anovikov

Now it's not what you know, it's who you know.

Yes it was stronger but fragile and less durable.

Iron was mostly perfected by Romans through their conquests as they collected and systemised iron processing tech of the nations they conquered, which all entered Iron Age by then. By the times of early Roman Empire, high quality iron spread around enough to make bronze obsolete.

It's other way around! Iron age did not result in Bronze Age collapse, it was caused by it. Iron has been known for a long time before the collapse, and widely accessible. It was little used because iron at that era was an inferior, substitute material (and is a pain in the ass to make because it involves first producing charcoal to achieve high temperatures). It only became stronger and comparably durable to bronze around 2nd century BC, in late Roman Republic. But the Collapse made long-distance transportation of inputs for bronze production impossible because centralised governments one could depend on for predictable rules and security, vanished. It forced people to turn to then-inferior iron, and start using and eventually, improving it, but it still remained inferior to bronze even in Classic Greece.

Syria: because of threat Assad presented to the free world in general but especially to Israel in particular, both directly, and by allowing Iran to transport weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Neither is the case anymore: Israel is safe from that direction.

Iraq: back back in the day, US really depended on oil coming from the Middle East. This problem was eventually resolved by fracking.

But does it really matter? We are speaking about American and broader Western interests. If more Shia kill more Sunni and they in turn kill more Alawites or whoever, why do we need to be concerned?

But in the end of the day, it was a victory too? Putin got his ass kicked, Assad reduced to playing xbox on Moscow dacha, pro-American and pro-Israeil forces are in charge in Syria.

It means that Iraq went from well, Iraq level of dictatorship, violence and tribalism to well, about Serbian level. I can call it big progress.

Was there any American intervention in Syria back in 2014?! Only Russian one.

One thing that people for some reason don't like to voice out loud: America won this way. Maybe it has become politically incorrect to even voice anything positive at all, like doomerism grasped all sides of society?

Baath party is destroyed and no longer exists, political and underlying ethnic groups that propped it up are deeply marginalised and sidelined, political regime in place in Iraq is exactly the one America wanted to have there, and it WORKS: they have regular competitive elections (in the strictest sense of it: before the elections, no one can predict results in advance) and a well-functioning civil society where people can advocate for, or protest against things without it devolving to tribalism (not "Shia vs Sunni" riots or similar). Iraq as it currently is, is created by America and stands firmly on its feet.

Most money gets spent in over-65 cohort in any case simply because they have the most of it, and they love wine. Just make less of more expensive ones.

It's just that usually it happens if the region suddenly becomes depressed and population exodus begins. Then homeowners find themselves underwater.

I had no idea Flock was an YC company. Truly it seems like that "everything that scales is an evil".

"A sufficiently smart person will always find a way to overfit any model to get to result they want".

An old Soviet joke asked: when Communism [meaning: 'classless and stateless'] arrives, will there be money? Chinese dogmatics believe there won't be, Yugoslav revisionists state that there will; but we Soviet Bolsheviks, approach the matter dialectically: some will have it; others won't.

Explainable, they suffer from depopulation so culture adjusts to make it as easy as possible for people to have children. Still doesn't help.

I mean, it's rather absurd to claim that "a net exporter country loses out because of increase in price of the commodity in question".

It absolutely does because balance of payments = exchange rate, and average Joe is poor and consumes disproportional part of imported goods vs the rich.

But unlike in the old days, US wins from higher prices. Even consumers wins (because they make more money on average, and their imported goods are cheaper because balance of payments shifts in US favour because of oil exports).

Voters are furious because of psychological factor of gas prices (purely psychological, it has nothing to do with economy or people's purchasing power). It bites politician's asses real hard.

So, Trump undermined himself by launching that war - but others are fine.

Thing is, if there is a worldwide shortage, US wins.

To the benefit of those on the political left, an oil shortage shows itself almost exclusively in poor countries (because they actually don't have money to pay), and these tend to not have automotive industries of their own, thus have no reservations about switching to electric cars, which means that any oil consumption decline these days tends to be sticky - when the oil flow resumes, these people won't need it anymore. No one is going to get back to driving an ICE car once they tried electric, even if they initially did it under duress.

In US oil exports were banned till 2016 did you know?

But for the US, there's no question like that. It produces a lot lot more than it consumes anyway. There can't be a shortage.

Yes US produces mostly light crude and production of refined products requires also inputs of heavy one, but it's not produced in the Middle East anyway, so current situation can't impact that, either.

There is a dumb ass simple explanation: in about the same time it took to build rockets that took people to the Moon, we figured out that there was nothing to do there for humans. Or anywhere in the Solar System for that matter.

I mean until 1960 people expected to find whole civilisation or at least intelligent life on Venus and until 1964, at least some life on Mars. By then, it was too late to stop Apollo, but already no point to go anywhere else or expand Moon presence.

Well this is natural, terrorism in Europe is almost entirely Russia-originating (and have always been, see drop to nearly zero after 1991 when Russia lost the capability).

I wonder what happens to China when this factor disappears. China workforce peaked in 2016, and city workforce will peak in the next few years. With the economy still growing, acute labor shortage is less than 10 years away.

"1920s style crisis of overproduction with Chinese characteristics"

This is a total joke. This kind of numbers are a drop in the bucket vs what's needed. US needs to install at least 10x as much simply to cover daily fluctuations in demand.

Thing is, what can they realistically do? Any work that does not involve a social component is on the way out. All work that remains will be more like "service" than like "work" the way we see it today ("service" as in "civil service", not as in "held in service or labor", i hope).

Indeed, where the hell Cyprus is? Or you think it is too Russified to trust anymore? Perhaps you have a point.

Problem is, public thinks that the government is corrupt but it doesn't impact their voting choices. Public is OK with corruption. If you look at many deeply corrupt countries, corruption is beneficial for majority of population there. As people in Belarus used to complain to Russians some 20 years ago, "in Belarus we live very poorly because Lukashenka does not allow us to steal unlike your bosses", and they were right.

Simple solution is:

- Rely on manned platforms and JDAMs, they work perfectly, cheap, and abundant. It was demonstrated that US pilots can fly anywhere in Iran including nuclear sites and center of Tehran with very little risk and let that be the case. Supply of retiring, effectively expendable F-16s is limitless (they will be written off for being worn out or just plainly aged out, much faster than they can be realistically shot down). US has enormous capacity for training fighter pilots.

- Don't use Patriot missiles to shoot down cheap targets, have plenty of 3D printed interceptors for everything that flies below 250 mph - Shaheds, jet-powered Shaheds (at the limit), helicopters, piston-powered and most turboprop planes, suicide boats. Use Patriots and THAADs for ballistic missiles with over 500km range, these are few in numbers and interceptors will be sufficient. This is a solved science, and mass production is there, Ukraine makes and uses thousands of 3D printed electric low-speed interceptors per day.

- Develop and mass-produce an interceptor missile compatible with Patriot system and capable of taking out an unsophisticated ballistic target with <500km range. In fact, no need to develop it, just buy them from Ukraine when they are done developing. Ukraine is under a lot more pressure than any of us. They have no way around building it, so just buy from them when they are ready. Mass produce it.

- Cruise missiles are pretty much out of the picture, it seems both Iranians and Russians realised they don't really work in this reality anymore. Somehow they still work for US very well though.