Z

@eigenrobot Isn't this just the FVEY? (America might not be explicitly mentioned, but since all these countries are dependent on the US in various ways, it is in fact the FVEY with extra steps)

interesting thing about drowning people who havent slipped into unconsciousness yet is that they'll seek out other swimmers and push them underwater to try to keep themselves afloat occasionally lifeguards have to save entire groups of people engaged in drowning each other

@rchitectopteryx @OKnox SBNR I think, in all its incarnations internationally, is best classified as a kind of deism. And can you really say that practical deism makes religion a "minor part" of people's lives (tbc, I could go either way on this question)? /fin

@rchitectopteryx @OKnox SBNR is an interesting beast, come to it. It reminds me of the phenomenon in East Asia where supermajorities of people (60-90% depending on country) believe God or other unseen beings exist (pewresearch.org/religion/2024/…), but less than 20% pray or consider religion important.

I had not heard this part of the bin Laden raid. From Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen.

@Ruminations01 @1990AO1974 @OKnox It was confirmed IIRC, the Pakistanis allowed a team of Chinese scientists to examine the tail rotor; they were especially interested in the radar deflecting paint.

@1990AO1974 @OKnox They did. In the many days Pakistan had it, and moved it to a covered area, China likely had special access & was able to take pieces home. I’m sure a place like Abottabad also has at least one night capable camera for some view of the whole thing. twz.com/40853/stealthy…

@kalajhadu @teortaxesTex Though this might have some explanatory value for the Air Force and ISI, it's unclear to me how this translates into making the nuclear program functional (and why not the Army?). The leader of Pakistan's nuclear program was not a member of any of these martial castes in any case

@teortaxesTex Pakistan inherited the 2 main martial demographics (per enrollment in British armed forces) of India - Punjabis / Pathans/ Pashtuns. Demographics were destiny.

Pakistan and North Korea are the only two societies that have minmaxed for A-Ring completion from a near-completely hopeless starting point. Everyone else more or less had it easy or didn't even try.

@DistractedAnna What's funny is 90%+ of the US shipbuilding sector is military-related. This is the sort of thing DOW can literally fix with executive fiat

They are not paying like they’re desperate

@SecondRingSZN @HMBrough_ Everything I said above is obviously also applicable to indigenous Taiwanese lol

@_mengde_ @HMBrough_ You know real native Taiwanese exist and they're not the hoklos right? Don't even try to pull the native card I'm not White I'm Fujianese I know abt Taiwanese settlers.

Man I have the most dedicated hate readers. To be clear, my views haven’t really changed since the 2010s, when I was a brown, upper-middle class, center-right Romneycon. What has changed is how I express them. Leaving the brown part aside, this would make you a “conservative” in the 2010s and a reluctant liberal in the 2020s. Accounting for the fact that the GOP despises brown people, this forces you towards the Democrats. Now, being with the Democrats means you can’t be very sanguine about the Indian People’s Party. I still think they are the best choice for India, if only because Rahul Gandhi directly threatens to drag India into South Africa-level quota-induced dysfunction and financial LatAmism. But this is not an admissible view among Democrats, so I keep it to myself. Regarding Taiwan, I do support its independence, it is something unique in East Asia and it would be a shame to see it snuffed out like Hong Kong was.

@SecondRingSZN @HMBrough_ With this kind of attitude, it's no wonder the Chinese pitch is so popular in Taiwan

@_mengde_ @HMBrough_ You know Chinese mainlanders know what you are right? Hey why does "sheng" in benshengren mean province?

@bingchillw @Afinetheorem @ATabarrok And tbc, Microsoft Research Asia is literally in Beijing.

@Afinetheorem @ATabarrok I think it was an asia-based microsoft research team and I know at least one of them is actually working for a chinese lab today

This is a great point. Chinese research is absolutely growing but 10/10 of the most influential papers in the past decade were from US institutions. Zero from Europe. Zero from China. This won't last, of course.

@SecondRingSZN @HMBrough_ But on the other hand, there's obviously a big difference between an ancestral language 22% of your people speak and an ancestral language 22 of your people speak.

@SecondRingSZN @HMBrough_ about theirs (however you want to take that: one can reasonably state that if you are a "Native American" named something like Markwayne Mullin, it's time to give up on your ancestral language and fully adopt whatever it is your colonizers speak. I actually agree with this).

@jimineuropa @bucephalus424 How much of that is just Czech being Czech?

@bucephalus424 Wait till you see how Czech romanises Chinese.

The Wade-Giles system and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race

@CBankingEditor It has never really been technical gaps in forcing payment at the heart of the problem of contract enforcement. /fin

@CBankingEditor "disputes over whether the financial transaction was properly obligated or not." This defies technical fixes beyond better authentication (and blockchain is not the best solution for this), because the question is one of personal disagreements and not a technical failure.

It's just fascinating how far-flung merchant clans can create sprawling financial empires even in the absence of modern banking techniques, simply because the requisite levels of trust are embedded into the way they do business. The Shanxi province merchants of the Qing Dynasty did something much similar to the Tamils merchants of Southeast Asia, creating modern China's first private financial system with the development of the piaohao banks. This is also demonstrative of the fact that irrespective of advances in financial technology or fancy digital ledgers, at the end of the day finance will never be about anything more or less than abstract relations of credit and debt that are underpinned by trust.