Oh, so Musk is only #2 businessman in the world now? What a shakeup!
By the way, on a device where I have not found a way to block YT ads (namely my smart-tv) I just saw a Musk ad where he invited everyone to go to tesla2024.io to receive lots of money in Bitcoin and/or Ethereum. I haven't touched the address. Please report back, anyone who goes there
Existence of this kind of ads perfectly justifies total ad-blocking. All those social media companies go through some purging campaigns among the users of their platforms, but they cannot screen ads?
Two motorists whose car plunged into a freezing Oslo fjord escaped unharmed when a floating sauna came to their rescue, Norwegian police have said. [...] The owner of the car, who was not identified by name, said he had thought the car was in park mode when he hit the accelerator pedal.
Tesla is recalling about 2.2 million vehicles because the font on the warning lights panel was too small to comply with safety standards, U.S. regulators said on Friday. [...] The models affected include the 2012 to 2023 Model S, the 2016 to 2024 Model X, the 2017 to 2023 Model 3, 2019 to 2024 Model Y and 2024 Cybertruck vehicles.
He makes a compelling case about the nature of the attack on the first Arab village by Israel in 1948. However, Nakba is not just about the first village. It is about Israel's policy of expulsion of Arab population. There is no way to deny that that was (and is) the policy.
In 1947/8, borders were assigned for Israel. People either recognise those borders or not. Arabs did not. And also Israel immediately overstepped those borders in every direction, so de facto Israel does not recognise those borders either. Thus Israel by its own measure is no better than Arabs.
For Travelingisrael (and other Zionists) Israel's behaviour is no different from the way other nation states emerged after WWII at the dissolution of European empires. The sad thing is that European empires were colonial, and even after formal dissolution or reform still retain colonial behaviour and colonial instincts to this day. You can choose to do either the right thing or follow the example of Western colonial hypocrites. Looking at Israel's behaviour — Palestinian territories either blockaded or occupied and burdened with Jewish kibbutz-colonies; Golan Heights occupied and the southern portions of Lebanon and Syria under periodic terror attacks because of it; policy of expulsion of original population in constant swing since 1948 — Israel has consistently refrained from doing the right thing.
Who is threatening? Is One China policy threatening? Both mainland China and Taiwan have the exact same rhetoric of One China policy, the only difference being whose regime should preside over the single China. (There are more small differences, such as Taiwan claiming more landmass to itself than the current mainland China holds, but that aside.)
Of course mainland China looks more menacing to Taiwan due to its manpower, but let's remember that it was Kissinger of USA who made the world recognise mainland China as the proper China so that Taiwan became a barely recognised country. Don't you think Taiwan felt threatened back then? Quite ironically, nobody thought of the cost-effectiveness of such a move. It's quite costly to have a recognised scary mainland China now.
The U.N. Court made a good decision. Finally, when Israelis are committing genocide, it is legal to say that they are committing genocide. And it's confirmed yet again that part of the rules of war is proportionality.
But the court did not rule Israel to stop.[1] When the other party is not a recognised country, then the perpetrators can argue more liberties for themselves, just like USA did in war against Afghanistan, explicitly refusing to abide by Geneva Conventions.
1 To stop the war, that is. The court ruled Israel to abstain from genocide.↵
I too (three?) can't see an invasion of Taiwan as anything but a loss for the CCP. Nor the military establishment raring to go fish either.
However threatening to invade could be cost-effective and threats must be taken seriously.
Cost-effectiveness does not matter at all whatsoever. Russia is trying to teach you this very hard, but you are not learning. In Ukraine war, Russians happily wallow in senseless pain and suffering. They think it makes them glorious and glory is what matters. You should already have seen how much they are willing to sacrifice for nearly nothing. The reality is that they are willing to sacrifice far more than we have seen, far more than the West can imagine.
How much are you willing to sacrifice for your home country? Obviously your mind went instantly into cost-effectiveness calculation mode, so the correct answer is: Nothing. As soon as you start calculating, it is not a sacrifice any longer. And you think everybody else is the same as you. Well, Russians are not, and I suspect the Chinese also are not like that. There is some diversity in the world, can you imagine?
