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But yeah the quality of people in politics is terrible. I thought very highly of Obama in terms of intellect, honesty, pragmatism, etc. Postcard leader. but he seemingly still managed to mess lots of things up. Or maybe we over-estimate the impact this one person on the top actually has on anything.

I wouldn't write off the US quite yet but it's definitely more of a multi-polar world with the US and China the major powers vs. the brief single polar world that followed the fall of the USSR. Arguably the quietest and most prosperous period ever, the largest number of people worldwide rising up from poverty etc. We're gonna miss it.

There are plenty of online training program generators that are pretty good and will take you from zero to running 10k. I used an online program to run my first 10k somewhere circa 1990.

There a lot of more cutting edge science online (and I follow Nick as well) but if you're not a competitive athlete and are just trying to get in better shape then the answer is mostly just do it. Over some base of running you can throw in some interval training including HIIT.

It is also possible you were over-training in your "moderate" intensity or conversely not increasing the load/distance enough. Training over years should result in good improvement even without HIIT. You will need to put a lot more time in.

I also do hill sprints. I try to do one [HIIT] workout a week and also some longer runs.

Hill sprints tend to be safer then sprinting on flat surfaces. Last time I did my HIIT sprinting on level ground my knee didn't really like that at all. A stationary bike (like the "assault bike") is even safer. Or you can just do burpies. People who don't run and haven't sprinted in a long time shouldn't just jump into sprinting.

EDIT: This book is maybe a bit old but covers a lot of ground on high intensity interval training vs. traditional training. I guess this study adds to the body of evidence that HIIT is effective. My take as a random person interested in this stuff is that ideally you are mixing both high intensity and longer duration workouts for their different benefits. But if you are limited in time it seems high intensity is a winner.

The original comment was the opposite of my personal experience having followed the events as they happened. The responses to my comment did not really address what I was talking about.

If you make a point (that the formation of the EU is because of X you are very specific about it) then you should be the one who is prepared to demonstrate it somehow. Why is this a problem?

Are you familiar with the topic or you're simply here to tell me that my manners are bad? If you're familiar I'd love to get your input on the actual question.

Why is my position "contrarian"? I am disagreeing with the original comment. For sure. And the reason I am persisting is that this comment seems wrong and I don't want to just let it go. It's important enough. FWIW I asked another random person whether my take on the EU's formation made sense to them (who was around at the time) and they agreed with me. It's definitely possible that I'm missing something profound but if I am then those taking the other position should spell it out. Maybe the OP meant something different. The OP didn't even weigh in.

@jpleyden98 jumps in with: You're just showing your ignorance and lack of knowledge about the history of the EU. Directly linking modern day EU with "European Coal and Steel Community was formed in 1950". I don't think that's right. At the very least it's missing a lot that happened in between.

> Its not that Europeans havent read Mearsheimer. its that for the best part of three hundred years the whole of Europe has been trying that same realist script until there was nothing left but total ruin across the entire continent. Europeans who created the EU knew about balance of power geopolitics so well, they created this slow bureaucratic mess specifically to stop Germany and France sliding back into the same old lethal habit. While clumsy positioning between the US and China is a headache in the present moment for Europe, compared to a tedious Union Europeans prefer reawakenings of 1914 in their backyard. Well at least so far.

Back to the original comment I had a problem with. This isn't some minor detail. It's pretty important. This history matters. At least I think it does.

Let's just add the actual preamble to the Maastricht Treaty that discusses at least some of the rationale: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Treaty_on_European_Union/Prea...

So ignoring my bad manners and my apparent ignorance. Where is the support to the idea that the Europeans created the EU as it stands today "they created this slow bureaucratic mess specifically to stop Germany and France sliding back into the same old lethal habit" ? I'm happy to learn something new today. When I try with AI it seems to agree with the point I am making: "Treating the 1993 Maastricht Treaty as a simple continuation of the 1950 Coal and Steel Community is a common oversimplification. While the underlying desire to keep Germany anchored to Western Europe remained a constant thread, the actual decisions made in 1993 were driven by a vastly different geopolitical crisis and economic reality.". If the OP just talked about the post-war European integration then I'm in complete agreement. To just project that to modern day EU feels like a very big stretch to me. But a quote from the specific individuals involved in the formation of the EU circa 1992 would definitely help me change my position. Again, this feels like a pretty big deal to me in terms of why the EU exists as it does today and understanding Europe.

