I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
If you give russia a ceasefire on the currentlines do you not think its handing them a win.if you do then it shows them this sort of action gets them results and encourages them do it it again just like 2014 did.
I don't state russia must lose because i hate russia. i state it because it might actually stop them doing shit like this
Agreed.
We should have acted more robustly when Russia invaded Georgia too, and when they committed war crimes in Syria.
A truly historic event in the Pett Bottom valley of Kent today?
It’s been a notable humid day, we’ve all felt it. But in a thin sliver of the far East of the country it’s been more than that.
The record highest dew point ever recorded in the British isles I understand is 23.8C, somewhere in SW Ireland. Dew point is the temperature at which the air becomes saturated. If Dp is 23.8C, then at 23.8C it’ll be foggy.
Today I noticed the station of Headcorn aérodrome was showing 23C dew point. Gosh, I thought. I looked at the live data from my weather station at the vineyard in Pett Bottom and it was 23.6C. But it kept climbing on my weather station. It topped out at 24.6C. In other words so much moisture inbred air that at that temperature it would be misty and condensation would form on objects.
I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Has my weather station just broken an all time British isles record?*
*disclaimer: private weather stations don’t count; readings can sometimes be faulty (though Dpt is usually quite accurate); I need to verify the current record with the Met Office / Met Eirann.
Temperature 25.6 degrees in my living room!
Your dew point though will probably be about 10C indoors.
I'm blaming you for this extremely hot weather BTW
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Do piss off.
That's an odd reaction, and I'm not sure why you think I merited it. Have a little look around and you'll see that it's a commonly held belief that Franco's regime was not, in fact, fascist.
That shouldn't be mistaken for any level of approval. Franco was a despicable monster and the world was measurably better the day he died. His remains should be removed from their current resting place and thrown into the sea.
But not every monster gets the label "fascist". Fascism actually means something. It's not a catch-all label for bad people. We can have the conversation about whether Franco qualifies without resorting to angry outbursts. Well, I can.
I'd call my response derisively dismissive rather than angry. I think using fascism as a catch all for bad people is exactly what you're doing. Your grand statement about the impossibility of peace with fascism was contradicted directly, so you've decided Franco wasn't a Fascist after all. OK then.
As a matter of fact we've been at peace with most of the world's fascist regimes.
By popular demand, wolf porn (I was visiting a Hungarian wolf rescue centre for the charity I was then working for) - as I said, no human has looked at me that affectionately...
... or sizing you up for dinner ;-)
Wolf: they said they would send Boris Johnson. You’re hardly more thsn a srarter!
To what extent should we be concerned about the continuing rise in oil prices? I see Saudi and Russia have agreed to maintain production cuts until the year of the end.
Oil at $90 a barrel doesn't do a lot for inflation and meeting inflationary targets, I'd imagine.
Saudi and Russia are doing more to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels than Extinction Rebellion ever will.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Um, really? I know modern day folk throw "fascist" around like it's confetti, but to go from that to "Franco's Spain wasn't fascist" is from one extreme to the other. It's getting to the point where apparently nobody in WW2 was fascist except Mussolini on alternate Fridays...
A truly historic event in the Pett Bottom valley of Kent today?
It’s been a notable humid day, we’ve all felt it. But in a thin sliver of the far East of the country it’s been more than that.
The record highest dew point ever recorded in the British isles I understand is 23.8C, somewhere in SW Ireland. Dew point is the temperature at which the air becomes saturated. If Dp is 23.8C, then at 23.8C it’ll be foggy.
Today I noticed the station of Headcorn aérodrome was showing 23C dew point. Gosh, I thought. I looked at the live data from my weather station at the vineyard in Pett Bottom and it was 23.6C. But it kept climbing on my weather station. It topped out at 24.6C. In other words so much moisture inbred air that at that temperature it would be misty and condensation would form on objects.
I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Has my weather station just broken an all time British isles record?*
*disclaimer: private weather stations don’t count; readings can sometimes be faulty (though Dpt is usually quite accurate); I need to verify the current record with the Met Office / Met Eirann.
Even yours truly, and quasi-loyal and semi-professional Irishman, must confess that "Met Eirann" is very close (in English) to traditional and universal public view of the Weather Bureau.
To what extent should we be concerned about the continuing rise in oil prices? I see Saudi and Russia have agreed to maintain production cuts until the year of the end.
Oil at $90 a barrel doesn't do a lot for inflation and meeting inflationary targets, I'd imagine.
Saudi and Russia are doing more to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels than Extinction Rebellion ever will.
Hardly good news though is it? And the Saudis acting unilaterally? I think questions need to be asked about their motives.
While PBers will understand the significance of regional vs constituency (the latter balances out the effects of the former, within reason and for larger parties), I'm surprised that the voters are that discriminating, with a big jump in SNP support for the latter and a big drop for the former. What might be the explanation (given that it's the same people answering the same poll)?
History. The last few Holyrood elections have shown the SNP list votes are a bit of a waste, with them sweeping a lot of constituencies.
SNP constituency voters are saying they might vote Green to maximise pro-Indy MSPs. That will comprise people with SNP VI and people who would prefer Green but know they might not stand in their constituency.
If your main aim is indy, it's a no brainer to pick SNP/Green in the constituency/list.
Not necessarily - a couple of points swing to Alba (I know, I know) could increase the Indy side by a few more seats and reduce Green influence. That would make for interesting times…
If you say so. I'm not motivated by independence so it's a moot point for me anyway, but even if I was, I wouldn't touch Alba with a barge pole because they're very obviously lunatics.
