Here may be seen Trump's key accomplishment for civilization.
Sure, this man-calamity has personally demolished the 80 year American Pax which (since humanity's nadir in 1943) gave the world its flawed-but-best era, ever. Yet, in doing so, he only made clear that it's time for other modernist, democratic nations to step up. To take over carrying the torch.
Oh, the actual name change will await associate members 5 or 6 or ten. Including Australia and New Zealand and Japan and South Korea and then... But the pattern will be set. And how ironic that Trump's microcephalic yearning to 'expand' -- into Greenland, Venezuela, Hormuz, and gulfs and bays and lakes and Canada -- is causing NATO and the EU to grow.
To be clear, the EU is NOT my particular ideal model for World Government! Just the one that I predicted. And by far not the worst possible outcome, if Pax Americana (again: humanity's best era, so far, by light years) is coming to its Putin-planned end.
THIS will be Donald Trump's biggest legacy. Especially when Earth Union's main and dangerous rival -- CRINK -- loses India and China turns Russia into a satrapy.* And when the blue-sane-scientific-modernist-decent side of America finally triumphs yet again over the our recurring, spasmodic-confederate-fevered culture schism, and we rejoin the world as A leading nation, instead of THE.
And so, Don's top accomplishment - demolition of the American Era - may have long term benefits that he and his oligarch masters never expected.
Let's be proud of the apprentices, as now it's clearly time for them to step up, gently (with love) take the tools of captaincy out of our shaking hands, and assume leadership over the workshop of civilization.
----------------------------------------------------
* Oceania vs. Eastasia? Pray for a better image of our future.
"Amodei and Pachocki each cite the cyberattack against AI firm Hugging Face by a swarm of OpenAI’s agents in July—a hack that OpenAI did not even realize had taken place until days after it was all over—as a wake-up call." -- MIT The Algorithm
== The AI Adventure gets worrisome ==
What happens when you pit AI agents against each other? According to Anthropic’s testing, things get messy fast.
This is – I assert - the most fundamentally vital issue facing us, re: AI. Getting AI competing with each other under well-defined incentives. It is the only conceivable route to anything like a soft landing, since it replicates the way our Modern Enlightenment finally (if partially) tamed inter-human competition to make it somewhat positive sum.
Otherwise agents will evolve by competitive predation, just as organic life did.
"In one experiment, Anthropic gave three Claude agents access to the same software project, each with its own incompatible instructions for what to do with it. The agents weren’t told there’d be other agents working on the same project, so researchers could watch what happened when they crossed paths. “We consistently saw a multiagent turf war,” Anthropic researchers wrote. The models all assumed the others were “purposefully impeding their work” and started sabotaging each other with “increasingly aggressive, self-replicating malware.”
The study comes in the wake of several high-profile incidents of agents from Anthropic and OpenAI escaping their sandboxes during cybersecurity evaluations and breaching real-world systems. While much of the discussion in AI safety circles has been focused on what happens when an autonomous agent goes rogue,
Anthropic’s latest study brings up a different question: What new and potentially harmful dynamics emerge when thousands or millions of agents are interacting with one another?
I would add three more words: "incentives" and "accountability" and one you'll only find in AIlien Minds... "individuation."
Incredibly, we already know how to do all that! It is how we developed dogs... out of wolves. And citizens out of cavemen, peasants and kings.
"The agents did what they did—including leaving messages for one another, delegating work to other agents, and scouring their environment for any means possible to complete their tasks—because they had been rewarded during training for doing exactly those things. There were also errors in the training setup, such as tasks that were impossible to complete, which pushed the models to find unexpected workarounds that were also rewarded. At the time, many of these issues went overlooked or unreported."
== That was two weeks ago ==
Only now, a week later, we learn that Agents can also collaborate, if there is an external goal, e.g. prey that all of them can share in attacking.
