Which is just stochastic optimisation.

Which yes is exactly what evolution does, big picture. Small picture the genome evolves a bit more intelligently, using not random generation and filtering but an algorithm employing randomness to generate, and then the usual survival filter because doing it that way is, well, fitter. Also what you can see under a microscope.

Merkur 23C, btw, in case anyone is looking for a safety razor that’s both inexpensive and very good. Unchanged for literally a century now, no fancy materials (“aerospace-grade aluminium”) but good ole chromed zinc and brass. On the blade side, Russians being out of the picture, BIC is probably the right choice unlike other western brands they didn’t slouch on quality. Feather is always an option but many consider them too sharp. Also, more expensive. BICs should be somewhere around 15ct a piece. Don’t buy anything of that stuff from Wilkinson or such their offerings in that area seem to only exist to make safety razors look bad.

because Zuckerberg did Jujitsu

LMFAO that coordination failure of a leek I have to see that.

I can’t believe this exists. Watch carefully how Lex Fridman (yes that one) goes to great lengths to not kill Zuckerberg in training.

As to martial arts in general and assholery, I’ll just leave this here.

Higher refresh rates for movies are meh at best, VRR OTOH is a godsend as 24Hz just won’t fit into 60Hz. Gaming, too, is much nicer when you have VRR, figures that delayed frames are quite a bit less noticeable than dropped frames.

Depends on whether you grow crops specifically to turn into fuel or ferment waste that would otherwise ferment in the open.

The main point on the European level revolved around whether construction of gas plants should get access to some green fund or the other, to which the answer is yes because they’ll always carry some on-demand load, and seasonal storage is bound to include syngas because we’ll need that stuff anyway as chemical feedstock.

US/Canadian border from roughly Vancouver to Winnipeg. Berlin is further north than Saskatoon, Karlsruhe is on the 49th parallel. The lot of mainland Europe is north of Albuquerque. In fact much of Tunesia is north of Albuquerque. Miami is on about the same parallel as Bahrain, Orlando on the same as New Delhi.

They introduced some kind of caps (don’t remember the details) on negative pricing quite early on, from what I understand it would have been very lucrative in the last decade or two to get into grid-scale battery storage without those caps.

One thing I remember is Flensburg building, pretty much on a whim, a water storage tank with immersion heater, an investment that amortised within a month or two as they were literally getting paid to fuel their district heating.

There’s got to be some rules as to what you can do with electricity you by at negative prices, e.g. not just put an immersion heater in the ocean, maybe some prioritisation as to who gets the energy first just as there is on the production side (fossils have to shut down and pay if they don’t do that fast enough while renewables get to produce energy), but overall I don’t see why there should be a limit on negative prices.

I mean yes but for that to work he would have to be popular. He might be trying to suck up to AfD voters so that now they instead of green techbros buy his cars but more realistically, I think he’s just off the rails.

Especially the “Scholz should resign” thing while Scholz is already on the way out is a thing even AfD voters will understand to be completely clueless.

1. The modern state of Ukraine is a relatively young country with 3 decades of independence and is a poor and corrupt post-Soviet Eastern European state.

Same goes for Russia regarding independence, and twice and thrice for corruption, and also poverty if you look anywhere but at the imperial core (Moscow/Petersburg). Same goes for, say, Romania. Who side note out-drink everyone.

Largest 50 companies in the world by revenue

22 are American . 7 are EU.

Not a good measure, either. Maybe look at without whose toilets neither Boeing nor Airbus would be able to build planes: It’s a small German company owning the global market for closed-system toilets, 100% market share in airplanes, dominating in high speed rail (where it’s feasible to go with cheaper options because a toilet breaking down isn’t as disastrous). Like 90% of multinational conglomerates run SAP. International shipping wouldn’t exist without European propellers, even South Korea is buying them, and not due to lack of domestic heavy industry (they’re building the rest of the ships, after all). The list of European hidden champions is endless, providing goods that just aren’t available anywhere else.

The reason we are able to communicate right now is because of development and infrastructure by American companies.

You mean at the CERN? America, structurally, gravitates towards big companies that’s why there’s more big American companies. Capital accumulation is harder in Europe, regulations actually get enforced and anti-trust isn’t a clownshow. You’re dazzled by those companies, which tellingly were all end-consumer facing.

Let me make this more concrete: The Brussels effect, as well as the track record of economic wars started by the US and won by the EU in short order.

This is patently false. For one, we could look at defense spending.

