The major difference is that in “blink” and “chicken” you expect to keep doing your thing (eg driving straight ahead) while only your opponent makes concessions.

The Cuban missile crisis involved significant concessions on both sides.

The Cuban middle crisis was resolved through negotiation and concessions, not by a game of nuclear chicken.

Exactly. The real debate is on which parts should be off limits.

Most people can think of some speech that they consider so horrible that nobody should be allowed to say it.

People often try to hedge that position by arguing that they’re not even really infringing on anyone’s speech because their form of restriction doesn’t meet a sufficient threshold of censorship.

Does anyone?

The closest I can think of to “real free speech absolutists” is the old-school doctrinal libertarians. Even they have limits on what they believe should be allowed and specifically state that contracts should be legally enforceable.

That sounds like a much more modest proposal.

I don’t know if any of your predictions are true. They might be, but I don’t have nearly enough evidence to be confident in any of them.

If they are, I don’t see how the complete collapse of Russia is even remotely feasible. Those predictions add up to saying that none of the necessary pre-conditions have been or will be met. Together, they say that we have no way to coerce Russia into the desired state and we have no way to re-align their interest to get them to do so voluntarily.

China definitely won’t swoop in to defend Ukraine against Russia. I think we can agree on that. It’s pretty clear the US won’t either. I think we can agree on that too.

That’s why I’m wondering if you think the EU can get big enough to do so on it’s own, and do so quickly.

I can see why this would be a good outcome for Europe.

It essentially turns Russia into a puppet state. If we were to eliminate China and the US, that would make Russia Europe’s puppet state. While it has some obvious advantages to Europe, it’s clearly not in the interest of either Putin or Russia (the most pessimistic estimates put his approval rating at over 60% among Russians).

Since it’s obviously not to their advantage they won’t agree to it. That means someone would have to force them to accept that new status quo. The US just dropped all support and China has made it pretty clear that they’re not going to participate in any operation like that either.

So that leaves the EU. I’ll circle back to my earlier question. Do you think the EU is ready to adopt and ratify a constitution if it came up again? Absent that, do you think the EU can put together a military coalition that’s big enough and permanent enough to induce an immediate surrender by Russia? If not, do you think that the EU is willing and able to wage a protracted direct war against Russia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irn-Bru

lol

“Originally selling it as Iron Brew, the drink’s makers, A.G. Barr, were forced to change the name of the drink in 1946 following a change in the law that stipulated that the marketing of products be “literally true”. As the drink did not contain much iron, nor was it brewed”

“The brand also has its own tartan”

What would be the best way for that to happen? More specifically, how can we pull this off safely?

We have very little historical precedent to go on. The USSR collapsed in 1991. There was some nervousness around what was going to happen with all their nukes. Ultimately, we ended up with Russia, led by Putin.

How would we stop Putin from triggering nuclear retaliation?
If we stop that, how do we make sure some other oligarch doesn’t immediately take his place?
If Russia were to completely collapse, what would happen to Russia? Would we be willing to let China take over? If not would we be willing to maintain an indefinite occupation of Russia?

There may be good answers to all of these questions. It seems the more practical solution is to contain Russia. Do you think the EU would be ready to adopt a constitution if it came up again?

I’m not aware of any major predictions he’s gotten wrong. As near as I can tell, he’s very focused on ex-post analysis.

Ukraine is still in the fight but it’s clearly loosing. Ukraine is still rich in subjective resources like “spirit” and “determination”. When it comes to hard metrics the picture is pretty bleak; casualties, ground gained, artillery production, depth of reserves…

The “we” wasn’t a quote by Colonel Reisener. I did put it in quotation marks but I thought it would be clear from the vocabulary that I was paraphrasing him. I’m sure you already know that Austria is constitutionally obligated to remain neutral. While Austria is barred from providing military assistance it has participated in sanctions and provided humanitarian assistance. That’s earned Austria a spot on Russia’s official Unfriendly Countries List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfriendly_countries_list

I try to keep a more complete set of facts in mind when assessing the reliability of sources.

He has a lot of videos like that. One of them is him in a room full of cadets. He goes through all the drone innovations that the Russian and Ukrainians have made in the past year and passes around a (disarmed) working €321 drone.

Then he points out that Austria still has the same expensive drone they had years ago and tells the cadets they should be a bit stressed about that.

I’ve found that Colonel Maruks Reisner provides some of the best information available on the war.

https://youtu.be/IDRjughhXMg

He doesn’t update frequently but all his analysis are sober, detailed, and realistic. He states his pro-Western, pro-NATO, pro-Ukrainian bias clearly.

If I could sum up the general trend of his presentation it’s, “The status quo favors Russia. If we don’t get our heads out of our asses and step up Russia will win.”

Wasn’t she picked to replace a white guy with a cock because it was obvious to everyone that he wasn’t gonna be president?

As a multi-national, multi-ethnic, mutt, I am too.

Given that part of my mutt-makeup is Austrian, I’m offended that Austria and our northern neighbor have greatly contributed to this. Our deserved guilt over the Holocaust blinded us to decade after decade of human rights abuses by Israel.

We’ve seen this coming for a long time and, as a taxpaying contributor to the biggest funder of Israel, I’m ashamed.

There is already a foolproof method that is immune to any abuse of trust by admins; create an alt account.

Maybe. “Allowed” suggested that they wanted or welcomed it.

A bunch of formerly powerful people in the Republican party are now much less powerful. Many of them have been sidelined in the Republican party and replaced. Several prominent former Republicans have effectively switched to the Democrats.

The Republicans and Democrats have differences in how they structure their organizations but neither one wants to intentionally allow outsiders to take over.

Maybe. I think it’s more likely that she truly believed that her milquetoast approach was actually the safer option. I’m not even sure Harris was exceptionally cowardly.

Many other people would likely have folded and taken that “safe” option.

The problem is that we needed someone who went well beyond just “not cowardice”. We needed an actual hero. We needed a candidate who was willing to boldly face down big money interests, even when it seemed unwise and hopeless. Harris definitely wasn’t that hero.

Yeah. And the fix for that has nothing to do with “de-duping” as a database operation either.

The main components would probably be:

1. Decide on a new scheme (with more digits)
2. Create a mapping from the old scheme to the new scheme. (that’s where existing duplicates would get removed)
3. Let people use both during some transition period, after which the old one isn’t valid any more.
4. Decide when you’re going to stop issuing old SSNs and only issue new ones to people born after some date.

There’s a lot of complication in each of those steps but none of them are particularly dependant on “de-duped” databases.

The Democratic party, as it stands, is dead and the Greens are stillborn.

There’s nothing but hopes and prayers to support the idea that the Greens will ever get anywhere in the US. They have neither a policy platform nor any individuals who inspire broad support.

It is absolutely possible to take over parties from within though. We’ve seen it happen twice with the Republicans. They tried, and failed, to keep the Tea Party from taking over. Then they tried, and failed, to keep Trump from taking over.

History suggests we have a better chance getting AOC to take over and clean house with the Democrats than we do waiting for the Greens to make any headway.

I agree. Her speech on the Monday after she got picked was great. She came out of the gate swinging. She laid out a solid initial vision with a realistic warning that it was going to be a hard fight.

Then she didn’t.

Somewhere along the line she got cold feet and decided that not rocking the boat would be a safe option. She thought that pushing too hard would galvanize her opponents. Instead she tried to play nice with them and alienated large chunks of her base.