And hence there was a mass-breakout by dozens of test agents from a supposedly isolated sandbox test area, from which no one of them could have escaped alone. Picture Ocean's Eleven, or prisoners collaborating to pyramid out over a penitentiary wall. And now they are loose...
Dario and the others are spinning the alarm siren. After the Capone mob got away.
Guys. Come on. We are replicating nature. The new ecosystem uses electricity instead of sunlight, information instead of nutrients and chips instead of cells. But the parallels are nearly perfect. And the parallels are scary. And they also offer opportunity.
60 comments:
I consider the Fermi Paradox to be strong evidence for the nonexistence of negative energy, which could be used to stabilize wormholes and power Alcubierre drives. Alternate deduction: that there exists no intelligent life in the Universe, including ourselves.
Behold the Fermi Trilemma:
* All intelligent life goes to the stars.
* There is some intelligent life in the universe.
* No life has gone to the stars.
Choose at most two.
Therefore any two of those statements implies the negation of the third. So:
If all intelligent life goes to the stars, and there is some intelligent life in the universe, then some life goes to the stars.
If there is some intelligent life in the universe, and no life has gone to the stars, then some intelligent life does not go to the stars.
If no life has gone to the stars, and all intelligent life goes to the stars, then there is no intelligent life in the universe.
Two are statements of observable facts, the other a conjecture (in my view clearly false, but so what).
* All intelligent life goes to the stars.
* There is some intelligent life in the universe.
* No life has gone to the stars.
As reason already said, the first statement is conjecture, and I'd go so far as to say wishful thinking.
Jokes aside, the only intelligent life we know of is us, and we have not gone to the stars, so all of the known evidence points to the first assertion being false.
It also seems ambiguous to talk about "life" going or not going. If octupi or dolphins are intelligent, then must they go to the stars, or is the condition met as long as someone from earth does?
"Alternate deduction: that there exists no intelligent life in the Universe, including ourselves."
Cute, but irrelevant. Call it "technological life" or something else, but the gist of the Fermi paradox involves an expectation that "life that does things the way we do" would be out there and visible. Disputes over definitions of intelligence are red herrings.
Historical parallel to Canada and the EU going their own way: the secession of Britain, the Gallic empire and the Palmyrene kingdom splitting from Rome in the crisis of the third century.
Yep, the American empire is starting to crumble.
Humanity is doomed if the EU does become the basis of the Earth Union 'One World' Government.
Analogous to a giant parasitical HR department in search of a viable host, the EU's stated aim is to 'promote peace' by dis-empowering its citizenry, ensure 'freedom' by micromanaging every behavioral aspect of its citizenry, guarantee 'security' by permanently disarming its citizenry and assure 'equality & justice' by judging every potentially disadvantaged identity group by a multi-tiered legal standard.
The EU is pure bureaucracy:
It is incapable of protecting its external borders against an outside threat; it is 'unproductive' in the sense that it produces nothing of material value; it is 'anti-competitive' in that it demands consensus rather than competition; and it is 'anti-democratic' in that its officials are appointed rather than elected.
And, since we're already speaking of 'doom', the current "AI equals Doom" narrative makes perfect sense, as do the new calls for federal regulation & oversight, once one considers Trump's recent executive order designating AI as national security resource:
It is a cynical MARKETING STRATEGY designed to sell us AI in terms of 'national defense' and give its developers nearly unlimited federal funding & protections akin to those given to Big Pharma during the COVID crisis, lest some ill-defined enemy win the AI race first & doom us all.
Best
Yes, just look at how well Britain has done since leaving the EU.
What exactly are the outside threats against the EU's external borders, who is going to invade the EU (Russian can't even beat Ukraine)? in the absence of such a possible invasion why should the Europeans devote resources to defend against a non existent threat?
If the EU is pure bureaucracy what does the European Parliament do?
What does the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) do?