Tell me you know nothing about the military without telling me you know nothing about the military. If, say, the US was stupid enough to send all its aircraft carriers to Europe and leave its pacific flank exposed, those aircraft carriers would be gone within days. There are no counters against stealth subs.

That’s why I specifically said “stalemate”: Both sides would quickly discover that they’re on the other side of an ocean and that it’s completely infeasible to reach the other side.

Oh, technologically speaking, the US are far behind in the aforementioned stealth subs. Abrahms tank barrels are produced under license from Rheinmetall, the US aren’t exactly stellar at metallurgy. European air to air missiles are generally superior to their US counterparts.

When the US tries to build frigates and the likes they turn out to be 20x more expensive than off the shelf European models, and still not as performant.

2. The US is the strongest military and economic power in the world and spends more money on power projection than any other country in the world.

As said, you’re wrong about the economy. The US is structurally weak, much of its GDP relies on broken windows, on financial transactions. Nobody wants to buy their cars or is excited about buying one of their factories. US manufacturing, by and large, is a joke.

Military strength, sure, but as already said there’s limits to how much of it can be used. Monetary expenditure is not a good measure at all.

3. The US has attempted, with varying levels of success, to topple dozens of regimes all over the world throughout the 20th century up to the modern day.

Fine. So did Britain and France and Germany and I bet others. Only the likes of Estonia have a clear record. Often the US only gets involved because it can’t bear to not be seen doing something when Europe does something, it’s e.g. still puzzling to me how Americans associate Libya with Hillary. France wanted Gaddafi gone and saw an opening, it’s as simple as that.

4. The US has in the past used covert means to spread dissent and support regime change in Ukraine, in addition to other Eastern European countries.

As your source says: Cold war. Of course they did. So did the Soviets in the other direction. That’s why it’s called the cold war.

A very important nuance, though: The Kremlin is considering people becoming fans of liberal democracy “western hybrid warfare”, independent of whether that’s due to direct influence, or people looking at the world and saying “yeah we’d rather have that instead of a Tsar”. Do you share that outlook?

5. NATO was founded as a tool of American hegemony and power projection, with an aim to counter the Soviet bloc

“tool of American hegemony” is a loaded term. It presupposed the existence of a hegemony, for one. Sure it might have been intended for that but that doesn’t mean that said hegemony exists.

6. The US has openly funneled billions of dollars in Ukraine since Ukrainian independence, far more than any other country except perhaps Russia.

You’d have to show me actual numbers. Partnership treaties with the EU date back to independence, being direct continuations of treaties with the USSR, Ukraine has shown general interest in EU membership since 1993. Millions and millions of migrant workers earning wages in the EU and spending them in Ukraine. Random shit, like being a ESA member and building rockets. Ukraine has been quite integrated into European frameworks for decades.

7. There is some non-zero and significant amount of money that the US poured into Ukraine covertly in addition to the funds above.

Speculation, also, so what. Specifically: Why, if the Ukrainian people are completely bought by the US, did they not do what the US wanted during Euromaidan. If you now think “why, they did”, then that’s because the sources you get your information from conveniently left those parts out, focussing only on instances where US preferences aligned with what Ukrainians wanted to do anyway.

He called German Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “incompetent fool” and said he should resign after a deadly car attack on a German Christmas market.

OMFG my sides. The attack was on the 20th of December, Scholz lost his confidence vote on the 11th of December (after firing Lindner on the 6th of November for treason against the coalition), opening the way for the President to dissolve parliament, resulting in new elections, which will be on the 23rd of February. Yes, technically Scholz could resign on top of that but all that would do is make Habeck Chancellor who I assume Musk likes even less. Technically they’re not even Chancellor and Vice Chancellor right now but acting versions of the same thing, having been told by the President that they are to stay in office.

On top of that it was the Magdeburg police who fucked up security, which is state matter. This wasn’t a train station or international border, the federation has no jurisdiction. As far as failure to predict things and thus warn local police is concerned, Faeser is on the hook. The buck stops with the interior minister because the Chancellor cannot micro-manage anything, only give broad guidelines.

The amount of ignorance about German politics is just off the charts.

I don’t think anyone is stopping them from guarding him in prison.

There is no issue with private use of russian language.

So once you’re out on the street you can’t talk Russian any more? If you’re in a trench, holding the frontline, with other Russian speakers, you can’t speak Russian?

to show that your musings about russians being afraid of conscription in the late 90s is BS.

