meeuwer

The exploited software is conveniently developed and controlled by Iran’s adversaries. In another episode of the geopolitical sabotage show,

“In January 1982, President Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the economy of the Soviet Union through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a Siberian natural gas pipeline, according to a memoir by a Reagan White House official.”

True or not, the risk of software Trojan horses in the big energy game was recognized pretty early. The lesson here is, potentially dangerous technology ought to be matched by a comprehensive security protocol.

Whatever the number, it was “worth it”.

https://youtu.be/RM0uvgHKZe8

Definitely. People don't hate the game, they hate losing at the game.

Problems can be either solved in a constructive way (we see that's not going to happen) or in a nonconstructive way (societal explosion or breakdown of some sort). Or sometimes problems get superseded by bigger problems. Like when recently the home prices went down just a little bit, it was because of ECB's hand forced into fighting inflation with higher interest rates, which made mortgages less accessible.

My impression is that the government tried to 'solve' the problem with one main constraint in mind: to never allow the prices go down in any meaningful way. Hence the ham-fisted attempts to instead tweak taxes and ease credit conditions.

Who said the test has to be self-administered? “This isn’t a litmus test unless the solution even knows what the pH range is”.

Leaving aside your focus on political views (even though the test I proposed is more about getting better informed than diversifying one’s beliefs and prejudices), what’s the typical case you’re getting at: do people have unique sets of political views or are those views more clustered “than people assume”? You sort of started arguing for the former and then pivoted.

I meant it in a more technical sense, as in “I start my morning by checking 4-5 news outlets from different corners of the political field and try to figure out what’s really going on by comparing the narratives”. That of course is not sufficient; one has to do their homework on prior history of whatever the contentious issue is.

And yes, probably it’s not an activity most people engage in.

There’s a simple litmus test for independent-mindedness: does the person in question do the continuous work of collating “news” and narratives from all across the spectrum? If not, they’re likely going with “the current thing” of their preferred echo chamber, which may or may not be real.

If the SVB debacle taught us anything, it is that even the most libertarian free-market aficionados love their “nanny state” when it’s them who’s in trouble.

First, no need to be rude. Second, a certain Mr. Stoltenberg would like to add a prequel to your non sequitur: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf5xEBwBhds

This is funny. Did you assume I was rooting for Trump because of my comments about the Bidens? Sorry, I don't have a dog in this race. In my book if something looks like corruption it is likely corruption, regardless of which side of the uniparty one's dad is on.

And again moving the moral goalposts. One minute it's an existential struggle between good and evil, the next minute it's "well, it's a gray area, you actually are allowed to shell nuclear power plants, everything that's gonna happen is on your enemy anyway, and as a bonus we'll keep our mouth shut about any inconvenient evidence, mkay?". Seems more like one sports team versus another one looking to bend the rules a little.

That's my problem. One can't have their moral cake and eat it too.

The safety and security officials will allow the agency to possibly perform a forensic evaluation of shelling that has occurred at the plant, Bloomberg reported. This evaluation could be used to hold attackers of the plant responsible for the damage it has received. [1]

It's unclear what happened to the planned 'forensic evaluation', but somehow there was no further interest in holding attackers responsible.

Does it really matter who's doing the shelling?

Sure it does. The entire good guys vs bad guys narrative falls apart when your, cough, ally is the one attempting "nuclear blackmail" against you. I for one don't want to help things escalate to the "together into the abyss" stage [2], not for any reason, least of all because someone's intergenerational vendetta went off the rails.

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/international/3615324-internation...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Glasl%27s_model_of_c...

A cushy job at a domestic propaganda outlet is a bit different from selling access to a top US official to foreign oligarchs. That's if you believe that it was strictly about 10% for the Big Guy and didn't involve undue political influence in the other direction, which is more than plausible judging by the level of political mobilization against the prosecutor guy.

... it should be clear that "just asking questions" only applies when the answers are already well known, where the question embodies a point refuted a thousand times, and where the questioner exhibits willful ignorance. If, for example, someone phrased their political argument as a series of questions — but provided sources to back up said questions, or has raised logical arguments in said questions — then it is not enough to dismiss the argument as "just asking questions".