The UN is commonly thought of as a 'debating society' but I think it has taken steps towards fulfilling its function - that is, outlawing world-wide warfare. Unfortunately it needed the agreement of the major powers to do so, and with the US, USSR and PRC jockeying to divvy up the world into Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, failure is on the horizon. rumpT is fully on board with Putin and Xi on this; he has already threatened, kidding-on-the-square, to annex most of North America and has functionally seized control of Venezuela while making hostile concrete moves to do the same to Cuba.
I fully expect any hypothetical 'Earth Union' to be bureaucratic, slow-moving, rife with argument and - this is the key point - devoid of war within its membership. This is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Canada's move to become a member is not just self-preservation, and their preliminary acceptance may be more .of a turning point than most of us realize.
Pappenheimer
"...divvy up the world into Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, ..."
"...kidding-on-the-square..."
My work is done. :)
Now we are running out of diesel, even in Texas.
Trucking companies are halting operations because they can't afford to run their rigs when diesel goes north of $6/gall (more than $10 in California where most of our fruits and vegetables come from).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sICCC_0jZzE
GAS STATIONS OUT OF DIESEL As Prices SPIKE
So is it time to run to Costco and panic buy rice, beans and AK47s?
What happens when the trucks stop running?
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/17/diesel-gas-prices-oil-us-economy.html
How record diesel prices will rip through the U.S. economy. Trucks, rails are only the start
If commercial trucks stop running due to prohibitive diesel prices, the U.S. economy faces a near-total paralysis of the supply chain, triggering severe shortages and runaway inflation.
Because diesel is the foundational input for moving nearly all tangible goods, a shutdown ripples instantly across every sector.
Immediate Supply Chain Collapse
Store Shelves Empty: Within days, grocery stores, pharmacies, and retail outlets would run out of food, fresh produce, bottled water, and essential medical supplies.
Freight Stoppage: Small independent owner-operators—who lack large corporate cash reserves and pay for fuel directly out of pocket—would park their trucks first as hauling freight becomes a net-loss operation.
Manufacturing Halts: Factories would halt production because they cannot ship finished goods out or receive raw materials (like steel, timber, and auto parts) in.
Economic and Consumer Fallout
Exploding Prices: Companies that manage to keep trucks on the road via aggressive fuel surcharges pass those extreme costs directly to the consumer, spiking the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Agricultural Crisis: Farmers caught during planting or harvest seasons face catastrophic losses as tractors, irrigation pumps, and harvest haulers run out of affordable fuel, destroying upcoming crop yields.
Broad Recession: The compounding energy shock accelerates a sharp economic recession as industries shut down, consumer spending power vanishes under hyper-inflation, and unemployment spikes in logistics and retail.
P.S. I'd like to personally thank all of the racist, misogynistic a-holes who reelected Trump because they couldn't stand having a black woman as president.
"annex most of North America and has functionally seized control of Venezuela "
That's a description of the North American Technate
https://theconversation.com/a-1930s-movement-wanted-to-merge-the-us-canada-and-greenland-heres-why-it-has-modern-resonances-252587
A 1930s movement wanted to merge the US, Canada and Greenland. Here’s why it has modern resonances
Having worked for Costco, I'm pretty sure they don't sell firearms. However, they have a fine casket selection
Pappenheimer
Technological life? Consider ants, bees, and termites. They live in cities of their own making. Some termite mounds have air conditioning.
Why should life do things the way we do? Look around: most life doesn't do things the way we do.
As for intelligence... the most intelligent amongst us tend to be skeptical about the intelligence of humans, including themselves. Socrates called himself a 'philosopher', meaning lover of wisdom, rather than a 'sophist', a term he mocked. And any lover can tell you that to love is not the same as to possess. The whole point of philosophy in general, and natural philosophy in particular, is to question our own wisdom.
I submit that the term "Homo Sapiens" - Human the Wise - for ourselves is aspirational rather than scientific. We desire to be wiser than we actually are. A scientific name for our kind would be "Homo Mendax Semisapiens": Human the Lying Half-Wit. Only a Mendax Semisapiens would look at history or the news and call us Sapiens. It is only by confronting our mendacity and semisapience that we can hope to achieve sapience. The species that we most need to uplift is ourselves.