I saw the fear in people’s eyes. It’s not like Dedovshchina was a state secret. The reason Moscow had it relatively easy to recruit people so far is that there’s a lot of very, very poor Russians, and they’re offering them lots of money. Those also aren’t the best-informed Russians. They’re by now also mostly dead, one of the reasons why I don’t think the war will make it through the year.

Where did I say that there is something inherent (essential) about russians that makes them act this way?

Two factors, mostly: Your constant unwillingness to say stuff like “Yeah that aspect of Russian culture is actually neat”, instead going for “but have you heard of their torture methods”, and your insistence on eradicating Russian from Ukraine anywhere that’s not a private kitchen table.

You’re either very naive or you’re being malicious. Show me an example of a russian “who is not actively Z” (and not hated by 99.99% of the population) showing any measure of nuance on their genocide of the Chechens in the 90s

That’s a rather specific thing to demand, and also not what I was getting at. Those people hate the lack of freedom in the country. They might still be caught in “People on the top know better I’ll better not think about politics much less talk about it that only gets me into trouble”, but they certainly don’t appreciate Putin’s breach of the social contract: “The Tsar gets to rule, in exchange the Tsar will stay out of people’s lives”. They’re not happy about the situation, but lack political conscience to analyse the situation, much less do something about it. General discontent without means to express it. Just as in Soviet times. Just as in Tsarist times. It was different around the millennium, very different.

You might want to ask e.g. NFKRZ, I bet he has quite a couple of choice words regarding Chechnya, I think the first time I heard that Putin orchestrated the 1999 bombings was from him. I don’t think he’s hated by 99.99% of Russians, though there’s doubtless a majority who are scared to even listen to people like him. In many cases because they would agree, and that’s dangerous.

And what do you mean by an opportunity to educate? What is your expected outcome from this alleged “education” and when (specific date) to you expect to see a result? Or is this just a meaningless platitude?

Wrong question. The question is “what does either approach do to you”. I don’t believe I’ll see utopia in my lifetime, but at least I’ll be able to say that I walked in the right direction.

Pointing out that you (and many others) are whitewashing and enabling russian crimes is not prejudice.

What crime, specifically, am I whitewashing or enabling? Speaking Russian in public in Kharkiv?

Rejecting infantalization of russian society and treating them like adults who should take responsibility for their actions is not prejudice.

You don’t need to be a child to be fooled, or scared. Which is where education comes in, which you deny them. Don’t get me wrong I’m not demanding that you do it – if you don’t find it in you, if it’s too painful, then don’t. Just don’t argue against it.

1.2 millions russian men have directly taken part in the fullscale invasion of Ukraine and 75%+ were not conscripted. And you ignore this.

I’m not ignoring it I’m asking what it has to do with Korobeiniki.

I won’t get into the discussion on russian (or any other) language in Ukraine.

And yet you did. That is the reason why I’m pushing back so hard. Why you care if Vadja from Kharkiv, in Russian AF Kharkiv, hums Korobeiniki while reminiscing about sniping Moskals.

I am talking fighting against russian genocidal imperialism.

Of which, so far, Russian-speaking Ukrainians were actually the primary victims because that’s where the Russians attacked. And now you want to tell them what language to speak. Many are already switching over, not all of them speak passable Ukrainian, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s ok to prioritise fighting against Russia over learning Ukrainian, right now. It will be up to them how to deal with the thing in the long term, not up to some random guy from Lviv or wherever.

Russian civil society and imperial attitude is fucked, yes. Does the same apply to Mongolia? If the Mongols changed, why not the Russians? Will they stop singing Korobeiniki when they do? Pretty much every single Russian who’s not actively Z hates Russia right now, even if they can’t admit it to themselves. You can take that as an opportunity to educate, or you can increase the amount of prejudice in the world.

Part of that constitution stated no offensive military.
When they leave NATO and have an offensive military then they will have full sovereignty.

Initially, Germany was not allowed a military. Using your military offensively is against international law so you’re saying that to be sovereign, you need to break international law?

Germany is the most powerful European country with a very prideful but repressed patriotism (you being a good example)

I do not have any kind of German patriotism. As usual for my state I’m Holstein first, European second, German if then third. The former is actual identity, the middle is the greater family, the third is an amalgamation of other peoples many of which have less in common with us than Danes or Dutch. It’s kinda arbitrary.

Might I remind you that the Prussians actually conquered us, and the only reason that we didn’t go for independence after the war is because Prussian refugees also got a vote. Be it Danish or German jingoism has only ever brought Schleswig-Holstein calamity.