EDIT: Also worth looking up the thread to what OP was responding to:

> The general population has 0 understanding of international relations.

And I think he's absolutely right.

Again, not that the wars in Europe don't cast a shadow today. But Europe has moved past that would be my take. Obviously not Putin I guess. But we digress.

The entire thread is a mix of politics/opinions etc. What I was trying to contribute is what the world was actually like during the formation of the EU from my personal experience and that it was not primarily driven by WW-II. Now it's possible my personal experience is wrong but hey, at least it's something that's not pure politics/opinion?

EDIT2: When you say where we got here is a process over time how is that not something that is just true? Yes, everything today everywhere is a result of the process of history playing over time. The EU was not a predetermined outcome. That is not the question. Is the EU today (and in 1992) primarily concerned with European wars or with the world?

EDIT3: To repeat what I'm not arguing with:

- Post WW-II sentiments and agreements were definitely driven by trying to ensure that a similar war does not repeat (more specifically around Germany).

- Before the EU was established in 1993 there were various cooperation arrangements in Europe that trace their history back to WW-II and can be seen through the lens of evolution.

- Where I disagree is the persistent weight of WW-II in the decades that followed vs. immediate after the war. More specifically the applicability to today's politics and geopolitics. In my impression the 60's until the fall of the USSR were dominated by the cold war and not the worry of new wars with Germany or France for example. The EU itself is a step function that was not a given and was driven by a wide array of reasons. The EU today also has a wide range of concerns. I also wouldn't compare the EU's formation to the USA or the UN. That said I can see how on some level the erasure of nationalism removes the motivation for wars that stem from said nationalism.

History of everything is a long journey. The OP made a comment re: the EU specifically which I thought was off. And at least so far in this thread my reply seems to have been more accurate.

> Europeans who created the EU knew about balance of power geopolitics so well, they created this slow bureaucratic mess specifically to stop Germany and France sliding back into the same old lethal habit. While clumsy positioning between the US and China is a headache in the present moment for Europe, compared to a tedious Union Europeans prefer reawakenings of 1914 in their backyard. Well at least so far.

This statement isn't talking about "the decades long journey Europe has gone through informed by wars". It is very specifically talking about the creation of the EU (and e.g. its slow bureaucratic mess which are an attribute of the modern EU). I have yet to see any actual support to the idea that the specific step of the formation modern (of the) EU was indeed primarily about Germany and France sliding back into war and that a "slow bureaucratic mess" was the intentional vehicle here. As someone who has lived through these events I have my perspective and it's fine for others to have a different perspective. But if that is the case then I'm still to see that in this thread.

You are painting a picture as if a geographic region inevitably drifts towards the EU, the UN, the USA, etc. This just feels like total nonsense to me to be blunt. These are decisions taken at the time for various specific reasons. Sometimes they go one way. Sometimes a different way. The countries that formed the EU and decided to adopt one currency and open borders (amongst other decisions) took that step for a reason. It was not inevitable. There are and were many other paths forward. And Germany and France going to war, as far as I recall, was not part of the discussion at the time (1992-ish).

Is current day Europe and the EU a product of a history. I mean duh. That was not the point the OP was making.

EDIT: I can see why this would be a sensitive topic for present day Europeans and how the rise of nationalism is a possible threat to the modern day EU. There's definitely ample motivation to paint a certain picture here and tell a certain story. Present day EU was not a given. It passed by a very small margin. Then there was Brexit. It's not a given that there would be more wars in Europe without the EU. Europeans can do what's best for them. Again, my main reason for jumping in is that the comment didn't agree with my memory of the time when all of this was happening, so it feels like a modern day rewriting of what Europe was actually like in the 90's.

When I'm traveling and I'm less online I don't miss either. Life feels simpler.

One thing I try to do more on lichess is to just do puzzles so I don't really get the same dopamine hit of games. I guess very long time controls might be better as well. I do make the excuse that it's at least using my brain and I have gotten much better at chess.

YouTube is really the other big problem. There is a lot of actually great content and then there's a lot of garbage. I don't do Reddit or TikTok at all.

