A lot of people do, but I think it is way too long and also overread. When I was a kid in the 1980s there were a lot of people who read Dune or Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy multiple times but didn’t seem to have ever read Heinlein or Asimov or Clarke or Dick or Pohl or E.E. Smith or anything in short-story form which were pretty important before the Tor books era.
It’s certainly better in my mind, who knows how Russia will take it. Even with missiles you are still interfering with the attacks. That’ll raise aggression against NATO.
If we don't interfere with the attacks at all, then aren't we effectively letting them get away with attacking a NATO state? And if we do that, won't they get even bolder?
Of course it's valuable. Our air defenses were, if not evaded, pierced. Biden's "fully prepared" and "every single inch" warning was challenged. That, in turn, lays groundwork for intimidating e.g. the Baltics.
One thing that the US could do, without getting into a direct conflict, would be providing Ukraine access to more advanced weapons that it's been hesitant to give earlier. No direct conflict, but sending a message to Russia that actions have consequences and those consequences aren't good for their already-uphill war.
Relax, NATO is not made of barbarians, but Russia will pay for it in other ways than nukes and bombs. They’ll just remain in the dark ages for a bit longer. Like North Korea and Cuba. Unless of course their friends in NATO will try and weasel them back on the economic scene.
Cruise missiles doesn't fly in a duet. AA missiles on other hand are often fired in pairs to increase the change of successful interception.
> strengthens the theory the Ukranians intercepted
If there was a cruise missile (what it needed to do there? hit a Polish tractor? Because it makes sense?) then it would be or a giant hole much bigger than that tiny one on the photos or it would be found more-less intact somewhere near. Yet we have only one video of the tractor and a couple photos of an unknown debris.
> false flag desperation pretty unlikely
This type of operations are ... coordinated with partners, as Russians would say.
Personally, between false flag, Ukrainian AA and Russian cruise missile my Occam says it was Ukraine AA doing whatever they did yet ended in Poland.
BTW all AA missiles have a self-liquidator which triggers by a command from the ground station OR automatically on a given altitude. For two AA missiles to go who knows where and not to self-liquidate is a sign of anything but normal. Which begs the question where are photos of the second hit?
NB: despite what even the first report claimed what missiles hit a grain storage - there are no photos of it yet.
> "The Ukraine" is a bit of a tell.
Oh, I knew you will get triggered, it was a low hanging fruit. How often do you wake up and think "Today is the day when my country should be written THAT way in a language what doesn't have any resemblance to my own. By the way only 1% of population of my country even know that language and 1% of that 1% could even understand the difference"? Did you ever wondered who guessed that change to AP style guide?
So your position is that Germany will find a reason to sanction Poland because Poland have been accidentally bombed by the Russian Federation? Sorry, I'm struggling to follow. Are you sure?
Perhaps you are still championing the dated notion that Germany is over exposed to the Russian energy market and thus is in thrall to the Russian Federation? I thought since the Nord Stream exploderised that was no longer really the case.
Cant find the link but apparently german carmakers expect to be back in about 5 years time (there is a clause in their exit contracts that they will be allowed to take back their assets after that amount of time).
sorry but I fail to see what that article has to do with the discussion at play. I really would suggest losing the cryptic veneer and making your points a little more plainly because you've merely left me confused.
At one point we're talking about a missile landing in Poland then suddenly Germany is chastising Poland for some inexplicable reason and now two multi-national car manufacturers have buy-back clauses to lessen the potential impact of their losses from having to dump operations in Russia.
I'm really not seeing a biting narrative that connects these dots.
> An unusual clause in their exit deals allows both Renault and Nissan to buy back their Russian assets within the next six years
> These facts suggest that the apparent exit of both companies from Russia is reluctant and largely symbolic, with both optimistic that sanctions will be lifted at some point in the next few years, allowing them to seamlessly re-enter the Russian market
Of course they will re-enter the Russian market. That was never in doubt, and it’s a very smart move to sign an exit deal allowing them to swiftly re-enter the market when it’s ready with all their places of operations nicely maintained for them. It seems that the people who signed that deal on the Russian side where negotiating from a position of weakness?
The issue is if they will re-enter a market with Putin at its head and Ukraine subjugated. That seems increasingly unlikely.
The official stance of Polish state TV and the leading politician is that Germany is Poland's biggest enemy. It's partly empty rhetoric aimed at the older population (the main electorate of the currently ruling right-wing party) and partly the perception that bigger EU countries try to bully everyone else (even France got upset over the recent public help issue).
The core of the issue in this particular case is that the ruling party tried to completely take over Polish courts in ways that were illegal both according to Polish and European law. The EU justly said they won't send the Next Generation EU money until Poland fixes this. The Polish Prime minister would agree to this, but the minister of justice said "over my dead body" - and without him the ruling party will not be able to have a majority rule. So the Polish ruling party accuses the EU, and the EU accuses them. Interesting to see how it plays out. In the meantime Poland is losing millions of euros because of one guy's big ego.
Exactly this. The features (or limitations) of medical data is inherent in the process of clinical practice, but this seems to be oftentimes overlooked.
Her government proposed an unfunded budget that caused a gilt market panic. Part of the mortgage market dried up. Variable mortgage rates exploded. Pension funds had to resort to emergency measures. The Bank of England had to intervene.
Don't the groups in the gilt market, mortgage market, pension funds, etc., have lobbyists that would be able to communicate their concerns and fears ahead of time?
For that matter aren't there Whitehall staff that could easily have said something?
