The most chilling is that this also inflicts the military.
Lieutenant Colonel Heffington on West Point, published in 2017:
> Academic standards are also nonexistent. I believe this trend started 10 years ago, and it has continued to get worse. West Point has stated standards for academic expectations and performance, but they're ignored. Cadets routinely fail multiple classes, only to be thrown back into the mix. The faculty is expected to somehow drag them through the academic program until they manage to earn a passing grade. As a result, professors have lost hope and faith in the entire Academic Board process
And this is supposed to be the most prestigious institution in the armed forces, the people who will have nuclear weapons in their hands...Chilling. That's how the West ends up with leaders who do not know how to lead, reporters who do not report, officers who are clueless about real war, and diplomats who are incapable of being diplomatic
Nit: Nukes are under the Air Force. So the Air Force Academy would be the one to worry about. And they are having similar problems to West Point. But yes, any nuclear 'go/no-go' would go through the joint chiefs and would include all branches.
Is that a problem of shortened attention spans pervading the entire populace or the overall quality of recruits going south thanks to politicians who insist on using them as muscle for unnecessary wars?
While that was a rhetorical point in the Brexit campaign, in reality the nameless unelected bureaucrats in Brussels were simply replaced by nameless unelected bureaucrats in London
Every Western "democracy" suffers from the same fundamental problem - entrenched deep state, and a lack of feedback loop towards it. It's extremely hazy where, how and by whom decisions are truly made, and as a consequence, nobody ever faces any consequences if those decisions flop. People like Biden, Harris, Johnson or Truss are so glaringly incompetent that nobody even suspects them to have any input into the decision process, they're simple announcers. Elections allow us to change the announcers, but change nothing about the deep state that ultimately dictates the policies. Brussels works the same way, it's just makes the fundamental problem more obvious
Your statement strikes me as too generalizing and overly simplistic and the conclusion that basically the entire circus of Western democratic parties and elections is meaningless and we're all ruled by an anonymous, malicious class of fellow citizens that somehow want only the worst for us and we're gonna label them the "deep state" is as absurd as it is unnecessarily threatening the freedom we all cherish.
Two or even several things can be true at the same time.
Yes, some decision making transcends legistlative periods of elected officials.
Other decisions are actively brought in and executed.
Yes, there is a lack of feedback loop. Sometimes there are public compliance investigations after the fact.
Yes, some politicians are incompetent and have risen due to other qualifications, be it greed, be it communication. Some politicians may just not show their qualifications in the few moments when all the spotlight is on them.
Democracies are imperfect exactly not because there is a centralized hidden agenda going on but because people like you and I with emotions and ego participate in every step of the process.
Yes democracies are painfully slow to respond to change, don't catch all malicious actors in its executive branch and live with an oversized public servant body most of the time, but so help me any spiritual being you might know or believe in I'd choose to live in one any day of the week over autocracies where everything is nicely simple and announced by one, all competent super hero.
I'd recommend watching an annual People Congress of the CCP or how Putler auditions his inner circle and scolds them like school boys and then let's have a talk about the deep state.
Yes I agree and this is not all together a bad thing.
We need some stability otherwise fast talking demagogues and mob sentiment would routinely upset the apple cart. The bureaucracy (aka the "deep state") provides that.
But what you point out is also a problem. How do you get rid of corruption and incompetence when they routinely circle the wagons to protect their own and are beyond the reach of the voters? It is a big problem in Western society right now.
To add one more data point - Olkiluoto 3, started 2005, was expected to finish in 2009. Completed late 2021, 12 years late
Cherry on top - after producing electricity for about a week, it had to shut down for another 3 months. Then, after ramping up to about 30% of the capacity, it encountered another problem, delaying it for another 5 months. Here we are in June 2022, 17 years later, Olkiluoto 3 provides exactly 0 MW to the Finnish grid
Tesla pulls all sorts of accounting tricks to make gross margin appear higher than it actually is. Warranty repairs are apparently done by pixies for free, so is R&D, factory amortization, or service centers
A like-to-like comparison would have Tesla's gross margin at ~18%, which is decent, bu not all that unusual for a premium car brand. Ford and GM tend to have much lower gross margins than VW or Toyota. The latter two are usually in the mid-to-high-teens, while competing in a cutthroat mass-market
Notice who is pushing the narrative of Russia bogged down - journalists, politicians and their nominees, economists, and people with an active career in the military. There are also some dissidents in the West pushing the opposite narrative - ex-marine, retired intelligence officer, weapons inspector, colonel from a neutral country. Which group knows more about how a modern war is waged? Which group has a better track record so far? Which group openly admits they're releasing unverified claims in order to shape the public opinion?
