pasabagi

36 ms·

361.
by pasabagi 5y ago
In the 19th century, the UK prided itself on accepting asylum seekers: that's how people like Karl Marx ended up there.
362.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I grew up in farming country and nobody I knew had an american-style truck. Some farmers had old military-style jeeps, but none of them were particularly large, and if they wanted to carry stuff, they could put it in a trailer. Guys who hau
363.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I guess is it's probably tricky to maintain rivet temperature - as soon as it contacts the hull, all the heat is going to flow out and the rivet is going to cool very rapidly. That would presumably have a negative effect on clamping pr
364.
by pasabagi 5y ago
This is absurd. Everybody has known for absolutely decades that a big problem with oil is that most of the petrostates are nuts. Russia is, by oil-producer standards, about middle of the pack when it comes to behaviour. Everybody is going t
365.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I went and watched some people installing hot rivets on youtube, and while I'm not sure it's much more demanding in terms of skill, it does look like an absolute pain to do, especially in tight spaces. Working in the guts of a shi
366.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I don't think the Russians would do well against Finland and Sweden. Both are big economies, both produce a lot of arms, and the Finnish army is both large and modern. They could maybe win against Sweden alone, since it's largely
367.
by pasabagi 5y ago
... The whole point about claiming islands is that they include an EEZ (exclusive economic zone). That's how you claim a 'whole sea'. Of course, the real reason people argue over islands because it gets idiots riled up (Abe a
368.
by pasabagi 5y ago
That's ridiculous. Japan has a load of border disputes, and pacifism is literally written into their constitution. Most countries in east asia have them.
369.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> it's insane the state failed to support them in creating truly great things. Insane, and tragic. I blame Stalin. He created a state where the only people who could stomach being an apparatchik had no moral center, where real power
370.
by pasabagi 5y ago
In straight terms you're right: going to war will almost certainly not help the Russian economy, almost regardless of how well it goes. I think the question is a bit more deeper, though. Economic growth is fundamentally useful as a mea
371.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Chinese foreign policy is typically very cautious. They don't like instability of any kind. That's because they (rightly) see that if things keep on going as they currently are, they are going to outstrip everybody else economical
372.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I think the repercussions of Iraq have been slow to emerge, but they have been profound. First, a precipitous decline in the moral authority of the US. Second, a collapse in trust in US intelligence. Third, a collapse in the reputation of t
373.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I guess? The basic concept of a tank is you take a bulldozer, put a gun on it, give it to a bunch of sleep-deprived teenagers, then tell them that if they stop moving at any point they're going to be hit by a RPG and burn to death.
374.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I think you're confusing 'being nice to both sides' with 'being balanced'. It is totally balanced to call Russia the aggressor in this conflict, because they essentially decided the war would happen when it did. In
375.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I'm in the same boat. I genuinely feel like the west and russia are in more danger than at almost any point in the cold war. The problem is that Russia's nuclear doctrine was 'updated' to use 'tactical nukes' i
376.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I think calling them 'excellent' is taking it a bit far. I'd view Al Jazeera as structurally similar to many other 'regime broadcasters', for example, the BBC. However, the regime they are broadcasting for is the Qa
377.
by pasabagi 5y ago
>Did you see those tanks rolling over civilian cars trying to escape? There's one famous video of an APC going over a car, and it's not clear, but some people have mentioned that it was an Ukranian APC (in any case, the crash l
378.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> Ukraine did down multiple Russian fighter jets. Well, the ukranians say they did. It's a weird war where both sides are using the same equipment, so when a plane gets downed or a tank gets blown up on video, it's still unclea
379.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Well, I think part of the problem is that the kind of people that were in the german army after the war were Nazis in the literal sense, and the kind of people that prospered in the environment these Nazis created were Nazis in the contempo
380.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I guess the tricky thing about a military, as german history shows, is its cultural impact. Would the Nazi regime have been possible without Hindenburg? Would Hitler have become prominent without Ludendorf? Ludendorf and Hindenburg essentia
381.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Or... you pre-record both 'attack' and 'no-attack' speeches ahead of time, because you know the actual moment will be very stressful and you won't have time. 'Negotiations as misdirection' makes literally
382.
by pasabagi 5y ago
I think for many people in the former USSR, that the fall of the USSR was a tragedy is kind of obvious. Living standards dropped precipitously, whole industries closed overnight, and the state was basically stolen from under the citizen&#x2
383.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Is this surprising? He's a right wing guy - he doesn't like "the odious and utopian fantasies" of socialism, and his read of Stalin (and how Stalinism worked) is pretty standard. It's actually a common understanding
384.
by pasabagi 5y ago
As a sort of redux, I guess my feeling is that obviously, every state would prefer to be surrounded by allies, or better still, by seas. However, the idea that all superpowers inevitably go to war to preserve this state is just wrong. If yo
385.
by pasabagi 5y ago
The cancellation of the NS2 pipeline has been a silver lining, even if it's hard to compare the long-term quanta of brutality a given amount of CO2 leads to vs the short term brutality of war.
386.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> But to my pride I do forget more history every day than most people will learn in their lifetime and can't think of similar example of a superpower happily accepting adversaries at their border. Not to burst your bubble, but the U
387.
by pasabagi 5y ago
Alternately, Tolstoy would be viewed as unusually progressive, even today.
388.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> Till was killed for violating social norms (that he presumably was not sufficiently aware of). You are defending them; your 'context' is simply how these particular murderers justified their actions. The real context is that
389.
by pasabagi 5y ago
The point about a lynching is it is a message. Imagine the power dynamic between a black man and a white man in the south, when the black man knows that the white man can murder him and get away with it. This particular lynching was obvious
390.
by pasabagi 5y ago
> The fact that you can consider the 1950s in the US a "nightmarish historical moment" is nonsensical Well, you can go upthread and read about the lynching of Emmet Till, or familiarize yourself with any of the many ways in whi

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