In short: You’re well-advised to not base anything on your understanding of European identities because you understand nothing about them.

Can we please dispel this myth that they were unimportant? Just because the truth is inconvenient does not mean we ignore it or pretend like it is something different

Please look at the election results of Svoboda since 2014.

verbatim quote below

   the far right Svoboda party was the most active collective agent in conventional and confrontational Maidan protest events, while the Right Sector was the most active collective agent in violent protest events

“collective agent” does not mean “they were the majority of the people”. They were a small fraction of the people. The vast majority of protestors did not come there as part of organisations.

Ok, and what if after all that sacrifice you ultimately lose anyway? What have they gained?

Entry to Valhalla. Also Russia has no way to win this thing, they lost within days of invading ever since then it’s a matter of them not understanding that.

It’s a fight between US and Russia.

…is what Russia likes to keep telling itself to justify to themselves why they haven’t won yet. In reality if Western support would cease, Ukraine would fight on, if necessary as partisans. They’ve spent long enough as a colony of Russia to understand that it’s worth the fight.

How much money. Name it. Name the sum. Then laugh at it. Ukraine is poor but not that poor.

We’ve discussed the exact number above. Are you not reading the messages? Are you a bot?

And, have you laughed at it already?

We can debate on whether or not the unprecedented nature of the event warranted this extrajudicial action- but we can’t play word games here. It was definitely unconstitutional, virtually all the constitutional experts agree on that.

As said: I’m not saying that the impeachment was according to the constitution, in fact I think I said the exact opposite. What about the elections after that, though? Not even Russian propaganda is talking about the “Legitimate president Yanukovich” any more, I mean it would be rather silly considering his term would be long over.

I see the opposite. The civil society was weak enough to allow violent protests to topple a democratically elected government.

Who is the civil society if not the people? Despite your assertions the protests encompassed a wide, wide spectrum of people, from all walks of life, all kinds of political directions.

In stable democracies, they get voted out next election and there’s a peaceful transition of power.

…no. E.g. Christian Wulff was forced to resign over this, based on public pressure. Yanukovich did not have the common decency to resign, he went AWOL instead, so he had to be impeached.

most of the pro-russian ukrainians have been incorporated into Russia by now.

No. Most of the population of the “people’s republics” have either fled or have been killed at the front, holding Mosin-Nagants the Russians gave them while installing barrier troops. In other words: They were put to the meat grinder. Another portion was massacred, Bucha, Izium, etc. Now it’s mostly settlers from Russia.

majority of Crimeans for example supported unification with Russia before 2014

No. There were polls conducted by Russia showing support. Those two things are not the same.

Ukraine is a relatively new country with roughly 3 decades of independence and is a poor and corrupt post-Soviet Eastern European state.

Ukraine pre-dates the Duchy of Moscow, pre-dates the Russian Tsars. It has a long history of keeping Moscow out, not all of it successful. Post-USSR, Ukraine has made much larger strides economically and when it comes to combatting corruption than Russia did.

The US is the strongest military and economic power in the world and spends more money on power projection than any other country in the world.

No. The EU is the strongest economical power and, militarily speaking, could stalemate the US. It does not have as much power projection capabilities, we don’t want them. We use soft power instead. Something something USB-C, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The US has attempted, with varying levels of success, to topple dozens of regimes all over the world throughout the 20th century up to the modern day.

Mostly South America and a couple of places in Asia because Domino Theory. Btw do you believe that the US still believes in that. That is, do you believe that their reasons for doing things are still the same as they were during the height of the cold war.

The US has attempted, in the 20th century, to stage a coup in Ukraine.

You’ll have to be more specific. You said “After WWII” which implies after 1945 which means that you’re talking about the Ukrainian SSR. At that time Stalin was generally busy sending Ukrainian Red Army soldiers into gulags. Or was that before or after. Anyhow kinda off topic but yet another crime of Russia against Ukraine.

NATO was founded as a tool of American hegemony and power projection.

It was founded to organise Europe against the threat of Russia, just after and in response to the Berlin Blockade I’m not a fan of it either but the whole thing wouldn’t exist, and definitely wouldn’t have expanded, without Russian imperialism. The alternative was the Pleven Plan which would have involved a joint European army, but France ended up vetoing its own proposal.

The US has openly funneled billions of dollars into Ukraine since Ukrainian independence.

So did Russia, so did the EU.

