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When I see people go down a totalitarian propaganda rabbit hole I always want to ask them how much they are being paid. When they indignantly insist nothing I feel the only proper follow up is 'why not', since most everyone else is at least making some coin from burning down their credibility.

Having ground through the lowest echelons of academia and associated with a few members I would say it's one of the easiest groups to typecast because of the guaranteed presence of self important mouthpieces that will tell you they speak for everyone (they're lying). It's also the most...

From the nerd corner I'm going to observe that the importance of human form factors runs the full spectrum from 'still broken because not everyone can use it' to 'perfect as soon as anyone can use it' depending on who you ask. I'm 99% certain there is no way that female sized gear would be in...

A good chunk of the west bank is under Palestinian administration, just not Hamas. Far from ideal, but has been a lot better than Gaza as near as I can tell. You're touching on my nightmare scenario. If Israel can't concede any land nor nationalize the people living there what are their...

Agree, with one snag... given Israel's objective of being a Jewish state there is plenty of pressure to not nationalize more Palestinians even if the Arabs were willing. A second state is pretty much necessary to any peaceful outcomes.

I pray you're wrong. Personal experience of Jews and Arabs living together tells me there are other ways, but as you say, are they realistic in the middle east. How do you remove entrenched extremist leadership without brutality and ensure the winning side doesn't end up run by extremists as...

You're right about that... and I believe these are points that matter a whole lot more than cranking back centuries through old maps.

And you can't just emigrate to Canada from any place, there are procedures and red tape, but it is clearly possible as people have done it. We can't reasonably communicate if we have to qualify every statement for all the potential exceptions.

Totally disagree. The historical precedent for something like Israel, Palestine or Gaza can be measured in short centuries. Their absence is measured in millennia, yet the people are still there. I'm not sure what that analogy is supposed to mean and it feels like you're responding to an...

Only in the most sarcastic tone of voice possible.

You're way off track if you are looking for historical precedents for any candidates for a modern state in that space. The ancient, united, and independent kingdom of Israel lasted only slightly over 100 years three millennia ago. For comparison, the crusader kingdom was there for almost 200...

Just to add to the manned/unmanned conversation I thought he covered a lot of interesting alternatives.

Possibly, although war exhaustion is a factor for both sides so it's hard to be sure exactly where that leads. It does give me a thought... Russia may well have entered the war assuming it just needed to outspend Ukraine and wait out the west. Reversing those requirements appears to be a much...

I get it's easy to be cynical about the way the war drags, but there are also a lot of plausible good reasons for the way things are playing out. Primarily I think it's just the best way of dealing with the threat of nuclear escalation, once it became obvious Ukraine was willing and able to...

Not sure I was clear. I meant Ukraine has only claimed about 270k Russians killed, 100k less than those compensation figures suggest. If you had told me they were overreporting by that same amount I would have thought it was totally plausible. I'm not sure Ukraine gets much out of low balling...

Even Ukraine has claimed 100k less than that killed. Russian demographics are horrible, their male population age 15 to 29 was only around 12 million according to pop pyramid for 2020. That's already 3% dead, probably more disabled some way. Those numbers are going to hit everyone there 😯

Some big picture stuff from the powerpoint god:

It was just my wry way of saying the Ukrainians probably have the best sense of what they have to work with, what they are working against and good reasons for what they do. But it may be a while before we get those insights and the internet moves on to new over the top critiques of the original...

I've had the feeling for a while the Ukrainians are deliberately keeping the battles small and quick. They seem to be a lot more mobile so they can setup enough local superiority to get little wins without paying the attacking premium in losses. I don't have the chops or information of what it...

Slightly off topic, but I don't see any twitter previews here since they went to x domain, is it just me or this site?