For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Neither is going to take you to a good answer to that, as there isn’t a simple one. ChatGPT is likely to be less reliable, in its current incarnation.
I’m not talking about veracity so much as convenience. ChatGPT was able to give me a pithy articulate answer in 20 seconds
Google would have taken 10 minutes and I’d have to cobble together the truth by myself. And its answer would be much like ChatGPT’s - “it’s nuanced and complex”
As it happens, ChatGPT is really pretty good at science questions. Much less good at anything political or controversial
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
At least it's not stupid AI shit. Small mercies and all that.
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
You might be right that shit governments around the world will one by one enact a pointless and counterproductive short term policy. That is not the same thing as having to “brace” for some disaster scenario playing out in your head.
Sequencing Chinese arrivals is really not pointless and counter productive. We have no idea what the fuck is brewing in China and the more I think about it, the more the sudden lurch by China to “total opening” looks suspicious
Was Xi really freaked by a few protests against Zero Covid? This is a man prepared to put 1m Uighurs in concentration camps. Yet students holding blank pieces of A4 terrified him so much he abandoned a three year long policy of quarantine and repression, overnight?
Really? Do we believe that?
Perhaps we do. But it is at least possible that Xi was told: China has a new unstoppable variant which is going to cripple us, the best thing we can do is spread it around the world so everyone suffers - like we did with Wuhan flu in 2020
And he said Yes, open the borders
Wait. Are we arguing about sequencing strains or imposing a travel ban on Chinese?
I agree by the way that the CCP effectively deployed a WMD on the world in 2019/early 2020 by guaranteeing the deep spread of a new virus everywhere else. That’s not what’s happening here. There was a groundswell of revolt among Chinese who had reached breaking point at restrictions. Xi knows this because his government can ascertain the national mood by bulk reading all “private” communications. He would also have been getting abuse from the elites due who just want to make money.
Who knows, maybe there was something to that rumour of a failed coup in the summer and once the National Congress was out the way he realised he had no choice.
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
You might be right that shit governments around the world will one by one enact a pointless and counterproductive short term policy. That is not the same thing as having to “brace” for some disaster scenario playing out in your head.
Once again, what is counter productive about banning flights and indirect travel from China? Let them get their own house in order before exporting yet more COVID around the world.
Rather a selfish position if I may say so. You might not have business dependencies or family connections to China but many do. Given the policy achieves nothing, why do it?
So this is all personal for you. You will lose business and you have Chinese family/friends
I sympathise, but it does put your opinions in a necessary context
“Sean Lin, a virologist and former lab director at the viral disease branch of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, said that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) opening up of the country is actually a strategy to get everyone infected not only within China, but around the world.
“When they can’t control the outbreak, they push it to the whole world. Just like when COVID first broke out in Wuhan, people who had been infected in Wuhan were allowed to travel around the world. The strategy is the same now as before,” he said.”
So what? If have we learned anything from the last 3 years it is surely that by the time that Western governments have realised there's something going on it's already too late to do anything.
The learned helplessness of this comment is as striking as it is pathetic
If you haven't learned that we are effectively helpless against a virus, you haven't been paying attention for the last three years.
Yeah, those vaccines eh? Waste of time. We are “effectively helpless”
We cannot stop viruses as infectious as this one from spreading without unsustainable economic damage. So we rely on our vaccines, our herd immunity and the tendency of viruses to become less virulent as they age (because killing their host is not an optimum strategy for spread).
There are risks, the tendency mentioned does have exceptions, but this is the sensible way to proceed, whatever China thinks it is doing.
The idea that viruses naturally evolve to be less pathogenic is disputed by many
True, because we don't yet have an adequate theoretical explanation of why the tendency is observed. It still seems more likely that our theory could be improved than that the observed tendency is misleading.
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
You might be right that shit governments around the world will one by one enact a pointless and counterproductive short term policy. That is not the same thing as having to “brace” for some disaster scenario playing out in your head.
Once again, what is counter productive about banning flights and indirect travel from China? Let them get their own house in order before exporting yet more COVID around the world.
What do you do when you've tried that and it has turned out to be too late? Another lockdown?
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
I made this point yesterday and was labelled a crazy xenophobe for my pains
No you weren’t. People just disagreed about the need to do this. Drama queen
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Neither is going to take you to a good answer to that, as there isn’t a simple one. ChatGPT is likely to be less reliable, in its current incarnation.
I’m not talking about veracity so much as convenience. ChatGPT was able to give me a pithy articulate answer in 20 seconds
Google would have taken 10 minutes and I’d have to cobble together the truth by myself. And its answer would be much like ChatGPT’s - “it’s nuanced and complex”
As it happens, ChatGPT is really pretty good at science questions. Much less good at anything political or controversial
It’s really good at recipes. I asked it for a tiramisu recipe. I then asked it if I really needed to bother using eggs. It gave me a recipe without eggs but told me why I should use the other one instead. Most helpful.
It did however also tell me that William the Conqueror fought at Stamford Bridge. And when I corrected it, it said “sorry yes you are right”. A legal friend was intrigued by it invoking an example of ancient Thai law. He is a subject matter expert and hadn’t heard of it before so queried the AI for its source. Which then said “sorry I just made that bit up”. Oh.
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
You might be right that shit governments around the world will one by one enact a pointless and counterproductive short term policy. That is not the same thing as having to “brace” for some disaster scenario playing out in your head.
Once again, what is counter productive about banning flights and indirect travel from China? Let them get their own house in order before exporting yet more COVID around the world.
Rather a selfish position if I may say so. You might not have business dependencies or family connections to China but many do. Given the policy achieves nothing, why do it?
So this is all personal for you. You will lose business and you have Chinese family/friends
I sympathise, but it does put your opinions in a necessary context
You’ve made a flawed logical leap there. I have no business or family connections to China at all.
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
You might be right that shit governments around the world will one by one enact a pointless and counterproductive short term policy. That is not the same thing as having to “brace” for some disaster scenario playing out in your head.
Sequencing Chinese arrivals is really not pointless and counter productive. We have no idea what the fuck is brewing in China and the more I think about it, the more the sudden lurch by China to “total opening” looks suspicious
Was Xi really freaked by a few protests against Zero Covid? This is a man prepared to put 1m Uighurs in concentration camps. Yet students holding blank pieces of A4 terrified him so much he abandoned a three year long policy of quarantine and repression, overnight?
Really? Do we believe that?
Perhaps we do. But it is at least possible that Xi was told: China has a new unstoppable variant which is going to cripple us, the best thing we can do is spread it around the world so everyone suffers - like we did with Wuhan flu in 2020
And he said Yes, open the borders
If it’s ‘unstoppable’ then that spread around the world would happen anyway. You ability to think conspiratorially is impressive.
The simple answer is that he’s realised his zero Covid policy was a failure, likely to lead to growing unrest, and has U-turned. It’s not impossible that the consequences will threaten his position, as it’s going to be pretty brutal in terms if sickness and deaths.
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Half a dozen people on PB could have given you that answer, with more detail
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
At least it's not stupid AI shit. Small mercies and all that.
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Half a dozen people on PB could have given you that answer, with more detail
And probably wrong. It's not clear cut, and depends overmuch on a single study of myxamatosis.
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
You might be right that shit governments around the world will one by one enact a pointless and counterproductive short term policy. That is not the same thing as having to “brace” for some disaster scenario playing out in your head.
Once again, what is counter productive about banning flights and indirect travel from China? Let them get their own house in order before exporting yet more COVID around the world.
Rather a selfish position if I may say so. You might not have business dependencies or family connections to China but many do. Given the policy achieves nothing, why do it?
So this is all personal for you. You will lose business and you have Chinese family/friends
I sympathise, but it does put your opinions in a necessary context
You’ve made a flawed logical leap there. I have no business or family connections to China at all.
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
You might be right that shit governments around the world will one by one enact a pointless and counterproductive short term policy. That is not the same thing as having to “brace” for some disaster scenario playing out in your head.
Sequencing Chinese arrivals is really not pointless and counter productive. We have no idea what the fuck is brewing in China and the more I think about it, the more the sudden lurch by China to “total opening” looks suspicious
Was Xi really freaked by a few protests against Zero Covid? This is a man prepared to put 1m Uighurs in concentration camps. Yet students holding blank pieces of A4 terrified him so much he abandoned a three year long policy of quarantine and repression, overnight?
Really? Do we believe that?
Perhaps we do. But it is at least possible that Xi was told: China has a new unstoppable variant which is going to cripple us, the best thing we can do is spread it around the world so everyone suffers - like we did with Wuhan flu in 2020
And he said Yes, open the borders
If it’s ‘unstoppable’ then that spread around the world would happen anyway. You ability to think conspiratorially is impressive.
