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statguy

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The Taiwanese know they can't take on China directly, they now know that Western support is meaningless - in fact it pushes them more into conflict with China. Given a choice, I think the Taiwanese would prefer a Hong Kong like outcome to a Ukraine/UAE like outcome.

AFAIK Iran never directly attacked several countries (e.g. UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi, Bahrain) before this war.

This has massive strategic implications for the US. The US couldn't protect its bases in the middle east from a middle power like Iran and in fact its bases were the reason that its "allies" in the gulf were attacked. Iran would have no reason to attack those allies otherwise. The US has also shown that Israel is the only ally that it really cares about.

Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Australia are taking notes. Prediction: there is not going to be a war over Taiwan - Taiwan will gradually come to a Hong Kong like agreement with China.

I don't doubt that the Iranian regime has committed some atrocities during the recent protests. However, I would discount any person/source who - supported the Iraq war, cheered America/Israeli bombing of Iran in 2025 and has nothing to say about Israel's genocide in Gaza, as being a reliable source of information on Iran.

It doesn't work that way. The dedicated machine for running agents will have very limited utility because it will not have access to anything it needs like your credit card to automatically purchase stuff on your behalf etc.

Any idea roughly how many $100M offers have been made. I initially thought that there were maybe 1-2 such offers and the remaining were maybe around $10-25M. However, judging by this particular case and another report where a $1.5B offer was made to a someone at Thinking Machines, I think that the actual number of such offers is much higher.

Any idea if the Googles/Apples are offering similar retention grants to prevent key employees from leaving?

I was curious so I looked it up, it turns out that the men’s world record for a mile is 3 minutes and 43 seconds, the women’s is 4 minutes and 7 seconds. These are the very best in the world at their prime. I would conjecture that less than 50% of adults in an industrial society would be able to run a 7 min mile, which is less than twice the world record times.

You knew this when making the booking? Why didn’t you book a hotel instead? Airbnb or the host have no incentive to change if people like you keep going back. They will change only when it starts to hurt their bottom line.

I remember that during the early nineties, when I was kid, I often used to see over a dozen vultures perched on my maternal grandparents’ terrace in New Delhi on summer evenings (I visited them only in summer). A few years later I noticed that I didn’t see them anymore and occasionally wondered why. Then years later I started seeing articles about Diclofenac killing vultures and then it clicked. Just thought I’d share.

RSS is a straight up fascist organization:

"India has the longest-running continuous fascist movement in the world – the RSS was founded in 1925. It’s nearly 100 years old. Their internal language hasn’t changed; they’re still using texts by Savarkar or Golwalkar for indoctrinating their members – and Golwalkar famously thought that the Nazi example of getting rid of Jews from Germany should be followed in India for Muslims." https://thewire.in/politics/benjamin-zachariah-fascism-sangh...

"In the 1930s Hindu nationalism borrowed from European fascism to transform 'different' people into 'enemies'. Leaders of militant Hinduism repeatedly expressed their admiration for authoritarian leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler and for the fascist model of society. This influence continues to the present day. This paper presents archival evidence on the would-be collaborators." https://www.jstor.org/stable/4408848#metadata_info_tab_conte...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/20/hindu-supremac...

Vembu's hobnobbing with such organizations, should make Zoho untouchable for any reasonable person.

The current Indian government has taken an increasingly fascist approach towards Indian Muslims. It has been jailing Muslim activists without due course and trials, demolishing homes of Muslims participating in peaceful protests and turning a blind eye to fireband Hindu leaders openly calling for genocide against Muslims.

https://m.thewire.in/article/communalism/beyond-blasphemy-in...

https://www.boomlive.in/news/hindu-rashtra-convention-bengal...

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/india...

https://article-14.com/post/jailed-or-punished-with-or-witho...

For overall context, the current Indian government has taken an increasingly fascist approach towards Indian Muslims. It has been jailing Muslim activists without due course and trials, demolishing homes of Muslims participating in peaceful protests and turning a blind eye to fireband Hindu leaders openly calling for genocide against Muslims.

https://m.thewire.in/article/communalism/beyond-blasphemy-in...

https://www.boomlive.in/news/hindu-rashtra-convention-bengal...

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/india...

https://article-14.com/post/jailed-or-punished-with-or-witho...

The dead body floating thing happened in 1 or 2 states.

Those were the worst hit states - UP and Bihar. What was observed during the second wave was not normal, something like that last happened in 1918 after the Spanish flu:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57068503 "This is not the first time bodies have floated up in rivers in India during a pandemic.

"The River Ganga was swollen with dead bodies", the famous Hindi language writer and poet, Suryakant Tripathi, better known as Nirala, wrote about the 1918 outbreak of Spanish flu in his village in a province which is now India's Uttar Pradesh state."

You may not believe it, but India's response to the pandemic has been nothing less than fantastic

Come on, India was probably the only country in the world where there were dead bodies floating in rivers. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57154564

During the second wave in April-May 2021, which India had ample time to prepare for, hospitals just didn’t have oxygen.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/haryana/ex-envoy-dies-wait...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/21/india-hospit...

States purposely undercounted their death tolls by vast amounts.

https://twitter.com/deepakpatel_91/status/139341986118379930...

That said some states like Kerala and Maharashtra managed the pandemic much better than others like UP and Bihar, so your experience could be based on one of the better performing states.