In Germany, there is a reason why the term "akademisches Prekariat" (academic precariat/precarity) exists, meaning that people who stay in academia are often in a precarious job situation and are paid quite badly. But these people are very intelligent and well-educated.
That doesn't really contradict what I said. This definition of intelligence can be useful in some contexts, but on average neither women nor capital are particularly attracted to people who have it
> This definition of intelligence can be useful in some contexts, but on average neither women nor capital are particularly attracted to people who have it[.]
Was my point really that hard to follow? I'm not saying "intelligence" in the strict psychological definition of the word. I mean, perhaps, the thing they claim was the independent variable was in fact a proxy for something else I hypothecated as "intelligence", by which I really meant some as yet undefined thing that on average leads to higher incomes, which could be intelligence in the colloquial sense, because that sort of has that trait and is pretty influential in attractiveness.
Then got their heads chopped off. Arguably the failure of the British monarchs to become absolute monarchs was what saved them from the same fate (Charles I notwithstanding, him being the vent).
Maybe their leaders lost their heads but not the general Norman population. Massacres were common during that period but genocide was never performed, not even against Jews and Gypsies.
No. Temperature increases until balance is restored. Temperature is currently increasing, which means the planet is not radiating away as much energy as it is receiving.
I think we're talking at cross purposes. There's a clear equilibrium state which is both higher temperature and notably bad whilst completely balanced from an energy perspective. Climate change is not bad because the temperature is increasing, its bad because it has increased and is going to increase more. The fact we still have baked in warming is additional bad.
Yes, at equilibrium the temperature stays constant. I'm talking about the average temperature of the entire Earth over time. We are currently not at equilibrium because we're pumping unfathomable amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, so the average temperature is skyrocketing. If we were to stop emitting CO2 today then in a few decades or so the planet would reach equilibrium and the temperature would stay constant at that new normal.
This is of course simplified, but roughly correct as I understand it.
I appreciate the sentiment, but is the gunk on the car not the gunk that would have washed down the drains in the first place? Clearly there are plenty of nasty cleaning agents, but one supposes that safe ones might be used (I actually spent a while considering exactly this, and it's possible but not super easy getting an environmentally friendly car cleaner). I guess the issue is it's hard to tell from mere drive-by observation what cleaner is being used.
> The ideal scenario is everyone suspects it's you but can't prove it.
Why? EU countries have shown time and time again they won't do anything. I mean for God's sake, Russia was caught sending THREE remote controlled flying bomb on a German airfield, with another one found by a passerby before it was launched.
They contained professionally made Russian explosives. There is no doubt who did it. This was not the first, or the 10th time they got caught. I mean Russia murdered someone in the UK with polonium, for God's sake.
The idea that the Kremlin is worried in the slightest that you can prove it's them is absurd. They leave their fingerprints knowing there will be no reaction.
> The idea that the Kremlin is worried in the slightest that you can prove it's them is absurd.
I mean they are. That is the reason they haven’t sent balistic missiles to the same airfield. They could have sent the same agents who placed those drones to the fence of the airport with a shoulder mounted missile and shot down the planes as they were departing. Or even shoot them down on the ground.
Or similarly they could send a submarine and disrupt the railway services of the Netherlands with missiles from that.
Those would be clearly attributable actions which trigger an immediate military response. That is the reason why they don’t do them.
You look at the actions they take and conclude that they don’t have any restraint or worries. But you should also be looking at the actions they could have but did not take to see that they are in fact restrained and probably quite a bit worried. If they werent they would play the game differently.
I think it's to slowly increase offenses _that won't lead to military response_. The response to each individual incident, worse than the one before, kinetic action can be delayed because "this was only a little worse than the last one".
This compounds because NATO needs to act collectively to effectively act militarily (maybe Poland could go it alone).
It's European countries that are taking this strategy, any Russia sabotage is aimed at deterring this widening of the conflict - not to encourage it.