There are all sorts of processes to say to her that this was a bad idea. She ignored them. It's a very Chernobyl kind of process: in order to run your experiment, first ignore all the safety alarms.
Because the UK in 2022 is not the US in 2017. One had high growths and low rate expectations. The other had high inflation raising rate expectations, so the borrowing cost more.
Lost the confidence of the market for UK government debt pushing up borrowing costs for government and for others (as well as causing problems for pension funds who own that debt).
She did this by launching a series of unfunded tax cuts and doing so without an assessment of the impact on the UK's finances.
> She did this by launching a series of unfunded tax cuts
Another interesting difference between the US and UK. Republicans do this routinely in the US, and have done for many decades now.
The last Republican president who didn't do this was George Bush (the first one). After promising "no new taxes" during his campaign, he later agreed to do the fiscally responsible thing and raise taxes in order to offset spending increases. He was not re-elected. That was ~30 years ago, and to my knowledge no subsequent Republican president has made that mistake.
US can run jaw-dropping debt-to-GDP ratios that are the envy of other nations thanks to $ being the world's reserve currency. US protects this privileged status religiously by any and all means - economic/diplomatic/political/military.
- I think in this instance it was partly the fact that they didn’t seem to be interested in the fiscal position and didn’t publish an assessment because they thought it was bad - so the markets assumed the worst. Don’t think any U.S. president has gone quite so far - happy to be corrected!
While they do, I'm not sure they ever have in quite _these_ circumstances. The UK is (a) seeing some of the highest rates of inflation in the developed world and (b) needs to massively subsidise energy costs due to the energy crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now, I'd argue that borrowing enormous amounts of money to give a tax break to the upper-middle-class is almost _never_ a good idea, but it's particularly not a good idea in the current climate.
> After promising "no new taxes" during his campaign, he later agreed to do the fiscally responsible thing and raise taxes in order to offset spending increases.
That is an extremely charitable parsing of the events. The more accurate (realpolitik) version is Bush said the no new taxes quip, and Democrats subsequently laser-focused on making him (slightly) raise taxes, showing he is a "liar".
My take away is to learn not to promise overly optimistic outcomes when your political rivals have a significant stake in seeing you either be a success or a failure.
Edit: Not sure why this was flagged. Did not mean to come off as hostile or aggressive. Anyways, cheers.
> The more accurate (realpolitik) version is Bush said the no new taxes quip, and Democrats subsequently laser-focused on making him (slightly) raise taxes, showing he is a "liar".
These days I think a Republican president in the same position would be a lot more likely to refuse to sign it, even it if meant shutting down the government. But politicians (and voters) really were much less divided back then compared to today.
> My take away is to learn not to promise overly optimistic outcomes when your political rivals have a significant stake in seeing you either be a success or a failure.
Over-promising is the bread and butter of campaign rhetoric; candidates do it all the time (certainly in US presidential elections at least). If it was really that much of a problem in practice, you'd see more election winners who hadn't previously promised all kinds of things they have no chance of delivering.
Announced a lot of unfunded tax cuts financed by borrowing - these have now been walked back on. The main issue was not really that she cut taxes, it's the unfunded borrowing to cover. Borrowing with the current high interest rates was always going to be risky and the market didn't have confidence that the cuts would lead to growth. This caused the value of the pound and of UK gov bonds (gilts) to plummet. Several large pension funds (which usually hold large numbers of gilts) were in danger of being margin called, which would cause them to have to sell gilts to cover the responsibility, which would drive down the price further, causing more sell offs. To prevent this the Bank of England (BoE) announced that they would be buying up to £65B of UK gilts - which calmed the markets and prevented a sell off (for now). But it has significantly worsened the economic outly for the country, buying your own bonds at a premium during a period of high inflation is a horrible position to be in.
The gov also declined to get the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) to check the impact of the plans. This is something the OBR does before every budget and it's very unusual that they didn't do this - even though it turns out they offered to before the budget was released. It didn't help that a lot of the taxes cut were targeted for high earners - It's hard to argue how cutting the top 45pc tax rate for earners over £150,000 and dropping a cap on bankers bonuses would help people in the short term (or dare. I say, the long), when the majority of people in the UK were struggling with the massively increased cost of living. It almost seemed as if the conservatives were trying to force through a list of long desired for tax cuts for the wealthy without the proper mandate (as Truss was only. elected by Conservative party members, rather than the general electorate) - and this made her gov monstrously unpopular.
Introduced a set of deep tax cuts. The markets reacted negatively to the implied increase in governmental borrowing. The pound had hit an all time low against the US dollar.
Experiments justify 'predictions' of certain mathematical models, not 'interpretations'. As for a belief in interpretations, it's more of a philsophy, and Feynman said just 'shut up and calculate'.
I agree that interpretations of QM are currently in the realm of philosophy, but (and, at the risk of being a fool in saying this) I disagree with Feynman when he says “shut up and calculate” [1].
I tend to lean towards Sean Carrol’s approach of the interpretation is important and we should spend real effort thinking about the different impacts of different interpretations. After all, Einstein didn’t get to general relativity just by calculating. It first required deep thought and consideration to decide what to calculate. And I’m not convinced that the interpretations will forever remain in the realm of philosophy (though, I accept I could be totally wrong about this).
[1] I don’t really disagree with Feynman on this. I think it’s perfect advice for people getting started in really learning QM (which is beyond where I am!). Being very familiar with the mechanics and being able to calculate fluently are probably a good starting point for people learning QM. But I do think that it’s worth experts in the field spending some time beyond the mathematical fundamentals.
