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51
DnD Central / Re: Tripe about Ukraine
Last post by ersi -
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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHFlWkejebI

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.
52
DnD Central / Re: The State of Israel ~ vs ~ Hamas ---- A "Natural Right" to Self-Defence?
Last post by ersi -
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.

This being a debate forum, feel free to debate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsm5AUE0UDs
53
DnD Central / Re: Philosophy, Logic, Formal Systems
Last post by ersi -
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.
54
DnD Central / Re: The Awesomesauce of the American 2024 Presidential Elections
Last post by ersi -
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.
55
DnD Central / Re: The Awesomesauce of the American 2024 Presidential Elections
Last post by OakdaleFTL -
What you really mean is: The EU, Russia and the CCP don't want this... :)
 I understand your point of view: Bureaucratic power is the most important thing to maintain!
The U.S. must be cobbled... if it won't accede to its bureaucracy.
Good luck with that!

What you want is something that you can't deal with...  A United States that adheres to its original principles.                                                               
56
DnD Central / Re: Philosophy, Logic, Formal Systems
Last post by OakdaleFTL -
Arithmetic never was my strong suit.
Nor was logic, despite your pretensions! :)

There's much to be said in favor of the logistic thesis — but nothing that requires or forbids the grade-school learning of abilities, such as basic arithmetic! If you have difficulties with such, it's a matter of memory and apperception... Since you claim to be a philosopher of sorts, shouldn't you recognize and explicate your weird reasoning for rejecting modern logic?

Choosing a base for arithmetic is trivially inconsequential. Unless one is -shall we say- idiosyncratic?  (I mean, of course, idiopathic!)

I'd not have commented here but for your recent post! But dear ersi I stand by my inane verse!

But you've given me yet another chance to post this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4


I'd agree that one needn't be a wiz at arithmetic to deal with dollars and cents. But innumeracy is indeed a debilitation...
57
DnD Central / Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?
Last post by Frenzie -
Incidentally noise data does seem to be fairly readily available for some cities.

https://gemeente.groningen.nl/geluidkaarten-voor-omgevingslawaai-inzien in the PDF file "Vaststelling geluidskaarten 2021"

Also available more dynamically on http://www.icinity.nl/ but that's a bit harder to navigate.

Compared to the Irish map, also available at https://gis.epa.ie/EPAMaps/ which is somehow even harder to use, it looks to me like it has many more roads at over 70 dB while it seems their equivalents in Groningen are mostly at 65-70 dB, with slightly fewer at that level.

While I'm at it, here are the noise maps for Flanders:
https://omgeving.vlaanderen.be/nl/klimaat-en-milieu/gezonde-veilige-en-aantrekkelijke-leefomgeving/geluid/geluidsbelastingskaarten

And here's one for North-Holland:
https://geoapps.noord-holland.nl/app/geluidsbelasting/
58
DnD Central / Re: Philosophy, Logic, Formal Systems
Last post by ersi -
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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDDaEVcwIJM

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.
59
DnD Central / Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?
Last post by ersi -
For example Dublin shows up as people being very satisfied with the noise level. From personal experience I can say that Groningen, ranked slightly lower on that list, is tremendously quieter than Dublin. It's been over a decade since I visited, but this noise map doesn't suggest it's become any quieter: https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2023/03/18/tyres-road-surfaces-and-speed-being-considered-in-noise-reduction-plans/ Similar notes clearly apply to many of the categories.
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.
60
DnD Central / Re: Maps-Maps-Maps! ?
Last post by Frenzie -
It's based on polling, asking what people think. Isn't livability objectively measurable, such as number of kindergartens/schools per parents etc?
I partially disagree with that. At best you might leave things on the table, at worst you'd risk measuring in the wrong direction. Asking people could act as a sanity check for whether something like the number of kindergartens/schools per parents actually does what you think it does.

But I see where you're coming from of course. For example Dublin shows up as people being very satisfied with the noise level. From personal experience I can say that Groningen, ranked slightly lower on that list, is tremendously quieter than Dublin. It's been over a decade since I visited, but this noise map doesn't suggest it's become any quieter: https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2023/03/18/tyres-road-surfaces-and-speed-being-considered-in-noise-reduction-plans/ Similar notes clearly apply to many of the categories.