I am talking about the formalization that is specifically the modern European Union. You are talking as if it's some inevitable consequence of earlier efforts.

> Europeans who created the EU knew about balance of power geopolitics so well, they created this slow bureaucratic mess specifically to stop Germany and France sliding back into the same old lethal habit.

I don't think anything you're saying is strengthening this statement that I had an issue with.

The Maastricht Treaty which is what created modern day EU was driven by other concerns, asking Gemini yields: "To answer your second question: No, everyday Europeans in 1992 were not primarily thinking about WWII.

By the time the Maastricht Treaty was being drafted, the public was reacting to a completely different era of history. They were focused on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the opening of Eastern Europe, and the need to compete economically with the United States and Japan in a rapidly globalizing world. The defining event on the public's mind was the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, not the end of WWII."

So you are right that the processes that eventually led to the formation of the EU started after WW-II due to concerns related to that war. But specifically the EU as it stands today with its current structure and agreements was not formed due to those considerations. Europe could have continued with the previous arrangements. At least that's my take and I don't think anything you're saying contradicts it. I'll admit to a certain lack of knowledge so happy to learn more about Europe pre-EU or why what I'm saying is still wrong.

EDIT: I guess one can see how the reunification of Germany was a factor that could have made people consider the world wars. That said the creation of the EU was a major change compared to previous arrangements.

EDIT2: When I read the EU site you linked to I get a strong sense of "backsplaining" as if it was written after the fact to appear like the EU was just part of a process that goes back to WW-II. The title says "History of the EU – 1945-59" but in 1945-1959 there was no EU. Didn't the term European Union only show up circa 1992? So this is perhaps the "history of Europe" but not the history of the European Union? I could be totally wrong. I am not European but I did live through these events and follow the news (well, not WW-II but the fall of the USSR, Germany's unification, and the establishment of the modern day EU). What's of interest to me in the context of this specific question/debate is what were the concerns of the Europeans and their leaders entering into the agreements that formed the modern day EU.

That said you can guess a lot by the components and what's visible. I'll bet you that if you added a layer that recognizes the components, their position, orientation and visible connection and emits that as a JSON or some machine readable format the frontier models would be really good at telling you what's going on and even potentially filling in the blanks.

I don't think the author is really super familiar with some of those other organizations he mentions so he's reflecting how he thinks they work rather than how they work. That said the observations are still pretty good.

> You need to delegate execution authority to small teams who are aligned to a shared goal

It's been a while since I read the slides but this is basically what the author is advocating for and what doesn't tend to happen in dysfunctional organizations.

> Complexity management in organizations follows the same patterns as in code. Single responsibility, don’t repeat yourself too much, encapsulation, etc.

There are a lot of parallels. But organizations have people so that's an extra factor. You can't just "refactor" them without thinking about people's egos, objectives and such. So a lot of thought is needed into how to build effective organizations and sadly not enough thought is given is most companies.

I think the ideas are solid but it's the C-suite that needs to deal with this and rarely cares. In other words, it's about organizational culture.

We are not all going to "just stop" using fossil fuels. That is not a realistic goal. If it was possible then I'd entertain it. Being religious about this doesn't help make progress because it alienates people. I am all for pragmatic measures that reduce fossil fuel usage globally. Tanking Canada's economy to make zero or negative global impact is how I evaluate some of the proposed aggressive policies. What is happening is that we are funding Russia's war on Ukraine indirectly due to our lack of ability to replace that supply in Europe. That to me feels like obviously bad policy.

I made changes in my life to reduce fossil fuel usage and am considering more. I also try and influence others where I can to make similar changes. I am not optimizing for $'s here, I can afford to spend more and use less fossil fuels. This isn't really to boast or anything, just to say that this approach works for me and can work for others.

My wife boycotts Nestle for political considerations. I sort of get it but also not get it. That's not to say I would never consider something like that but I also am not a believer in the efficiency of that driving change and I don't have time to research everything in enough depth to come to a conclusion about everything I buy. Not buying Tesla for politics X is a very one dimensional decision. I don't understand how to make that decision and so I don't bother.

But really, there is growth under the policies, so saying "despite" doesn't work. You could try to argue that the policy makers tried to kill solar but achieved the opposite result. But at the end of the day the current policy environment led to a positive result. Correlation isn't causation but if I was writing a policy and I wanted to guarantee the opposite outcome I'll bet ya I could.