The Chinese can afford to expend with about half a billion lives. But I think they won't. For the current regime, starting a war would be a totally new activity. They have not had a war since their civil war around WWII. They have not committed any external aggression for some 300 years or so. A war would be a completely new thing for them and this is probably the main reason why they think very carefully and are very cautious about it.
However, they have the manpower. And they keep getting indirect encouragement from the West, as Russia has been consistently rewarded for every incursion.
Here’s a couple of good questions for an election year: while we may talk about minimum wages, why don’t we ever discuss maximum wages? And, while our politicians may argue about how little a family can survive on, why do they never address the other end of the inequality scale: just how much accumulated wealth might be too much?
The best move ever is of course to come up with a catchy name for your theory. In this case, it's Limitarianism.
But I'm expecting a science-fictiony turn in Klara and the Sun. Perhaps artificial intelligence sinking into abuse mode while failing to sense anything out of the ordinary?
It was a different twist. Probably better, because it was something I did not expect.
I have a relatively minor discontentment about it, but let me stay silent about it. I am rather happy that great humanist fiction continues in 21st century.
Average playout: 1. It is more preferable for China to attack in south of Taiwan. In north they would fail to get a foothold. 2. An assumption is that Japan will let USA use their bases. 3. USA will overpower the Chinese navy. 4. Chinese infantry in Taiwan cannot sustain themselves and would eventually be defeated. 5. All events from beginning to end take some four or five weeks.
Comments: - Taiwan is a difficult island to conquer. The difficulty is comparable to World War II's D-Day or Philippines battles. - One would think that when both sides use war games to predict the outcome and the outcome is clear, they would not engage in real war. In reality the risk may be taken anyway. - Sometimes politicians, citing some political factors, encourage military action despite the pessimism of the generals. For example, Iraqi generals in the Iraq war did not see any point in fighting, but Saddam Hussein said he was talking with the French and Russians and that victory was possible. - Ukraine holds on strategically because USA/EU supports Ukraine and Russia is unable to disrupt the support. Such support is not possible for Taiwan. A longer war would be lost for USA and Taiwan would have to put up an internal resistance, build on asymmetric capabilities, landmines and such.
My own takeaways: Western policy makers think they have already done everything they could for Ukraine. Victory for Taiwan is plausible, so it is okay to call the current status in Ukraine a day. Their Plan B: Even if the West loses Taiwan, so what.
Funny thing is, like mentioned in the Map thread, few in Europe seem to think that our support of Ukraine is just right. A fairly clear majority want us to do more, and a minority want us to do less (or preferably nothing at all).
Yes, the majority wants us to do more and a minority wants to do less, but these are people who don't have much power over either national or union-level policies. The only effect they have is to get politicians to act busier for a few months before elections.
Not true. A majority of the political circles cannot "want to do more". They are the ones in position to do as much as they want. If we assume that the political circles would like to do more, but cannot, then why is it exactly the political circles in western EU who are unable to do more?
Nope. Support for Ukraine is precisely at the level that the political circles have set. It is in their nature to think that they have already done their best. The state of affairs is as it is not because they cannot do more even though they would want to, but because they think they are performing top-notch according to polls, charts and maps.
Edit: An easy test for the members of the political circles is to ask them to formulate victory for Ukraine or defeat for Russia. Make a poll and see what sort of answers you get. Actually, how do you formulate victory for Ukraine yourself?
And I have yet to see anyone (outside that minority) happy about the current sorry state of the US, because of our own sorry state.
The western EU political circles are afflicted — always have, always will — with the superiority complex. Under this complex, they never see or acknowledge their own sorry state. Sorry state does not exist for them. Some foreign country such as USA can be in a sorry state. Eastern EU members can be blinded by a sorry "survivalist" mindset. EU biggies themselves in their own mind are not in any sort of sorry state, never have been. EU biggies don't think they have made any mistakes that need correcting.
For a moment Scholz was able to enounce that the Ostpolitik had led to an "Irrtum". What was the lesson he took from this in the same speech? To start militarising Germany. So this "Irrtum" has been taken care of this way. It did not involve doing more for Ukraine. In his mind, Scholz was briefly in an embarrassing situation, but he got quickly out of it.
