> we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon
Ah yes, China has a track record of invading countries.
> or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s
As opposed to NATO countries who have a steady increase in the number of young conscripts.
> Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones.
I don't know why you put modern in parentheses. Russia did make a mistake of not adopting cheap drones earlier in the war. But Russians were the first to use optic fiber drones resistant to electronic warfare which gave them an edge during Summer offensive last year. Ukrainians have since caught up and their allies were able to supply them with large number of drones. But both Ukraine and Russia rely primarily on drone warfare and artillery becomes less important for both sides. Which all explains the static state of this war.
> Ah yes, China has a track record of invading countries.
Claims on Taiwan. Building fake islands in the South China Sea. Encroaching on the Siachen glacier. Attempting to rename Indian states. Port capture in poor nations through default. They have plenty of expansionist tendencies, it’s just early in the game…
China has been “advanced” for a handful of years now. It’s going to get a lot worse because conscience is a throwaway concept for them when it comes to achieving outcomes.
> Which if you want an actual feel for the true scale of things
The caveat is that more zeros do nothing for our comprehension of the scale. That's the problem because most people can't comprehend how evolution is even possible. We just don't have a mental model for a trillion, it's all the same to us after a certain threshold.
> In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest
You'd absolutely get detained by authorities in Ukraine or Russia for sharing consequences of airstrikes on critical infrastructure. I'm sure other countries would do the same (not that it's good).
A large number of those tend to be vetted. Additonally, frontlines level videos do go through significant vetting and some form of MDM is used on personal phones in the frontlines.
Additionally, on the Ukraine side as well as the Russian side, civilian strike information isn't deemed critical from a NatSec perspective as plenty of Russians and Ukrainians lived on both sides of the border and still have relatives on either side, so both assume the other has granular level knowledge of non-frontline spaces.
obviously, countries have ways to determine BDAs for their attacks, but you don't have to give it to them for free. The concept of oversharing is lost in the age of social media.
I'm pretty sure most people didn't notice any kind of inconsistency. I myself have a hard time figuring out what's going on. I'm so focused on doing the work with the computer that I don't have the time to notice what's "wrong" with the OS. Which makes me wonder if the whole thing is blown out of proportion.
The only status it brings is "smart enough to not use Windows 11" or "cares enough to get the work done rather than fighting with Linux on laptops".
(I use Linux on desktop as a first choice, but it's always been an uphill struggle with laptop wifi/power manglement/audio for me. I blame the esoteric chipsets used in the machines I've bought in the UK)
I have blue collar friends in California that consider apple products a sign of leftism and I hate to say it, but even sexuality (but that moreso in a joking way.)
Yeah, but then MacBook is going to run smoother and faster than the Windows one (and I don’t want to spend even one extra minute on dealing with drivers on Linux). There’re just objective benchmarks for that.
And MacBooks also have a better display and build quality. Like, touchpad is still hit or miss on any non-Apple device.
That’s why you shouldn’t take it at face value. Ethically speaking, the experiment must have been approved by the institutional review board. If there’re ethical concerns, these can be raised with them.
But I don’t think anyone “feeling uneasy” should be an argument once the ethical concerns have been considered and experiment has been approved.
The problem is, no amount of climate policies in the West is going to offset burning fuel in the developing counties. It’s a global phenomenon and addressing it locally is futile. That, and you don’t have the luxury of green solutions when energy prices were going through the roof.
Imagine what could be accomplished if Americans used their global influence to affect global change on climate issues with the same zeal that they pursue manipulative trade deals.
Surely it's better to be more reliant on domestically/locally produced wind and solar when oil and gas production by 3rd party countries is plummeting?
This is not only wrong but you are bending over backwards to maintain the state of ignorance which makes it possible to say that. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere did not come from developing countries, and every reduction buys more time to deal with the problem so, yes, local measures matter: as an example, the U.S. transportation sector is so carbon intensive that getting our average efficiency up will reduce global emissions by more than entire other countries produce.
This is even more wrong when you look at how Africa is electrifying. Unlike the United States, China continued to invest in solar panel production and so they’re now the cheapest option for electrical power for millions of people since solar panels run for decades and don’t require trucking diesel fuel around or building out power grids. Investments in batteries are having the same cycle: richer countries have the research universities and product development but then anyone can buy the product.
That’s why the fossil fuels spend so much money spreading messages like yours: they grew fat on government subsidies and they need those subsidies to continue or even expand as the basic economics increasingly favor renewables. Trump has to force coal plants to stay open because otherwise the operators would switch to cheaper options.
Ok so the wiki graph shows that annual emissions from the rest of the world are growing and US and EU contribute less and less while others contribute more? What’s the argument you’re making here?
The graph that shows the US as the #3 CO2 generator after China (#1), and all of Asia except China & India (#2)? The one that shows the US generating about half as much as China despite having less than a third of the population? The one that shows the US's contribution to be more than the continents of Africa, South America, and Oceania combined?
Struggling to see how one could look at such a chart and think it's futile for the US to take meaningful action.
Nice take on the trolley problem. "No amount of pulling the emergency brakes is going to prevent passengers from dying when this runaway train finally crashes. So let's be responsible adults and put the pedal to the metal."
OP mentions "six minutes" as a DB metric. But the thing is that DB doesn't care about trains being late. It's absolutely normal to have an hour delay in Germany. You can be considered lucky if it's under an hour. What will usually happen is that you spend half a day in some village waiting for your connection and travel the rest of the way standing in the doorway with your bags.
I've been on UK trains that were an hour late, others that changed platform at least three times, headed to the wrong destination etc.
Many are cancelled without a decent reason being given. I rarely take British trains now they are so expensive and unreliable. Only long distance maybe because buses are unpleasant.
reply