dagenleg

This is kind of supported by what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in her book.

There's no need to bring US nuclear forces into this discussion, we're talking about Russian authorities and their competence here.

Sure, it's possible that this one specific force is more professional than the rest, but the bar is low. Soviet Union is the state that gave us Chernobyl after all. For more recent evidence, do check out the recent Russian track record with space technologies - the 2018 ISS air leak incident is particularly telling. Or, you know, the whole war thing that's been going on.

You're claiming that everything is fine because Russians have procedures in place. Russians. You're appealing for calm based on the trust in Russian competence, after referencing Sverdlovsk incident. It's just too funny.

By this logic Biden's administration was far left.

Ukraine did notably send its army into Iraq, as one of its overtures towards NATO. There have been plenty of attempts from Ukraine to get closer and participate in the collective security arrangement.

Frankly unfair for a German to judge Ukraine for not being part of the western alliance, when it was largely Germany in the first place that was preventing it from joining.

How is USSR, a direct continuation of the Russian Empire, not an empire?

I think the parent is referring to heavy financialisation of the economy in the West. As we've recently seen, such economy can grow quite unconstrained by the material concerns such as factories, energy or workers.

Taiwan is liberal democratic china. It's doing quite okay.

It's not just large corporations, it's arguably most jobs, and it's getting worse. Wageslaves don't get to keep those proceeds either, not enough bargaining power.

The UX is horrendous, density of information is a fraction of what it was and the infinite scroll sucks

> not including geeks

Sir, this is Hackernews

edit: Sorry, I could not resist. Just does not feel like arguments to the tune of "my consumption habits do not require X, so who even needs X" really work well at the discussion forum for, ostensibly, geeks and hackers

Not the best success story, granted, but socialist revolutions in China and Russian Empire had definitely hurt the rich as a class. Definitively even.

Why is everyone on social media talking about Midea? I never see any other brand mentioned. Is this a coordinated marketing campaign?

Why Cantonese?

Are you familiar with the "proofster" concept? It's funny how poignantly on the nose some memes can be.

Why? Because killing serial killers is good, and having war is bad?

I think the person you were responding to had a more utilitarian view. When war happens, the death of conscripted young people is unavoidable. It's kill or be killed. We prefer wars not to happen, and people not to die, but it's not a choice.

Killing a serial killer who has already been apprehended is a choice. And it's here that we can actually start weighting options and see what is better for the society, bringing up possibilities of wrongful convictions, Blackstone's ratios and second order effects of the death penalty.

I can't help but notice that your definition of "utopia" includes people never disagreeing with you.

And no, you can't justify death penalty because some people "get out on a technicality". Innocent people end up in jail on technicality too.

No, where are you getting this from? His value proposal was that he was a) an outsider in politics, b) russian speaking ukranian. He was elected on on the platform of reducing corruption and negotiating the end to the Donbas conflict.

30% of the population protesting - that would be absolutely enormous! Revolutions are made by single digit numbers

Second time? More like fourth time. First there was Crimea, then Donbas, then the current invasion.

I suspect a large part of that 110K would be the government's cut. Again, coming back to the french system, an employee getting 40K after taxes costs ~80K to the institution there. I didn't think of the salary taxes as overheads, we count them as direct costs.

Well, no. That money is the total grant sum, to be spent over multiple years, and PhDs are usually funded in full - in Germany a PhD takes around 5 years. Moreover, the money a PhD student gets after tax, is not the same as the money spent overall from the grant, see my other comment below.

In Europe a PhD student is a multiyear commitment, with a bunch of externalities, they are much simpler to manage as discrete units, and thus are funded as such.

This sounds like quite an outlandish figure, could you please elaborate? For example, an ERC grant would allow for a maximum of 25% of the so called "indirect costs", that is, one fourths of all the the direct costs (gross salaries, materiel, travel, etc) gets paid as a lump sum, and this usually goes to the institution. How do you end up with over 100% overheads?

These are gross overall costs for the full PhD, not yearly salary.

At least in France, where they have PhDs which last only 3 years, a years of PhD would cost ~45K EUR in gross salary (granted the student gets around half of that after tax), then let's say ~10K travel and consumables costs, then add up the inevitable 20% overhead costs and now you're looking at around 200K for the shortest possible frugal 3 year PhD.

Same. Feels like we exist in a very small bubble doesn't it?

There are many good Chinese language films, not all of them Cantonese. You're forgetting about Taiwanese directors (Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang, Hou Hsiao-Hsien) and mainland sixth generation directors (Jia Zhangke, Lou Ye). There are also works by less known authors such as Bi Gan, Hu Bo, Xinyuan Zheng Lu - very unique and impressive.

One should not throw around ignorant blanket statements. There's a wealth of amazing Chinese language movie made outside of Hong-Kong, and yes, good artists can exist under authoritarian regimes, a prominent example of which would be Soviet cinema and literature.

"We have evidence but it's secret". Hey, we've seen this one before, it's a classic!

At this point, the credibility of the trust-me-bro evidence can fall anywhere on the scale between "Iraqi WMDs" to "Imminent invasion of Ukraine", and there is just no way to know.

I think if you wanted to bring up meaningful words, those were not the best examples to give. In the recent years, somewhere amongst the endless nuclear threat screeching and the ignored ICC arrest warrants, they have lost a lot of meaning. The declaration of war is a pretty good example of that, actually, being an outdated and withered concept.

I'm simply pointing out that words do not matter as much, willingness to do something, to respond, to defend yourself, that's what matters. I'm not ignoring the value of laws, and rules, and regulations, but they clearly are not an ironclad defense. Just like Article 5 isn't.

Who cares? It's just words. It's better than getting attacked while being paralyzed with indecision.