Could some of differential in Holyrood constituency v regional poll results, stem from voters still supporting incumbent SNP MSPs, but registering disaffection (putting it politely) with national SNP situation (ditto) by voting for some other party for region, NOT necessarily Greens or Alba, but instead Labour?
That’s what I plan to do, especially if the SNP list continues to be biased in favour of minorities, instead of competence.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Military conquest and constant war as a defining factor of government was lacking. It had most of the other traits: traditional macho values, central power and repression of minority or regional identity, the strong man etc. I’d say the central importance of the church and, for want of a better word culture war, is what made Spain subtly different from Mussolini’s Italy. More akin to MAGA Trumpism or the current Polish government.
One of the impossible questions about that bit of Spanish history is whether Franco kept out of wars of invasion because he was a shrewdie (which at some level he was), or Spain was just too poor and too weak to indulge in dreams of conquest (which it basically was). But that must have helped.
In practice, Franco's Spain was seen as a notch or two less bad than Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy; hence only one of the three was allowed to die peacefully in his bed.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
You're essentially agreeing with my post then, I think. I'm strongly supportive of keeping with Ukraine but I don't find the 'whatever it takes and come what may' rhetoric particularly sensible or appealing.
Since Dr. Foxy raised the homeless problem, I thought I'd share this study described in a Megan McArdle column: "Instead, I want to introduce a new argument: that higher minimum wages may be contributing to homelessness, a problem that is, of course, particularly bad in California.
This suggestion comes from Seth J. Hill, a professor of political science at the University of California San Diego, who recently published a striking analysis of cities that raised their minimum wages between 2006 and 2019. He found that in these cities homelessness grew by double-digit percentage points. The effect was larger for cities with bigger minimum-wage increases, and it also appeared to get stronger over time." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/13/higher-minimum-wages-increase-homelessness/
To what extent should we be concerned about the continuing rise in oil prices? I see Saudi and Russia have agreed to maintain production cuts until the year of the end.
Oil at $90 a barrel doesn't do a lot for inflation and meeting inflationary targets, I'd imagine.
Saudi and Russia are doing more to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels than Extinction Rebellion ever will.
Hardly good news though is it? And the Saudis acting unilaterally? I think questions need to be asked about their motives.
Isn't the Occam's Razor answer that this approach brings them more money?
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
What were the crucial differences from Mussolini's Italy?
I'd say Fascism has three main characteristics - lack of class warfare, internal repression and external aggression. Franco's Spain (and Salazar's Portugal) had the first two, but not really the third. So they were unpleasant right-wing dictatorships, but not Fascist. Mussolini's Italy hit all three, and of course Nazi Germany was the extreme archetype.
Napoleon's France, on the other hand, had the first and the third, but not really the second. So I wouldn't count it as Fascist either, though it was also unpleasant.
But all these arguments ultimately come down to definitions, so I'm not sure they're of much value.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
You're essentially agreeing with my post then, I think. I'm strongly supportive of keeping with Ukraine but I don't find the 'whatever it takes and come what may' rhetoric particularly sensible or appealing.
It’s back to the game theory. Either you think peace on Russian terms secures peace long term, or you think it encourages them to come back for seconds.
Taking the emotion and talk of good and evil out of it, that’s a purely tactical question.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
What were the crucial differences from Mussolini's Italy?
I'd say Fascism has three main characteristics - lack of class warfare, internal repression and external aggression. Franco's Spain (and Salazar's Portugal) had the first two, but not really the third. So they were unpleasant right-wing dictatorships, but not Fascist. Mussolini's Italy hit all three, and of course Nazi Germany was the extreme archetype.
Napoleon's France, on the other hand, had the first and the third, but not really the second. So I wouldn't count it as Fascist either, though it was also unpleasant.
But all these arguments ultimately come down to definitions, so I'm not sure they're of much value.
Texas Tribune - Buzbee accuses the former first assistant attorney general of “staging a coup” Sept. 6, 2023 at 4:02 p.m.
During cross examination, Ken Paxton’s lead attorney Tony Buzbee accused former first assistant attorney general Jeff Mateer, of “staging a coup” against Paxton.
In a meandering, hours-long cross examination, Buzbee often jumped from one line of questioning to the other as he insinuated that Mateer and other senior staff were colluding against Paxton by meeting with the governor and lobbyists from the group Texans for Lawsuit Reform and by moving to have the attorney general’s office hire an outside lawyer before approaching the FBI about Paxton’s relationship with Paxton donor and friend Nate Paul.
“You were involved in staging a coup, weren’t you?” Buzbee asked.
“Absolutely not,” Mateer responded.
Buzbee also repeatedly accused Mateer of removing Paxton’s name from official letterhead, arguing that it amounted to altering a government record in violation of state law. Mateer said he signed the letter in question, but denied making any changes to the letterhead.
At times, Mateer sparred with Buzbee as Paxton’s defense lawyer tried to question Mateer’s decision making.
“You’re trying to misstate things,” Mateer said to Buzbee at one point in the cross examination. Upon conclusion of cross examination, House lawyer Rusty Hardin started a new line of follow up questions for Mateer.
SSI - new witness being questioned by lawyer for Texas House (body that impeached Paxton), think he's another former assistant state AG.
You made a comment about Twitter/X's advertising revenues that was simply not true.
A meaningful proportion of Twitter's revenue decline was entirely self inflicted, and had nothing to do with the ADL or any organized conspiracy.