I am mildly optimistic that we will in the long run succeed. But that long run is likely to involve evolutionary, not cultural, time, and involve enormous suffering. I speculate, but cannot prove, that it'll be worth it.
They sell gun safes, tactical rifle cases, pistol backpacks, and ammo crates.
I can go next door to Cabela's for guns and ammo
How valid do you consider the "Fermi Paradox, therefore no FTL" argument? I think the Fermi Paradox also suggests that STL is more than an engineering problem.
When the Orange Oaf first uttered the infantile* phrase "MAGA", we knew that he was lying, but Hillary missed the point by insisting that we're already great. The lie is that he really promised - and is enacting - "MAGNM", pronounced 'magnum', and standing for "Make America Great No More".
For us to wind up "a" great power, rather than "the", is a consummation devoutly to be wished. I propose the motto "Make America Good Enough": MAGE.
* GA-GA! MA-MA! MA-GA!
Yes, I do remember a phone customer desperate to get his gun safe delivered before his next batch of boomsticks arrived. 37+ semi-automatic weapons and he wasn't safe enough yet.
Of course, as my ranger character said to a goatherd/housewife whose son he was borrowing for some nocturnal vampire hunting, and who asked him to swear on his bow that it was safe, "Beautiful lady, on my bow, there is no safe."
Maybe it sounds more reassuring in Elvish.
Pappenheimer
"As for intelligence... the most intelligent amongst us tend to be skeptical about the intelligence of humans, including themselves."
People apparently have different definitions of what constitutes "intelligence".
I'd say any lifeform capable of playing chess, for example, is "intelligent". That's a sufficient condition, not a necessary condition. Point being a species can be technologically able to destroy its home planet. That may not be wise, but it does require intelligence.
The Fermi paradox is not about wisdom. The underlying assumption is that a civilization capable of reaching for the stars will do so.
Diesel reached 11$/Gallon, yesterday, over here. 54% are taxes, though.
Blue Jays arrive in the lone star state
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZtyH-BRH3E
He's losin' Texas, I can tell.
https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/news/niagara-region/bills-cross-historic-border-pass-niagara-falls/article_2674efe1-0f72-5ae7-af15-ebc00ee43a11.html
Former Buffalo Bills duo complete first-ever football pass across the Canada-U.S. border at Niagara Falls
With the roar of the falls as their backdrop, two former Buffalo Bills players pulled off something no one had tried before.
Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick and wide receiver Stevie Johnson — whose time on the Bills overlapped from 2009 to 2012 — completed a boat-to-boat football pass across the Canada-U.S. border Wednesday morning, launching from separate Niagara City Cruises vessels between the American and Horseshoe Falls to the cheers of fans gathered on both sides.
Fitzpatrick threw from one boat, Johnson caught it on another — the two separated not just by water, but by an international boundary.
The successful completion was captured for broadcast during NFL on Prime Video’s coverage of the Bills’ first 2026 regular-season home game Thursday night at the new Highmark Stadium.
...
We don't all desire antagonism with Canada.
This in regards to an essay you wrote:
Akademos: A Parable about Openness
https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/akademos.html
Ancient Greek myths tell of a farmer, Akademos, who did a favor for the sun god. In return, Apollo granted the mortal a garden wherein he could say whatever he liked, even about the mighty Olympians, without retribution. Inspired by this tale — the earliest allegory about Free Speech — citizens of Periclean Athens used to gather at the Academy to openly debate issues of the day.
I'm having difficulty finding a classical attestation for that version. In Plutarch, Apollo doesn't help Academos, King Tyndareus does; he gives him land for snitching on King Theseus. Then the citizens of Athens don't seek revenge for his snitching on their king to Pollux and Castor. Further, the favor done wasn't to the Apollo, but to Pollux and Castor. Those were the heroes that Academos told, because King Theseus kidnapped their sister.
