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fatbirdon The secret medieval tunnels that we still don't understand

As people spent time in them, the oxygen would run out and be replaced with carbon dioxide, which is heavier than air and would sink to the bottom. With no exits and no airflow, wouldn't this become a straightforward deathtrap at some point? Or were there ways to force clean air to the bottom, somehow forcing out the CO2?

fatbirdon De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)

It wasn't an issue for 250 years, or at least until the Unitary Executive Theory became a dream of the Federalist Society.

fatbirdon US Places Arctic Airborne Troops on Standby as Greenland Dispute Escalates

And how much does the U.S. import from the EU?

fatbirdon US Places Arctic Airborne Troops on Standby as Greenland Dispute Escalates

Okay. What will the stability be like after NATO is shattered and the EU is no longer a market open to the US?

fatbirdon US Places Arctic Airborne Troops on Standby as Greenland Dispute Escalates

The deputy commander of that division is this guy: https://11thairbornedivision.army.mil/dcgo/

fatbirdon US Places Arctic Airborne Troops on Standby as Greenland Dispute Escalates

What America got, by being the heavyweight in NATO, was the greatest economy the world has ever seen. America got rich by selling Europe a nuclear umbrella, which kept the peace, and let Europe go cheap on defense and long on developing their own economies in tandem. The USD as global reserve currency means the world loans money to the US at the lowest possible interest rate; the US extended that credit to its businesses and education system and infrastructure.

What America loses by gaining Greenland is that worldwide market and those close defense relationships forming a common bloc. The US dollar stops being the reserve currency; America's cheap credit line dries up. American soft power in Europe is gone, and Europe aligns itself with China or Russia for stability, and becomes an American adversary. All so you can have, what, a bunch of melting glaciers?

fatbirdon Statement by Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands,Norway,Sweden,UK

https://medium.com/the-dock-on-the-bay/ukraine-ran-sting-on-...

However, in finding that, I've found some outlets disavowing the story, so treat it as unproven:

https://unn.ua/en/news/did-ukraine-allegedly-provide-the-us-...

fatbirdon Statement by Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands,Norway,Sweden,UK

There's how the people in general remember, and then there's how the politicians and the institutions remember. If nothing else, the changes in institutions will have effects reverberating for decades, with the most obvious institution being the military in each country that expected to fight a war under a NATO umbrella with an American general in charge.

If I'm a German or French or Swedish officer, especially if I'm suddenly in Greenland, I'm going to be thinking hard about the changes to come in the next few years so that they're not all dependent upon a friendly America. If nothing else, they're all getting ready now to operate without any Americans in the loop, since it might be Americans they're fighting. That means the entire NATO command structure, which presumes American dominance of it, is now an obstacle to avoid rather than a resource to share. Every PM is asking the head of their air force if they can fly their F-35s without the Americans knowing about it and possibly shutting them down remotely.

There's a story going around today in French newspapers about how French and Ukrainian intelligence fed US intelligence some false strategic info to see if it ended up in Russian hands, which it did within days. Now Ukraine is consciously breaking its relationship with US intelligence because it can't be trusted, while getting closer to French and German intelligence. I suspect that the UK is also carefully looking at what's shared via the Five Eyes and decided what it can/needs to withhold.

fatbirdon Statement by Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands,Norway,Sweden,UK

There have been multiple instances of exactly what NRA members decry as federal tyranny: Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc. At not a single one did any number of people exercising their second amendment right ever show up to actually do anything, even to peacefully protest.

The idea that the 2nd amendment exists to keep alive a threat of rebellion against a tyrannical gov't is a joke.

fatbirdon Statement by Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands,Norway,Sweden,UK

Trump's passing and his admin getting tossed won't erase the memory that a good third of America was always happy with him and wanted what he actually did. America is now branded with MAGA in a way that will take generations to fade.

fatbirdon Eight European countries face 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland

Trump wants to brag, and be remembered, for adding Greenland to America, in the same way that Alaska was bought from Russia, or Louisiana from the French.

fatbirdon Eight European countries face 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland

No one wants Kaliningrad now because it's 100% Russian. Annexing it means adding a Russian fifth column to your country.

