>A fairly high percentage of famous free soloists (I'd say over 25%) have died prematurely
Yes but I'd also say Alex is a bit of a different beast. He's clearly not a thrill seeker who attempts climbs he isn't sure about. And as he has once said, there's a very real risk of dying when you get in your car, play football, are a boxer, and so on.
People have a stark reaction to the visual of a guy being 200 meters above the ground but the reality is if you're a circus acrobat and you're 10 meters up the air you're also likely dead or maimed if something goes wrong. It doesn't get more dead than dead and in many ways he's probably more calculated and less reckless than people in other sports or performances.
> People have a stark reaction to the visual of a guy being 200 meters above the ground but the reality is if you're a circus acrobat and you're 10 meters up the air you're also likely dead or maimed if something goes wrong.
No, it's the large number of free soloists that have died. And the small number of circus performers who have died. People's intuitions about the relative risks are actually very accurate here.
I really liked Brook Ziporyn's translation of the Dao and particular his deep dive into the A / B / True A move that the Dao does all the time. There's a nice small lecture on YT on this as well: https://youtu.be/EJ1bB2w2gBk
>it is a mixture of technology and art, it is provocative
There's no art (or engineering) in this and the only provocative thing about it is that Yegge apparently decided to turn it into a crypto scam. I like the intersection of engineering and art but I prefer if it includes both actual engineering and art, 100 rabbits (100r.co) is a good example of it, not a blog post with 15 AI generated images in it that advocates some unholy combination of gambling, vibe coding and cryptocurrency crap.
no offense but the US spent about a billion on the WHO. That's a lot of influence for chump change. US defense sits at only 3% of GDP compared to 8% during the height of the cold war.
The argument always seems to be that the US is getting these rough deals, but objectively what it has spent the last few years be it in terms of soft power for organizations like this or in weapons to Ukraine, a few decades ago people would have opened champagne bottles getting that much bang for your buck.
This is British "the EU is stealing your NHS money" stuff, like it doesn't work at a basic level of arithmetics. What's driving spending in the US is entitlements, literally a straight line up
I get that it all adds up, but you're railing against 0.1% of a budget that's over a trillion dollars. Not only do household and national budgets work differently, the numbers are also so much larger that they give a sense of vertigo instead of understanding. If we compare for 0.1% of your budget, would you stress over that amount? Because I know I'm not about to panic over spending $100 annually for a safer, healthier, and more stable world
I feel like there’s a logical fallacy in your response. I’m down for cutting significantly more than $1 billion. Halving the defense department budget would be a good start.
In which case we disagree fundamentally on America's place in the world, and how best to lead - and that's okay. We can politely disagree (on this), and neither of us has to be an asshole, because neither view is objectively wrong
I applaud the consistency you put on display regarding the US budget though, and I gotta say you view (on this) probably should count more than mine - I'm a Canadian citizen, not American
>the Chinese will seek something in return. They're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
of course they aren't but it's also obvious what they want. Design a new global order where they have a seat at the table and get to determine standards, processes and technologies. That's the point of investing in telecommunications, cars, and so on. But what they don't want is annex European territory.
China is still ambitious enough to imagine itself as creating new international orders rather than just creating disorder, and so they'll likely make for a better partner for any civilized country than powers that descend into 19th century colonial neo-imperialism run by people who may as well come straight out of the Warhammer universe.
> But what they don't want is annex European territory.
They've more-or-less directly supported Russia's ambitions in Ukraine. If they don't want to annex your territory but are willing to support someone who does in the bloodiest war on the continent since the end of WWII, is there really a difference? They know they aren't in a place to project power over Europe, but they have a partner that absolutely is. I'd keep a close eye on how forgiving European countries have to be of Russia in order to curry favor with the Chinese in the coming years.
> so they'll likely make for a better partner for any civilized country than powers that descend into 19th century colonial neo-imperialism run by people who may as well come straight out of the Warhammer universe.
The problem is, deep down, none of that means anything to the ruling class of any European nation. If it did, Russia doesn't get the chance to do anything of consequence internationally after their incursion into South Ossetia in 2008. There would be no ambiguity regarding the future of Taiwan vis-a-vis control under the PRC. There wouldn't be investment deals now.
Wang Yi, when he was in Brussels earlier last year was pretty blunt and said that if China wanted Russia to win the war would be over and given the scale of China's defense and industrial sector that's probably true. They don't actually recognize Russia's territorial gains. From their perspective, this is the middle position. They simply can't afford Russia to lose, they're dealing with their own US problem.
And mind you I'm not very sympathetic what we in Germany call "Russlandversteher" but it's also become clear, the war in Ukraine not withstanding, that Russia isn't an existential military threat. There'll come a time, maybe after Putin is gone, when there's an opportunity to have a security architecture that covers the whole continent. A Europe with Russia even though it's impossible now wouldn't be this vulnerable. And at some point this has to be resolved because it's untenable long term.
Kissinger wrote a book in 1994 Diplomacy where he pointed out that the biggest threat to European independence is over-reliance on the US, not China or Russia simply because of the predominance of the US militarily and economically. And if the US continues to be this beligerent, unlike Russia it is an existential threat.