So, the IAEA and Grossi either can't establish where the shells are fired from (hard to believe given the prolonged and intensive nature of the shelling and the amount of evidence) or are hesitant / not allowed to incriminate the party they believe is responsible.

Here's a funny weird little fact. The IAEA inspectors and even Mr. Grossi himself have been documenting and even 'hearing' shelling 'on a regular basis' while present on the ZNPP premises. But they've never attributed the shelling to either of the parties, not once. [1]

Isn't that unusual given how quick all the officials and media are to blame just one side of the conflict (we know which one) for everything, with or without evidence?

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aiaea.org+znpp+shellin...

Just curious, how do you rationalize Hunter's employment at Burisma? Was it his business acumen or maybe background in natural gas? Or something else altogether?

He also emphatically denied any wrongdoing after being named in the Panama Papers. What's the point you're making?

It's great when corruption and influence peddling can happen out in the open. When it can become the official policy. Right?

"The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors." Shokin continued, stating that, "On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the criminal case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company, but I refused to close this investigation."

Nothing fishy about any of this. Good, honest public servants doing their job.

I agree, politicians can be hard to follow at times and Joe is no exception.

He's notorious for confusing and incoherent ramblings like this:

"I looked at them and said, ‘if the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money'. Well son of a bitch, he got fired".

We will never know what he meant, but I'm confident it was just a parable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXjLqhtnIRI

The problem here is that the main suspect has control over both WaPo and those who hold the guy in jail. Oh, and over the countries that carry out the investigations too. Essentially, you're asked to disregard the motive, the capabilities, the unambiguous public statements made by the most likely suspect and accept their fall guy explanation. That's a bit too much disbelief to suspend.

Don’t know about the guy, but the outlet seems spook-infested. Bigwigs connected to the Council on Foreign Relations, the German Marshall Fund, etc. By definition they have and promote a US-exceptionalist worldview. Apparently, Dalio’s openly realpolitik business approach is a thorn in their side.

https://www.semafor.com/about

Funny, I too thought of that very video the moment I’d read the news. Rich was barely managing to feign just enough engagement without appearing rude. Happy he has escaped.

When a corporation runs out of money, the managers get an assignment to hand out a high number of performance improvement plans to their direct reports. Those who can leave, prefer to resign. Those who can’t, stay and play along and face either no pay adjustment / no promotion or risk getting fired for “underperforming” after a while. Either way, the company achieves its goals of reducing the costs and headcount.

Of course this works only if you have a well-oiled HR machine and docile managers, which is typical for every Big Corp out there.

Indeed, it seems to be a large corporations thing.

They prefer stealth layoffs here in the Netherlands. The end result is the same: you’re out, but with no severance and gaslit AF. Thanks Rutte, I guess?

Bingo. Housing in the Netherlands has become a cult demanding increasingly more human sacrifice.

Sometimes I wonder if “demographic transition” in the developed world is nothing more than a side effect of the neoliberal housing policies.

Appreciated this video too.

It helps one understand that the lenis/fortis opposition is broader and arguably more useful than the voiced/unvoiced one even in English.

Obligatory mention of Mark Fisher and his talk "The Slow Cancellation Of The Future". [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgkLICTskQ

One doesn’t have to be American to consider themselves to be in the US camp. I live in a NATO country and the pro-US propaganda here is even worse than in American outlets and much more consolidated because of the de facto media monopoly. Here, ’us’ means the US with the rest of NATO and ‘them’—Russia, China, Iran, etc.

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion when it comes to moral judgement. My opinion is that on the global bully scale the US is much higher than any other country. Which of course doesn’t excuse the lesser bullies, but it’s puzzling to see the extent of mental gymnastics one has to go through to argue that Russia is worse than the US in the invasions department.

The country that has a history of being a serial invader with the overall (by far) higher civilian death toll is still better because the first six months of Iraq invasion were reportedly less brutal than the first six months of Ukraine invasion?

I don’t buy the idea that there can be only one Bully we should all focus on and the moment you get a worse one the previous bully can walk away scot-free. If one starts punishing people for their government’s actions (as Ken does), at least they should be consistent in their folly and treat the ally bullies the same way as the enemy ones.