The simple answer is that he’s realised his zero Covid policy was a failure, likely to lead to growing unrest, and has U-turned. It’s not impossible that the consequences will threaten his position, as it’s going to be pretty brutal in terms if sickness and deaths.
He could have got away with it if he hadn’t labelled mrna jabs dangerous, western, untested etc… and simply compelled everyone over 60 to have it. Instead he banned provincial governments from offering it widely whenever they proposed doing so. His racial superiority complex will be his downfall sooner or later.
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
You might be right that shit governments around the world will one by one enact a pointless and counterproductive short term policy. That is not the same thing as having to “brace” for some disaster scenario playing out in your head.
Sequencing Chinese arrivals is really not pointless and counter productive. We have no idea what the fuck is brewing in China and the more I think about it, the more the sudden lurch by China to “total opening” looks suspicious
Was Xi really freaked by a few protests against Zero Covid? This is a man prepared to put 1m Uighurs in concentration camps. Yet students holding blank pieces of A4 terrified him so much he abandoned a three year long policy of quarantine and repression, overnight?
Really? Do we believe that?
Perhaps we do. But it is at least possible that Xi was told: China has a new unstoppable variant which is going to cripple us, the best thing we can do is spread it around the world so everyone suffers - like we did with Wuhan flu in 2020
And he said Yes, open the borders
I have heard it stated that the thing that freaked Xi was… not exactly refusal to enforce the Party line, but a kind of malicious compliance thing setting in. So when security troops were sent to deal with protestors, they would be sent to the same road name in the wrong part of town, very efficiently. Or barriers would be put across a road, with an obvious way round 20 yards away….
South Korea joins the China Covid travel non-party
2) South Korea now also plans to mandate rapid Covid testing for all travelers arriving drom China and require proof of a negative PCR test 48 hours prior to arrival.
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
At least it's not stupid AI shit. Small mercies and all that.
Shouldn’t we be using the AIs to screen immigrants?
Apparently some of the “AIs” descend into racism. So they would be well suited to be Border Patrol officers.
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Half a dozen people on PB could have given you that answer, with more detail
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
If you are using it for data then you don't understand what it does
South Korea joins the China Covid travel non-party
2) South Korea now also plans to mandate rapid Covid testing for all travelers arriving drom China and require proof of a negative PCR test 48 hours prior to arrival.
This is absorbing if unnerving to watch. Is the world going mad, all over again? Or are these sensible precautions taken by sensible countries?
Let’s face it, everyone has woken up and now fecking hates the CCP. This is some good revenge. The real test will be what these countries do to those countries who don’t play ball with these new travel restrictions. Is the EU going to ban travel from the Uk if we don’t stop flights from China? Is the US? If not then this is all stupid posturing.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.
Is there still a chance that this Santos bloke will be able to hang on? Would have thought falsely claiming that yer maw died on 9/11 would offend even MAGAers, but I’ve learned never to bet on GOP people being embarrassed by falsehoods.
South Korea joins the China Covid travel non-party
2) South Korea now also plans to mandate rapid Covid testing for all travelers arriving drom China and require proof of a negative PCR test 48 hours prior to arrival.
This is absorbing if unnerving to watch. Is the world going mad, all over again? Or are these sensible precautions taken by sensible countries?
Let’s face it, everyone has woken up and now fecking hates the CCP. This is some good revenge. The real test will be what these countries do to those countries who don’t play ball with these new travel restrictions. Is the EU going to ban travel from the Uk if we don’t stop flights from China? Is the US? If not then this is all stupid posturing.
We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do this.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.
Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.
The author fails to divulge that she is a prominent political activist on behalf of the people she writes about, the remnants of Mau Mau.
David Anderson's book from 2006 is much more balanced.
The author is a polemicist. The Mau Mau were absolutely detested by Christian and Muslim Kenyans. So much so, the organisation remained banned for forty years after independence.
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
If you are using it for data then you don't understand what it does
I just asked ChatGPT to explain “viral sequencing” then I asked it to display this info as a table with four columns. It is completely astonishing
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
You might be right that shit governments around the world will one by one enact a pointless and counterproductive short term policy. That is not the same thing as having to “brace” for some disaster scenario playing out in your head.
Sequencing Chinese arrivals is really not pointless and counter productive. We have no idea what the fuck is brewing in China and the more I think about it, the more the sudden lurch by China to “total opening” looks suspicious
Was Xi really freaked by a few protests against Zero Covid? This is a man prepared to put 1m Uighurs in concentration camps. Yet students holding blank pieces of A4 terrified him so much he abandoned a three year long policy of quarantine and repression, overnight?
Really? Do we believe that?
Perhaps we do. But it is at least possible that Xi was told: China has a new unstoppable variant which is going to cripple us, the best thing we can do is spread it around the world so everyone suffers - like we did with Wuhan flu in 2020
And he said Yes, open the borders
If it’s ‘unstoppable’ then that spread around the world would happen anyway. You ability to think conspiratorially is impressive.
The simple answer is that he’s realised his zero Covid policy was a failure, likely to lead to growing unrest, and has U-turned. It’s not impossible that the consequences will threaten his position, as it’s going to be pretty brutal in terms if sickness and deaths.
He could have got away with it if he hadn’t labelled mrna jabs dangerous, western, untested etc… and simply compelled everyone over 60 to have it. Instead he banned provincial governments from offering it widely whenever they proposed doing so. His racial superiority complex will be his downfall sooner or later.
The “Marxist Historian” thing, that people at the top are all cynical realists who manipulate those below them with propaganda they don’t believe in, is almost never true.
The lesson of history is that leaders are nearly always high on what they supply.
South Korea joins the China Covid travel non-party
2) South Korea now also plans to mandate rapid Covid testing for all travelers arriving drom China and require proof of a negative PCR test 48 hours prior to arrival.
This is absorbing if unnerving to watch. Is the world going mad, all over again? Or are these sensible precautions taken by sensible countries?
Let’s face it, everyone has woken up and now fecking hates the CCP. This is some good revenge. The real test will be what these countries do to those countries who don’t play ball with these new travel restrictions. Is the EU going to ban travel from the Uk if we don’t stop flights from China? Is the US? If not then this is all stupid posturing.
We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do this.
Why must we do anything? Just let them get on with it. We already give boosters to whoever turns up at the vaccine centre. Personal responsibility in action.
Sorry, what is closing the border to Chinese travellers supposed to achieve?
Don’t get me wrong, I was all in favour back in February 2020 when we had no idea what the fuck what was happening.
But it seems to me that any measures to prevent Chinese travel would merely retard any new Chinese strains by a week or so, which buys us time to…do what?
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.
Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.
Elkins vastly exaggerated the number of deaths during the Mau Mau uprising.
How could one be sure since the British authorities destroyed as many of the records they could get their hands on?
Because there are sufficiently detailed records of population to refute the notion that "hundreds of thousands" died. Among writers on the subject, she is very much an outlier.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
Expand on how being deported from W Africa to be worked to death growing sugar was a walk in the park compared to Auschwitz Birkenau.
Sorry, what is closing the border to Chinese travellers supposed to achieve?
Don’t get me wrong, I was all in favour back in February 2020 when we had no idea what the fuck what was happening.
But it seems to me that any measures to prevent Chinese travel would merely retard any new Chinese strains by a week or so, which buys us time to…do what?
Sorry, what is closing the border to Chinese travellers supposed to achieve?
Don’t get me wrong, I was all in favour back in February 2020 when we had no idea what the fuck what was happening.
But it seems to me that any measures to prevent Chinese travel would merely retard any new Chinese strains by a week or so, which buys us time to…do what?
It just buys delay.
I can see it make sense somewhere like S Korea, where the volume of travellers might be significantly higher. There might even be an argument for it here if we wanted to delay a potential large sudden winter wave by a few weeks.
Looks as though we’re going to rely on out high vaccination rates to prevent large scale severe illness, and not worry about trying to game it.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
Expand on how being deported from W Africa to be worked to death growing sugar was a walk in the park compared to Auschwitz Birkenau.
You can scrutinise every post I've written here, and not find anything that suggests that slave-trading was a "walk in the park" for its victims.
By 1807, there was widespread recognition in this country that slave trading was immoral, and by 1833, recognition that the very institution was immoral. That became the norm in the 19th century.
Nazi Germany violated what were accepted norms, in WW2.
Sorry, what is closing the border to Chinese travellers supposed to achieve?
Don’t get me wrong, I was all in favour back in February 2020 when we had no idea what the fuck what was happening.
But it seems to me that any measures to prevent Chinese travel would merely retard any new Chinese strains by a week or so, which buys us time to…do what?
I can see it make sense somewhere like S Korea, where the volume of travellers might be significantly higher. There might even be an argument for it here if we wanted to delay a potential large sudden winter wave by a few weeks.