Originally Europe didn't want to supply tanks, then it was only short range missiles, then it was longer range missiles as long as they weren't used to attack targets inside Russia - now it's actively supporting doing military strikes deep into Russia, and openly talking about European boots on the ground in Ukraine ( not that they likely didn't have deniable special forces there from the beginning ).
Strategically it's not in Russia's interests at all to have a wider escalation right now - they have their hands full. Any Russia sabotage is a direct response to missiles and drones using Western technology blowing up warehouses and oil installations deep inside Russia - widening the war is not in their interest or their aim here - they are trying to deter that.
There is the wider question of whether Russia's long term goal is to take back the old soviet states bit by bit in a way that doesn't trigger a full response - but I'd argue there is already a clear red line there - and that's the Nato border.
Really? Unless they are complete morons they realize something. If you take EU governments, any random country, as a general rule government expenditures go like this:
35% pensions (usually also has some health care here)
35% social security and health care
15% education
15% everything else, roads, bridges, government buildings, ... (army is in here @ maybe 5%)
They're also drowning in debt, of the non-tiny, only Germany does better than the US. So they can't realistically borrow to finance this for 5 years. They're trying to cheat, and treat the EU like a separate country (meaning get investors to treat the EU as a separate state that is not on the hook for the debt of member countries but levies it's own taxes, then borrow against that, but EU countries are cheating, for example using money the EU borrowed for military purposes to fund general expenses like fixing roads)
If the EU countries mobilize the army will go to 20-25% of government expenditures easily.
That means either pensions or social security HAVE TO go down 15% (or 7.5% each). That will cause a revolt since a great many people can't survive like that. At that point there will be no choice for a lot of people but to tear the government down.
part of the answer is the peace time dividend. the decrease in european spending has mostly been used for lowering or abolishing taxes on the corporations and the wealthy. if this was to be reversed (because we're not in a peace time anymore), the added tax income could be used to finance the re-armament.
i agree with this. the kremlin sees this as a win-win strategy. there are two options:
1. either their actions are ignored by the victim states, which makes this very cheap and effective sabotage to weaken EU members.
2. or alternatively, if there's military retaliation, putin can finally do the mobilization he promised not to do for his war on ukraine, because he can now assert that the country is under attack by foreign nations.
the EU / the member states are now in a pickle: they know it's russia but can't say it out loud because then they'd have to take action. they also can't do nothing because then russian sabotage could wreak havoc with the population and economy. so what can they do?
1. military support of ukraine
2. further sanctions of the russian economy, which includes getting rid of dependencies on russian goods
3. re-arming and modernizing their own military (i.e. introducing modern drone warfare capability, launching their own satelite intelligence, ...)
4. start opposing/controlling russian influence by local malicious actors, i.e. russia friendly right wing political parties (which is somewhat complicated but not impossible in a democratic setting)
Because being too blatant will galvanize the public and create support for open war.
The goal is to ensure all reasonable people know, while keeping enough deniability that Russian-funded right-wing groups can sow doubt about attribution and response policy’s
They don’t care whether it can be proven in court or by people paying close attention. They care whether it can’t be denied even by their aligned agents in western countries.
Maybe it depends on the country, but here the public automatically assumes everything like this done by Russia and these increase support for open war. I don't think Russia wants deeper European involvement in the war, so I'm having trouble understanding why Russia would be doing this. They're already having difficulties in Ukraine, how would angering the European public and increasing the support for further involvement help Russia achieve its goals?
In many countries, russia’s psyop tactics do work frighteningly well, and we see this resulting in a renaissance of the far-right, who are explicitly against supporting Ukraine, and explicitly seek the rehabilitation of russia.
Exactly. If anything, the country that would benefit most from heightened Europe-Russia tensions (as a result of these sorts of infrastructure "accidents") isn't even on the continent. I'm not ruling out Russia completely, but it would sure be stupid for them to effect this strategy. Additionally, Russians weren't the ones that blew up a pipeline at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Look up how successful the US has been in getting right wing crazy people elected as the heads of state in nearly every Central and South American country by funding right-wing groups, with the exception of Mexico and Brazil (but top minds are working on this).