I'm surprised by this, but my general opposition to ethnic cleansing has been weakened by understanding how Russia uses Russian migration to subvert nations from within. Transnistria, an independent Russian dominated portion of Moldava, exists entirely because Russians moved there in large numbers with the support of the Russian government to give them an ethnic wedge. Were I in charge in Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Poland or the Baltics, I would seriously consider expelling all ethnic Russians.

fatbirdon Eight European countries face 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland

The US already has 1) a base in Greenland, and 2) and agreement with Denmark that they can arbitrarily increase their presence there. America could increase it's presence a hundredfold and start putting missiles there, and Denmark would be fine with it.

America is threatening Greenland for one reason: Trump wants to brag that he added Greenland to America.

fatbirdon Canada slashes 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to 6%

Here's how to abolish the electoral college: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

States with a total of 270 electoral votes agree to award their electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The effort appears to be stalled, but there are 209 votes from states who've already passed the law (which is in effect only once 270+ electoral votes are reached).

The Supreme Court's composition can be changed with a law, and the most popular option appears to be 18 year terms, staggered so that there are two appointments for each presidential term. The court can also be expanded, and should be to 13 (one for each circuit).

Gerrymandering is a serious problem, and would properly be solved by coming up with some algorithmic way of drawing districts. But for practical purposes this unlikely to ever happen. But I'm hopeful because of the effort of Democratic states to recognize the gerrymandering and turning it into a standoff of sorts. To date, there's been no reason not to gerrymander if you can do it, and Republicans have seriously overreached.

fatbirdon Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

Bluesky is full of people angry and screaming about Trump. In my feed, at least, though, the "it's all fascism, we're doomed" posters are getting blocked. It's an angry call to action that survives. They're consciously recognizing the pessimism is counterproductive and blocking.

fatbirdon Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?

Whatever else you think of Bluesky, it's a place where trolling and doomerism are rejected. The nuclear block (and a culture of block, don't engage) does wonders for denying actual trolls an audience, and secondarily for permitting people to do the virtual equivalent of walking away from someone who's behaving badly. In particular, doomerism about Trump is minimized there the same way.

fatbirdon European military personnel arrive in Greenland as Trump says US needs island

The amount of money and guns that have been sent to Ukraine have been critical to its survival. They still have a functioning economy just because of all the financial aid they've received. It would obviously be better if French, British, or German troops were in Ukraine, even if they were just securing the rear areas. But the fact that no one in Europe has voluntarily joined Ukraine's war against Russia isn't comparable to putting a tripwire deterrent in place.

If the U.S. seized Nuuk, and Europe mustered a counter-invasion, it would be comparable.

fatbirdon European military personnel arrive in Greenland as Trump says US needs island

After the U.S., Germany is the largest donor of money and kit to Ukraine, approximately 1/3rd of what the U.S. gave under Biden. The cost of 13 soldiers hanging about in Nuuk is a footnote.

fatbirdon European military personnel arrive in Greenland as Trump says US needs island

They're not there to defend Greenland, they're there to die if the U.S. invades. The U.S. keeps small numbers of soldier on the border with North Korea for the same reason.

fatbirdon European military personnel arrive in Greenland as Trump says US needs island

Europe has provided massive aid to Ukraine, mostly financial. Their hesitation has been committing themselves militarily to the war, which, if they did, would be a huge benefit to Ukraine. But their current level of support is still very substantial (and necessary).

