Messages

151

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022-3

« on: August 11, 2023, 05:02:03 PM »

Kyiv Independent has a piece on the raids across the Dnipro.  I see figures of up to 40 Ukrainian troops. https://kyivindependent.com/ukrainian-troops-regularly-cross-dnipro-river-probing-russian-defenses-in-kherson-oblast/  The Ukrainians have also stated to The Times that in December 2022 they almost ordered the evacuation of Kyiv due to attacks on heat and electrical systems. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-bombers-us-patriot-surface-to-air-missiles-ukraine-dh6x8vcgn (paywalled)

Edit: one of the weird things about this war is that on one hand its utterly inhumane (you are most likely to die when some drone signals back that there are hostiles at this latitude and longitude and an artillery piece 15 km away opens fire for a few minutes then changes targets) and on the other hand the units that carry out many combat operations are tiny and human-sized. 

Edit: some people claim to have seen recent photos of Ukrainian artillery next to mountains of empty shell casings.  They fired vast numbers of shells to defend Kyiv in the first 30 days of the war and I doubt they were repositioning after every few shots.  So excited claims such as that drones make fixed artillery positions obsolete and guns have to shoot a few times then move before bad stuff starts landing on them may not be true.  It also suggests that the situation may be more complicated than "endless supply of low-tech Russian artillery versus a few high-tech NATO systems operated by Ukrainians." 

Edit: UA has confirmed that they have resumed conscription with the usual result that people are paying bribes to be excluded https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/11/zelenskiy-sacks-all-military-recruitment-heads-over-frontline-bribes-scandal-ukraine

Edit: another article on the NATO training provide to Ukrainian troops and the trouble adapting it to a positional war against opponents with sometimes-superior firepower and superior airpower https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-russia-training-nato-west-military/

This Chieftain talk has a summary of a talk by Ukrainian officers on anti-drone defenses (starts around 19 minutes in).  They seem to have started using lots of MGs and autocannons sometimes aided by searchlights! Those might be easier to get cleared to talk about than the electronic methods which the UK MoD report alluded to. https://piped.garudalinux.org/watch?v=iFs6LG0TEyU

We can just hope that as both sides acquire and lose troops and equipment, the relative strengths are tilting towards Ukraine. 

152

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Belief in NHI

« on: August 11, 2023, 04:30:07 PM »

"Hi, I'm Jubal Barca and I would like to make the case for reconsidering Georgian chronology in the 830s ... no, I am not Spring-Heeled Jubal the terror of Norwich, the tabloids got that all wrong ... and Reddit too, yes.    What, I was on twitter too? ... No that is not a brain pick that is my spare USB stick with the slides!"

153

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Belief in NHI

« on: August 11, 2023, 03:05:30 AM »

On online cold-case communities, I think there are books like Bill James, The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery, and Susan Jonusas, Hell's Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier

So those would be the equivalent of the woo-woo books and the books that patiently explain that the cryptid was probably an owl having a bad day.

154

General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: August Pub - 18 or 25?

« on: August 11, 2023, 02:57:16 AM »

I have a short meeting on the 25th UK time.

155

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Belief in NHI

« on: August 07, 2023, 06:04:31 PM »

Because the military-intelligence nexus in the USA is so big, so convoluted, and so resistant to congress the courts and the executive, its also possible to tell a story where this part of the system is neutral or friendly, but that part is controlled by the Conspiracy.  Between 2016 and 2021 there was a lot of speculation in the USA about which federal agencies or agency heads were for or against orange guy.

We have seen with COVID policy since 2022 how governments around the world can all implement the same policy without saying they are implementing a common policy, why they are implementing it, or what the goals of this policy are!  There are other examples like the globalized nationalist far right (international conferences on how to seize control of the state and make the foreigners and immigrants pay!) or how the US government and Fidel Castro came together in the 1960s and 1970s to persecute gay people in their jurisdictions.  Its not surprising that some people turn to conspiratorial thinking.

Edit: also, even though I have not done a deep research dive on this, I think its interesting!  I just don't want to express a strong personal opinion based on half-assed investigation.

156

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Belief in NHI

« on: August 07, 2023, 01:17:32 AM »

That seems like a good overview but I don't have independent sources for the details and don't know the people involved. 