Looks as though we’re going to rely on out high vaccination rates to prevent large scale severe illness, and not worry about trying to game it.”
++++
As the Telegraph says, HMG is now actively considering restrictions on Chinese visitors
We will probably do something half arsed about 3 weeks after Italy. As per
South Korea joins the China Covid travel non-party
2) South Korea now also plans to mandate rapid Covid testing for all travelers arriving drom China and require proof of a negative PCR test 48 hours prior to arrival.
This is absorbing if unnerving to watch. Is the world going mad, all over again? Or are these sensible precautions taken by sensible countries?
Let’s face it, everyone has woken up and now fecking hates the CCP. This is some good revenge. The real test will be what these countries do to those countries who don’t play ball with these new travel restrictions. Is the EU going to ban travel from the Uk if we don’t stop flights from China? Is the US? If not then this is all stupid posturing.
We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do this.
Why must we do anything? Just let them get on with it. We already give boosters to whoever turns up at the vaccine centre. Personal responsibility in action.
I was quoting the Politicians Syllogism - that you have to show “caring”, “leadership” by doing *something*.
Personally, I think we should burn some Z list celebrities on a pyre as a sacrifice to the Gods. This would be more valuable.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
Expand on how being deported from W Africa to be worked to death growing sugar was a walk in the park compared to Auschwitz Birkenau.
You can scrutinise every post I've written here, and not find anything that suggests that slave-trading was a "walk in the park" for its victims.
By 1807, there was widespread recognition in this country that slave trading was immoral, and by 1833, recognition that the very institution was immoral. That became the norm in the 19th century.
Nazi Germany violated what were accepted norms, in WW2.
A victorious Germany might equally have had a Wilberforce moment in the 1960s, we just don't know. And there was no accepted norm in 1680 which said slavery was ok, it was cooked up and hoc because the money was so good.
Something must be doneism. If the fear is variants, then just keep up good surveillance and sequencing on those that test positive.
In good news we are at the lowest gas generation I can remember on the grid. 2.1gw. That’s less than solar, a few days after the winter solstice (2.2gw). Wind at 19.7gw. We need a few more weeks of this kind of weather, plus a continued fall in the oil price and hopefully Russia goes bankrupt.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
Well worth a read. There is quite an interesting set of works on the dark side of our Empire emerging. The past may well be a different country with differing norms and standards, but much of this end of empire is well within living memory.
Good to know that Ms Elkins has brought all the rigour of the impartial Historian to her work having spent '20 years trying to undermine' Britain's reputation for decency....
Her classic work "Britain's Gulag" is well worth a read, and won the Pulitzer prize. It is hard to see the Empire as a benign, decent affair after reading that.
Things were different at different times and places in the Empire, but this wasn't atypical.
Elkins vastly exaggerated the number of deaths during the Mau Mau uprising.
How could one be sure since the British authorities destroyed as many of the records they could get their hands on?
Because there are sufficiently detailed records of population to refute the notion that "hundreds of thousands" died. Among writers on the subject, she is very much an outlier.
'Look chaps, we've got nothing to hide but I think the best policy to counter any tendentious future historians putting the old BE in a bad light is to burn and dump in the sea as many hard records of what happened as we can.'
Something must be doneism. If the fear is variants, then just keep up good surveillance and sequencing on those that test positive.
In good news we are at the lowest gas generation I can remember on the grid. 2.1gw. That’s less than solar, a few days after the winter solstice (2.2gw). Wind at 19.7gw. We need a few more weeks of this kind of weather, plus a continued fall in the oil price and hopefully Russia goes bankrupt.
We need to be sequencing Chinese arrivals for new variants. That means testing. So we need to be testing Chinese arrivals. That’s not “something must be doneism”, it’s common sense
Not great for the tourist industry hoping for a Chinese boost. Let’s hope it’s all mere precaution
Something must be doneism. If the fear is variants, then just keep up good surveillance and sequencing on those that test positive.
In good news we are at the lowest gas generation I can remember on the grid. 2.1gw. That’s less than solar, a few days after the winter solstice (2.2gw). Wind at 19.7gw. We need a few more weeks of this kind of weather, plus a continued fall in the oil price and hopefully Russia goes bankrupt.
We need to be sequencing Chinese arrivals for new variants. That means testing. So we need to be testing Chinese arrivals. That’s not “something must be doneism”, it’s common sense
Not great for the tourist industry hoping for a Chinese boost. Let’s hope it’s all mere precaution
"Testing Chinese arrivals" is, of course, not the same as "requiring Chinese arrivals to have a negative test two days before coming". The latter has essentially no merit because it doesn't find enough people who are positive when they arrive.
Nor, of course, does testing Chinese arrivals, but that comes closer.
Something must be doneism. If the fear is variants, then just keep up good surveillance and sequencing on those that test positive.
In good news we are at the lowest gas generation I can remember on the grid. 2.1gw. That’s less than solar, a few days after the winter solstice (2.2gw). Wind at 19.7gw. We need a few more weeks of this kind of weather, plus a continued fall in the oil price and hopefully Russia goes bankrupt.
We need to be sequencing Chinese arrivals for new variants. That means testing. So we need to be testing Chinese arrivals. That’s not “something must be doneism”, it’s common sense
Not great for the tourist industry hoping for a Chinese boost. Let’s hope it’s all mere precaution
"Testing Chinese arrivals" is, of course, not the same as "requiring Chinese arrivals to have a negative test two days before coming". The latter has essentially no merit because it doesn't find enough people who are positive when they arrive.
Nor, of course, does testing Chinese arrivals, but that comes closer.
Then block all flights and prevent anyone who has been in China in the last month from entering the UK
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
The speed omicron is going through China means it’ll be over by late January, let alone Summer.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
Expand on how being deported from W Africa to be worked to death growing sugar was a walk in the park compared to Auschwitz Birkenau.
You can scrutinise every post I've written here, and not find anything that suggests that slave-trading was a "walk in the park" for its victims.
By 1807, there was widespread recognition in this country that slave trading was immoral, and by 1833, recognition that the very institution was immoral. That became the norm in the 19th century.
Nazi Germany violated what were accepted norms, in WW2.
A victorious Germany might equally have had a Wilberforce moment in the 1960s, we just don't know. And there was no accepted norm in 1680 which said slavery was ok, it was cooked up and hoc because the money was so good.
There may indeed have been a German William Wilberforce in the 1960's, but by then, most of the Nazis' intended victims would have been long dead.
Something must be doneism. If the fear is variants, then just keep up good surveillance and sequencing on those that test positive.
In good news we are at the lowest gas generation I can remember on the grid. 2.1gw. That’s less than solar, a few days after the winter solstice (2.2gw). Wind at 19.7gw. We need a few more weeks of this kind of weather, plus a continued fall in the oil price and hopefully Russia goes bankrupt.
We need to be sequencing Chinese arrivals for new variants. That means testing. So we need to be testing Chinese arrivals. That’s not “something must be doneism”, it’s common sense
Not great for the tourist industry hoping for a Chinese boost. Let’s hope it’s all mere precaution
"Testing Chinese arrivals" is, of course, not the same as "requiring Chinese arrivals to have a negative test two days before coming". The latter has essentially no merit because it doesn't find enough people who are positive when they arrive.
Nor, of course, does testing Chinese arrivals, but that comes closer.
For sequencing to do its job we don’t even need that. Just continue to sequence a portion of positive cases, and monitor the sequencing results of other countries.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
PB has gone from “any restrictions on Chinese people are meaningless theatre and probably racist” to “yes we should test all of them” in about ten minutes. With a side order of “but it’s too late because they are much cleverer than us in the West”
Impressive
*Checks watch*
Early start?
Old Jonesy is impressive, how can he panic about so many things.
I’m sitting in my sunlit living room, sipping coffee, serenely watching the dominos fall
I am right. Many (most?) countries will now institute some kind of travel restriction on China
“ITALY PM MELONI: ITALY'S MANDATORY COVID TESTS FOR TRAVELLERS FROM CHINA RISK NOT BEING EFFECTIVE UNLESS FOLLOWED AT THE EU LEVEL.”
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
The speed omicron is going through China means it’ll be over by late January, let alone Summer.
I'm holding my Tesla shares for the long term and bought a few more yesterday. Despite huge recent drops I'm still up overall. I believe that the electric car transformation is still on the steeply increasing part of the 'S' curve. Tesla have recently opened new Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas to add to those in California and China, so it's not surprising that their production can now exceed sales. It also means that the waiting time for a Tesla has dropped significantly which is good for the company. Tesla make around $10,000 on each sale whereas other companies struggle to make any profit on EVs, this means that Tesla could afford to drop their prices in order to maintain demand. They may not have to for a while at least in the US as they will be eligible for a $7,500 Inflation Reduction Act subsidy. Twitter was a big mistake for Musk but Tesla is still a huge success and will continue to be.
