I was going to say that he was remarkably well-composed given the circumstances. I had a very close call when driving once and after I was safe I pulled over and cried for 10 minutes. I don’t like him, but he handled himself better than I would have. (Probably better than most people without a military background would have.)

I studied German in high school but I don’t remember any of it. I like to pretend that ich_iel is just using made up nonsense words, like the Swedish Chef muppet.

In the extreme case, you would have AIs buying from other AIs. Humans aren’t the only possible economic agents.

No, I’m saying that not all violence is political violence. Things that aren’t even violent are definitely not political violence. The author’s definition of “political violence” appears to include any government action that he’s not happy with. (He reminds me of the “taxes are theft” libertarians.)

the very concept of “political violence” is evacuated of meaning

The author of this piece is the one doing that. Hint: it doesn’t mean everything he personally doesn’t approve of.

If you want to read a military historian’s long take on Rings of Power armor, here you go. Spoiler: he’s not a fan, although he did like most of the armor in the LotR trilogy (elsewhere on his blog).

On the contrary, one can commit or compile credentials quite simply… Maybe Boromir isn’t the right person to ask.

I’m not sure how someone could live in a big city without learning to just walk past beggars without making eye contact. I know I sound like a terrible person when I say that explicitly, but it’s what almost everyone actually does. Most other people just don’t want to admit it (to others, and maybe to themselves).

I understand that that’s what the union leaders think. I’m asking why they’re saying so in their official capacity on behalf of union workers who often aren’t actually inclined to think so. Apparently the resolution is more popular with the college teaching assistants in the union than it is with actual auto workers, with whom even the union’s endorsement of Biden is controversial. IMO while the country as a whole has to pick a single policy regarding Israel regardless of how divisive the issue is, the union shouldn’t since it doesn’t actually have to.

I suspect that the debate was an “emperor has no clothes on” moment for Democratic politicians. Everyone already knew that Biden is old but no one who thought that was a big problem wanted to be the first one to say so. (Why risk being sidelined for disloyalty to the party in the case where you speak out but then no one else does?) The debate was just the tipping point that made age an issue the politicians were willing to talk about, but voters don’t have the problem with being disloyal that politicians do so they had already taken Biden’s age into account in a way that politicians publicly hadn’t.

With that said, these national polls are fun for people who watch the election like a sporting event but they’re a poor way to actually predict victory. How many electoral college votes each candidate will have is independent from his support in much of the country, where only a catastrophic event could possibly change a state’s electoral outcome. Meanwhile in swing states the small difference in polls like this appears to be magnified in Trump’s favor.

What good reason does a union have to pick a side on an issue that Americans are divided about, when that issue is entirely irrelevant to the union’s core purpose?

I think Russia wants Ukraine not in order to make money but in order to have Putin go down in history as the restorer of the Russian empire. That lack of pragmatism is what’s going to make negotiations difficult.

The scenario you describe has already come to pass. Russia has NATO on their doorstep since Finland joined, Russia’s chances of breaking through the Ukrainian army and actually capturing that agricultural land are rather low even if Western support for Ukraine drops significantly, and Ukraine is going to be friendly to the West and hostile to Russia even if it isn’t allowed into NATO. If this scenario is intolerable to Russia, then whatever would happen is going to happen.

I do think there is a small but significant risk that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine (a scenario where both escalating and not escalating are likely to be disastrous) if its army is driven back to the border but not if the war becomes a frozen conflict with Russia controlling the territory it currently does. With that said, I disagree that shows of strength don’t deter. Western strength deterred a Soviet invasion of Europe, and it deters a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. There definitely is a risk of escalation, but there always will be. The USA has tried being isolationist before, but it was still drawn into both world wars. It will be drawn into the next one if such a war happens.

I think it’s the other way around: Russia is aggressive but a show of strength would deter it. In other words, Russia isn’t desperate to avoid a confrontation with the West. Russia wants a confrontation with the West, and it needs to know that that’s a confrontation it won’t win. (China also needs to know that, and it’s watching the situation in Ukraine closely.)

That’s not to say that we should seek out such a confrontation with the goal of intimidating Russia. A high-stakes situation like that does have the risk of escalating out of control. However, the situation in Ukraine is already such a confrontation, initiated by Russia due to its belief that the West is weak. It would have been much better to avoid creating such a belief, but now is too late for that. The best we can do is to avoid reinforcing it and, from a pragmatic perspective, it helps that most of the risk is borne by Ukraine.

In short, the nightmare scenario is Russia invading a NATO country like one of the Baltic states. Then either there is a war between nuclear powers immediately or Western unity collapses and a war between nuclear powers becomes much more likely in the near future. Our best chance of avoiding that is to stop Russia in Ukraine, where we can do so indirectly.

Edit: Also people shouldn’t be down-voting you. You’re making a valid point that needs to be addressed.

A thought experiment: you operate a security camera on behalf of a property owner. The camera records a serious crime taking place. The police want to see the video, but they can’t force you to give it to them. The property owner doesn’t want the police to see the video, but he can’t force you not to give it to them. (However, he can stop being a customer, which will cost you money.) What would you do?

I think I’d give the police the video as long as I thought the crime was serious. And I’d do that even if it cost me money, because IMO it’s the right thing to do. I’m not saying Amazon was in that position, but I would have to know the specific circumstances before I could judge.

People aren’t worried about the sort of foreign influence where Putin publicly endorses a candidate.

The problem with high wealth taxes is the same as the problem with nationalizing privately-owned businesses. Even if you’re not worried about the people you tax fleeing the country (maybe they can’t because their investments aren’t mobile) you still have to worry about the fact that no one would build anything in France (even things not currently taxed) if there was good reason to think that France might suddenly decide to seize a large fraction of its value.

(High income taxes aren’t as big a deal because wealthy people can restructure their investments in order to avoid most of them, but I wonder whether the lost economic activity is actually worth more to the country than the money raised by the tax.)

It’s bizarre to me. We do so much carelessly, but here we’re being extra careful? 600,000 people die of malaria every year. A delay of one day means 1,600 people die.

But was she dumb?

One time, I was on a date and I was telling a story about a bossy graduate student. I said “And he didn’t even have his PhD!” which didn’t impress my date, who didn’t even have her PhD.