Within days of taking over, Twitter fired a host of engineers and switched off dozens of microservices. One of those was the two factor authentication system for advertisers. For several days. smaller advertisers simply couldn't login to spend money on advertising. And there was no-one to call!
That locked out thousands of smaller advertisers from the platform for a couple of days. And all those people will have reevaluated where they want to spend their money.
Ok, it's wrong to say that none of the decline was organic but this doesn't mean that the boycott campaign and general atmosphere of hysteria surrounding the takeover had no effect.
Sure:
Here's the thing, though. Google's entire business - it's close to a billion dollars a day in advertising revenue - is on the back of smaller companies like Just.
Google gave us the tools to get past GEICO and Progressive and speak just to the people who might want our product.
Small companies don't have the luxury of boycotting channels because of "hysteria". I need to make my numbers, because if I don't make my numbers, then I won't be able to raise investment, and if I can't raise investment, I won't have employees or a business.
Twitter had been losing small companies for a long-time. And it was becoming increasingly dependent on big brands writing big cheques,
And that's a problem.
Budweiser cares about "reputational risk". Now, you can say this is hysteria or bullshit. But just as Smith & Wesson doesn't want to advertise in the middle of documentary about the Parkland shooting, well, some brands don't want to be placed next to people promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Musk wants Twitter to be a haven for free speech. Great!
But you can't then complain when people say "you know what, I don't see the benefit of advertising on that channel, it's too reputationally risky."
Or at least, you can complain, but you will get laughed at.
One of the most significant developments of recent times, this change of mind by Lord Sumption.
If we leave by cutting-and-pasting it into UK law, I think the international reaction would be survivable. But I don't know enough about the topic to know if we should.
"This is simply an extraordinary study. Researchers gave $7,500 (CAD) to homeless people in Vancouver. The result? The program *saved* money. It helped many of them to move into housing faster, which saved the shelter system $8,277 per person. 🧵👇"
An arbitrary selection of homeless people, or a cherrypicked group of those most likely to succeed? Good news either way, but rather different things.
Yes, a small-sample study (N=115) that ascribes the average cost of shelter to the cheapest quartile of cases: short-term homeless, legally resident so more readily employable, not with "severe" drug problems/mental illness.
All together now...
* The size of the sample is dependent on the (implied or overt) test. * You can have an implied test (where you estimate a thing to a certain accuracy, which is an implied test between your thing and the accuracy) or an overt test (is your thing significantly different to another thing). * If you don't have an (implied or overt) test then your sample can be as big or small as you like, but because there is there no test there are few conclusions you can draw. * So you cannot say whether a sample is too small without specifying the test for which it is too small
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Military conquest and constant war as a defining factor of government was lacking. It had most of the other traits: traditional macho values, central power and repression of minority or regional identity, the strong man etc. I’d say the central importance of the church and, for want of a better word culture war, is what made Spain subtly different from Mussolini’s Italy. More akin to MAGA Trumpism or the current Polish government.
One of the impossible questions about that bit of Spanish history is whether Franco kept out of wars of invasion because he was a shrewdie (which at some level he was), or Spain was just too poor and too weak to indulge in dreams of conquest (which it basically was). But that must have helped.
In practice, Franco's Spain was seen as a notch or two less bad than Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy; hence only one of the three was allowed to die peacefully in his bed.
Surely Franco was "allowed" to die peacefully in his bed because he didn't pose a direct threat to people in countries outside Spain that might have been in a position to prevent that?
I mean, we can debate where he sits in the hierarchy of sh1ts, but being seen as horrible doesn't put you in danger from foreign countries. Being seen as a direct and immediate threat does.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
What were the crucial differences from Mussolini's Italy?
I'd say Fascism has three main characteristics - lack of class warfare, internal repression and external aggression. Franco's Spain (and Salazar's Portugal) had the first two, but not really the third. So they were unpleasant right-wing dictatorships, but not Fascist. Mussolini's Italy hit all three, and of course Nazi Germany was the extreme archetype.
Napoleon's France, on the other hand, had the first and the third, but not really the second. So I wouldn't count it as Fascist either, though it was also unpleasant.
But all these arguments ultimately come down to definitions, so I'm not sure they're of much value.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
What were the crucial differences from Mussolini's Italy?
The Jews weren't rounded up and sent off to Germany?
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
You made a comment about Twitter/X's advertising revenues that was simply not true.
A meaningful proportion of Twitter's revenue decline was entirely self inflicted, and had nothing to do with the ADL or any organized conspiracy.
Within days of taking over, Twitter fired a host of engineers and switched off dozens of microservices. One of those was the two factor authentication system for advertisers. For several days. smaller advertisers simply couldn't login to spend money on advertising. And there was no-one to call!
That locked out thousands of smaller advertisers from the platform for a couple of days. And all those people will have reevaluated where they want to spend their money.
Ok, it's wrong to say that none of the decline was organic but this doesn't mean that the boycott campaign and general atmosphere of hysteria surrounding the takeover had no effect.
Sure:
Here's the thing, though. Google's entire business - it's close to a billion dollars a day in advertising revenue - is on the back of smaller companies like Just.
Google gave us the tools to get past GEICO and Progressive and speak just to the people who might want our product.
Small companies don't have the luxury of boycotting channels because of "hysteria". I need to make my numbers, because if I don't make my numbers, then I won't be able to raise investment, and if I can't raise investment, I won't have employees or a business.
