fatbird

I've been referring to it as the "United States of Lower Canada" (USLC) since, and calling my American family members "Lower Canadians". They giggle in a kind of resigned way.

As you seem to know, the prion example was to highlight how industrial scale operations create industrial scale problems, namely the bone-and-meal feed that was throwing all the cow brains into a common pool from which all were feeding. I understand that sanitary practices don't affect this.

> It’s not dirty or unsanitary by any means

I didn't say this and I don't know where you got it from.

So this butcher was standing in his insufficiently cleaned butchering room telling you about how he should really be doing what industrial slaughterhouses do, but he just can't be bothered? Or did he have his own methods of sufficiently sanitizing his workspace such that he wasn't a source of disease and poisoning?

What volume brings is increased odds of one of them introducing/reinforcing a contaminant, especially if they're from a CAFO, which are horrifically unsanitary. Again, there's a reason industrial operations have apparently higher standards. When Mad Cow disease was spreading, it wasn't because a local butcher was lax wiping things down, it was because cow brains were being recycled into cow feed and sold across North America on an industrial scale.

Industrial operations have industrial scale problems that require much higher standards. The local butcher might not scrub the floor and walls with the same industrial anti-bacterial detergent, but he's also not running hundreds of cows a day through the space. The local farmers don't pre-emptively administer antibiotics to their herd; the CAFO operation that feeds the industrial slaughterhouse has to cram antibiotics into the cows to keep them healthy enough to slaughter. Comparing the two directly is very misleading.

Agreed, but my point was that these things are hideously complicated and there's an endless source of details to hold up and say "NOT FAIR!" and it's ultimately about finding an agreement, not about the course of natural justice.

BTW, I'm Canadian. IIRC, the trade courts didn't find that the complaint about fees wasn't legitimate, it was that American logging companies had other, offsetting economic benefits, so the bottom line was that they weren't disadvantaged. So the U.S. simply refused to abide by the ruling and didn't pay the fine it was supposed to, so that receiving the fine or some portion thereof, became another thing to negotiate in the next round. Unbelievably hairy stuff.

The U.S. also has a huge amount of trade barriers that are indirect against the rest of the world. Don't act like the U.S. is the victim here.

One example: In Canada, there's a vibrant french language film industry, meaning films in french that originate and are made in Canada and then marketed abroad. The english language equivalent is anemic because decades ago, as part of trade negotiations, the Canadian gov't gutted subsidies for english language film production as a trade barrier against Hollywood.

In the softwood lumber dispute that's been going on for decades, the US raised (legitimately) the point that in Canada, land is granted by permit to loggers for only nominal fees; in the U.S. loggers have to pay significant amounts for rights to log. This is effectively a gov't subsidy to Canadian loggers by comparison with American loggers, allowing Canadian loggers to sell softwoods at a lower price.

This is the difficulty with discussing "trade barriers": things that are simply handled differently in different countries can be (arguably) economic factors that discriminate against one side or the other, hence they're trade barriers. Complicating it further, one can create barriers that have plausible deniability, or point to unrelated factors and scream "TRADE BARRIER".

I know someone who was involved for a while in the softwood lumber discussions. Just an absolute snake pit trying to suss out what are real barriers, intended barriers, relevant inputs... and all of this in the context of negotiations over the same, so everything is also "does he mean this or is he distracting us from something else or just building up a talking point to surrender later?"

NATO funds no one and trains no one. NATO is a treaty about military cooperation and a bureaucracy for facilitating it. Or do you believe that NATO is secretly a more powerful, and comprehensive entity than it appears to be?

The countries that have provided military and economic aid and training are members of NATO because they're closely allied with the U.S., who, under Biden provided a generous level of aid and coaxed its allies to do the same. Then Trump became president and American aid was cut off, while the rest of the allies tried to ramp up to replace what was withdrawn.

So when you say "NATO funded, NATO trained army", you're vastly overstating the NATO-ness of the UA. They received much western hardware, and cohorts of soldiers did their basic training abroad to relieve pressure on Ukrainian training capabilities; this does not equate to a force that fights like NATO forces would, either by doctrine or organizational competence. Indeed, the one time they tried a "NATO-style" offensive in the summer of 2023, it was an abject failure (in part because they lacked air superiority, which is a foundational condition for applying NATO tactics, but mostly because the UA at the time wasn't capable of corps-level organization).

> how many Ukrainians need to die, and how much territory does it need to lose to make you realise they cannot win the war alone?