The car business lives and dies on new models. Tesla's product lifecycles are too long and the new model pipeline is constipated. Model S is now ten years old with no replacement in sight. Taycan outsells it 2:1 and is getting a mid-lifecycle upgrade next year before being completely replaced in 2025. That's the speed Tesla needs.
I'm not sure that EVs need the cost of replacements every 5-7 years. The new S - when it launches here - is a fundamentally different car to the old one - the battery, motors, on-board tech, body panels and interior have completely changed. Its got the same silhouette and the same name, that's about it.
Surely, Dura has a point? Why would EVs succeed with fewer refreshes than conventional cars?
His point is that he doesn't know what he is talking about on this particular subject. Bar the chassis the entire vehicle has been changed, most changes at fundamental level - completely new batteries / motors / automation. The new Model S which is finally coming to Europe next year has the same profile as the original car and thats it. He mentioned Porsche - famous for issuing new 911s that look the same as the old 911. So whats the point being made - that people don't buy the new car if it looks like the old car? Giving Porsche - who have done that doe decades - as the example?
What 'new' Model S? The 2021 Palladium refresh changed the fog lights, added black door handles and that's it. A lot of the tech underneath has changed but it still looks the same. When it launched in 2012 it was the most exciting EV you could buy and that novelty was a huge part of its appeal. There is no novelty now, everybody is familiar with it and there is no sizzle. That staleness is reflected in the relentless decline of Model S sales relative to the competition. And that's before the all electric BMW M5 and Porsche Panemera arrive to rough it up even more.
Porsche give us a completely new 911 every 7-9 years and that must cost them billions. They aren't doing it for a laugh, they do it because the 'new' 911 always sells like coke at the tory party conference and new 911 buyers are very well aware of the differences between generations.
Sorry, just caught back up. You say Porsche "give us a completely new 911 every 7-9 years". Is that actually true? They launch a lot of evolutions with very few actual new everything cars - and the all look the same (philistine alert).
I don't want a Model S as its huuuuge. The "sizzle" is the tech - the only thing the same in the previous generation S is the shape (see Porsche). The question I was asking is why car companies stopped their previous <20 year model cycles and started doing faster and faster changes. Is that not a large reason why so many of them are such financial basket cases? Spend £billions developing and £more marketing in an endless cycle of KLFing a pile of cash.
As Tesla have no debt, do no marketing, have big profit margins and sell every car they can make, I doubt they are too upset by the "its the same car".
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Neither is going to take you to a good answer to that, as there isn’t a simple one. ChatGPT is likely to be less reliable, in its current incarnation.
I’m not talking about veracity so much as convenience. ChatGPT was able to give me a pithy articulate answer in 20 seconds
Google would have taken 10 minutes and I’d have to cobble together the truth by myself. And its answer would be much like ChatGPT’s - “it’s nuanced and complex”
As it happens, ChatGPT is really pretty good at science questions. Much less good at anything political or controversial
It’s really good at recipes. I asked it for a tiramisu recipe. I then asked it if I really needed to bother using eggs. It gave me a recipe without eggs but told me why I should use the other one instead. Most helpful.
It did however also tell me that William the Conqueror fought at Stamford Bridge. And when I corrected it, it said “sorry yes you are right”. A legal friend was intrigued by it invoking an example of ancient Thai law. He is a subject matter expert and hadn’t heard of it before so queried the AI for its source. Which then said “sorry I just made that bit up”. Oh.
There is (was?) a website that was based around "I have ingredients A, B and C - what could I make?". I tried the same thing with ChatGPT and it gave me very similar results. But as you did, ask it for a quick modification or alternative if I didn't fancy something spicy/sweet/whatever which the website version couldn't do (at least without clicking back, clicking some buttons, pressing submit, going back, clicking...).
Whether you look on that as possibly destroying an existing business, or letting that business add some other value on top of a ChatGPT call - not sure. We'll see how it shakes out I guess.
Tesla upgrades its cars all the time for example the use of giga castings and earlier the introduction of the heat pump and 'chrome delete'. Those are just the hardware changes, there's also the Over The Air software changes. You could wake up and find that your 3 year old Tesla has new improved functions.
That's great for people who've bought one but it doesn't help sell new ones because it looks almost exactly the same, inside and out, as it did in 2012.
It also means there is less incentive for people who have one to buy a new one.
I don't think Tesla are completely fucked but their product line is very stale with no replacements in sight in an industry which richly rewards continuous renewal. Simply being Tesla isn't enough any more.
What percentage of Tesla’s sales is represented by the S ? The EV market is still in the rapid growth phase; they’ll introduce new models when it suits them. Like the Cybertruck sometime this year.
The game is about production costs and production capacity - both currently battery dominated. Tesla is a decent bet at this level.
I think the giga press is a bigger development than the battery. They're essentially casting a single big aluminium piece at front and back which accommodates the motors. Simply bolt the front and rear pieces to the structural battery, add the suspension and wheel components and you have a rolling chassis with very few parts.
This is the advantage Tesla have had in a blank sheet of paper approach to industrial design. Most EVs are built on the same line / in the same factory as piston-engined cars. So you end up with a vertical stack of components being dropped into the space where the engine would be because that's how their factory works. And a car made up of an ocean of parts and sub-assemblies which have to be built before being added to the car.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
Oh dear.. the nats led by Dickson of Sweden will be coming for you.. what's the NZ version of a coconut?
Sorry, just caught back up. You say Porsche "give us a completely new 911 every 7-9 years". Is that actually true? They launch a lot of evolutions with very few actual new everything cars - and the all look the same (philistine alert).
993, 4 years 996, 6 years 997, 9 years 991, 8 years 992, 4 years and counting. MLU next year with a completely different interior and hybrid versions.
The basic architecture (flat 6, rear engined, MacPherson front, multi-link rear) is the same and some powertrain components (transmission) can be carried over but it's a completely new car every time with very limited (ie almost none) component interchangeability.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
I like the bit where it casually mentions that the organisation opposing British policy was "London-based".
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
Based on the last three years, whenever I hear the phrase "play it safe" I translate it as "make an unforced error".
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
The speed omicron is going through China means it’ll be over by late January, let alone Summer.
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
Based on the last three years, whenever I hear the phrase "play it safe" I translate it as "make an unforced error".
But what unforced error will there be in keeping Chinese tourists out for another six months? No one has yet pointed to a downside, it's all upside.
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
The speed omicron is going through China means it’ll be over by late January, let alone Summer.
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
Based on the last three years, whenever I hear the phrase "play it safe" I translate it as "make an unforced error".
But what unforced error will there be in keeping Chinese tourists out for another six months? No one has yet pointed to a downside, it's all upside.
Tourism spend, for one. And a increasing appetite for illiberal border measures, “just because”.
But what unforced error will there be in keeping Chinese tourists out for another six months? No one has yet pointed to a downside, it's all upside.
When there is a substantial baseline of cases anyway, does it really make much difference? We're no longer in a position where we're having to suppress transmission.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
I read that Ferguson book and it was pretty nuanced for the both part. It was scathing about the treatment of the Irish and Africans transported to the new world.
The Empire is nothing to be proud of, but comparisons to Germany, Japan or Leopold II are clearly ridiculous. The horrific crimes were generally very small-scale and isolated. The ones that caused widespread damage were not done to deliberately cause harm to people.
The one major exception is the Atlantic slave trade, though I am not sure that counts as imperialism. The other was the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, but that brutality was fairly normal for warfare of the time period.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
You haven't been paying attention if you've not noticed regular forays into this area. That much of it is done by the Speccie, Tele, Robert Tombs, Tim Stanley and indeed one Boris Johnson shouldn't detract from the quantity if not quality.
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
The speed omicron is going through China means it’ll be over by late January, let alone Summer.
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
Based on the last three years, whenever I hear the phrase "play it safe" I translate it as "make an unforced error".
But what unforced error will there be in keeping Chinese tourists out for another six months? No one has yet pointed to a downside, it's all upside.
Tourism spend, for one. And a increasing appetite for illiberal border measures, “just because”.
Meh, tourism spend that comes with the huge downside if Chinese tourists. Agree in the latter, but faced with a potential new lockdown the border measures seem like the lesser evil.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
You haven't been paying attention if you've not noticed regular forays into this area. That much of it is done by the Speccie, Tele, Robert Tombs, Tim Stanley and indeed one Boris Johnson shouldn't detract from the quantity if not quality.
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Neither is going to take you to a good answer to that, as there isn’t a simple one. ChatGPT is likely to be less reliable, in its current incarnation.