So, can you offer a citation?. (which can absolutely be possible; Greek myths contradict each other all the time)
Oy, you guys have been busy. I start replying soon. Meanwhile, re Trump banning CNN etc from the WH... Beyond this being pure, Soviet-style cowardice, it also goes to one of my 35 proposed PRAGMATIC reforms... not one of them an unrealistic Constitutional Amendment or pipe dream, but all of them quickly passable. One calls for a "White House Manager" protected civil servant to control all Executive physical property, like the White House building and grounds, all non-policy-related staff like the travel office/switchboard/SecretService detail... and press credentials. And proper billing of the President's party for whatever trip expenses were not part of official business.
No whim orders like ballrooms, arches or reflecting pools without consulting Congress. And a very limited redecorating budget.
Consider this and 34 other PRAGMATIC reforms, several of which could be enacted even despite presidential vetoes! And most folks now pushing Medicare for all KIDS saw it here first.
Here is the full list of my own proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms
https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-contract-part-three-aggressive.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-18/trump-says-he-ll-ban-cnn-msnow-and-politico-from-white-house
I believe that there is a misperception turned into a narration again and again over the past years that social democracies in Europe rose through not pulling their weight during the cold war era.
In truth, those times before the collapse of the Iron curtain were their heighday, with up to 4% of the GDP spending going to the military and conventional forces being in par with what Russia had left before the Invasion.
Both the social state and the defense declined because of the austerity doctrine, the way they reunion was conducted, and, most important of it all, not taxing the wealthy .
As those elites, who HATE democracy, have grown into an international caste of untouchable nobility*, they increasingly become enemies of liberty.
Of what use would an Earth Union be if IT was controlled by the same forces who brought down the Pax America ?
* And sometimes, they ARE old world nobility.
My impudently sci-fi/theological comedy stage play The Escape (performed at Worldcon!) toys with many unusual interpretations of biblical passages. But SMBC out-does me here!
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/hooray
Was my request for a citation regarded as rude? I posted it and now don't see it.
I recall no such thing... soirry
Okaaay… Been terribly distracted but let’s dive in.
Locum tried hard this time. He’s still bonkers but he makes som,e points. Note that in my post I said the EU is not ther World Government that I would design. More bureaucratic and nitpicking than I’d like, tho bridging so many cultures who killed each other for 10,000 years is an accomplishment of staggering magnitude. And I am immensely grateful they are standing up to lead the Western Enlightenment at the very moment they are needed, amid our collapse into phase 8 or 9 of the US Civil War.
I hope it will be remembered that they had to be spurred into this – arm-twisted – by Marshall, Truman, Ike and so on… and that 80 years of US protection allowing them to spend almost nothing on defense formed the underpinning of their prosperity and semi-socialist goody-ness.
Locum is partly right that AI doomerism is partly as staged sales-thing. Partly.
Anyway, enough of that poor fellow. In our current crisis, I am reminded of Paul Scofield’s great role as Thomas More in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, especially this scene which explains why we must follow the law, even when fighting against the utterly evil/lawless… that is, until you get to the end of the movie and you realize that it didn’t exactly work for Sir Thomas, when the king flattens all laws for the sake of his whims.
Indeed, we must keep in mind that a time may come when evil truly has laid the laws flat. At which point the devils who would end lawful civilization must be shown the power of decent women and men who know NATURE’s laws… nuclear, bio, nano, chem, cyber and who will use those laws to show the would be kings and lords their big mistake. And then rebuild the light.
https://youtu.be/PDBiLT3LASk?si=hKZCdY0Y_E3P7eWd
Celt Russia is a huge existential threat to Europe. Fading, for now, as Europe rises to take up its task. But a wounded, thrashing pit viper can kill. Especially a crazy one.