Twitter had been losing small companies for a long-time. And it was becoming increasingly dependent on big brands writing big cheques,
And that's a problem.
Budweiser cares about "reputational risk". Now, you can say this is hysteria or bullshit. But just as Smith & Wesson doesn't want to advertise in the middle of documentary about the Parkland shooting, well, some brands don't want to be placed next to people promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Musk wants Twitter to be a haven for free speech. Great!
But you can't then complain when people say "you know what, I don't see the benefit of advertising on that channel, it's too reputationally risky."
Or at least, you can complain, but you will get laughed at.
Small companies which require further rounds of investment because they are not yet profitable, or are but want investment to grow, are only one kind though.
Facebook makes a lot of money from small companies which are day-to-day profitable as well, does it not? The local florist, restaurant etc?
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
What were the crucial differences from Mussolini's Italy?
I'd say Fascism has three main characteristics - lack of class warfare, internal repression and external aggression. Franco's Spain (and Salazar's Portugal) had the first two, but not really the third. So they were unpleasant right-wing dictatorships, but not Fascist. Mussolini's Italy hit all three, and of course Nazi Germany was the extreme archetype.
Napoleon's France, on the other hand, had the first and the third, but not really the second. So I wouldn't count it as Fascist either, though it was also unpleasant.
But all these arguments ultimately come down to definitions, so I'm not sure they're of much value.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Do piss off.
That's an odd reaction, and I'm not sure why you think I merited it. Have a little look around and you'll see that it's a commonly held belief that Franco's regime was not, in fact, fascist.
That shouldn't be mistaken for any level of approval. Franco was a despicable monster and the world was measurably better the day he died. His remains should be removed from their current resting place and thrown into the sea.
But not every monster gets the label "fascist". Fascism actually means something. It's not a catch-all label for bad people. We can have the conversation about whether Franco qualifies without resorting to angry outbursts. Well, I can.
I'd call my response derisively dismissive rather than angry. I think using fascism as a catch all for bad people is exactly what you're doing. Your grand statement about the impossibility of peace with fascism was contradicted directly, so you've decided Franco wasn't a Fascist after all. OK then.
As a matter of fact we've been at peace with most of the world's fascist regimes.
Most places can exist at peace with most other really awful places. So long as you restrict your awfulness to at home you can get by for decades like that. Even the occasional external episode of awfulness wouldn't immediately change things, even only responding economically or diplomatically is a right hassle after all.
Russia used to exist in that space, being awful and acquisitive, but most places looked the other way and hoped they would cause too much trouble close by again. But then it did happen again and the ones closest to it at least have admirably recognised that they cannot pretend anymore, since that didn't work.
People will disagree about how much the UK for example should involve itself as a result, but it is at the least a different situation to, say, a less demonstrably awful place.
Quit hoping, wishing, & praying for something that ain’t gonna happen. Trump will be the nominee, he was always going to be the nominee, & he’s got a damn good shot of getting elected again. To defeat him, we must first accept this truth. @WalshFreedom
It's a bit of a contrast with the 'Trump will never win and that's why he should be opposed' crowd.
(1) Premise Data is not a polling company (2) the Premise Twitter feed (the one linked) has no record of this poll (3) the Premise website has no political polling, and certainly has no record of a bi-weekly poll
I have reached out to Premise directly to see if it is their's.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Military conquest and constant war as a defining factor of government was lacking. It had most of the other traits: traditional macho values, central power and repression of minority or regional identity, the strong man etc. I’d say the central importance of the church and, for want of a better word culture war, is what made Spain subtly different from Mussolini’s Italy. More akin to MAGA Trumpism or the current Polish government.
There was also the fact that the actual fascists were a distinct group, attached to the regime but not at the very top of it. And indeed, often pushed to the back of the queue within the power politics of the regime.
Hungary under Horthy is a similar case, in my view.
Franco was a social reactionary at his core, I think.
One of the most significant developments of recent times, this change of mind by Lord Sumption.
Just seems like another predictable waystation on his rather noisy 'journey'.
He has plenty of interesting things to say I'm sure, and is a very bright man. But I read his last book, Law in a time of crisis, and when it came to the section on Covid-19 it was like it written by another person entirely, sloppy and lazy in its arguments.
Like many a blossoming media pundit he is gradually trading in credibility for saying things fans want to hear, even if it gets more ridiculous, and in time may end up like Matt Goodwin. I don't think he's there yet though, but it is a danger he needs to be careful about.
On this issue? I've not read his take on the ECHR yet, but based on what he's written in the past few years I'd have assumed that was his longstanding position.
You made a comment about Twitter/X's advertising revenues that was simply not true.
A meaningful proportion of Twitter's revenue decline was entirely self inflicted, and had nothing to do with the ADL or any organized conspiracy.
Within days of taking over, Twitter fired a host of engineers and switched off dozens of microservices. One of those was the two factor authentication system for advertisers. For several days. smaller advertisers simply couldn't login to spend money on advertising. And there was no-one to call!
That locked out thousands of smaller advertisers from the platform for a couple of days. And all those people will have reevaluated where they want to spend their money.
Ok, it's wrong to say that none of the decline was organic but this doesn't mean that the boycott campaign and general atmosphere of hysteria surrounding the takeover had no effect.
Sure:
Here's the thing, though. Google's entire business - it's close to a billion dollars a day in advertising revenue - is on the back of smaller companies like Just.
Google gave us the tools to get past GEICO and Progressive and speak just to the people who might want our product.