Greenland isn't important because it's Greenland, it's important because taking it shatters NATO. As an attack on Denmark it's actually less important than the deathblow to an alignment that has been foundational to the world order for the last 80 years. If the US takes Greenland, the whole international order breaks down, so yes, they're taking it very seriously.

fatbirdon Git Rebase for the Terrified

Every commit message starts with the ticket number of whatever issue tracking system you're using. If you're not using issue tracking with a system large enough for multiple devs, you've got a much bigger problem.

fatbirdon Rob Reiner has died

His last film was Spinal Tap II. I think if you could tell him that Spinal Tap would bookend his life, he'd be tickled by that.

fatbirdon Denial of service and source code exposure in React Server Components

You have two applications you have to ensure are always in sync and consistent.

No, the point of the API is to loosely couple the frontend and backend with a contract. The frontend doesn't need to model the backend, and the backend doesn't need to know what's happening on the frontend, it just needs to respect the API output. Changes/additions in the API are handled by API versioning, allowing overlap between old and new.

Code is duplicated.

Not if the frontend isn't trying to model the internals of the backend.

Velocity decreases because in order to implement almost anything, you need buy-in from the backend AND frontend team(s).

Velocity increases because frontend works to a stable API, and backend doesn't need to co-ordinate changes that don't affect the API output. Also, changes involving both don't require simultaneous co-ordinated release: once the PM has approved a change, the backend implements, releases non-breaking API changes, and then frontend goes on its way.

fatbirdon US seizes oil tanker off coast of Venezuela

Fuel oil deliveries to smaller communities that don't buy in tanker quantities. Those boats are basically the u-hauls of the sea.

fatbirdon OpenAI needs to raise at least $207B by 2030

I keep thinking about how, 20 years, 3D printers became accessible for tech/price, and there was a lot of talk about how we'd all just print what we need (pretty much like in Stephenson's book Diamond Age), and you'd get rich selling digital patterns for material goods.

Instead, we got the elevation of the handmade, the verifiably human created, typified by the rise of Etsy. The last 20 years have been a boom time for artists and craftspeople.

I keep seeing AI slop and thinking that all this will do is make verifiably human created content more valuable by comparison, while generative AI content will seem lowbrow and not worth the cost to make it.

fatbirdon Trillions spent and big software projects are still failing

There's nothing wrong with technical debt per se. As with all debt, the problem is incurring it without a plan or means to pay it off. Debt based financing is the engine of modern capitalism.

Gradual growth to large scale implies an ongoing refactoring cost--that's the price of paying off the technical debt that got you started and built initial success in small scale rollouts. As long as you keep "servicing" your debt (which can include throwing away an earlier chunk and building a more scalable replacement with the lessons learned), you're doing fine.

The magic words here to management/product owners is "we built it that way the first time because it got us running quickly and taught us what we need to know to build the scalable version. If we'd tried to go for the scalable version first, we wouldn't have known foo, bar and baz, and we'd have failed and wouldn't have learned anything."

fatbirdon Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse

My wife was a teacher and sexual health educator for most of her career (grades 8-12).

When I was getting sex ed, part of the teacher's responsibility was grounding us in basic facts to dispel word-of-mouth myths that were patently absurd to anyone with any experience (like "sneezing after sex prevents pregnancy").

My wife's tasks was to explain that the hardcore porn they'd all seen was unrealistic in the same way that action movies completely misrepresent fights and stunts, and the real world doesn't work that way. Her problem was that she was arguing with video evidence that it could. The kids aren't unhinged, but they're definitely misled in a completely different way than we were.

fatbirdon A One-Minute ADHD Test

My ADHD became screamingly obvious when I quit smoking, about a year after seriously reducing my coffee drinking from a couple pots a day to a cup or two.

fatbirdon Trade Chaos Causes Businesses to Rethink Their Relationship with the U.S.

Peter Navarro is also a driving force behind the tariffs.

fatbirdon How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

While US weapons aid has basically been cut off, then somewhat restored through European purchases, US intel sharing has been relatively consistent and continuous throughout, and Ukraine is very dependent on it. When intel sharing was suspended for several weeks, Ukraine lost almost half the ground it had taken in Kursk. At a minimum, satellite intel is key to monitoring Russian dispositions, and Ukraine has no way to replace that.