I’m not talking about veracity so much as convenience. ChatGPT was able to give me a pithy articulate answer in 20 seconds
Google would have taken 10 minutes and I’d have to cobble together the truth by myself. And its answer would be much like ChatGPT’s - “it’s nuanced and complex”
As it happens, ChatGPT is really pretty good at science questions. Much less good at anything political or controversial
It’s really good at recipes. I asked it for a tiramisu recipe. I then asked it if I really needed to bother using eggs. It gave me a recipe without eggs but told me why I should use the other one instead. Most helpful.
It did however also tell me that William the Conqueror fought at Stamford Bridge. And when I corrected it, it said “sorry yes you are right”. A legal friend was intrigued by it invoking an example of ancient Thai law. He is a subject matter expert and hadn’t heard of it before so queried the AI for its source. Which then said “sorry I just made that bit up”. Oh.
There is (was?) a website that was based around "I have ingredients A, B and C - what could I make?". I tried the same thing with ChatGPT and it gave me very similar results. But as you did, ask it for a quick modification or alternative if I didn't fancy something spicy/sweet/whatever which the website version couldn't do (at least without clicking back, clicking some buttons, pressing submit, going back, clicking...).
Whether you look on that as possibly destroying an existing business, or letting that business add some other value on top of a ChatGPT call - not sure. We'll see how it shakes out I guess.
I’ve been very impressed with its recipe writing ability. Tried it with some random ingredients a few times and it turned out very tasty sounding dishes. If I had one criticism it would be its lazy penchant for tray bakes. Doesn’t seem so keen on frying or steaming.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
I read that Ferguson book and it was pretty nuanced for the both part. It was scathing about the treatment of the Irish and Africans transported to the new world.
The Empire is nothing to be proud of, but comparisons to Germany, Japan or Leopold II are clearly ridiculous. The horrific crimes were generally very small-scale and isolated. The ones that caused widespread damage were not done to deliberately cause harm to people.
The one major exception is the Atlantic slave trade, though I am not sure that counts as imperialism. The other was the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, but that brutality was fairly normal for warfare of the time period.
Mid 17th century Europe sounds like the world of Mad Max.
Sorry, just caught back up. You say Porsche "give us a completely new 911 every 7-9 years". Is that actually true? They launch a lot of evolutions with very few actual new everything cars - and the all look the same (philistine alert).
993, 4 years 996, 6 years 997, 9 years 991, 8 years 992, 4 years and counting. MLU next year with a completely different interior and hybrid versions.
The basic architecture (flat 6, rear engined, MacPherson front, multi-link rear) is the same and some powertrain components (transmission) can be carried over but it's a completely new car every time with very limited (ie almost none) component interchangeability.
I did say I am a philistine when it comes to Porsches. Its just that there is an awful lot of knowledgeable stuff out there about how so many of those are evolutions of the previous one and very few all new cars like the 991 was. And they do all look the same! Which is the same point with the Model S - body has changed, drivetrain has changed, tech platform has changed. But looks the same and kept the silly pop-out door handles.
I know you don't want one - and neither do I. But the premise that its the same car and nobody wants one just isn't true. Anyway, bigger stuff to argue about than a car neither of us actually wants. The bugger Porsche has is the charger network. Same for all of them.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
I read that Ferguson book and it was pretty nuanced for the both part. It was scathing about the treatment of the Irish and Africans transported to the new world.
The Empire is nothing to be proud of, but comparisons to Germany, Japan or Leopold II are clearly ridiculous. The horrific crimes were generally very small-scale and isolated. The ones that caused widespread damage were not done to deliberately cause harm to people.
The one major exception is the Atlantic slave trade, though I am not sure that counts as imperialism. The other was the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, but that brutality was fairly normal for warfare of the time period.
Mid 17th century Europe sounds like the world of Mad Max.
A horrendous century for internecine conflict. Crowned of course by the 30 years war.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
I read that Ferguson book and it was pretty nuanced for the both part. It was scathing about the treatment of the Irish and Africans transported to the new world.
The Empire is nothing to be proud of, but comparisons to Germany, Japan or Leopold II are clearly ridiculous. The horrific crimes were generally very small-scale and isolated. The ones that caused widespread damage were not done to deliberately cause harm to people.
The one major exception is the Atlantic slave trade, though I am not sure that counts as imperialism. The other was the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, but that brutality was fairly normal for warfare of the time period.
Mid 17th century Europe sounds like the world of Mad Max.
Another way of looking at things - when did carrying weapons as part of being “dressed” fall out of fashion?
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
I read that Ferguson book and it was pretty nuanced for the both part. It was scathing about the treatment of the Irish and Africans transported to the new world.
The Empire is nothing to be proud of, but comparisons to Germany, Japan or Leopold II are clearly ridiculous. The horrific crimes were generally very small-scale and isolated. The ones that caused widespread damage were not done to deliberately cause harm to people.
The one major exception is the Atlantic slave trade, though I am not sure that counts as imperialism. The other was the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, but that brutality was fairly normal for warfare of the time period.
Mid 17th century Europe sounds like the world of Mad Max.
There were extremely horrific abuses carried out by the Irish Confederate forces, equivalent to anything Cromwell did, but for some reason Irish history lessons don't mention them.
Gas generation now down to 1.8gw. Closest to zero it’s ever been in the years I’ve followed the grid mix. Until this month there was always a baseload of about 3gw even during gales presumably because it remained cheap for the stations generating it, but I assume the higher gas prices have now changed the equation.
Seattle Times ($) - Paul Krugman: Tesla isn’t so special after all
If you’re one of those people who bought bitcoin or another cryptocurrency near its peak last fall, you’ve lost a lot of money. Is it any consolation to know that you would have lost a similar amount if you had bought Tesla stock instead?
OK, probably not. Still, Tesla stock’s plunge is an opportunity to talk about what makes businesses successful in the information age. And in the end, Tesla and bitcoin may have more in common than you think.
It’s natural to attribute Tesla’s recent decline — which is, to be sure, part of a general fall in tech stocks, but an exceptionally steep example — to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the reputational self-immolation that followed. Indeed, given what we’ve seen of Musk’s behavior, I wouldn’t trust him to feed my cat, let alone run a major corporation. Furthermore, Tesla sales have surely depended at least in part on the perception that Musk himself is a cool guy. Who, aside from MAGA types who probably wouldn’t have bought Teslas anyway, sees him that way now?
On the other hand, as someone who has spent much of his professional life in academia, I’m familiar with the phenomenon of people who are genuinely brilliant in some areas but utter fools in other domains. For all I know, Musk is or was a highly effective leader at Tesla and SpaceX. . . .
Now, some technology companies have indeed been long-term moneymaking machines. Apple and Microsoft still top the list of the most profitable U.S. corporations some four decades after the rise of personal computers. . . .
Similar stories can be told about a few other companies, such as Amazon, with its distribution infrastructure.
The question is: Where are the powerful network externalities in the electric vehicle business?
Electric cars may well be the future of personal transportation. In fact, they had better be, since electrification of everything, powered by renewable energy, is the only plausible way to avoid climate catastrophe. But it’s hard to see what would give Tesla a long-term lock on the electric vehicle business. . . .
Which brings us back to the question of why Tesla was ever worth so much. The answer, as best as I can tell, is that investors fell in love with a storyline about a brilliant, cool innovator, despite the absence of a good argument about how this guy, even if he really was who he appeared to be, could found a long-lived money machine.
And as I said, there’s a parallel here with bitcoin. Despite years of effort, nobody has yet managed to find any serious use for cryptocurrency other than money laundering. But prices nonetheless soared on the hype, and are still being sustained by a hardcore group of true believers. Something similar surely happened with Tesla, even though the company does actually make useful things.
I guess we’ll eventually see what happens. But I definitely won’t trust Musk with my cat.
‘The British Empire was much worse than you realise’
In the twentieth century’s hierarchy of state-sponsored violence, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Hirohito’s Japan typically take top spots…. Britain is rarely seen as among the worst offenders, given a reputation for decency that the Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has spent more than two decades trying to undermine. “Legacy of Violence” (Knopf), her astringent new history of the British Empire, brings detailed context to individual stories like Tudor’s…. Britain’s use of systematic violence was no better than that of its rivals. The British were simply more skilled at hiding it.
From Ireland had come paramilitary techniques and the use of armored cars; from Mesopotamia, expertise in aerial bombing and the strafing of villages; from South Africa, the use of Dobermans for tracking and attacking suspects; from India, interrogation methods and the systematic use of solitary confinement; and, from the Raj’s North-West Frontier, the use of human shields to clear land mines. As one soldier recalled about the deployment of Arab prisoners, “If there was any land mines it was them that hit them. Rather a dirty trick, but we enjoyed it.”
That's a lot of self-indulgent left-wing clickbait. Any article or text that posits "was British liberal imperialism, given the extent of the damage it inflicted over generations, a more malevolent influence on world history than even Nazi Fascism?" isn't to be taken seriously.