Small companies don't have the luxury of boycotting channels because of "hysteria". I need to make my numbers, because if I don't make my numbers, then I won't be able to raise investment, and if I can't raise investment, I won't have employees or a business.
Twitter had been losing small companies for a long-time. And it was becoming increasingly dependent on big brands writing big cheques,
And that's a problem.
Budweiser cares about "reputational risk". Now, you can say this is hysteria or bullshit. But just as Smith & Wesson doesn't want to advertise in the middle of documentary about the Parkland shooting, well, some brands don't want to be placed next to people promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Musk wants Twitter to be a haven for free speech. Great!
But you can't then complain when people say "you know what, I don't see the benefit of advertising on that channel, it's too reputationally risky."
Or at least, you can complain, but you will get laughed at.
Small companies which require further rounds of investment because they are not yet profitable, or are but want investment to grow, are only one kind though.
Facebook makes a lot of money from small companies which are day-to-day profitable as well, does it not? The local florist, restaurant etc?
Errr: we're not in disagreement.
My point is that Twitter offers next to no targeting, and is therefore very dependent on big brands. That's clearly not true of either Google or Facebook.
(1) Premise Data is not a polling company (2) the Premise Twitter feed (the one linked) has no record of this poll (3) the Premise website has no political polling, and certainly has no record of a bi-weekly poll
I have reached out to Premise directly to see if it is their's.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Do piss off.
That's an odd reaction, and I'm not sure why you think I merited it. Have a little look around and you'll see that it's a commonly held belief that Franco's regime was not, in fact, fascist.
That shouldn't be mistaken for any level of approval. Franco was a despicable monster and the world was measurably better the day he died. His remains should be removed from their current resting place and thrown into the sea.
But not every monster gets the label "fascist". Fascism actually means something. It's not a catch-all label for bad people. We can have the conversation about whether Franco qualifies without resorting to angry outbursts. Well, I can.
I'd call my response derisively dismissive rather than angry. I think using fascism as a catch all for bad people is exactly what you're doing. Your grand statement about the impossibility of peace with fascism was contradicted directly, so you've decided Franco wasn't a Fascist after all. OK then.
As a matter of fact we've been at peace with most of the world's fascist regimes.
You made a comment about Twitter/X's advertising revenues that was simply not true.
A meaningful proportion of Twitter's revenue decline was entirely self inflicted, and had nothing to do with the ADL or any organized conspiracy.
Within days of taking over, Twitter fired a host of engineers and switched off dozens of microservices. One of those was the two factor authentication system for advertisers. For several days. smaller advertisers simply couldn't login to spend money on advertising. And there was no-one to call!
That locked out thousands of smaller advertisers from the platform for a couple of days. And all those people will have reevaluated where they want to spend their money.
Ok, it's wrong to say that none of the decline was organic but this doesn't mean that the boycott campaign and general atmosphere of hysteria surrounding the takeover had no effect.
Sure:
Here's the thing, though. Google's entire business - it's close to a billion dollars a day in advertising revenue - is on the back of smaller companies like Just.
Google gave us the tools to get past GEICO and Progressive and speak just to the people who might want our product.
Small companies don't have the luxury of boycotting channels because of "hysteria". I need to make my numbers, because if I don't make my numbers, then I won't be able to raise investment, and if I can't raise investment, I won't have employees or a business.
Twitter had been losing small companies for a long-time. And it was becoming increasingly dependent on big brands writing big cheques,
And that's a problem.
Budweiser cares about "reputational risk". Now, you can say this is hysteria or bullshit. But just as Smith & Wesson doesn't want to advertise in the middle of documentary about the Parkland shooting, well, some brands don't want to be placed next to people promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Musk wants Twitter to be a haven for free speech. Great!
But you can't then complain when people say "you know what, I don't see the benefit of advertising on that channel, it's too reputationally risky."
Or at least, you can complain, but you will get laughed at.
Small companies which require further rounds of investment because they are not yet profitable, or are but want investment to grow, are only one kind though.
Facebook makes a lot of money from small companies which are day-to-day profitable as well, does it not? The local florist, restaurant etc?
Errr: we're not in disagreement.
My point is that Twitter offers next to no targeting, and is therefore very dependent on big brands. That's clearly not true of either Google or Facebook.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Military conquest and constant war as a defining factor of government was lacking. It had most of the other traits: traditional macho values, central power and repression of minority or regional identity, the strong man etc. I’d say the central importance of the church and, for want of a better word culture war, is what made Spain subtly different from Mussolini’s Italy. More akin to MAGA Trumpism or the current Polish government.
One of the impossible questions about that bit of Spanish history is whether Franco kept out of wars of invasion because he was a shrewdie (which at some level he was), or Spain was just too poor and too weak to indulge in dreams of conquest (which it basically was). But that must have helped.
In practice, Franco's Spain was seen as a notch or two less bad than Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy; hence only one of the three was allowed to die peacefully in his bed.
Surely Franco was "allowed" to die peacefully in his bed because he didn't pose a direct threat to people in countries outside Spain that might have been in a position to prevent that?
I mean, we can debate where he sits in the hierarchy of sh1ts, but being seen as horrible doesn't put you in danger from foreign countries. Being seen as a direct and immediate threat does.
A savvy authoritarian scumbag knows when to pull back.
I suppose Libya might be an example as well - no so much about being a direct threat, but Gaddafi made no real international allies worth a damn, so in a period when intervention was still blooming, he was screwed. Even China and Russia abstained on a UN vote about Libya, a tacit green light.
