This is wild. Russia is now *visually confirmed* to have lost more than 80% of the number of tanks it initially deployed in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/hQQ7NugSqM
— Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 (@Noahpinion) October 12, 2022
If that’s winning, I’d hate to see what losing looks like.
Russia complaining about the U.S. helping fund its defeat with $17B; only .88% of our government’s entire DoD budget ($1.94T) and .3% of our entire governmental budget ($5.35T). Russia is being beaten by Ukraine with the help of the US’s pocket change https://t.co/ThWHd5VnaW
— Blake Allen (@Blake_Allen13) October 12, 2022
In a conventional non-nuclear war with Russia, the US military would destroy the Russian forces utterly in weeks. It wouldn’t even be a contest. I say this not because I am some “USA! USA! USA!” dude but because of how obvious this is. The Russian military is atrocious.
Is Russia’s Nuclear Threat Even Credible?
I suspect about 25% of Russia’s nukes would actually function.
That’s enough.
Man, Republicans really are committed to killing their own voters. Covid has lost most of its political salience and yet they're still keeping up the pressure on the base to avoid vaccination as some kind of "own the libs" move. https://t.co/jUQ7BNglj0
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) October 12, 2022
Which most libs are vaccinated so avoiding vaccination will have little to no effect at all. Most won’t even pay attention and only the Covidians will pretend to care.
Meanwhile, enough conservative idiots are dying that there will absolutely be enough dead cons to swing elections in close districts. Pretty funny.
I see why the Covidians hate Angie:
She actually cares about what was really happening and where the risk actually was located.
I think "medium covid" is a fine term to distinguish between symptoms that linger for 12/16 whatever weeks and something more long lasting. I just don't know why we have to present it as a scary new thing when it's not.
— Angie Schmitt🚶♀️ (@schmangee) October 12, 2022
Right-o. Most cases of “Long Covid” will be medium covid (just like every other damn virus ever).
Getting rid of kids’ hospital beds because they’re not profitable enough. What a healthcare system pic.twitter.com/dg4NC3m4zK
— Read Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns (@JoshuaPotash) October 12, 2022
And the Covidians will claim this has something to do with Covid…somehow.
This is pretty much the worst thing I’ve ever read. 5 and 14 yo girls were shot in Florida because their dads were having some kind of road rage standoff shooting at each other while they were passengers https://t.co/iJyD1L7hsi
— Angie Schmitt🚶♀️ (@schmangee) October 12, 2022
Yeah, that’s the Florida I know. Alas.
A reminder:
* COVID is airborne.
* Herd immunity did not happen.
* Omicron was not mild.
* Kids do get sick.
* Transmission does occur in schools.
* Each variant is not milder.
* No wave has been an exit wave.
Minimizers have been wrong about every
single one of those things..🦠— Dr. Mild Yet Still Mysterious (@sammy4723) October 11, 2022
Man, Covidians are a hoot. The only one of those that is meaningfully true is the first point: Covid is airborne.
The rest are distractions or minuscule or irrelevant. Pandemic is essentially over (for most people). Herd immunity definitely happened — it just wasn’t sterilizing and neither were vaccines.
Listen to Zeynep, not these loons. They’ll steer you into paranoia every time because it benefits them to do so.
There was a science fiction book I read a while ago where someone who’d experienced the effects of time dilation emerges into a future where there is mandatory homosexuality. It’s not seen as a bad or a good thing (from the meta perspective of the book), just something that happens.
The people of the future this character emerges into see relationships between men and women as too fraught and dangerous — and primitive — so society moves to enforced compulsory same-sex relationships only. I was thinking about this in relation to how many (mostly) feminists wish to make being attracted to someone else morally verboten, or not permitted until it’s (somehow) authorized. The future portrayed in the book is a somewhat-likely future for us too I guess.
I can’t remember the book, though. It’s hard sometimes when you’ve read thousands of them.
I hear two narratives on security:
1. Computer security is a permanent mess and perfect defense is impossible.
2. In the long run we can just solve computer security with formal methods.
Which is right? I'm real skeptical of the second, but is it theoretically possible. https://t.co/fBNo8dM8wG
— Wolf Tivy (@wolftivy) October 10, 2022
Formal methods are too difficult and time-consuming. Formal methods increase the development time and cost 1,000x to 10,000x (or more), so can only be used for absolutely-must-work software and even then, usually only crucial parts of that software.
This will pretty much always be the case, so formal methods are not the solution we are looking for.
Most commenting rules usually specifically prohibit commenters from discussing the one part of the whole area of inquiry that I find interesting or would want to know about, examine, and dispute, so that’s why I almost never comment anywhere.
It probably makes sense from a community perspective but means forums and such are banal and pointless for me.
But to liberals, the space program is “useless.” Tell me that when a planet-killer is hurtling our way, losers.
I just awoke from a vivid dream of watching a mushroom cloud rising in the distance. I haven’t had one of those in, like, 35 years.
The Cold War really is back….
— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) October 11, 2022
I dreamed about that fairly often in the 1980s. Nearly everyone did. But that dream hasn’t returned. Yet, at least.
What's your gender?|| If a very overweight person of your preferred gender wanted to have casual sex with you, would you? Assuming they are attractive, clean, eager, great personality, skilled, etc., and you're single and looking
— Aella (@Aella_Girl) October 10, 2022
No. I’ve never been attracted to a very overweight person. That and tattoos is such a turnoff for me sexually.* If that in the modern (absurd) thought makes me a bigot, so be it. It’s really damn hard (read: impossible) to force yourself to be attracted to things that you just aren’t, though.
*A woman without tattoos these days seems 10x hotter to me just because they alas have become so common.