I think I would like a long-form, humane-but-critical account of these spaces.  Given the power of the military-intelligence nexus in the US, I doubt we will ever get a full account of real programs that might inspire UFO mythology (including programs to feed misinformation to believers to hide other programs).  The CIA destroyed records of its Bush era torture programs and MK-ULTRA rather than hand them over!

157

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Belief in NHI

« on: August 05, 2023, 07:52:04 PM »

One of the Skinwalker Ranch crew got featured on PBS Nova a few years ago with no hint that they push some weird stuff (I think this one is also a space tourism advocate).

I'm not able to form an independent opinion because I am not interested in learning all the names and connections, I just follow people who I respect who think that there are networks of people who believe that the US government is hiding UFOs or UFO encounters because they would demolish scientific materialism and who are pushing a sanitized version of their ideas in public to get support that they think will help achieve their private aims.  Just like how in the Weird Internet Communities thread I quickly backed off from claiming to know or communicate the personalities and networks of the Oxford end of this space.

One thing which has come up is that due to compartmentalization, many people in the United States military-intelligence services will have been assigned to examine sensor records, or slag, or Russian and Chinese technology without being told what it is or where it comes from.  If they start from the right worldview (or they were just young and romantic at the time) they could easily convince themselves that they were handing UFO sightings or remains.

158

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Canadian Politics 2023

« on: August 05, 2023, 07:21:07 PM »

Looking back at the Canadian Politics 2019 thread: the Liberal government has pledged to phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies which was already in their platform in 2015.  They have decided not to separate the offices of (partisan) Minister of Justice and (non-partisan) Attorney General even though that would have avoided the SNC Lavalin affair when the Attorney General said no and there was no way to pressure her off the record.  So decarbonizing and structural reforms are still not priorities.

The government is also pushing interest rates higher and higher in the apparent belief that inflation is basically caused by people borrowing money to bid for scarce resources, rather than COVID, extreme weather, an aging population, and the RU-UA war taking goods and labour out of the market without reducing demand.  In the USA this policy is probably behind a lot of the strange behaviour of web service companies this year, in Canada the effects are harder to see unless you know someone who is renewing a mortgage and saw the payments triple.  In my province there is still a serious housing crisis, local governments are finally enabling more construction after being pushed by the provincial government which threatened to take away their power to zone.  But it takes time especially because of lumber shortages and labour shortages (and because capitalists want to build giant glass condo towers rather than eg. row houses or modest sized apartment buildings).

Wildfires are bad in many parts of Canada this summer too.

As an example of local news, here is a case of fighting over who should pay to raise a weir to keep a river viable during climate change.

159

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Belief in NHI

« on: August 04, 2023, 11:25:14 PM »

As for trying not to be stressed in this day and age... You had me think of a recent comic... ;-)

Two things that really help me are not reading short-form news above the local level, and not following social media which tells me who to be ANGRY AND FRIGHTENED about today (triply so if the people they talk about are in other countries).  Processes like the RU-UA war, or the fascist takeover of the Republican party, or chatbot technology, could hurt any of us in the near term, but nobody knows anything about the details and nobody can know and to the extent they can know they are writing longform reports themselves not being paraphrased by journalists who heard of the subject yesterday.  And knowing the kind of things about say India which short-form news covers is almost certainly useless unless you or your family live in India.

Edit: also, like, where I live a full-time minimum-wage job pays the rent for a one-bedroom apartment if anyone is renting (nothing left for groceries, clothes, utilities, transport, etc.).  There are lots of real things to worry about but the details of bad people in other countries or things that might happen one day are not.

The Guardian has noticed the connection between wellness woo and hard-right politics https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/02/everything-youve-been-told-is-a-lie-inside-the-wellness-to-facism-pipeline  A good keyphrase is "crank magnetism."  Notice the paragraph about how many people are very lonely and form close relationships with fitness instructors or healthcare and 'healthcare' providers.  Scientifical Americans by Sharon A. Hill also argues that ghost hunter and cryptozoology clubs are mainly made up of people who want a useful project to work on with other people face to face, so that could just as easily be organizing a film festival or campaigning for a change in zoning laws.