(1) Premise Data is not a polling company (2) the Premise Twitter feed (the one linked) has no record of this poll (3) the Premise website has no political polling, and certainly has no record of a bi-weekly poll
I have reached out to Premise directly to see if it is their's.
It’s linked from the main 538 website so I assume it’s genuine.
You made a comment about Twitter/X's advertising revenues that was simply not true.
A meaningful proportion of Twitter's revenue decline was entirely self inflicted, and had nothing to do with the ADL or any organized conspiracy.
Within days of taking over, Twitter fired a host of engineers and switched off dozens of microservices. One of those was the two factor authentication system for advertisers. For several days. smaller advertisers simply couldn't login to spend money on advertising. And there was no-one to call!
That locked out thousands of smaller advertisers from the platform for a couple of days. And all those people will have reevaluated where they want to spend their money.
Ok, it's wrong to say that none of the decline was organic but this doesn't mean that the boycott campaign and general atmosphere of hysteria surrounding the takeover had no effect.
Sure:
Here's the thing, though. Google's entire business - it's close to a billion dollars a day in advertising revenue - is on the back of smaller companies like Just.
Google gave us the tools to get past GEICO and Progressive and speak just to the people who might want our product.
Small companies don't have the luxury of boycotting channels because of "hysteria". I need to make my numbers, because if I don't make my numbers, then I won't be able to raise investment, and if I can't raise investment, I won't have employees or a business.
Twitter had been losing small companies for a long-time. And it was becoming increasingly dependent on big brands writing big cheques,
And that's a problem.
Budweiser cares about "reputational risk". Now, you can say this is hysteria or bullshit. But just as Smith & Wesson doesn't want to advertise in the middle of documentary about the Parkland shooting, well, some brands don't want to be placed next to people promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Musk wants Twitter to be a haven for free speech. Great!
But you can't then complain when people say "you know what, I don't see the benefit of advertising on that channel, it's too reputationally risky."
Or at least, you can complain, but you will get laughed at.
Small companies which require further rounds of investment because they are not yet profitable, or are but want investment to grow, are only one kind though.
Facebook makes a lot of money from small companies which are day-to-day profitable as well, does it not? The local florist, restaurant etc?
Errr: we're not in disagreement.
My point is that Twitter offers next to no targeting, and is therefore very dependent on big brands. That's clearly not true of either Google or Facebook.
Absolutely. My experience (which is decidedly at the florist level of things) is that Facebook ads work remarkably well; Google can work but can also be a shortcut to losing a whole bunch of money with virtually no return; and Twitter doesn’t generate any interest at all.
Though the raspberry goes to Reddit, whose ad UI is so bad I’ve never managed to successfully place any advertising there at all.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
Supporters of Ukraine certainly need to be thinking about a Trump presidency on the horizon. How would we deal with that? First and foremost by getting them as much support as possible NOW.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
A lot of the analyses consider the possible changes in Russia, the US or Europe. The Ukrainians are actors in this, as well.
This reminds me of the debates around the Yugoslav Wars, where the Serbs were seen as having agency, as opposed to the Bosnians and Croats who were seen as passive victims, by the solemn writers of newspaper columns and the diplomats briefing them.
Paul Mason @paulmasonnews 7/ Karaganov wants Russia to pre-emptively nuke NATO countries and to make the case for doing so with the BRICS. He wants to annex Ukraine east of the Dnipro and turn the rest into an "agricultural hinterland" (as Nazi Germany intended with Ukraine)...
Paul Mason @paulmasonnews 8/ He wants to indoctrinate UA population and send 2 million prisoners to Siberia. Anybody - I don't care how many Marxist classics you have read - anybody siding with this bunch of fascist psychopaths, and anyone giving left cover to the BRICS project - you know what you're doing...
Fascism is a slippery bastard, because at its core it's comfortable with internal contradiction and anti-intellectualism. It's less a system of thought and more a pattern of actions.
If we disagree about this or that regime having the label, it's not the end of the world.
Perhaps the way to see fascism is as a national expression of sociopathic behaviour, or at least narcissistic personality disorder.
(1) Premise Data is not a polling company (2) the Premise Twitter feed (the one linked) has no record of this poll (3) the Premise website has no political polling, and certainly has no record of a bi-weekly poll
I have reached out to Premise directly to see if it is their's.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
Supporters of Ukraine certainly need to be thinking about a Trump presidency on the horizon. How would we deal with that? First and foremost by getting them as much support as possible NOW.
Simple, just stop Trump. There are several ways to make that happen.
"But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line."
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
Supporters of Ukraine certainly need to be thinking about a Trump presidency on the horizon. How would we deal with that? First and foremost by getting them as much support as possible NOW.
Simple, just stop Trump. There are several ways to make that happen.
Trump can stop weapons being transferred, which is bad, but an outgoing Biden administration would surely transfer tens of billions of slush fund money before the handover.
"This is simply an extraordinary study. Researchers gave $7,500 (CAD) to homeless people in Vancouver. The result? The program *saved* money. It helped many of them to move into housing faster, which saved the shelter system $8,277 per person. 🧵👇"
An arbitrary selection of homeless people, or a cherrypicked group of those most likely to succeed? Good news either way, but rather different things.
Yes, a small-sample study (N=115) that ascribes the average cost of shelter to the cheapest quartile of cases: short-term homeless, legally resident so more readily employable, not with "severe" drug problems/mental illness.
All together now...
