sylver_dragon

It’s not a crazy as you think.

I have to believe the actual poll and report aren’t as glaringly stupid as that headline. If you ask nearly anyone, “do you want peace?” They are going to respond with “yes.” The devil is always in the details though. Ask them, “should the war in Ukraine be ended by the Ukrainian Government capitulating to all Russian demands to secure an immediate peace?” And, you might find a lot of folks are suddenly less peaceful. This reminds me of the old saw:
There’s lies, damned lines and then there is statistics.

With a crafted question and a bit of p-hacking you can get a lot of results you want out of people.

And once you have found your specific collection of plugins that happen not to put the exact features you need behind a paywall but others, you ain’t touching those either.

And this is why, when I’m investigating phishing links, I’ve gotten used to mumbling, “fucking WordPress”. WordPress itself is pretty secure. Many WordPress plugins, if kept up to date, are reasonably secure. But, for some god forsaken reason, people seem to be allergic to updating their WordPress plugins and end up getting pwned and turned into malware serving zombies. Please folks, if it’s going to be on the open internet, install your fucking updates!

They’re less laws and more “guidelines”.

While I can understand Poland’s desire to have nuclear weapons available, this seems like it would be a really provocative step towards Russia. Nuclear weapons positioned that close to Russia will raise the threat of a nuclear first strike against Russia. Even without an unstable strongman in charge of Russia, it’s easy to see how a Russian government would be uncomfortable with this. At the same time, with an unstable strongman in charge of Russia, the provocation may not matter. Putin has proven he is willing to invade his neighbor and slaughter thousands, without provocation. So, I’m sure Poland isn’t as worried about provocation as they are defense.

Boeing said this was the only report of this issue in the 737 MAX fleet. The rudder pedal system is identical to the prior generation 737 NG

Given how well communicated the MCAS changes were between the 737 and 737 MAX. I’d be skeptical of the claim that the rudder pedal system is “identical” between the models. I’d actually be less surprised to find out Boeing added some screwball software which locks up the rudder pedals under the specific conditions of “fuck you”.

Nope, it was HER TURN! Now shut your deplorable mouth and quit questioning the Holy Neoliberal narrative! The Third Way shall provide!

~/s for the dumb~

I guess this guy must have joined the IDF.

Unfortunately, the Democrats keep going back to the well of “what are you going to do, vote for the other guy?” Their success on this has been hit or miss the last few cycles. In fairness, it’s been a viable strategy in the past, if Democrats can get those few persuadable voters in the middle of the political spectrum to vote Democratic and not Republican, that’s a net win for the Democratic candidate. But, that begs the question of “are there enough persuadable voters left to offset losses when parts of your base stay home?” With Biden’s continued support for Israel’s actions, it seems that their political calculus says, “yes”.

However, we’ve seen this go both ways in the last few cycles. Clinton deployed the tactic in 2016 and commenters were out in force to brow-beat any of the deplorables who offered anything less than a full-thoated support of her turn. It got her the popular vote, but that has never mattered, she lost the election. The “vote blue no matter who” force was on full display again in 2020 and managed to eek out a win. And here you are again, ramping up for 2024. It’s going to be interesting to see how it works out this time.

Biden in 2020 had the advantage of being somewhat unknown. Everyone knew him as Obama’s Vice President and that provided him some of Obama’s popularity. This time around, he’s much more of a known quantity and he’s going to be running on his own record. Brow-beating people with “anyone but Trump” seems less likely to work when voters may be looking at specific policies and actions which they find at odds with their beliefs. When Biden was more of an unknown, it was easy for voters to map their own views onto him. We see this with polls which include “generic Democrat/Republican” as an option. People map their own views onto the “generic” view and so are more supportive. When a candidate becomes a known quantity, support can drop off, as the voters know which areas they agree and disagree with a particular politician. In the same way, Biden’s policies are now more understood by the voters and people may be less inclined to support him based on those policies.

Personally, I’m doubtful this sort of brow-beating is going to work this cycle. Biden’s popularity isn’t fantastic and he’s too well known for people to map their views onto him. Moreover, responding to people being upset with his actions with a brow-beating seems like a poor response to peoples’ legitimate issues. It seems more likely to convince them to disengage or push back even harder. Sure, what are they going to do, vote for the other guy? No, probably not, but they may also not show up on election day. And with the closely divided state of the US electorate, that might just be enough to swing things the other way.

2024 is off to a great start for proving that space is hard.
Joking aside, it sounds like the mission was mostly successful in demonstrating a precision landing, they just had an electrical connection fail. Given the vibrations that are experienced in launch, it could have been anything from a loose connector to a bad solder joint. Just one small problem and the whole mission ends up lost. So ya, space is hard.

The company, which generates its revenue primarily through advertising and also offers premium access for $5.99 per month, has yet to turn a profit

Ya, this seems like a bad investment. And the need to turn a profit will likely lead to a worse and worse user experience as Reddit tries to monetize them.