An argument that was once confined to neo-Nazis, that the Western Allies were as bad as they were, does seem to be becoming more common in "progressive" circles.
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
How many of the historians analysing the evils of empire are arguing in those terms, though ? Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
I don't think that serious historians have glorified the British Empire, during my lifetime.
Surely if anything it’s time for a broadly positive representation of the Empire.
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
I read that Ferguson book and it was pretty nuanced for the both part. It was scathing about the treatment of the Irish and Africans transported to the new world.
The Empire is nothing to be proud of, but comparisons to Germany, Japan or Leopold II are clearly ridiculous. The horrific crimes were generally very small-scale and isolated. The ones that caused widespread damage were not done to deliberately cause harm to people.
The one major exception is the Atlantic slave trade, though I am not sure that counts as imperialism. The other was the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, but that brutality was fairly normal for warfare of the time period.
Mid 17th century Europe sounds like the world of Mad Max.
Another way of looking at things - when did carrying weapons as part of being “dressed” fall out of fashion?
Seattle Times ($) - Paul Krugman: Tesla isn’t so special after all
If you’re one of those people who bought bitcoin or another cryptocurrency near its peak last fall, you’ve lost a lot of money. Is it any consolation to know that you would have lost a similar amount if you had bought Tesla stock instead?
OK, probably not. Still, Tesla stock’s plunge is an opportunity to talk about what makes businesses successful in the information age. And in the end, Tesla and bitcoin may have more in common than you think.
It’s natural to attribute Tesla’s recent decline — which is, to be sure, part of a general fall in tech stocks, but an exceptionally steep example — to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the reputational self-immolation that followed. Indeed, given what we’ve seen of Musk’s behavior, I wouldn’t trust him to feed my cat, let alone run a major corporation. Furthermore, Tesla sales have surely depended at least in part on the perception that Musk himself is a cool guy. Who, aside from MAGA types who probably wouldn’t have bought Teslas anyway, sees him that way now?
On the other hand, as someone who has spent much of his professional life in academia, I’m familiar with the phenomenon of people who are genuinely brilliant in some areas but utter fools in other domains. For all I know, Musk is or was a highly effective leader at Tesla and SpaceX. . . .
Now, some technology companies have indeed been long-term moneymaking machines. Apple and Microsoft still top the list of the most profitable U.S. corporations some four decades after the rise of personal computers. . . .
Similar stories can be told about a few other companies, such as Amazon, with its distribution infrastructure.
The question is: Where are the powerful network externalities in the electric vehicle business?
Electric cars may well be the future of personal transportation. In fact, they had better be, since electrification of everything, powered by renewable energy, is the only plausible way to avoid climate catastrophe. But it’s hard to see what would give Tesla a long-term lock on the electric vehicle business. . . .
Which brings us back to the question of why Tesla was ever worth so much. The answer, as best as I can tell, is that investors fell in love with a storyline about a brilliant, cool innovator, despite the absence of a good argument about how this guy, even if he really was who he appeared to be, could found a long-lived money machine.
And as I said, there’s a parallel here with bitcoin. Despite years of effort, nobody has yet managed to find any serious use for cryptocurrency other than money laundering. But prices nonetheless soared on the hype, and are still being sustained by a hardcore group of true believers. Something similar surely happened with Tesla, even though the company does actually make useful things.
I guess we’ll eventually see what happens. But I definitely won’t trust Musk with my cat.
Musk is in growing danger of getting himself booted from Tesla and SpaceX because of his Twattery antics. Yes, the Tesla share price was absurdly inflated, but the reset will have buggered a whole load of investors which makes raising future money much harder. And one thing all tech companies need is money.
I don't what he is doing with Twitter, other than he is a pothead. Which isn't news. Perhaps he needs to smoke less?
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Neither is going to take you to a good answer to that, as there isn’t a simple one. ChatGPT is likely to be less reliable, in its current incarnation.
I’m not talking about veracity so much as convenience. ChatGPT was able to give me a pithy articulate answer in 20 seconds
Google would have taken 10 minutes and I’d have to cobble together the truth by myself. And its answer would be much like ChatGPT’s - “it’s nuanced and complex”
As it happens, ChatGPT is really pretty good at science questions. Much less good at anything political or controversial
It’s really good at recipes. I asked it for a tiramisu recipe. I then asked it if I really needed to bother using eggs. It gave me a recipe without eggs but told me why I should use the other one instead. Most helpful.
It did however also tell me that William the Conqueror fought at Stamford Bridge. And when I corrected it, it said “sorry yes you are right”. A legal friend was intrigued by it invoking an example of ancient Thai law. He is a subject matter expert and hadn’t heard of it before so queried the AI for its source. Which then said “sorry I just made that bit up”. Oh.
There is (was?) a website that was based around "I have ingredients A, B and C - what could I make?". I tried the same thing with ChatGPT and it gave me very similar results. But as you did, ask it for a quick modification or alternative if I didn't fancy something spicy/sweet/whatever which the website version couldn't do (at least without clicking back, clicking some buttons, pressing submit, going back, clicking...).
Whether you look on that as possibly destroying an existing business, or letting that business add some other value on top of a ChatGPT call - not sure. We'll see how it shakes out I guess.
I’ve been very impressed with its recipe writing ability. Tried it with some random ingredients a few times and it turned out very tasty sounding dishes. If I had one criticism it would be its lazy penchant for tray bakes. Doesn’t seem so keen on frying or steaming.
As I'm a bit bored due to being stuck in with pouring rain and hail outside, I thought I'd give it a try with the main ingredients I've got kicking about for tonights dinner. I now have a much more interesting sounding grilled salmon marinated in sesame oil and fennel dish than the simple 'salmon, potatoes, salad' that I'd been planning.
So, 'go ChatGPT!' I guess.
Certainly convenient compared to putting my ingredients into google and clicking through 30 recipe websites (which all pop up irritating 'subscribe to our newsletter' or the like) thinking 'hrm - nah' over and over.
Gas generation now down to 1.8gw. Closest to zero it’s ever been in the years I’ve followed the grid mix. Until this month there was always a baseload of about 3gw even during gales presumably because it remained cheap for the stations generating it, but I assume the higher gas prices have now changed the equation.
One thing that doesn't seem to be a lot of attention is that the collapse in the price of gas to pre-war levels should be a real windfall to the government as their scheme of subsidising the market cost of energy should come in much lower than anticipated. This may free low tens of billions of government funds which a smart government would be redirecting towards buying some industrial peace.
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Neither is going to take you to a good answer to that, as there isn’t a simple one. ChatGPT is likely to be less reliable, in its current incarnation.
I’m not talking about veracity so much as convenience. ChatGPT was able to give me a pithy articulate answer in 20 seconds
Google would have taken 10 minutes and I’d have to cobble together the truth by myself. And its answer would be much like ChatGPT’s - “it’s nuanced and complex”
As it happens, ChatGPT is really pretty good at science questions. Much less good at anything political or controversial
It’s really good at recipes. I asked it for a tiramisu recipe. I then asked it if I really needed to bother using eggs. It gave me a recipe without eggs but told me why I should use the other one instead. Most helpful.
It did however also tell me that William the Conqueror fought at Stamford Bridge. And when I corrected it, it said “sorry yes you are right”. A legal friend was intrigued by it invoking an example of ancient Thai law. He is a subject matter expert and hadn’t heard of it before so queried the AI for its source. Which then said “sorry I just made that bit up”. Oh.
There is (was?) a website that was based around "I have ingredients A, B and C - what could I make?". I tried the same thing with ChatGPT and it gave me very similar results. But as you did, ask it for a quick modification or alternative if I didn't fancy something spicy/sweet/whatever which the website version couldn't do (at least without clicking back, clicking some buttons, pressing submit, going back, clicking...).
Whether you look on that as possibly destroying an existing business, or letting that business add some other value on top of a ChatGPT call - not sure. We'll see how it shakes out I guess.
I’ve been very impressed with its recipe writing ability. Tried it with some random ingredients a few times and it turned out very tasty sounding dishes. If I had one criticism it would be its lazy penchant for tray bakes. Doesn’t seem so keen on frying or steaming.
As I'm a bit bored due to being stuck in with pouring rain and hail outside, I thought I'd give it a try with the main ingredients I've got kicking about for tonights dinner. I now have a much more interesting sounding grilled salmon marinated in sesame oil and fennel dish than the simple 'salmon, potatoes, salad' that I'd been planning.
So, 'go ChatGPT!' I guess.
Certainly convenient compared to putting my ingredients into google and clicking through 30 recipe websites (which all pop up irritating 'subscribe to our newsletter' or the like) thinking 'hrm - nah' over and over.
it is very good at recipes. You can also alter the quantities instantly - "make this a recipe suitable for 1, or 3 or 6"
The "problem" with ChatGPT is that it has so many abilities it is easy to get lost. And GPT4 is meant to be another quantum leap from this?!