> How much would it cost to continuously occupy a country of 48 million largely hostile people
If Russia limits the territorial acquisition to Russian-speaking regions, they'll be fine. Minorities are almost always strongly in support of unification with their nation-state. Some historical examples - 77% of Sudeten Germans voted for Nazi Sudetendeutsche Partei. 99.7% of Austrians voted for unification with Germany in 1938 referendum. 95.6% of Crimeans voted for unification with Russia. 95.7% of Cypriots voted for unification with Greece in 1950
> There are also some dissidents in the West pushing the opposite narrative - ex-marine, retired intelligence officer, weapons inspector, colonel from a neutral country.
And above all, right-wing kooks, useful idiots, and outright Putler trolls. Quite a few of the people you mention also seem to belong to at least one of these categories.
> Notice who is pushing the narrative of Russia bogged down - journalists, politicians and their nominees, economists, and people with an active career in the military.
> There are also some dissidents in the West pushing the opposite narrative - ex-marine, retired intelligence officer
> Which group knows more about how a modern war is waged?
Ahem...
> Which group has a better track record so far?
Well, not the ones who said "This will be over in less than a week!" eleven weeks ago.
Even Ukraine said they aren’t interested in fighting for the eastern parts of the country because the local population will likely be hostile and make
their jobs much harder.
They are strictly focusing on preventing any greater expansion than what happened prior to the invasion.
There are arguments that Mariupol and maybe even Kherson have a relatively large pro-Russian population compared to other parts but I still believe they want to protect them regardless since they aren’t nearly as large as the more eastern parts and it blocks access to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea ports.
> Even Ukraine said they aren’t interested in fighting for the eastern parts of the country because the local population will likely be hostile and make their jobs much harder.
Source?
This is simply not the case, their is intense fighting in the Donbas region by both UA and Foreign legions, and places like Bucha and Kharkiv are all on the East and are all subject to the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas of mainly Ethic Russian Ukrainian citizens in what are some of the worst crimes against of Humanity seen since maybe the Croatian-Serbian conflict.
These places may not be as nationalistic as Lviv, very few places are in fact, but it would be absolutely foolish to say that considering this [0] was just released last month which specifically states it's intention to de-occucpy Crimea from Russia.
And after what is seen in Bucha, Irpin, Kharviv, Mariupol etc... there are no Russian speaking regions who think they are going to be spared from the indiscriminate and needless death they have seen of women, children, men. They now see them for the violent murderers that they are. Those that remained probably left for Russia.
Even the dissenters posting on social media are being tracked down by the Ukrainian military and being arrested/detained which honestly is fucking terrifying, but consistent with it's actual intended use--State surveillance.
This isn't 2014 anymore, where it was mainly the Azov holding off things in the Donbas against Russian sponsored separatists and sympathizers, things have drastically changed and while I doubt loyalty is 100% to he Ukrainian government it's really crazy how united that country has gotten since the invasion. I had mixed feelings of Azov because of how they violently dealt with Russian-leaning supporters back in 2014, but after what they've done in Mariupol it goes to show that it's not something they tolerate any longer. They sacrificed themselves in order to protect them in the steel mill and are bravely still the only thing left from total Russian occupation of Mariupol.
People around here don't know this but Bitcoiners were some of the first non Government affiliated volunteers in Ukraine to help back in 2013 during the Maidan Revolution and then 2014 for the war in the Donbas. This is where our technology got battle tested for real, hence why it has played such a pivotal role in distribution for funds when the Ukrainian Central Bank suspended withdraws of UAH on the day of the invasion just as it did during the capital controls and hyper inflation in 2013/14.
I won't go into a tirade about it, but this is why many of us Bitcoiners get so upset when we hear some misinformed arm-chair coder in the comfort of his apartment in SV tells us why 'bitcoin doesn't matter, no one uses it' type diatribes. It's a waste of my time but all it's all there for people to see that it was critical in both 2014 and 2022 to support Ukraine.
And the fact that you can make such blatantly misinformed statements reflects the level of ignorance on all of the aforementioned topics.
I'm honestly curious, how did/are bitcoiners using BTC and crypto tech to help people in these regions? What's the methodology? And also for actually spending/using the coins.
Also, from your wider comment, by the way you phrased it, I can't quite tell who you're saying is shelling ethnically Russian men, women and children in these areas a crime against humanity, the Ukrainian military or the Russians?
> I'm honestly curious, how did/are bitcoiners using BTC and crypto tech to help people in these regions? What's the methodology? And also for actually spending/using the coins.