> Wang Yi, when he was in Brussels earlier last year was pretty blunt and said that if China wanted Russia to win the war would be over and given the scale of China's defense and industrial sector that's probably true. They don't actually recognize Russia's territorial gains. From their perspective, this is the middle position.
I'm sure that's of incredible comfort to the citizens of Ukrainian cities that have missiles raining down upon them; missiles that contain electronics that were made by China as a direct result of Western embargoes. It's the middle position, helping a belligerent tyrant slaughter civilians, in a quest to be tzar in everything but name.
> They simply can't afford Russia to lose, they're dealing with their own US problem.
Of course they can. Same with North Korea. If they'd sworn off those two nations a decade - or more - ago, they'd just be sitting there with sweet Western investment cash and far less American antagonism. But they need those two nations to cause problems, to break rules, and to generally paint the world order as a farce. Otherwise, what vacuum are they to fill? They'd just be a bigger Japan: existing in an America-centric world order, comfortable, downsizing, and utterly without incident. That's not going to give the CCP the external threats it needs to justify its totalitarianism.
> that Russia isn't an existential military threat.
> Kissinger wrote a book in 1994 Diplomacy where he pointed out that the biggest threat to European independence is over-reliance on the US
Ah, that old ghoul. The very embodiment of interests over values. Hopefully a Cambodian child is dropping bombs on Kissinger's village somewhere.
Regardless, his assessment is flawed. The US begged, for decades, other NATO members to take defense seriously after the creation of the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. With the exception of former Warsaw Pact countries that wanted to make damned sure the Russians stayed out, that seemed to fall on deaf ears until relatively recently. During the pustule's time in office, there has been discussion of moving the strategic focus from Germany, which was not particularly warmly received in the area around Ramstein. [0]
As for whether or not the Russians are an existential threat, well, for now, no. Despite Trump's best efforts, at least as of this writing, Article 5 still exists and any sort of mass movement towards NATO territory by Russia would likely quickly decay into a thermonuclear war that would involve the entirety of the American and Russian strategic arsenals. Life on this planet as we know it would be over. Get rid of that - and the pustule seems like he wants to - and there would be no effective counter against Russian WMD forces, because they would have an advantage over France and the UK in such a conflict. The likelihood of Russia becoming an existential threat increases if NATO's current configuration breaks apart.
Any time someone has thermonuclear warheads pointed at your cities, they're an existential threat. I'll leave it to you to guess whether the US or Russia has more targets in central and western Europe.
>they'd just be sitting there with sweet Western investment cash and far less American antagonism
no they wouldn't, we know this because we here in Europe are facing American antagonism and a trade war right now and we're American allies. The Chinese on this have been vindicated, not only has the United States been waging a trade war on China, it's now waging a trade war with threats of annexation on her allies. They were right and we were naive.
I'm not claiming China is morally spotless or doesn't clash with us on countless of issues, but they act rationally, long term in their own interest, and their view of the world is being vindicated by the week at this point. If I was China I'd keep Russia and North Korea around as a buffer too if I saw what the US pulls on their friends.
Mind you Denmark is a country that lost soldiers for the US when Article 5 was invoked. The US is the only country to actually invoke it. They were so absurdly pro-American they spied on us for the US[1]. And this is what you get for it? If that's how the biggest military power and up until now guarantor of global order acts, yeah people are going to hedge their bets quickly. Russia is weirdly enough small fish in comparison.
well I hope it's better than Spotify's age prediction which came to the conclusion that I'm 87 years old.
Seriously though this is the most easily game-able thing imaginable, pretty sure teens are clever enough to figure out how to pretend to be an adult. If you've come to the conclusion that your product is unsuited for kids implement actual age verification instead of these shoddy stochastic surveillance systems. There's a reason "his voice sounded deep" isn't going to work for the cashier who sold kids booze
The US would no longer be able to export the cost of its spending on other countries which is the so called 'extraordinary privilege' of running the world's reserve currency and the US population would feel the consequences of its out of control spending.
Which is to say, that is a fairly traditional way of how empires go the way of the dodo. First losing their financial dominance, which loses them their international power, which then causes internal rupture.
that's what happens with stuff that is so popular it becomes infrastructure. It's like the guy who goes "ew I haven't touched Java in ten years" while half the stuff he uses runs on it. WhatsApp in some countries is less of a ChatApp you use than a thing you live in.
Like the psychology bit that Freud seems absurd because all that's left to us are his mistakes because the rest has been so thoroughly absorbed you don't even realize it
Threads is not a walled garden though. It's got Activity Pub integration and you can follow Fediverse accounts already. I think the other way around it's still a work in progress.
light mode as the article points out for people with no vision impairment. And the trend towards dark mode in some applications as the default setting is bad.
When people talk about light mode blinding them, please do yourself a favour and do not live like a goblin. Work in a well lit room and calibrate your monitor, your eyes should not be hurting looking at bright colors.
Yes but I'd also say Alex is a bit of a different beast. He's clearly not a thrill seeker who attempts climbs he isn't sure about. And as he has once said, there's a very real risk of dying when you get in your car, play football, are a boxer, and so on.
People have a stark reaction to the visual of a guy being 200 meters above the ground but the reality is if you're a circus acrobat and you're 10 meters up the air you're also likely dead or maimed if something goes wrong. It doesn't get more dead than dead and in many ways he's probably more calculated and less reckless than people in other sports or performances.
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