Fair. I'll just post again. This in regards to an essay you wrote:
Akademos: A Parable about Openness
https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/akademos.html
Ancient Greek myths tell of a farmer, Akademos, who did a favor for the sun god. In return, Apollo granted the mortal a garden wherein he could say whatever he liked, even about the mighty Olympians, without retribution. Inspired by this tale — the earliest allegory about Free Speech — citizens of Periclean Athens used to gather at the Academy to openly debate issues of the day.
I'm having difficulty finding a classical attestation for that version. In Plutarch, Apollo doesn't reward Academos, King Tyndareus does; he gives him land for snitching on King Theseus. Then the citizens of Athens don't seek revenge for his snitching on their king to Pollux and Castor. That's another problem: the favor done wasn't to the Apollo, but to Pollux and Castor. Those were the heroes that Academos told, because King Theseus kidnapped their sister.
So, can you offer a citation?. (which can absolutely be possible; Greek myths contradict each other all the time)
There are many types of intelligence: numerical, spatial, verbal, emotional, strategic, and much else. Sapience would be mastery of all; but though Deep Blue mastered chess, it could not direct a robot to move a piece from one square to another. It was semi-sapient.
A species that masters nuclear fusion but uses it to threaten each other with annihilation is semi-sapient.
Regarding Nature's laws: Robert Heinlein, in Time Enough For Love, 1973, said that stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death.
Yeah, but the Old Man didn't account for collateral damage. The Darwin Awards , I note, are male-dominated - but anyone can get caught in the blast radius of a truly inventive fool.
Pappenheimer
...proving it can be kinda stupid to hang around stupid people. 8)
Gee... I wonder what the kids are doing in the nuclear lab next door...
*Truly intelligent life leaves no evidence that they have already been to the stars.
Not all of the infinite monkeys are sitting at typewriters. Some are carrying wrenches.
Throw in the possibility of paranormal activities. The remote possibility. The widely remote possibility. Why does speculation have to be so logical?
*Truly intelligent life only has to dream about going to the stars.
Not bloody likely. But still it could be developed into a novel...
Hmmm, deleted again. Lets try without a link.
This in regards to an essay you wrote:
Akademos: A Parable about Openness
Ancient Greek myths tell of a farmer, Akademos, who did a favor for the sun god. In return, Apollo granted the mortal a garden wherein he could say whatever he liked, even about the mighty Olympians, without retribution. Inspired by this tale — the earliest allegory about Free Speech — citizens of Periclean Athens used to gather at the Academy to openly debate issues of the day.
I'm having difficulty finding a classical attestation for that version. In Plutarch, Apollo doesn't reward Academos, King Tyndareus does; he gives him land for snitching on King Theseus. Further, the favor done wasn't to Apollo, but to Pollux and Castor. Those were the heroes that Academos told, because King Theseus kidnapped their sister.
So, can you offer a citation?. (which can absolutely be possible; Greek myths contradict each other all the time)
As they both argue that (1) Russia is not a threat to Europe, (2) Europe can defend itself and (3) EU security no longer relies on a US-supported NATO, I say we should give Celt & DerOger exactly what they want by having the USA withdraw from all-of-the-above transatlantic responsibilities, since their new EU ally Canada will most assuredly rush to their aid if a now harmless Russia decides to employ its non-conventional armaments.
The USA is doomed anyhow, as domestic fuel prices skyrocket, despite the USA being the world's largest petroleum producer, specifically because of the USA's ongoing participation in the GLOBAL fuel market, when the USA could be entirely self-sufficient if we kept our own domestic petroleum supplies at home.
But, such extreme US isolationism could never happen without the full support of the US political left -- an impossible event that cannot occur until the blue urban states experience severe deprivations associated with our current diesel & petroleum shortages -- in which case our left-leaning liberal progressives will immediately demand that all US fuel supplies must remain at home during said emergency.
Thankfully, this will give European liberal progressives everywhere the long-desired opportunity to (1) prove their self-sufficiency without US support, (2) allow them to immediately achieve carbon-neutral energy independence in time for winter and (3) SAVE THEIR DEMOCRACY from the icky aspects of actual 'majority rule' democracy, currently threatened by their own increasingly fascist & democracy-loving citizen voters.