Another example: Remember Macron's flights and phone calls between Putin and Zelensky, trying to get them to agree to a peace or ceasefire or negotiate a deal over something he himself was not certain of? Clearly Macron had no idea what he was doing. Clearly he had no idea that he was undermining any possibility of formulating a common EU policy. (Actually, I assume he was doing it deliberately precisely in order to kill anobody else's better initiative just to pretend to be relevant on the world arena just to ingratiate his own narcissism, but that aside.) His attempts fell through massively. His counterproductive "diplomacy" was overrun by USA/Baltic initiative of providing Ukraine with unconditional support. Has Macron regretted his macroning for a second? Does he see how destructive and dangerous he was? Or at least that he was or is in a sorry state? Nope. Nothing. Sorry state does not exist for him. Not for a second did he think he was doing anything wrong. He does not think he is doing anything wrong now and there's no chance in the universe for him to get in any sort of sorry state.
US and EU has had a well-working partnership through decades: US breaks things with weapons, EU rebuild them with money. US feels strong, EU feels good, and both get results, often the wanted ones.
Now, once you get over this flashy oversimplification, take some time to count the wanted results as opposed to unwanted results, and you should see how skewed this characterisation is. At least, you would if you took the on-ground situation more seriously. The EU has been miserable at diplomacy at every crucial turn. Not occasionally miserable, not getting "often the wanted" results, but making things worse at every single crucial turn, such as Balkan wars, messing up relations with Poland and Hungary after they joined the EU (and almost messing them up with more countries, Estonia being a close call), failing to see any threat in Russia. The results in those situations were deaths and misery, having to call in external superior firepower (against Serbia, which means that diplomacy failed), and signing agreements (Minsk Agreements) that were doomed to be either broken (which again means that diplomacy failed) or, if not broken, then perpetuate unlawfulness (which means that whoever signed the agreements had no sense of justice).
A far more accurate characterisation of the EU activities is the way Ukranians characterise it — it was Ukrainians who came up with the words "macroning" and "scholzing" as far as I know — and the way North Africans see it — as plain old French colonialism, slightly modernised, but still unmistakably colonialism. Moreover, the entire "Global South" perceive the EU/USA/Nato/IMF etc. "seven-headed beast" as a single colonial power headquartered in the so-called collective West.
Why do they perceive it this way? I'd say, given the actions of the entity, how could they not.
The final test for USA is whether Trump happens again. All branches of government should demonstrate the resolve to take him out. Thus far the judicial branch has yielded the best results, but kind of mixed. For example, the gag orders produced no consequences, even though Trump clearly breached them. The best would be for SCOTUS to decide that Trump cannot run, which is up next, seems to me.
A party whose leader attempted a coup and who fails to condemn such a leader — quite the contrary, lets him run for presidency again — should be banned. This is probably in the competency of Congress, but the current Congress is absolutely not up for it. The executive branch is making a fair attempt by driving the secret documents case, but it seems to be narrowly running out of time.
Ukraine's president Zelensky visited Estonia this week. It caught my ear that he wants to get back those refugees who would be eligible for the army. Not sure how warmly the refugees take this.
This is the status on the politico-rhetorical front, as officially expressed by the most pro-Ukraine EU member:
I'd say the status is pretty bad. At 12:08: "I think there's a difference between 2014 and 2024. In 2014 I saw how quickly it went from Let's support Ukraine to Let's sit down and negotiate, give away the territory so that Russia is happy. This time we have been able to explain how giving in to the aggressor only gives you more war. Weakness provokes Russia. Strength doesn't."
Unfortunately no, we have not been able to explain this. First, we failed to explain this in 2014. As she acknowledges both earlier and later in the interview, there are still EU members who are unclear on the support for Ukraine and unclear on the needed outcome, and it is clear (to me) that she implies other/more members than Hungary. For example in the same context she mentions that there is still the illogical strategic requirement on Ukraine to not attack Russia's soil — this is something Hungary has nothing to do with.
