paleotrope

As Bart Simpson might say, "In conclusion, France is a land of contrast"

What are these examples? Taiwan and South Korea could be argued that Japanese colonialism and authoritarian states are the reason they are successful today. Philippines was an important Spanish trade colony for a few hundred years. None of these were non self serving. As for Egypt are you talking about the Ptolmaics?

The problem is when you say 'answers' what is provided are 'curated answers' which is what google has been doing which explains the terrible spam links. SEO is a way to provide an answer but usually not the one you want.

I would like to see what a "populist value system" looks like.

If the US wasn't fighting these "proxy" wars, Euroland would have a lot bigger problems. Refugees are a simple problem to fix. Don't take any.

Lag effect. 30-40 years ago, California was a different place, way more business friendly. Lots of military connected companies. Lots of money. Lots of people moving there. Educated workforce. It's very different now.

The Bully is basically a pit bull as well.

I'm sure somebody has created a software keyboard where the more used characters are simply larger than the less used ones.

Maybe someday, they'll be a big market for LLMs training sets that predate widespread knowledge of them, sort of like pre-nuclear era steel.

We had a 9/11-type event and many many many smaller scale terrorists events WITH a "non-collapsed" FBI!

What big box chains?

If you assume the PRC is going to try Taiwan one way or another, wouldn't your actions be exactly the same regardless if your plan was re-shore manufacturing here for domestic politics or you were trying to re-shore for military strategic reasons?

The position of Taiwan isn't enviable at all. If I were Taiwanese based, I would make sure you pay close attention to the internal politics of the nation. You might not have much time in the event someone makes a different choice. The PRC wants Taiwan whole and intact if possible.

It is kind of puzzling. Obviously there's alot of hypocrisy involved but nothing more complicated that the historical US relationships with South Korea, the Philippines, or Indonesia. And our interests should align, we don't really have competing strategic objectives, unlike with the Soviets. A "Co-Dominion" if you want to look at it like that should have been most likely.

Maybe Red Dawn had it right.

Col. Tanner: Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later they gonna fight. Jed: That simple? Col. Tanner: Maybe somebody just forgot what it was like.

Well the Gestadt poleizi of course.

"Malicious compliance" then.

"Because as long as it’s illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don’t qualify for social security, they don’t qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket."

This stopped being accurate about a decade or two ago.

I could see many people with this abstract concept of a system that governs itself with it's own rules and policies, not quite understanding that it's all customary.

It's like people thinking that the President can't declassify a document or make foreign policy decisions without the NSC's advice or consent.

Executive overreach has been the growing problem since at least the 80s.

The actual term "unitary executive" dates from then.

The problem is the government has gotten too big. Congress can't or won't rein it in. The President doesn't have the scope to do it either. So in effect, alot of power is giving to the various organizations, and under unitary executive power, the President devolves his authority to the various organizations. This leads to the growth of unaccountable bureaucracy. I know this sounds contradictory but it isn't. The bureaucracy reports to the President who under unitary executive theory is their only real boss. An absent boss if the best kind of boss.

The twinned parties like this because they can force through policies they really, really want when they hold the executive, but everything else sorts of just happens.

I wonder how much of this is just the fact that main ski resorts started when the 10th came home from WW2.

Those guys ended up founding alot of these resorts. Areas in the backcountry, where the land was super cheap and they managed to get leases for them for pennies.

Over time they became more commercial and less of a personal project. Plus these areas became more valuable because of the skiing and that priced out the locals, the people that actually worked the slopes.

I think this story is way more complex then to point to climate change.

Apparently the one in Alabama opened for the first time in 5 years recently.

https://www.skimag.com/news/alabama-cloudmont-ski-resort-ope...

This is interesting.

"In addition, at the time of research, there are five states (Alabama, Maryland, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas) and two provinces (Northwest Territories and Prince Edward Island) with only 1 resort remaining. Details of state/province/territory data can be seen in Table 2."

I found it hard to believe that Texas has a ski resort. I did some searching and I can't find any evidence that this is true.

RI and Alabama both have one. Seems easy enough to check.

Is this the "Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded" argument?

Not many sanctuary cities in the "red" states.

Was it effective? Did you take a chance on the role they were offering you?

Who are these people keeping resumes in their "back pocket". Has anyone ever been reached out about a job months or years later. Has anyone here ever just keep a resume just in case?

Ok so the source, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/time-series/US says,

"tornado outbreaks, high wind, hailstorms"

So most of this cost is roof damage. Which is an area rife with insurance fraud and getting worse.

It seems like "severe storms" have increased quite a bit, the other categories not so much. What does "severe storm" mean here? Doesn't seem to mean hurricanes or winter storms. So what gives? Is this just political patronage handed out under the cover of claiming a big storm knocked some trees down?

What are you gonna do about the ones that don't care?

The secret programs with lots of money little oversight, and the normal bureaucratic inertia. Plus, people in that realm like to play political games where they imply that they have access and power to things other people aren't even allowed to know the names of the programs. Secret squirrel stuff goes to their heads.

"Major Dumbass is researching what?" "Well we didn't have any actual useful work for him so we figured this was harmless"

You guys get the NHS though.