Gas generation now down to 1.8gw. Closest to zero it’s ever been in the years I’ve followed the grid mix. Until this month there was always a baseload of about 3gw even during gales presumably because it remained cheap for the stations generating it, but I assume the higher gas prices have now changed the equation.
One thing that doesn't seem to be a lot of attention is that the collapse in the price of gas to pre-war levels should be a real windfall to the government as their scheme of subsidising the market cost of energy should come in much lower than anticipated. This may free low tens of billions of government funds which a *smart government* would be redirecting towards buying some industrial peace.
I think I might have identified the flaw in the plan
Is there still a chance that this Santos bloke will be able to hang on? Would have thought falsely claiming that yer maw died on 9/11 would offend even MAGAers, but I’ve learned never to bet on GOP people being embarrassed by falsehoods.
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
The speed omicron is going through China means it’ll be over by late January, let alone Summer.
O/T, but … Not insisting on negative covid tests for travellers entering the UK from China seems a bit foolish, to say the least, given what is currently happening in China. It seems like we’re going to repeat previous mistakes. What am I missing?
We've given up pretending that travel restrictions or quarantine actually works without unacceptable restrictions on our freedom and unsustainable damage to our economy.
I suppose it is really a question of the risk of a 'new variant' emerging from China given the amount of cases/deaths there.
No reason a new variant is more likely to emerge from there than anywhere else, especially given the immunity-naive Chinese population are just as susceptible to good old basic Omicron so there’s less selection pressure.
Even if 100% of arriving travellers were positive it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the number who already have it here. And if a new variant does get through: well, if there’s one thing the Chinese experience surely shows us it’s that holding back the tide just delays the inevitable.
One reason to put a temporary stop on Chinese visitors is this frankly bizarre behaviour of the CCP. Going from Zero Covid to total openness in about a week, and thereby allowing 1m deaths - or so it seems
Can we be sure they aren’t covertly exporting a horrible new variant to make sure the world suffers alongside them?
Sadly, they have form on this
Even if they are, it's already far too late to do anything about it.
So the decisions made by Japan, Taiwan, Italy and the USA - to restrict Chinese tourism/visitors - are completely pointless?
Sadly, yes. The world should have blocked Chinese flights from last week and let COVID stay there for another two months. As long as they can go somewhere whatever variants they have will be seeded all over the world.
Why are people worried about perhaps a billion cases of covid in China in the next six months causing a Disease X variant, when globally there’s going to be multiples of that case load happening anyway? Sounds like a lot of tired thinking going on from policy makers.
I just don't want Chinese tourists back in London. If we can delay that by a few months then I'm all for travel bans.
That’s just your own self-interest not public policy
Well yes, but it's a good policy. London without Chinese tourists is a completely different city. I've found myself no longer avoiding the Covent Garden/Piccadilly area as I'd done for years before COVID. It will be sad when Londoners, once again, get pushed out of parts of our own city because Chinese tourists make it unbearable.
I guess you are not reliant on tourists for your income then. And yet yesterday you were complaining about prices!
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
Allowing Chinese tourists to come to London will put European and American tourists off. The smart move is to play it safe and ban them until the summer.
Based on the last three years, whenever I hear the phrase "play it safe" I translate it as "make an unforced error".
But what unforced error will there be in keeping Chinese tourists out for another six months? No one has yet pointed to a downside, it's all upside.
Normalising, once again, the idea of restrictions that do more harm than good. Which I thought we had left in the past.
These travel bans will fail - it's already too late for them. When they do, people like you will be calling for lockdown to "play it safe".
For the very first time in decades, my first response to an interesting and complex question - do viruses evolve to be less pathogenic - was NOT to reach for Google. Instead I went for ChatGPT
Google might be in trouble
Half a dozen people on PB could have given you that answer, with more detail
And probably wrong. It's not clear cut, and depends overmuch on a single study of myxamatosis.
I don’t think you’d say the answer is wrong.
It’s certainly atypical to become more virulent but not impossible. But @Leon is misunderstanding the conclusions
Seattle Times ($) - Paul Krugman: Tesla isn’t so special after all
If you’re one of those people who bought bitcoin or another cryptocurrency near its peak last fall, you’ve lost a lot of money. Is it any consolation to know that you would have lost a similar amount if you had bought Tesla stock instead?
OK, probably not. Still, Tesla stock’s plunge is an opportunity to talk about what makes businesses successful in the information age. And in the end, Tesla and bitcoin may have more in common than you think.
It’s natural to attribute Tesla’s recent decline — which is, to be sure, part of a general fall in tech stocks, but an exceptionally steep example — to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the reputational self-immolation that followed. Indeed, given what we’ve seen of Musk’s behavior, I wouldn’t trust him to feed my cat, let alone run a major corporation. Furthermore, Tesla sales have surely depended at least in part on the perception that Musk himself is a cool guy. Who, aside from MAGA types who probably wouldn’t have bought Teslas anyway, sees him that way now?
On the other hand, as someone who has spent much of his professional life in academia, I’m familiar with the phenomenon of people who are genuinely brilliant in some areas but utter fools in other domains. For all I know, Musk is or was a highly effective leader at Tesla and SpaceX. . . .
Now, some technology companies have indeed been long-term moneymaking machines. Apple and Microsoft still top the list of the most profitable U.S. corporations some four decades after the rise of personal computers. . . .
Similar stories can be told about a few other companies, such as Amazon, with its distribution infrastructure.
The question is: Where are the powerful network externalities in the electric vehicle business?
Electric cars may well be the future of personal transportation. In fact, they had better be, since electrification of everything, powered by renewable energy, is the only plausible way to avoid climate catastrophe. But it’s hard to see what would give Tesla a long-term lock on the electric vehicle business. . . .
Which brings us back to the question of why Tesla was ever worth so much. The answer, as best as I can tell, is that investors fell in love with a storyline about a brilliant, cool innovator, despite the absence of a good argument about how this guy, even if he really was who he appeared to be, could found a long-lived money machine.
And as I said, there’s a parallel here with bitcoin. Despite years of effort, nobody has yet managed to find any serious use for cryptocurrency other than money laundering. But prices nonetheless soared on the hype, and are still being sustained by a hardcore group of true believers. Something similar surely happened with Tesla, even though the company does actually make useful things.
I guess we’ll eventually see what happens. But I definitely won’t trust Musk with my cat.
Musk is in growing danger of getting himself booted from Tesla and SpaceX because of his Twattery antics. Yes, the Tesla share price was absurdly inflated, but the reset will have buggered a whole load of investors which makes raising future money much harder. And one thing all tech companies need is money.
I don't what he is doing with Twitter, other than he is a pothead. Which isn't news. Perhaps he needs to smoke less?
Blaming marijuana for Elon Musk, is like blaming whipped cream for Adolf Hitler.
Comments
Google would have taken 10 minutes and I’d have to cobble together the truth by myself. And its answer would be much like ChatGPT’s - “it’s nuanced and complex”
As it happens, ChatGPT is really pretty good at science questions. Much less good at anything political or controversial
I agree by the way that the CCP effectively deployed a WMD on the world in 2019/early 2020 by guaranteeing the deep spread of a new virus everywhere else. That’s not what’s happening here. There was a groundswell of revolt among Chinese who had reached breaking point at restrictions. Xi knows this because his government can ascertain the national mood by bulk reading all “private” communications. He would also have been getting abuse from the elites due who just want to make money.
Who knows, maybe there was something to that rumour of a failed coup in the summer and once the National Congress was out the way he realised he had no choice.
I sympathise, but it does put your opinions in a necessary context
True, because we don't yet have an adequate theoretical explanation of why the tendency is observed. It still seems more likely that our theory could be improved than that the observed tendency is misleading.
It did however also tell me that William the Conqueror fought at Stamford Bridge. And when I corrected it, it said “sorry yes you are right”. A legal friend was intrigued by it invoking an example of ancient Thai law. He is a subject matter expert and hadn’t heard of it before so queried the AI for its source. Which then said “sorry I just made that bit up”. Oh.
If you are going to reduce numbers to make it a premium experience you need to be willing to pay for it
You ability to think conspiratorially is impressive.
The simple answer is that he’s realised his zero Covid policy was a failure, likely to lead to growing unrest, and has U-turned. It’s not impossible that the consequences will threaten his position, as it’s going to be pretty brutal in terms if sickness and deaths.
This was from Chinese colleague at work.
2) South Korea now also plans to mandate rapid Covid testing for all travelers arriving drom China and require proof of a negative PCR test 48 hours prior to arrival.
https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1608235542143016965?s=46&t=mbjTskMZasflLGUwlte6zQ
(Yes, it’s Doctor Ding)
This is absorbing if unnerving to watch. Is the world going mad, all over again? Or are these sensible precautions taken by sensible countries?