The current support and sympathy that is flowing out towards Ukraine is not due to our explanations, but due to our strong example and initiative, and even more so due to the actual situation on the ground that very concretely proved the falsity and perversity of the position of western EU that left them utterly embarrassed. The concrete material proof did the trick. The EU biggies are convinced by no explanation ever. They needed an outbreak of hot war to lift their asses a bit.
However, their embarrassment is wearing off and they will soon fall back to their old attitude. Republicans in USA have already stopped the support from USA to Ukraine, so that the current balance of EU's support surpasses that of USA. This has the effect of the EU biggies thinking Our support to Ukraine is absolutely fabulous, bigger than that of USA, therefore we can pat ourselves on the back now and take it easy. Elections in USA are scheduled at the end of this year, so Democrats (and as a result entire USA) will be, in best case, cautious and indeterminate on the Ukraine topic for the entire year. In practice, "cautious and indeterminate" means a halt, and EU biggies will do the same with a delay, which is the way they have behaved all these decades.
I discovered Travelingisrael some five years ago or so. I appreciate a good professional tour guide. I have passed some of the same training and done plenty of tour guiding informally. Most of what I know about the attitudes and culture in Israel I know from the videos of Travelingisrael.
Anyway, on topic: Travelingisrael is an outright Zionist. He considers his positions "centrist", positions such as that there was no such thing as Palestinian people in the first half of the 20th century, so the land was up for grabs, and of course Jews/Israelis have a historical+moral+divine priority to it over everybody else. Plus Israel has committed no atrocities that would not be overshadowed by atrocities against the Jewish people.
such as basic arithmetic! If you have difficulties with such, it's a matter of memory and apperception...
I passed, so I did not have difficulties to any significant degree. And I may be underestimating myself, since I am comparing myself to my primary school deskmate who was the school primus, particularly in arithmetic, being able to calculate large numbers in his head and even play blind chess.
Anyway, there are several areas in math, arithmetic being one, geometry being another. I was excellent in geometry.
What you mean is that you have no idea about anything. Russia welcomes Trump. Russia contributed to Trump's election campaign in 2016, significantly so, if not outright decisively. Trump and Putin are best buddies. Not as best as Trump and Epstein, but almost.
CCP also warmly welcomes an erratic American leader once again. The status of the war in Ukraine conveys the following message to the Far East: Westerners don't help even those of their own race, so they definitely won't help Asians. Meaning that Taiwan is entirely on its own, absolutely helpless in case USA gets a pact-ignoring Nato-demolishing president who has no idea about geopolitics, no idea about global trade and does not care to get an idea. For CCP this means: If Trump wins, we have Taiwan in our pocket. Foreseeing this, Japan has decided to remilitarise.
The EU is divided. Ever since the end of Cold War, the western half spearheaded by Germany and France has been working to undermine Nato (as a defence alliance against Russia) and USA's role on the continent. The western half of the EU has been working to approach Russia economically and politically, envisioning Russia's membership for the EU. A part of this policy has been to divest the new members of their voting rights with every new renegotiation of the EU constitution, and the next such step is right now on the lips of all western EU leaders, including Scholz, Macron, and Leyen.
The eastern half has no use for this kind of the EU. The eastern half of the EU sees Russia as an existential threat. They joined Nato and the EU (and Nato first) in order to counterbalance and counteract this existential threat. The current status of the war in Ukraine conveys the following message: Despite all treaties, alliances and memberships, the West does not do anything to hold itself to their declared values and signed commitments. The West sees no problem giving up the eastern countries to Russia. The following action by the eastern EU countries depends on how fast they are able to take this message in and reorient themselves. The fastest one to correctly foresee this coming was Orban who already reoriented Hungary pre-emptively. Hungary is best positioned for the post-Ukraine-war situation by having operable relations both with Russia and the EU biggies and also with USA, whoever the president there be. Hardly anyone else will (be able to) reorient themselves this radically, but at least nobody has any reason to hold to their commitments to the West any longer, since the West has by now clearly dropped all commitments (and even pretension of fairness) to the East which, for the East, held existential value, the most important value of all. The betrayal from the West has been absolutely total and thus reorientation is forced, inescapable. So, even though nobody in the eastern half of the EU welcomes a Nato-demolishing president in USA, realistically nobody can expect any president in USA be capable of saving Nato's reputation either. As a result, nobody in the eastern half of the EU gives a damn who becomes the president of USA. But the western half would welcome a reasonably polished diplomatic figure who would not look too bad to take a photo together with. Trump is not welcome for that reason.