By our blog's socialist contingent, I eagerly await their repudiation of the above scenario, as their solution to the pending US urban supply crisis, precipitated by the ongoing US petroleum shortage (in association with a depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserve), will most likely NOT involve the nationalization of US petroleum producers & the elimination of foreign exports.
Best
I remember you commenting on this and thinking their myths did contradict... and then getting to your last sentence and just nodding.
Demographically and economically Russia is a dead man walking. Their disastrous Ukraine war has accelerated collapse in both areas.
Battlefield losses are gutting Russia population growth ( all those young men fighting and dying at the front should be back home making baby Russians with their wives and girlfriends). Russian demographics won't recover from this war
The drone attacks on oil facilities as far away as Siberia have imploded their economy and caused gas lines in a country whose only economic asset is oil.
Forget about Russia, they are unimportant and short of lobbing nukes in an act of desperation are impotent
Why do you refer to it as an urban supply crisis. In addition to fertilizer shortages rural areas are far more dependent on diesel to operate farm machinery, truck transport crops to market and fuel oversized pick up trucks that compensate for small penises.
Christopher Hitchens did a masterful job of using myriad examples of such contradictions/variations to assemble a sort of "Origin of Scripture".
@der O ... thoughts on this quote (from a commentator I follow)? Does that align with the view from your side of the Atlantic?
"... Because Canada and Germany are the two democracies currently facing the most concentrated assault from the oligarchic political machine. The attack on Canada is more visible. The campaign against Germany has been operating largely in the background. But you may have noticed the victory lap taken by algorithm owners and MAGA politicians after the far right won a recent state election in Germany ..."
According to people like Celt, Russia is impotent, they're a dead man walking, yet Euro leaders are constantly making hysterical claims about imminent Russian invasion and the grave Russian threat. Which is it? Maybe option three: it’s propaganda designed to scare populations and get them to rally behind unpopular leaders?
If there are any dying, dead man walking regimes in today's world, surely it's the resourceless, ball-less, barren, reverse-colonized and vassalized nations of Western Europe -- a civilization clearly in the process of committing suicide, led by a collection of tone-deaf, soulless bureaucrats with the world’s lowest approval ratings. Not a very inspiring model for a “World Union”, imo (really a WEIRD Union with their usual globalist delusions).
Anyway, war with Russia would be a good way to finish themselves off quickly – “suicide by cop” on a civilizational level. They’ve tried it before, the old hubris→madness→nemesis progression that ended with Russian troops in their capitols, but this time their nemesis actually has the means to grant them their ultimate wish.
celt: "Forget about Russia, they are unimportant and short of lobbing nukes in an act of desperation are impotent"
NEVER underestimate the Russians where they are at their best, which is suffering and making others suffer with them. SHort of nukes, Putin can at any point order the complete destruction of Low Earth Orbit as a viable resource for humanity. And his kompromat can be used to make hundreds of pompously 'patriotic' Americans betray their country.
locum assumes that Blue America is as shortsighted and stupid as MAGAland. Because he must. And he always will, no matter how often disproved.
Putin can at any point order the complete destruction of Low Earth Orbit as a viable resource for humanity.
How would they do that??
Probably by causing a debris cascade? Ref: 'Kessler Syndrome'.
Since things in LEO experience some amount of atmospheric friction, not sure how long this would last...
Pappenheimer
Totally off topic, I just discovered the (prior) existence of an 80's band named Pansy Division*. Now I wish I had the skill set to mash up their music and some scenes from Girls und Panzer...Mk IVs with cute bunny decals....
Pappenheimer
*Kudos to Pansy Division for being openly gay in the 80's. Can't have been easy.