* The size of the sample is dependent on the (implied or overt) test. * You can have an implied test (where you estimate a thing to a certain accuracy, which is an implied test between your thing and the accuracy) or an overt test (is your thing significantly different to another thing). * If you don't have an (implied or overt) test then your sample can be as big or small as you like, but because there is there no test there are few conclusions you can draw. * So you cannot say whether a sample is too small without specifying the test for which it is too small
Well, good thing nobody said "too small" so the righteousness is rather misdirected.
But in a real-world study, a hundred is small. It means you can get statistical significance at the 5% level if something happens to three of your guys. When the treatment and control groups aren't random but instead contingent on choice of service provider, this is far from implausible.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
A lot of the analyses consider the possible changes in Russia, the US or Europe. The Ukrainians are actors in this, as well.
This reminds me of the debates around the Yugoslav Wars, where the Serbs were seen as having agency, as opposed to the Bosnians and Croats who were seen as passive victims, by the solemn writers of newspaper columns and the diplomats briefing them.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
You're essentially agreeing with my post then, I think. I'm strongly supportive of keeping with Ukraine but I don't find the 'whatever it takes and come what may' rhetoric particularly sensible or appealing.
It’s back to the game theory. Either you think peace on Russian terms secures peace long term, or you think it encourages them to come back for seconds.
Taking the emotion and talk of good and evil out of it, that’s a purely tactical question.
That's not quite my point though. Even if you think at this juncture (as I do) that 'we' should be supporting Ukraine's counter offensive rather than steering them to negotiate a settlement it doesn't follow that this must always remain the case or that all other considerations must be forever trumped by the need for Russia to be totally defeated. You have to be prepared to adjust your position according to developments.
"This is simply an extraordinary study. Researchers gave $7,500 (CAD) to homeless people in Vancouver. The result? The program *saved* money. It helped many of them to move into housing faster, which saved the shelter system $8,277 per person. 🧵👇"
An arbitrary selection of homeless people, or a cherrypicked group of those most likely to succeed? Good news either way, but rather different things.
Yes, a small-sample study (N=115) that ascribes the average cost of shelter to the cheapest quartile of cases: short-term homeless, legally resident so more readily employable, not with "severe" drug problems/mental illness.
All together now...
* The size of the sample is dependent on the (implied or overt) test. * You can have an implied test (where you estimate a thing to a certain accuracy, which is an implied test between your thing and the accuracy) or an overt test (is your thing significantly different to another thing). * If you don't have an (implied or overt) test then your sample can be as big or small as you like, but because there is there no test there are few conclusions you can draw. * So you cannot say whether a sample is too small without specifying the test for which it is too small
Well, good thing nobody said "too small" so the righteousness is rather misdirected.
But in a real-world study, a hundred is small. It means you can get statistical significance at the 5% level if something happens to three of your guys. When the treatment and control groups aren't random but instead contingent on choice of service provider, this is far from implausible.
It was a (pre-registered) randomised controlled trial. Participants were randomly allocated.
"This is simply an extraordinary study. Researchers gave $7,500 (CAD) to homeless people in Vancouver. The result? The program *saved* money. It helped many of them to move into housing faster, which saved the shelter system $8,277 per person. 🧵👇"
An arbitrary selection of homeless people, or a cherrypicked group of those most likely to succeed? Good news either way, but rather different things.
Yes, a small-sample study (N=115) that ascribes the average cost of shelter to the cheapest quartile of cases: short-term homeless, legally resident so more readily employable, not with "severe" drug problems/mental illness.
All together now...
* The size of the sample is dependent on the (implied or overt) test. * You can have an implied test (where you estimate a thing to a certain accuracy, which is an implied test between your thing and the accuracy) or an overt test (is your thing significantly different to another thing). * If you don't have an (implied or overt) test then your sample can be as big or small as you like, but because there is there no test there are few conclusions you can draw. * So you cannot say whether a sample is too small without specifying the test for which it is too small
But in a real-world study, a hundred is small. It means you can get statistical significance at the 5% level if something happens to three of your guys...
No it doesn't. I can only repeat what I said above: it depends on the test. Oh, and the size of the effect, but that's because I'm an idiot who forgets things. And the sampling method. Ouch. But my point is still valid. For example Fisher's exact test can cope with teeny samples.
Sample size thresholds depend on the study, the test, and the effect. If you want to compare the weight of an elephant to that of a flea, you will not need a hundred of both for a valid test. Sample sizes of around 30-40 are not uncommon. People on PB are far too quick to say "oh, the sample size is too small" and every time they do you can hear me screaming in the background "too small for what???"
Will Hutton @williamnhutton · 2h Rejoining Horizon is excellent news. Of course it’s a tragedy that our leadership is over and the 3 year limbo was unnecessary, but British and European science is the stronger. Thank God. UK to return to EU’s flagship Horizon science research programme
"This is simply an extraordinary study. Researchers gave $7,500 (CAD) to homeless people in Vancouver. The result? The program *saved* money. It helped many of them to move into housing faster, which saved the shelter system $8,277 per person. 🧵👇"
An arbitrary selection of homeless people, or a cherrypicked group of those most likely to succeed? Good news either way, but rather different things.
Yes, a small-sample study (N=115) that ascribes the average cost of shelter to the cheapest quartile of cases: short-term homeless, legally resident so more readily employable, not with "severe" drug problems/mental illness.
All together now...