This isn't a war that can be won militarily by either side. Ukraine wins by surviving; Russia loses if Ukraine survives. If, by treaty or exhaustion, the lines freeze where they are, then Ukraine has won and Russia has lost: Ukraine remains, more western-oriented than ever, ready to join the EU (which has a much stronger mutual defense clause than NATO's).

Russia, OTOH has a barren, parched wasteland earned at a ruinous cost. All the industry in the Donbass is destroyed, and the fertile wheatfields of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson can't be irrigated because Russia destroyed the dam that created the Kakhovka Reservoir. Half a million dead Russians bought them a picturesque coastline.

And just as Ukraine has chosen not to grant a pause to Russia to rearm and return, Russia can't grant Ukraine a pause either. As soon as hostilities stop, Ukraine has a domestic drone industry that is the best in the world and can sell them, and their expertise, worldwide to finance their reconstruction (along with five or six Middle Eastern countries desperate for an effective defense against Shaheds who've already gone to the Ukrainians for help). And every time Ukrainians beat NATO forces in an exercise, more customers line up.

What's telling to me is that you're unable to discuss Ukraine's future as anything but a pawn for western interests. You don't think Ukraine has agency to chart its own course, military or politically. The chaos in NATO alone should tell you that there's no coherent western power(s) directing Ukraine. Ukraine is simply doing really well at surviving and getting whatever aid it can to do so.

Time favours Ukraine. Are there more Chinas and Irans waiting to align themselves with Russia?

So the short version is: Russia felt threatened and invaded. It didn't do that for any of the Baltic states. It didn't do that when Finland aligned with NATO by joining the PfP in 1997, or joined NATO in 2023. All that had to happen was for Ukrainian leaders to say they wanted to join NATO, and that caused such a perception of undermined security that it demanded the extinction of Ukraine?

How's that worked out for Russia? Finland is now actually in NATO, and 1/3rd of Russian land-based nuclear weapons are within 400 km of that border. Sweden is also in NATO, so the Baltic sea is an all-NATO sea except for St. Petersberg and Kaliningrad. They have over a million casualties, lost more than half their tanks and AFVs, and are struggling to avoid general mobilization, all to occupy an area in Ukraine a little smaller than the state of Colorado--an area that is now completely in ruins. What remains of the Black Sea Fleet is in hiding in Novorossiysk, beaten by a country that has no navy.

The Russian economy survives by selling deeply discounted crude oil to China and India, liquidating its gold reserves (73% gone to date), and drawing down its foreign currency reserves. In the Russia/China relationship, Russia is now the subordinate partner, dependent on China to buy its crude and sell it materials for its war effort (Khrushchev spins in his grave). Europe is rearming and cutting any remaining energy ties to Russia.

Is Russia more secure today than it was in 2014?

Talk about idiocy.

If Ukraine surrendered now, ceding occupied territories and perhaps giving up some extra in the Donbas, all that would happen is a pause that Russia desperately wants to rebuild and rearm, and return in a couple years (as it did in Chechnya and Georgia). There's no benefit to Ukraine in doing so without real security guarantees--far more than the empty promises they had before, meaning third party forces patrolling a DMZ. Until that happens, Zelensky and Ukrainians recognize that continuing to bleed Russia on the battlefield while building their capabilities and stressing Russia's economy is the only viable strategy. No conventional victory is possible for either side, it's a race between who collapses first, and in this, Ukraine is doing well: receiving aid from, and building relationships around the world.

It was never an option for Zelensky to stop the war from dragging on. Thank God he recognized that.

The same way they survived and evolved for hundreds of thousands of years with cancer and different bacterial infections and viruses and congenital defects: they suffered from them, sometimes died from them. They didn't lack mental health issues, they just lived or died with them unaddressed or poorly addressed.

What a stupid argument.

I've successfully addressed several issues with a therapist. I know other men who've also done it. It's about the same as getting a doctor's help with a physical issue--some easily fixed, some taking time and effort, some stubborn that seem to resist all attempts.

I kept expecting it to turn into a horror short story.

May you someday experience the same lack of empathy you're broadcasting here.

Also, having explained by example, finish with "quod erat demonstrandum"

How much fact checking do you do on the research AI does?

Availability and wait times vary widely by location. I'm on Vancouver Island in a city of 100,000 and can see my PCP and dentist within a week if I want (though for a while, getting a cleaning required making an appointment months out). I've been to the general hospital for three separate procedures in the last six months, each time getting scheduled within two weeks (and each time getting a marvel of efficiency, arriving in the morning and out by lunchtime).

