Indeed. What the russians heard loud and clear: Iโm here today to directly and unambiguously express that you are free to invade anywhere in Europe at your own convenience and timetable.
— Maria Popova ๐จ๐ฆ (@popovaprof.bsky.social) February 12, 2025 at 4:03 PM
The Baltics, Poland and also likely Germany are totally fucked now. I’d guess Russia will push into Berlin sometime between 2030-2032.
Suspension of inbound parcels from China and Hong Kong.
Buncha stuff about to get fucked, y’all.
I’d put Great Recession II: Immiseration Boogaloo chances at 80% now.
The chance of a Great Recession type event due to Trump I’d now put at 65%. Prepare accordingly.
I am going insane. This company will lose $10bn this year! Generative AI has peaked! There isn’t a sustainable business model, and the products are mediocre and error prone and don’t even do anything cool despite costing billions and accelerating climate change and stealing everybody’s artwork!
โ Ed Zitron (@edzitron.com) January 22, 2025 at 6:03 PM
I like Ed, but this is a clueless take. He’s not thinking predatorily enough, like an MBA would. The point of GenAI is to eventually replace workers, not to be these little toys we have now. The MBAs simply DO NOT CARE if AI does not do work that is as of the quality that a human can do. If a GenAI costs 1/20 the price and does work that’s only 1/4 as good — that is still a net win. In MBA thinking, anyway.
Ed is wrong, wrong, wrong. โMediocre and error prone” at a low price is just fine in capitalism. Preferred, even, if it never talks back, never demands higher wages and has no actual human needs.
Understand this or you understand nothing.
We’ve really done Ukraine dirty. And by “we,” I mean the US, NATO and the EU. We allowed them to absorb all the Russian aggression and revanchism while providing just barely enough support to survive.
And we’ll pay for that. More specifically, the Baltics, Poland and Germany will. At least they’ll get it the worst.
Wait and see.
I now put the chance of an extended war in Europe (outside of Ukraine) with Russia at 65%.
And the probability of war with China that starts over Taiwan at 90%.
Yup. And it’d only cost around $100 billion to fill the desert1 with enough solar panels and batteries to power the entire United States year-round forever.
The problem is not cost. Nor even what is possible. The problem is will. We could do so much more than we have done. And we should. The future does not belong to faint-hearted, anemic degrowthers cowering before the god of lost causes and reveling in their prostrate servility. The degrowthers claim that tech will not allow us to survive what is coming. But that is completely wrong. In fact, it is the only thing that will.
We undertake insanely ambitious projects or we die. It’s as simple as that.
As I’ve said before, we must become the gods that we pretend to be.
It looks like the future of Europe is to be a stagnant backwater where the standard of living slowly declines. It’s likely to be overrun both by Russia and by mobs of economic migrants with Enlightenment-hostile values and cultures.
My guess is that the region will deteriorate for 200-300 years and then as those mobs aforementioned and their terrible cultures cool out, it’ll flourish once again — after some brutal wars and genocides.
Good times, good times.
The Price of Russian Victory: Why Letting Putin Win Would Cost America More Than Supporting Ukraine.
Allowing Russia to defeat Ukraine would cost the United States about seven times more than preventing a Russian victory.
Far more than that. Because if we let Russia win, we’ll be fighting Russia in Poland in 2028 or a bit later. I’d estimate the financial cost of that war at $5 trillion or so. And that’s only the monetary burden; hundreds of thousands to millions will be killed and lives will be disrupted forever.
We should not let that happen. But we probably will.
This is correct; we are already in WWIII’s beginning phases and we should act like it. There is a certain inevitability to these things. We are making it worse, not better, by not helping Ukraine enough. I don’t completely agree with Kyle but we’re on a path globally that leads to a world-devastating conflict, with very few realistic ways to avoid it.
Our goal now should be to make it the least bad and shortest war possible. Which we in the US are not doing at all, and neither is Europe.
This is not the direct setup for the Taiwan invasion. That’ll occur in 2026-2027 while Trump is at his weakest. This is a test to see how the US and Europe respond to provocations. This is a common Chinese tactic that produces extremely valuable real-world data on likelihood of aggressive retaliation, determination of actual effects of communications being severed, and movement of forces in the area in which the sabotage was conducted and in other areas as well.
This is a dry run for a future, much larger operation and not the operation itself.
If Russia nuclear strikes Ukraine, would the West really follow up with nuclear counter strikes?
No, that’s not what would occur. NATO and the US would utterly destroy Russia’s military capabilities using conventional means, though. And perhaps even occupy Moscow temporarily.
However, what China would do is another matter. That I don’t have a lot of insight on but I can guarantee it would not be nothing. Most likely it would occupy significant parts of eastern Russia and Siberia, I’d guess. But that I’m less clear on.
AOC is 100% correct, and this is exactly what I was saying earlier today. https://t.co/WhrxlQTpMU
— Noah Smith ๐ (@Noahpinion) November 15, 2024
AOC is right. That’s some bad shit, man. Russia won’t even stop at Poland. They’ll be in Germany before 2035.
How bad is it? This is very bad, and we are not nearly ready for whatโs coming our way.
Agreed. Possibility of economic depression in the next few years. War also, and a large one at that.
This is going to be a very bad four years. Or more. Likely many more.
Well, yes. But we’ll also probably have a huge war too. So there’s that.