I happen to know some Americans who have worked really hard to advance renewable energies and have made an impact. To just view the US with one lens is not right is maybe the point I am making, without poking.

China makes cheap solar panels because there's a market for them. Panels aren't the only component in a solar system either. A lot of the technology comes from the US and American companies as well. Germany apparently gets some credit as does Australia. The Chinese did what they do best- low cost manufacturing. We got there together.

Canada was able to give me a rebate on my EV purchase. Where do you think that money comes from? I drive a Tesla because at the time it was (and maybe still is) the best EV. I benefit from the network of superchargers. It is one, if not the, of the most efficient EVs in terms of energy/km. Batteries last a very long time due to battery management. It has been very reliable for me. My decision (way back) was really strictly on what is the best EV with no political considerations (and that was before a lot of the more recent political issues).

And that's ignoring the consequences of that on e.g. people in cold climates that rely on gas for heating or people that rely on gasoline for getting to work. The correct approach is to reduce the usage of fossil fuels which will lead to reduced extraction naturally.

You're not 100% wrong but the impact is marginal. Partly because some energy markets are a cartel. The prices aren't strictly governed by supply and demand but rather supplies are throttled to drive prices.

This is why that's the wrong thing to focus on. If we (e.g. Canada and the US) have strong economies that allows us to do more. Both internally and by influencing others. For example I can afford to drive an EV and use a heat pump because the Canadian economy does well, despite those not being economical options. Many early adopters of solar and EVs and other environmental approaches were only possible because we have strong economies, and those drive down prices for everyone.

But...

The political criticism in the US (and in Canada where I'm from) against fossil fuel extraction makes no sense. We should want that fossil fuels are extracted here. Not overseas. It's true some element of the "right" are ideologically driven here in the wrong direction but many in the "right" are also pragmatic. Instead of fighting we need to get to common ground and the way to get there is by market forces. Most would prefer the get solar energy if it's cheaper vs. more expensive fossil fuels. And certainly if all else was equal (panels made in the US, American jobs, whatnot). So you can take the adversarial route or you can take the pragmatic route and make real progress.

The other stupid political battle here is boycotting Tesla. How does that make sense? We "punish" Elon by using more fossil fuels.

https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-ti...

"Solar and storage provided 90% of all new power added in the U.S." is mind blowing. How about we give the US credit for this?

Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage. Given the world consumes fossil fuel I prefer they use American fossil fuel vs. Russian or Saudi fossil fuels. I don't understand why we are dwelling on the wrong metric here. Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. How about some extra credits there?

Similarly data centers are going to get built somewhere. If they're already built I'd rather they are built in places like the US.

Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. This is already happening with solar. Where I would be critical about US policy is that I think they are introducing more tariffs on imported solar panels. This might fit into governments make things worse and hopefully everyone regardless of their political affiliation can push back on this specific item.

The world all going to act together stronger than the markets is not going to happen. You can argue that is unfortunate but it's also where we are.

China absolutely wants to influence Canada. They put in effort to influence Chinese-Canadians. They want our intellectual property (whatever they haven't "acquired" already). They want our manufacturing (whatever is left of it). They interfere with our elections. And sure, they want to sell us stuff as well.

What's our best interest? Democracy, freedom, safety, economical prosperity, "healthy" society, etc.

Australia and New Zealand are far from here so I can't comment. It was never my impression that the US wields a ton of influence there anyways. Canada and the US are neighbors.

Canada has had close relationships with the US for a long time. We fought together in WW-II. But I wouldn't characterize these relationships as "mommy or daddy". We work together and sometimes we don't. The US is the "stronger" partner in this relationship for sure but we have held and still hold our own.

Western liberal democracies need to stick together because what's the alternative? Would Ukraine have held on without the support of the USA? And yes the US could have done better and yes the current admin has done less. Are Canada, New Zealand and Australia going to defend Taiwan? Or South Korea? We've had unprecedented prosperity since WW-II. In the west but not only in the west. The world seemed to be heading in the right direction, and now it's maybe not so much, but breaking the "west" into this multi-polar beast is not a step in the right direction as the world stands today. We have things to fix, here and in the world, but we need to also work together to get there.

Anyways. This is what I am looking for.