Russia has been trying to get locals to elect governments on their side and even revolt and destroy their own countries to do so ... since 1917. They used the red army to make this happen in most of Eastern Europe, half of Asia, Africa, South America, Middle America ... and they're still at it in quite a few places (like Africa). They fought until their state collapsed to change the government in Afghanistan.
Just because the US does something bad, does not mean others don't do 100x worse. In both meanings of the word.
Right, but you absolutely need the suspicion. If it's too deniable, it rather loses efficacy. It seems in this situation it could be any number of actors, which rather dilutes any intended message.
You don't need a real basis for a response. There's nobody here enforcing any rules.
If you wanted you could claim you have evidence, without having any. Doesn't matter.
"This better stop or there will be sanctions, and if its not within your power to stop it, tough luck" is a valid response.
Whether that's wise is another question.
Here's a recent example where Germany so far claimed that it tied the attack to Russia, but whether that's actually true is anyone guess (since there's little publicly verifiable information released so far): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Leipzig_Airport_drone_att...
It wouldn't be terribly surprising if Russia was behind it, but on the other hand it wouldn't be the first false flag incident of this war either.
Well yes technically countries can just attack others. In practice they need to justify those attacks to their allies and populace if they want to maintain the status quo with them. That's where "they started it, we're only defending ourselves" is very helpful.
Romania has reluctantly done exactly that after the drone incident and tensions have escalated. The Romanians closed the Russian consulate in Constanta as a response and sent the consul back to Russia. The Russians sent an hijacked Ukrainian drone that blew up after 5 hours in the port of Constanta just after this. Now they're slowly escalating by periodically sending drones into Romanian airspace or attacking cargo ships bound from/to Odessa while in the Romanian EEZ.
> You don't need a real basis for a response. There's nobody here enforcing any rules.
First order, maybe. But the clearer the attribution the more political capital there is to act. Just look at the article. We don’t know, and won’t know for a while, if this was caused by Russia or the FDF protestors or who. That is all confusion all kind of actors can use to criticise a government who puts more sanctions on Russia.
This isn’t a show of power. Sabotage works best when your target doesn’t even realize it was sabotage. Similarly it’s best if you misattribute blame because then you’re fighting the wrong party and looking for ghosts.
Russia throwing journalists out of windows or paining with Novachok - that’s a “it’s us, you can’t do anything about it, don’t fuck with us” power signal that benefits from “plausible” deniability - you can’t prove it was us.
If the main point is slowing/frustrating drone production?
It would honestly be kind of fair game to sabotage production of drones that would be used against you, even if they're made in a country you're not at war with --- if it wasn't for Russia having a lot of responsibility for that war in the first place (to put it mildly).
Your analogy is way off base. This is how you've framed it:
> Let's say I [the Netherlands] pay [!?] someone [Ukraine] to punch you [Russia] int the face every day. Then one day when you [Russia] punch me [Ukraine] in the face do I have a right to complain?
Ukraine is defending itself, and nobody is paying Ukraine to do that. Russia is the aggressor here. It's weird that I need to point that out. We're talking about Russia sabotaging someone for selling defensive capabilities to Ukraine. So a better analogy is this:
Let's say I punch you in the face every day. Then one day you buy a baseball bat from Gart Sports to defend yourself, so I go in and punch the manager of Gart Sports. Am I in the wrong?
Yes, very obviously, when you frame the analogy correctly, you are in the wrong.
With you up until there. There's nothing defensive about drones. Retributive capabilities certainly, pre-emptive capabilities maybe, but absolutely offensive capabilities, not defensive ones. Attacking Russia back was a line that was definitively crossed in May 2024. You may argue it was justified, but not that it wasn't attacking. In terms of that stupid punching analogy (which wasn't yours to begin with, I know) this is going over to your bully's neighborhood with that baseball bat.
and people who could do those things. Sure. That was a line which was crossed, and everyone knew that - including Ukraine, which is why they didn't do it until two years into the war after getting explicit permission from the governments supplying them with weapons.