And what is your reason to favour Trump for president, OakdaleFTL? I get it: He is the treasonous nepotist election-denying dictator wannabe with no morals, no principles, and no professionalism. He represents everything near and dear to yourself.
This video is a review and critique of Misali's seximal system, which according to Misali is the best way to count. The video argues that the binary system is far better. After watching it, I am convinced.
What I find most impressive about the video is that it even makes the binary system palatable as a human-language system (Chapter 6 at 1:00:15). However, at this point I slightly disagree because I got inspired to invent a slightly modified system that would work better in my opinion, even though my system would not match the notation as neatly as the system proposed in the video. I will probably spend the weekend testing my system out.
Arithmetic never was my strong suit. This is exactly why I went to work at a bank: I heard they have computers for counting so that I don't have to do any of it. Unfortunately we are in civilisational decline and crappy Microsoft products are increasingly not up to the simple tasks of counting and computing. A few years ago I had to buy a soroban to physically start practising arithmetic in order to be able to get work done.
By the way, soroban computing is a fantastic skill to possess. It can be easily adapted to any base.
Yes, this is the point that I am making. The method we (you and I) apply here is anecdotal, but let's not underestimate this, because it *is* objective. We want a city to be objectively livable, on your example quieter, not quiet in the opinion of locals who have suffered noise for so long that they don't notice it any longer and it does not occur to them to complain about it. In some places the polled people may think à la, "Oh, this is the EU asking questions. I better make my home town look fantastic" just like Russians who see on TV that their economy is doing brilliant, so it is not worth a mention that they have to burn their boots and pieces of old furniture to warm up their home.
This is a report on the regional policy website of the EU, so definitely some EU regional policy kommissar looks at it and decides, "Romanians are catching up nicely. Good job!" This is the important reason to have objective measures, to get from our anecdotal observations to more adequate auditing, so that EU's regional policy would not be as terrible a systemic failure as its geopolitics is. But alas, they are shooting themselves in the foot with a machine gun in both areas.
This particularly applies to the Russian minority, which is relatively much larger in Estonia and Latvia than in Lithuania.
This is the correct answer. (Everything else is rather irrelevant.)
Estonia and Latvia have to deal with a sizeable bunch of actual Russians inside our own borders. This particular issue is sharply dividing the country along ethnic lines.
I find polling in the EU, by the EU, pretty atrocious. Now, this Ukraine issue is of course appropriate material for polling, but the other day a report about the livability of cities was published. The obvious problems: - It's based on polling, asking what people think. Isn't livability objectively measurable, such as number of kindergartens/schools per parents etc? - It is a weird selection of cities. From Nothern Europe nd Baltics they take just the bare ridiculous minimum, i.e. the capitals, while there are many cities from Central and Southern Europe, and also cities from countries outside the EU, from countries that will never become the EU (Turkey). - The results are very off. Number ten in overall ranking is Cluj-Napoca. I have been there. I know what kind of city it is. Number one is Zürich. I have been there. I know what kind of city it is. There are subjectively (since this report is subjective) easily better, nicer, prettier, cleaner, better-managed cities with denser amenities in both countries. There must have been a weird slice of population who got polled, such as EU interns' own kitchen pals or such.
When making an objective report, it should be possible to measure all cities (of the EU), or all cities starting with a certain size. In this case apparently the goal was not to get an objective report out, to learn something from the data, but just to conjure up some nonsense regardless of the damage it causes in those who stumble on the nonsense that has an official stamp on it.
When you do a report, stupid EU, do it thoroughly and properly, fairly and objectively. But clearly you are not able to do it, so get replaced by ChatGPT.
One upon a time Fox News went all-in on Trump. Then on 2020 they called the elections correctly and the warm relationship became endangered even after Fox News fired the elections reporters who had called the elections correctly. Fox News tried to save the relationship by spreading the elections lie more faithfully than William Barr, but it was to no avail. Fox News had to settle with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 m, fire their biggest magnet Tucker Carlson and Trump stopped appearing at Fox News.