160

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Belief in NHI

« on: August 04, 2023, 02:00:37 AM »

OK. Another thing I have observed in trawling through UFO videos. So many comments from people who claim to have had a UFO encounter as a child. This is still the level of anecdote, but it feels to me like the majority of claims online are that they occurred when they were a child.

Humh, that is different from the classic take on UFO encounters. 

161

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Belief in NHI

« on: August 03, 2023, 04:00:09 AM »

Nick Pelling the Cipher Mysteries guy has a few recent posts on the related phenomenon of communities which form around cold cases and cipher mysteries: https://ciphermysteries.com/2021/09/19/charles-gazzam-hurd-and-the-somerton-man

OK, even though I’ve assembled all the information on Charles Gazzam Hurd in one place above, the stuff that actually interests me here isn’t Hurd himself, but rather the swirl of stuff around ‘The Disappeared’. For me, a much better question would be about why so many people are interested in identifying John / Jane Does.

Is this about closure, doing good, being helpful, connecting to (often long dead) people in a disconnected modern world? Is it about becoming interested in something, and then repeatedly scratching some kind of previously-unnoticed research itch that never quite scabs over? Is it about just finding an online community that you can settle into, safe in the knowledge that there really aren’t any terribly bad theories? Or is it about being nosy, opinionated, mouthing off, bickering, forum fighting, disagreeing, and occasionally trolling relatives and descendants?

162

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Weird Internet Communities

« on: July 31, 2023, 05:31:52 PM »

Back in April 2018, SBF barely survived accusations by the board of Alameda that he was a serial liar who refused to implement basic corporate controls against fraud and embezzlement and had sexual and romantic relations with subordinates (the board and half the staff left instead).  People involved at the time say that MacAskill and the rest of the Oxford EA movement were thoroughly informed but still accepted SBF's money and spoke in public about how wonderful his businesses were: https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-altruism-alameda-ftx/

Edit: economist John Quiggin talks about what happens if we try to maximize average utility rather than total utility (because total utility is what leads the Longtermists to dream of conquering the universe and turning the solar system into a giant computer simulating minds, just like minimizing suffering leads to the conclusion that humanity should end itself) https://johnquiggin.com/2023/07/30/against-the-repugnant-conclusion/  There is an Isaac Asimov story where humanity has reduced the biosphere to humans, algae tanks, and a few lab animals, and someone notices that they could reach perfection by euthanizing the animals and authorizing a few more human births

163

General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: Exilian Pub Out Of Context

« on: July 27, 2023, 09:55:19 PM »

"Russia has an Evil Gherkin"

"tentacle putin is a disconcerting thought"

(if sources want to be named, please say so in this thread)

164

Tabletop Design - The Senet House / Re: Seeking Advice for TTRPG Based Off A Book

« on: July 27, 2023, 01:10:43 AM »

Are you planning on creating a game system or a campaign?

Ken Hite has written a few conversions of horror novels or stories like that.

165

Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza / Re: Russia/Ukraine Crisis 2022-3

« on: July 25, 2023, 12:12:25 AM »

I would be surprised if they can burn it all or destroy all the port infrastructure and bulk shipping is so much more efficient then land transport and especially motor vehicle transport (Canada ships its grain to ports by train).  The recent attack on Odessa is said to have destroyed 60 kt but 33 mt were shipped under the grain deal.  So they would have to repeat that attack 1000 times to destroy one year of Ukraine's grain exports (realistically there is some point before that where all the grain silos near the ports are broken, but still).

I agree with Politico that loss of fertilizers, the seizure of labour and land, and destruction from fighting and occupation are likely to reduce Ukraine's production of grain.

Edit: I see a claim that the Ukrainian military can't train above company level (~150 guys) within Ukraine's borders for fear of air attack.  .

Edit: and here is another description of a peculiar kind of assault which is carried out at platoon strength (~30 guys) lead by a section-sized assault group (~10 guys) because anything bigger gets shelled and airstruck to death but the other guy also has to spread out so ten guys suddenly arriving at their position can be bad news https://kyivindependent.com/its-a-lottery-how-ukraines-assault-brigade-counterattacks-near-bakhmut/  Ukrainian propaganda includes clips of single IVFs driving up to Ukrainian positions, dismounting their infantry, and being blown up so some Russian counterattacks are very small too.