Apparently some of the “AIs” descend into racism. So they would be well suited to be Border Patrol officers.
https://twitter.com/kfile/status/1608230983509356544?s=61&t=AfCO2G1LEUeTngaDIa5v4A
This is something.
Therefore we must do this.
The lesson of history is that leaders are nearly always high on what they supply.
Don’t get me wrong, I was all in favour back in February 2020 when we had no idea what the fuck what was happening.
But it seems to me that any measures to prevent Chinese travel would merely retard any new Chinese strains by a week or so, which buys us time to…do what?
The British, French, and Americans could be brutal in their colonies, no question, but they did not conduct the equivalent of Generalplan Ost, the Holocaust, T-731, The Three Alls, or the Sack of Nanking.
Although even that article goes on to suggest that Elkins’s thesis is tendentious.
Officials are expected to assess today, with six flights from China due to arrive in the next week as Beijing lifts zero-Covid policies”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/12/29/uk-consider-following-us-imposing-covid-testing-requirements/
I can see it make sense somewhere like S Korea, where the volume of travellers might be significantly higher. There might even be an argument for it here if we wanted to delay a potential large sudden winter wave by a few weeks.
Looks as though we’re going to rely on out high vaccination rates to prevent large scale severe illness, and not worry about trying to game it.
By 1807, there was widespread recognition in this country that slave trading was immoral, and by 1833, recognition that the very institution was immoral. That became the norm in the 19th century.
Nazi Germany violated what were accepted norms, in WW2.
“It just buys delay.
I can see it make sense somewhere like S Korea, where the volume of travellers might be significantly higher. There might even be an argument for it here if we wanted to delay a potential large sudden winter wave by a few weeks.
Looks as though we’re going to rely on out high vaccination rates to prevent large scale severe illness, and not worry about trying to game it.”
++++
As the Telegraph says, HMG is now actively considering restrictions on Chinese visitors
We will probably do something half arsed about 3 weeks after Italy. As per
Personally, I think we should burn some Z list celebrities on a pyre as a sacrifice to the Gods. This would be more valuable.
Some of it might well be overreaction to century of positive representation of Britain’s imperial role, but a reaction was certainly merited.
In good news we are at the lowest gas generation I can remember on the grid. 2.1gw. That’s less than solar, a few days after the winter solstice (2.2gw). Wind at 19.7gw. We need a few more weeks of this kind of weather, plus a continued fall in the oil price and hopefully Russia goes bankrupt.
Not great for the tourist industry hoping for a Chinese boost. Let’s hope it’s all mere precaution
Nor, of course, does testing Chinese arrivals, but that comes closer.
This time we gotta do it properly. I want welders going from door to door
I don't want a Model S as its huuuuge. The "sizzle" is the tech - the only thing the same in the previous generation S is the shape (see Porsche). The question I was asking is why car companies stopped their previous <20 year model cycles and started doing faster and faster changes. Is that not a large reason why so many of them are such financial basket cases? Spend £billions developing and £more marketing in an endless cycle of KLFing a pile of cash.
As Tesla have no debt, do no marketing, have big profit margins and sell every car they can make, I doubt they are too upset by the "its the same car".
I suppose Ferguson did a decent enough job a decade or so ago.
Haven’t seen him for a while
Whether you look on that as possibly destroying an existing business, or letting that business add some other value on top of a ChatGPT call - not sure. We'll see how it shakes out I guess.
This is the advantage Tesla have had in a blank sheet of paper approach to industrial design. Most EVs are built on the same line / in the same factory as piston-engined cars. So you end up with a vertical stack of components being dropped into the space where the engine would be because that's how their factory works. And a car made up of an ocean of parts and sub-assemblies which have to be built before being added to the car.
996, 6 years
997, 9 years
991, 8 years
992, 4 years and counting. MLU next year with a completely different interior and hybrid versions.
The basic architecture (flat 6, rear engined, MacPherson front, multi-link rear) is the same and some powertrain components (transmission) can be carried over but it's a completely new car every time with very limited (ie almost none) component interchangeability.
And a increasing appetite for illiberal border measures, “just because”.
The Empire is nothing to be proud of, but comparisons to Germany, Japan or Leopold II are clearly ridiculous. The horrific crimes were generally very small-scale and isolated. The ones that caused widespread damage were not done to deliberately cause harm to people.
The one major exception is the Atlantic slave trade, though I am not sure that counts as imperialism. The other was the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, but that brutality was fairly normal for warfare of the time period.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-the-british-empire/
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-raj-revision-why-historians-are-thinking-again-about-british-rule-in-india/
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/hong-kong-reveals-the-truth-about-the-british-empire/
https://theprint.in/india/casting-the-british-as-villains-to-make-up-heroic-stories-cambridge-professors-take-on-rrr/1048403/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/mistake-remainers-make-british-empire/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-colonialism-africa-british-empire-slavery-a9564541.html
I’ll stick to Jan Morris, although I see she was denounced as a heartless bitch by her daughter before her grave even went cold.
And then some twerp non-entity in the Times said she was a shite prose stylist as well.
I know you don't want one - and neither do I. But the premise that its the same car and nobody wants one just isn't true. Anyway, bigger stuff to argue about than a car neither of us actually wants. The bugger Porsche has is the charger network. Same for all of them.
https://grid.energynumbers.info/
If you’re one of those people who bought bitcoin or another cryptocurrency near its peak last fall, you’ve lost a lot of money. Is it any consolation to know that you would have lost a similar amount if you had bought Tesla stock instead?
OK, probably not. Still, Tesla stock’s plunge is an opportunity to talk about what makes businesses successful in the information age. And in the end, Tesla and bitcoin may have more in common than you think.
It’s natural to attribute Tesla’s recent decline — which is, to be sure, part of a general fall in tech stocks, but an exceptionally steep example — to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the reputational self-immolation that followed. Indeed, given what we’ve seen of Musk’s behavior, I wouldn’t trust him to feed my cat, let alone run a major corporation. Furthermore, Tesla sales have surely depended at least in part on the perception that Musk himself is a cool guy. Who, aside from MAGA types who probably wouldn’t have bought Teslas anyway, sees him that way now?
On the other hand, as someone who has spent much of his professional life in academia, I’m familiar with the phenomenon of people who are genuinely brilliant in some areas but utter fools in other domains. For all I know, Musk is or was a highly effective leader at Tesla and SpaceX. . . .
Now, some technology companies have indeed been long-term moneymaking machines. Apple and Microsoft still top the list of the most profitable U.S. corporations some four decades after the rise of personal computers. . . .
Similar stories can be told about a few other companies, such as Amazon, with its distribution infrastructure.
The question is: Where are the powerful network externalities in the electric vehicle business?
Electric cars may well be the future of personal transportation. In fact, they had better be, since electrification of everything, powered by renewable energy, is the only plausible way to avoid climate catastrophe. But it’s hard to see what would give Tesla a long-term lock on the electric vehicle business. . . .
Which brings us back to the question of why Tesla was ever worth so much. The answer, as best as I can tell, is that investors fell in love with a storyline about a brilliant, cool innovator, despite the absence of a good argument about how this guy, even if he really was who he appeared to be, could found a long-lived money machine.
And as I said, there’s a parallel here with bitcoin. Despite years of effort, nobody has yet managed to find any serious use for cryptocurrency other than money laundering. But prices nonetheless soared on the hype, and are still being sustained by a hardcore group of true believers. Something similar surely happened with Tesla, even though the company does actually make useful things.
I guess we’ll eventually see what happens. But I definitely won’t trust Musk with my cat.
I don't what he is doing with Twitter, other than he is a pothead. Which isn't news. Perhaps he needs to smoke less?
So, 'go ChatGPT!' I guess.
Certainly convenient compared to putting my ingredients into google and clicking through 30 recipe websites (which all pop up irritating 'subscribe to our newsletter' or the like) thinking 'hrm - nah' over and over.
I see we have time travelled back to 2020 with the usual suspects spamming the threads with attention-seeking panic and irrational policy ‘solutions’.
95%+ of the UK population (everyone except @Cyclefree) has had covid.
Can someone explain - in non hyperbolic terms - what closing our borders to China is going to achieve exactly?
(Other than childish, somewhat sinophobic, tit for tat?)
The "problem" with ChatGPT is that it has so many abilities it is easy to get lost. And GPT4 is meant to be another quantum leap from this?!
I think I might have identified the flaw in the plan
I’m fine with the Empire.
These travel bans will fail - it's already too late for them. When they do, people like you will be calling for lockdown to "play it safe".
It’s certainly atypical to become more virulent but not impossible. But @Leon is misunderstanding the conclusions