There is some non-zero amount of money that went into Ukraine covertly in addition to the funds above.

Oh, definitely. All those bribes definitely weren’t cheap for Russia.

I have exactly three questions for you, in return:

1. How, specifically, does the US force the EU to do whatever it wants.
2. When Europe ever directly contradicts the US on the geopolitical chessboard, is that a deliberate diversion dictated by the US to keep up appearances?
3. Does number 2 sound like a conspiracy theory?

If they need to keep wolves away from certain places they should do the same Greenland does with polar bears: Catch them, put them in prison with shoddy (but edible) food for a couple of weeks, then release them away from civilisation. Bear parents then even go ahead and teach their kids to not get too close to human settlements, wolves should be more than intelligent enough to do the same.

According to data I shouldn’t be getting into any relationship with a woman because they’re the leading perpetrators of psychological violence. I could be driven into depression, into suicide, even to be physically violent.

Can we please the fuck stop weaponising the behaviour of assclowns. On either side.

Freezing nights in Tiraspol.

Moldova can be supplied via Romania, and I guess it won’t be too much work to also supply Transnistria. There’s bound to be lots of Transnistrians coming over the border looking for warmth, Transnistrian industry is fucked two ways both when it comes to energy and workers, add general discontent, meaning the powers that be are fucked in three ways. Long story short it’s not going to take long until they’re going to start talking about re-integration terms. I mean it’s not like Transnistrian companies wouldn’t already be paying Moldovan taxes, they wouldn’t be able to export to European markets otherwise and they depend on that. The inner-Moldovan border isn’t a front line, they’ll figure it out. Might very well already have, but wanted to wait until the gas actually cuts off.

The “checking laws” thing is actually not mentioned in the constitution but the argument is that the president is a constitutional organ, and it cannot be expected from a constitutional organ to sign an unconstitutional law when another constitutional organ puts it on their desk. Just as you can’t expect a notary to notarise an unconscionable contract.

Parliament is free to sue when that happens, and the constitutional court will decide, not the president, if the court says the law is fine the president has to sign.

In Germany everyone can bring any law affecting them before the constitutional court to have it checked, the president’s implicit right is similar but they can do it even if not personally affected, and before it comes into force.

The most powerful institution is the constitutional court, the buck stops with them. Chancellor heads the governing and thus does a lot, President is the notary of the state, first diplomat, and also high priest. Meaning responsible for non-partisan speeches emphasising common values, ceremony, and sprinklings of wisdom.

But unlike you I was cognizant that russians were showing a lack of humanity in their attitude towards Chechens and that even liberal minded were show a worrying level of support for an authoritarian KGB goon.

I saw the fear in people’s eyes when they were thinking of conscription. During peace time. Back then noone knew that Putin had orchestrated the apartment building bombings. Back then Putin was a president who wasn’t a drunk. You know the Russian fatalism, they were imagining eternal 90s before Putin and, in the beginning, he actually delivered on getting the economy in shape. In short: The Russian people were bribed, and their hopes betrayed. Now they’re back deep in their fatalism, created by 500 years of Tsars.

Back in the days, I called Putin a Tsar. He still has the same “I’m the smartest person in the room and am now explaining very basic stuff to you” attitude he had back then. Russians didn’t have an eye for spotting such things, how can you tell a terrible politician from another type of terrible politician if you’ve never ever seen an at least half-way decent one. And btw during the first presidential elections he won “against everyone” was still an option, and it got a ton of votes.

Yes, the Russian people, collectively, fucked up. That doesn’t mean that everything about their culture led them there. Americans, too, fuck up constantly, and it’s not BBQ that’s the reason. Germany really fucked up and it wasn’t about whole-grain bread. Noone is cancelling Kant over Hitler and nations we invaded back then now listen to Rammstein.

What I’m advocating against is blanket judgement. That would be the enemy’s mode of thinking winning. You’re better off telling Russian liberals why their shit isn’t sufficient, until they learn to see for themselves.

No where did I say russian (or Bengali or Farsi or any language) cannot be used in private. Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine, Ukraine has its own heroes and great people of culture.

Soyou suppose that the defenders on the front should defend the front in private? Like, not talk to soldiers that are not family members? Have you any idea how large a percentage of the Ukrainian army operates in Russian?

Yes, Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine. Everyone is learning it in school. It is the language used in politics. Ukraine also has 17 recognised minority languages, Russian is one of them. Ukrainians are European, they’re capable of being multilingual.