It’s popular in the social consciousness right now. So, governments and international organizations are scrambling to look like they are “doing something”. Once the incredibly short attention span of the masses moves on to the Next Big Thing™, the Israeli Government can get back to building some Lebensraum for it’s settlers, without the rest of the world throwing a performative fit about it.

This kinda looks like a bad poll. The wording seems to setup a bad choice of extremes. The respondent has to either choose “friendly” or “an enemy”. But the relationship between the US and China is a much more complex thing. The US and China are certainly in competition in a number of areas, economically and geopolitically. The induction of China to the WTO in 2001 impacted the US’s manufacturing sector negatively (see: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-9/forty-years-of-falling-manufacturing-employment.htm). The US and China are at odds over the fate of Taiwan. But, in spite of all that, the US and China have deep trade links which benefit both countries greatly. And both countries are likely better off than they would be without the other. Global trade is generally positive for the economies involved, though global trade can also fuck individuals inside each economy, including driving wealth concentration and harming the economically disadvantaged and people whose skills don’t align well with the industries their country is focused on.

Trying to boil US-China relations down to either Friendly or “Enemy” misses a lot of the nuance and may mean people aren’t giving an accurate picture of how they view China.

So if a modern US president decided to publicly announce that he would no-longer respect NATO without additional justifications, how can the Senate enforce NATO without the US President and thus the Armed Forces support?

Sadly they would only have one option left, Impeachment. And that is such a fraught political process that it’s use and success would be in serious doubt. The House might vote to send Articles of Impeachment up to the Senate, but actually getting enough GOP Senators on board with removing a GOP President seems like a long shot. I think much of it would turn on who the Vice President is. If Trump somehow picks a more traditional Republican as VP, then there may be some desire in the Senate, from more moderate Republicans, to remove Trump. If Trump (as is more likely) picks some horrible ass-licker as VP, the GOP may look at the situation as having to remove both Trump and the VP and then end up with the Presidency falling to the Speaker of the House. While that might still be a Republican, this is also a pretty large embarrassment for the GOP, not something they will want to face lightly. And it’s also possible for the House to flip to the Democrats in 2024. So, the GOP in the Senate may be unwilling to accept removing a GOP President for a Democratic one. The Senate could try to engineer the transition of power such that a GOP care-taker President ends up in power (basically Gerald Ford’s path); but, one also wonders if the harder left wing of the Democrats would take a hard line against such a deal, seeing this as an opportunity to completely blunt a GOP Presidency. It wouldn’t work, we’d just end up one vote short for Conviction in the Senate for Impeachment. But, that’s the sort of political calculation which would need to be made.

Congress could also try to force the President’s hand by using budget votes and thew Power of the Purse. But, I don’t see Trump responding to that in a rational enough way to matter, This is a guy would would be completely willing to shutdown the US Government in a temper tantrum over a Happy Meal toy. He’;s not going to respond well to being told to play nice with our allies.

It’s a Goldilocks situation. Too much inflation leads to things like out of control price increases and a devaluing of a currency. For an example, Argentina is facing such a crisis. And it can get really bad. As the government tries to prop up the local currency, people end up avoiding it even more, because it’s just losing value so fast. On the other side of the coin, when growth goes negative, that can lead to high unemployment, stagnant or falling wages. This is a classic depression, and it’s never good for the average people.

For all the complaints about central banks and their interest rate fuckery, it’s one of the most effective controls central governments have on the economy as a whole. Turkiye was kind enough to run the counter-factual experiment and is now hoping to get inflation down to “only” 30% by the end of 2024. In a normal economy, you could probably produce diamonds with strategically placed charcoal and telling local economists that inflation may hit 30% next year. But, thanks to Erdogan’s desire to win another election, Turkiye is now hoping to get down to that number.

It’s all a balancing act. And raising and lowering of rates effects a lot of people in different ways. But,it’s going to be going on constantly as central banks try to keep inflation at a reasonable level, without causing economic contraction. And it also means reports on economic conditions which highlight where economists think an economy is going. Unfortunately, it also leads to journalists using those reports to write sensational articles. The economy effects everyone, and nothing drives clicks like fear.

It’s kinda to be expected. US export controls are preventing the sale of NVida chips to Chinese companies. Those companies can either adapt or go out of business. So, they are adapting. China also have a sizable semi-conductor industrial base; so, we should expect to see some switch to domestic production to de-risk their supply chain. While it will be a long time (if ever) for that domestic production capability to catch up with US based companies, the current situation does give them an incentive and source of funding to try. It will be interesting to see, going forward, if Huawei can improve on their technology and processes to challenge NVidia.

Day 1 after they kick russia out permanently? Election.

You’d actually want to schedule it a bit further out than this. Once the war is over, political parties will need to time organize, build infrastructure and campaign in an environment where the weather isn’t “sunny with a chance of bombs later”. Holding elections, with any sort of opposition having not had time to campaign is one of the more insidious anti-democratic tricks. As it leads to people voting for the “devil they know”, even if the opposition isn’t a devil at all.