But that leaves us back where we started doesn't it? If it's fair game to attack civilian infrastructure which was used or could be used to make the weapons you are getting hit with - then why should it make a difference if it's in the Netherlands? Or in China for that matter? I'm pretty sure that if Russian weapons were made in a state technically not in the conflict (say Belarus), that wouldn't stop Ukraine from sabotaging them.
I'm not denying that Russia was the initial aggressor. I am saying enough lines have been crossed that we really can't fault Russia if they wanted to sabotage weapons production in the west.
I mean what I said: if you're being attacked by drones, then no one can fault you for trying to sabotage the production of those drones, even if they're made in a different country than the one which is sending them against you.
But, you can and should fault Russia for getting into that position in the first place, that their neighbor is attacking them back with drones.
I guess no one can fault the West for retaliating by paying people to light stuff on fire in Russia, for deterrence. And I guess no one can blame the West for sending Ukraine more missiles to fire into Russia, to end the war.
Amazes me how the right wing American view point is so anti the “Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back” of libertarian darling Malcolm Reynolds from 25 years ago. Reagan would be spinning in his grave with how Russia has owned the discourse.
No, the alternatives are any number of other solutions that are not given a look-in to the very lucrative duopoly. The network effects are prohibitive for upstarts.
As I recall about half my class enjoyed it, and half hated it. I have nothing wrong with you being in the half that liked it. However I remain in the half that didn't like it.
That is one of the 3 purposes of school. The other two are to get a good job, and to make you a better citizen of the world... (there might be more, but those are the 3 I've come up with).
Animal Farm tries to be the last, but the flaws in it mean I can't take it seriously and so it fails. Well maybe it soft of works because nearly everybody has read it, but again, the flaws are so bad I can't take anyone seriously who cites it and so I consider it a failure.
I think you're quite confused about what Animal Farm is. It's a short work of fiction. It's not something that you'd "cite" in support of a particular point, and it wasn't written with the intention of making the reader "a better citizen of the world". Of course it has obvious satirical and allegorical elements, but there's no He-Man-style PSA at the end of it.
That's a non sequitur. But you see, this is the exactly kind of thing that a high school literature class could usefully dig into.
We know that Orwell was thinking of the Russian Revolution when he wrote the book. Many events in the story have obvious historical parallels to it.
On the other hand, Orwell was also a political journalist who wrote political essays. If his primary aim in writing the book was to make a specific critique of communism, why did he decide to express that critique as a work of fiction with talking animals? He would certainly have been aware that such a work is inherently open to wider interpretation.
Do you really think that a class of reasonably intelligent high school students couldn't find any moral in the story that's not inherently tied to communism? There are clearly all sorts of analogies that can be drawn between the story and historical or current events. And there are all sorts of conclusions you can draw. Maybe the animals should never have had a revolution in the first place; maybe they should have, but they went about it the wrong way, etc. etc.
>Is the purpose of school to make you do things that you'll enjoy?
ideally, yes, enjoyment should be one purpose of school. it's much easier to teach when students are enjoying learning.
learning to engage with something that you don't enjoy is also important, though, and why i think some of "the classics" should still be required reading.
This is kind of the point. We simply don't have a sufficiently good understanding of food and nutrition to be able to say "smoosh these nutrients ands other food derivatives together and you get a healthy food".
UPFs is exactly the smooshing, and is generally done to maintain palatability whilst saving money, not even in an attempt to make a healthy food. Sure, Huel has a different goal, but I'm not sure the end result is any different. Just because it's not hyper palatable, it doesn't mean it's healthy.
I agree, it is used in place of meat, but I think that it is not usually intended to mimic meat. For example, I think that few people would claim you could use tofu as a drop-in recipe replacement without affecting flavor, whereas meat replacers like Impossible are intended to be able to do exactly that.
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