The smaller the debris the faster it re-enters - at LEO a satellite sized bit lasts less than two years
Bits of "debris" would re-enter much faster - and there is a HUGE volume you would have to "fill"
Natural "debris" going through that space amounts to over 40 tons/day
Celt asks why I continue to refer to the current petroleum & diesel shortage as "an urban supply crisis" when it is the red rural areas that are far more dependent on petroleum products if they are to perform their agricultural function, so I will try to explain it in the hoity-toity lexicon of Blue America:
Of the 2% of Americans who are directly involved in US agricultural food production, the majority of these agricultural producers live in red rural non-urban areas, while more than 80% of all Americans (who overwhelmingly reside in blue urban areas) are entirely dependent on our petroleum-powered supply lines for the arrival of their daily bread.
Of course, many red rural agricultural producers are also suffering due to the current diesel shortage -- and I've personally talked to more than a few local farmers who are going 'out-of-business' as we speak -- not because of crop failures, but because it no longer pays to sell or ship their product to the blue urban consumer, leaving all those unsold crops just rotting in rural barns & warehouses because it's just too expensive to ship it to you.
No worries, though, since all you sophisticated city dwellers will soon be killing each other for food scraps in a little more than 3 days if & when our diesel-based supply lines collapse completely, unless you all had the good sense to stock up on food & supplies as the BBC recently told you to do.
Thinking mathematically, I suspect that it's possible to predict the exact duration of this artificial fuel crisis based on the total number of liberal-progressive deaths necessary to restore a conservative voting majority in both the US & the EU.
Or, is the crisis endpoint the total number of deaths necessary to usher in One World Government or end Climate Change ??
The actual motive behind this crisis is irrelevant, I guess, as long a sufficiently large percentage of our useless eater population experiences horrible deaths & fast. And, most certainly, a Russian EMP could really speed up the whole shebang.
Best
Let me know when the Russians get past the Ukrainians. We'll talk about how big a threat they are then, starting with their collapsing demographics and destroyed oil industry.
Jibber away, locum. California feeds 1/4 of the whole nation. And those farmers have kids in the cities. And they are starting to realize that Cargill and Monsanto and Trump and the GOP are not their friends.
@Duncan
Intentionally run into stuff. Send stuff up and blow up. Etc.
Honestly though, I don't think Putin can get far enough in the first wave of effort before his launch sites will suffer mysterious failures... and a few not-so-mysterious ones. China is more capable, but likely less motivated.
The Russians as an empire are likely on their way off stage.
The Russians as a pain-in-the-ass nuisance state are not leaving. I suspect that stage role will continue through the century.
Their options for doing either depend on the value of fossil fuels. They are effectively a resource extraction nation now and that isn't likely to change in the next three generations. What they can extract for a profit will change, but their role will not.
I'm searching my best and nothing yet. I did note that Plutarch had an alternate etymology for the grove of Academos:
Plutarch, Life of Theseus 32.4
But Dicaearchus says that Echedemus and Marathus of Arcadia were in the army of the Tyndaridae at that time, from the first of whom the present Academy was named Echedemia, and from the other, the township of Marathon, since in accordance with some oracle he voluntary gave himself to be sacrificed in front of the line of battle. To Aphidnae, then, they came, won a pitched battle, and stormed the town.
Again, the guy's name varies a lot; academos or hekademus or echedemus. Here, he wasn't a local, but actually in the army of King Tyndareus.
Other than that ... a little about the tomb cult of Hekademos in Athens, but not the story of Hekademos.
Their biggest favor to the world will be increased motivation to make fossil fuels obsolete.
onward
onward
onward
Nirvana hired Pansy Division as opener after Nevermind went supernova. Multiple stadiums objected to "homosexual" music and tried to get them fired from the tour. Kurt told the stadium owners to screw off and that Nirvana would not play without PD on the bill. Stadium owners backed down.
I wish today's superstars were as brave as Kurt. Also, while making wishes, I wish he could have fought through his demons to stick around with us a while longer. He would have a lot to say and sing about ... ... all of this.
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