Start here [0], this discusses BTC involvement in the Maidan Revolution, and then the come back alive campaign with the Azov in the Donbas region in 2014, and then touches on the Government backed initiative by the Ukrainian Ministry of digital reform in '22. Ultimately, the Zelensky government backed the creation of United24 with BTC at it's core.
It's worth doing your own research, I can assure you it's really worth your time to see how effective open source technology can boot-strap itself so quickly in conflict zones. Ultimately, it's a testament of Human ingenuity and perseverance in some of the most daunting situations.
> Also, from your wider comment, by the way you phrased it, I can't quite tell who you're saying is shelling ethnically Russian men, women and children in these areas a crime against humanity, the Ukrainian military or the Russians?
Sorry?
Even if you were completely lost by what I wrote, are you seriously not aware of what is happening in Crimea, Kharkiv, Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol? It's Russians killing other Ethnic Russians on the Eastern and Southern parts of Ukraine; then turning around and saying it's Ukrainians killing their own citizens as we see Russian soldiers shell, loot, steal, rape, murder all over Ukraine without any hesitation or regard for Human life.
To expand on this point, and a similar system in Finland called asumisoikeus:
Municipalities have a pool of housing units. The tenants do not buy the house itself, they buy a right to live in that house, which usually costs about 10% of the price of the house, reimbursed when they move out. They also pay a rent that takes care of the energies and depreciation of the house. Socio-economic status is taken into account when figuring out who's eligible
Now, there are some criticisms of the system, mainly that the rents aren't that much lower than commercial properties. However, it does keep house prices in check. 100m^2 (~1100 sqft) house in the capital region is about 9 years of average take-home income - or 5 years for a couple
In the BRF system, you literally do not "buy the place you live in", you instead buy the right to live there. The actual ownership of the property is with the BRF.
The word is "bostadsrättsförening" [1] which roughly translates to "living rights association" or something (Wikipedia uses "housing cooperative" so I guess that's the best).
The word "förening" is hard to translate, the closest seems to be "voluntary association" [1], it is a formal collection of people with some common purpose (like managing a house). There are legally various types with varying requirements, and so on.
If Playstation is a cheaper source of compute power than consumer hardware, the customer should be able to turn it into a compute cluster, as many people did (1). That doesn't mean Sony has to provide support or warranty for it, it means they shouldn't raise intentional obstructions in the way
On a societal level, once heating, industry, public services and transportation are accounted for, we consume around 500-1000W per person. Saving a few Watts per family is a rounding error. We're talking about the power output of a solar panel the size of an A4 paper
This is a failure of state's energy policy, trying to pass the blame on regular citizens
Correct, and the difference is not even close - anything to do with temperature manipulation consumes orders of magnitude more. Literally, not figuratively
The laptop I'm writing this on consumes around 10W. Kettle 2100W
Making one coffee in the morning consumes enough electricity to power the laptop for the whole workday
The idle power consumption of my home is dominated by the fridge and freezer (around 150W combined). Idle mode of any other devices is a rounding error
Pricing for the next day is decided on the spot market, around 2-3 PM. All large consumers and producers place bids on one-hour slots until the market clears. Prices do not fluctuate minute-to-minute, but hour-to-hour. Consumers might opt in to electricity resellers selling spot prices, or get a fixed but usually higher guaranteed price per kWh. All that changes for the end consumer is that your electricity meter readings will be forwarded to a different company
As an European with a fixed-Euros-per-kWh-contract (with two prices, one for daytime, one for nighttime, the latter being a bit cheaper), I'm curious - which countries allow you to get a contract in which your electricity costs get updated daily?
Apparently, Nord Pool just is an electricity exchange market - I was aware those existed. I was more asking for a local electric company which changes prices daily (and allows me to know that before so I can adapt). At least in Germany, I am not aware of anyone offering that kind of contract, and I would love to see how that is implemented elsewhere.
At least in Finland pretty much every electric company offers "pörssisähkö" contracts using either hourly or daily prices. Afaik they all provide an app to see the prices, or you can get them directly from Nord Pool.
Since German prices are on that map, I assume there are at least some companies doing that in Germany too.
Lieutenant Colonel Heffington on West Point, published in 2017:
> Academic standards are also nonexistent. I believe this trend started 10 years ago, and it has continued to get worse. West Point has stated standards for academic expectations and performance, but they're ignored. Cadets routinely fail multiple classes, only to be thrown back into the mix. The faculty is expected to somehow drag them through the academic program until they manage to earn a passing grade. As a result, professors have lost hope and faith in the entire Academic Board process
And this is supposed to be the most prestigious institution in the armed forces, the people who will have nuclear weapons in their hands...Chilling. That's how the West ends up with leaders who do not know how to lead, reporters who do not report, officers who are clueless about real war, and diplomats who are incapable of being diplomatic