Until two days ago or so, when Trump agreed with Fox News to arrange a "town hall", a televised meeting between a candidate and voters. Trump was in his normal mode: - lying about elections - lying about his lawsuits - promising to become a dictator - accusing media - ridiculing and threatening his political opponents
And the Fox News hosts just giggled.
Evidently, Trump is like a drug. Even though relationship with him is extremely damaging and unhealthy, Fox News cannot help itself and desperately wants more. Until death do them part.
Estonia's Nublu (with Finland's Mikael Gabriel) are trying to win Finland's national song competition to get to represent Finland in Eurovision. With this configuration they hope to secure 12 points for Finland at least from Estonia.
I think the name is actually passable. It has the minimum requirement for a project name: Be distinct, different from other projects. The name of Vivaldi browser does not pass this minimum requirement. Neither did Opera.
At this stage I personally am done browser-hopping, certainly when it comes to graphical browsers. Apart from interface configuration, what I want from a browser is - Control over cookies (suppress all by default) - Control over popups/popins (suppress all by default) - Control over fonts and colours (the imposed styles and scripts should be completely unnecessary)
The modern web is bad and getting worse. In late 90's and 00's, popups proliferated. When popup blockers became common, popups were replaced by popins, which are a far more evil feature.
In good old times, control over cookies used to be in the browser, that is in the user's hands. Ever since the EU's completely unwarranted inane incompetent idiotic counterproductive cookie directive, there is no longer any control whatsoever over cookies. Instead we have cookie popups/popins which give the false impression to people that they are managing their cookie preferences, whereas in reality of course they are not. The cookie popups do not care what settings the user has set in the browser (in the only place where the settings have an actual under-the-hood effect), the popups pop up regardless, and also regardless what settings you set in the website popup earlier. Every time you visit a website, you get the popups no matter what your settings are or were.
None of the graphical browsers over the last ten years or so is able to control popups, despite some browsers having a setting for it. There is literally no single decent graphical browser currently in existence out of the box. Maybe Brave browser or the like can be made to suppress all popups with careful extra tinkering.
Text mode or terminal browsers handle both cookies and popups properly out of the box. They also handle fonts and colours properly out of the box and usually interface configuration is fine too. Unfortunately they do not handle webscript features, such as delayed loading, properly. For delayed loading and other heavily scripted features, graphical browsers are still necessary.
The user interface feature that I expect from graphical browsers is the ability to toggle off all toolbars and menus. Vivaldi used to have it for a while, but in recent updates they ruined it and they brought back an empty bar that you cannot get rid of. No reason for the bar and no way to get rid of it. I won't ask why.
On Linux I can still achieve the toolbar-less and menu-less effect in all apps by going fullscreen and then taking control over the fullscreen window by resizing it with the window manager as if it were any other window. Funny that Windows is called Windows, but has no window manager. Anyway, it should be possible to toggle off all toolbars and menus in all web browsers. Browsers are giving their users less and less, so give at least that.
Human rights? Another symptom of your self-righteousness: You believe everyone in the world has the right to residence and citizenship anywhere they choose... Why? It's certainly not enlightenment. It's Soros-style agitprop. How do you determine that residence and citizenship are inalienable? Hand-waving? No. You just want to keep the argument going, and this red herring is just a means to that end. It doesn't matter that it's nonsensical!
Oh dear, you have not learned your fallacies properly. Your reading comprehension is F as usual.
My point was that DeSantis and Abbott are engaged in human trafficking. Human trafficking is a crime. Crimes should be prosecuted in a law-and-order country. Also, human rights reads straight in the Declaration of Independence of USA.
Your attempt to sidetrack from this by attributing the concept of human rights to Soros instead is a red herring. You are using logical fallacies to compensate for your lack of facts, but this is not going to work. Just keep on cheering crimes and criminals - when they are of your own party, you hyperpartisan hypocrite.
61% in Germany. 62% in Estonia. What explains the fact that the numbers are so low and so close to each other, compared to 83% in Lithuania and 90% in Finland?