When my brother was in Columbus, OH, (pop. 1.5 million) he got a referral to a neurologist for a pinched nerve in his neck and was scheduled 9 months out. The situations are far too varied for easy generalizations.

That's where I got an immediate migraine.

No, Carmack is actually an incredibly smart and talented engineer.

Iran will clearly end up much richer and thus stronger than before, with fewer international trade impediments. So Iran having a nuke is objectively much closer and more likely than before.

The bad actors were killed, and the children of the bad actors took over. Same regime, now more firmly in control.

While before, Iran's assets worldwide were frozen, they're now receiving back $25 billion of it. Also, the sanctions preventing them from selling their oil are lifted, so they now have oil revenue to expect.

Additionally, the US will pay $300 billion to "reconstruct" Iran.

Lastly, Iran has proved that it has de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz and the mightiest military in the world cannot prevent or stop it. Going forward, Iran will receives fees to allow transit of the strait.

How can you possibly think this isn't worse for the US and the world than the previous status quo?

This is very charitable assumption.

For a second I was excited that someone had built a space station in Earth's orbit secretly. Perhaps a military station by a world power, perhaps a minor power's attempt to achieve a continuous presence in space, perhaps a private effort.

How it was built secretly, and hidden from discovery until now, and why would make for a legitimately engrossing topic in the news.

Not a bad story, but not as gratifying as my mistaken first assumption either.

Will Ferguson wrote a book named _Bastards and Boneheads_ [0] that told the history of Canada's prime ministers as one or the other. The bastards made history, the boneheads are remembered for their folly.

Mulroney and Pierre Trudeau were bastards, and supremely consequential in Canadian history. Joe Clark and Paul Martin were boneheads.

Which ones Harper and Justin Trudeau are may be too soon to tell, but Carney is clearly a bastard.

[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Bastards-Boneheads-Canadas-Glorious-Le...

The longer term of continuing to buy businesses, load them with debt, strip them of value, and move on to the next, promises much better ROI than focussing on a single business.

I don't follow this example. Isn't stripping screw heads a skills issue? How does a tool help/hurt with that?

Perfect. The dirty little secret of this strategy is that most people's uses just aren't that demanding, so the cheap stuff is more than sufficient. Additionally, breaking a cheap tool is a great indicator of where your real needs for quality lie, which is rarely where you think it will be.

Honestly, Ryobi is fine for just about anything a non-professional will need. Buy it, use it until it breaks (if it does), and then consider whether a more expensive one will be necessary.

I started with Ryobi and burned out a drill using it to hog out a 3" mortise with a 2.5" forstner bit (far beyond any reasonable use case for a drill), and upgraded to DeWalt. All of my other Ryobi pieces (circular saw, reciprocating, jigsaw, lights, non-orbital sander) work great, and I've never said to my tool "You'd be able to do this if you were a DeWalt, ya piece of shit!"

The more important thing to do once you start on one brand, and have a bunch of their batteries, is simply wait until the big sales come. All the brands have ridiculous, stock-dumping deals to move volume at least once or twice a year, and that's when it almost becomes buy-one-get-one-free.

Where I avoid the Ryobi brand is in consumables: bits, blades, and such. That's where the cheapness is most obvious. Bits wear more quickly, blades go dull faster. Milwaukee and DeWalt stuff lasts longer, but this is where you go for specialty names like Diablo that are even better. My Ryobi circular saw with Diablo blade is a tank.

True, the Metaverse was a practical product failure, rather than an impossible-in-principle failure. Regardless, a lot of smart people worked a long time trying to make it work, and it was pretty obvious it wouldn't once Zuck demo'ed it and everyone saw a creepy cartoon world, which was all the bandwidth and compute at the time could support.

Grandparent is trying to argue that a lot of smart people working quietly on something confers plausibility upon the premise of their work (i.e., "they must know something you don't"). I've rebutted with two examples showing that large numbers of smart people working on something don't make plausible a premise that is obviously flawed for other reasons [*].

[*] (ETA) and is known at the time by the smart people.

How many smart people worked quietly on Zuck's metaverse for years? How many knew it was never going to work at some point on the line to $70 billion wasted, but thought "hey, maybe I'm wrong, and it's an interesting job that pays well"?

How many smart people worked quietly at Theranos, knowing that a drop sample from a thumb was incapable of carrying sufficient blood volume for a legitimate sample, but thought "hey, maybe someone will figure something miraculous out that violates a basic tenet of my professional experience"?