* The size of the sample is dependent on the (implied or overt) test. * You can have an implied test (where you estimate a thing to a certain accuracy, which is an implied test between your thing and the accuracy) or an overt test (is your thing significantly different to another thing). * If you don't have an (implied or overt) test then your sample can be as big or small as you like, but because there is there no test there are few conclusions you can draw. * So you cannot say whether a sample is too small without specifying the test for which it is too small
But in a real-world study, a hundred is small. It means you can get statistical significance at the 5% level if something happens to three of your guys...
No it doesn't. I can only repeat what I said above: it depends on the test. Oh, and the size of the effect, but that's because I'm an idiot who forgets things. And the sampling method. Ouch. But my point is still valid. For example Fisher's exact test can cope with teeny samples.
Sample size thresholds depend on the study, the test, and the effect. If you want to compare the weight of an elephant to that of a flea, you will not need a hundred of both for a valid test. Sample sizes of around 30-40 are not uncommon. People on PB are far too quick to say "oh, the sample size is too small" and every time they do you can hear me screaming in the background "too small for what???"
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Do piss off.
That's an odd reaction, and I'm not sure why you think I merited it. Have a little look around and you'll see that it's a commonly held belief that Franco's regime was not, in fact, fascist.
That shouldn't be mistaken for any level of approval. Franco was a despicable monster and the world was measurably better the day he died. His remains should be removed from their current resting place and thrown into the sea.
But not every monster gets the label "fascist". Fascism actually means something. It's not a catch-all label for bad people. We can have the conversation about whether Franco qualifies without resorting to angry outbursts. Well, I can.
I'd call my response derisively dismissive rather than angry. I think using fascism as a catch all for bad people is exactly what you're doing. Your grand statement about the impossibility of peace with fascism was contradicted directly, so you've decided Franco wasn't a Fascist after all. OK then.
As a matter of fact we've been at peace with most of the world's fascist regimes.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Do piss off.
That's an odd reaction, and I'm not sure why you think I merited it. Have a little look around and you'll see that it's a commonly held belief that Franco's regime was not, in fact, fascist.
That shouldn't be mistaken for any level of approval. Franco was a despicable monster and the world was measurably better the day he died. His remains should be removed from their current resting place and thrown into the sea.
But not every monster gets the label "fascist". Fascism actually means something. It's not a catch-all label for bad people. We can have the conversation about whether Franco qualifies without resorting to angry outbursts. Well, I can.
I'd call my response derisively dismissive rather than angry. I think using fascism as a catch all for bad people is exactly what you're doing. Your grand statement about the impossibility of peace with fascism was contradicted directly, so you've decided Franco wasn't a Fascist after all. OK then.
As a matter of fact we've been at peace with most of the world's fascist regimes.
Went to the amazing 180 year old Shrewsbury wine merchants of Tanners today. They showed me the 14th century attics and Georgian cellars etc. The present boss also showed me this remarkable pic of his great grandfather
Why is it remarkable? Because of that wound on his upper left cheekbone
He was shot straight through the head at Ypres age 20. Yet survived. Apparently he had doctors marvelling over him - as a miracle - for the rest of his days. He went on to have a rich full life of kids and grandkids and wine selling and fox hunting and died in his bed aged a million or whatever
Fascism is a slippery bastard, because at its core it's comfortable with internal contradiction and anti-intellectualism. It's less a system of thought and more a pattern of actions.
If we disagree about this or that regime having the label, it's not the end of the world.
There's a touch of 'you know it when you see it' about it. Bit like racism or misogyny. Often the straining for a definition fails the cost/benefit test, and sometimes even hinders understanding.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
Supporters of Ukraine certainly need to be thinking about a Trump presidency on the horizon. How would we deal with that? First and foremost by getting them as much support as possible NOW.
Simple, just stop Trump. There are several ways to make that happen.
Trump can stop weapons being transferred, which is bad, but an outgoing Biden administration would surely transfer tens of billions of slush fund money before the handover.
You do kind of need the actual arms.Russia has a lot of cash but struggles quite badly to get the best kit. And the US is in fact an enormously important producer of arms, and not just a wealthy uncle.
To see it you'll probably need binoculars and to be up an hour before dawn. The Independent is probably making ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ do a lot of work here.
I'm baffled by people on the left who recommend some kind of accommodation with Russia. Russia is literally fascist these days.
There can be no peace with fascism. It's not even an unwise choice, it's literally not available. People on the left ought to know this better than most.
There was peace with fascist Spain from 1939 to 1975, that seemed satisfactory.
The labelling of Franco's Spain as fascist is possibly problematic. I personally reject the label in that case, and I'm not alone in that.
Do piss off.
That's an odd reaction, and I'm not sure why you think I merited it. Have a little look around and you'll see that it's a commonly held belief that Franco's regime was not, in fact, fascist.
That shouldn't be mistaken for any level of approval. Franco was a despicable monster and the world was measurably better the day he died. His remains should be removed from their current resting place and thrown into the sea.
But not every monster gets the label "fascist". Fascism actually means something. It's not a catch-all label for bad people. We can have the conversation about whether Franco qualifies without resorting to angry outbursts. Well, I can.
I'd call my response derisively dismissive rather than angry. I think using fascism as a catch all for bad people is exactly what you're doing. Your grand statement about the impossibility of peace with fascism was contradicted directly, so you've decided Franco wasn't a Fascist after all. OK then.
As a matter of fact we've been at peace with most of the world's fascist regimes.
The Progressive Alliance 🟥🟩🟧 @TheProgAlliance • OK we're calling it. We've crunched, mulled, and mashed the stats and we're suggesting a #tacticalvote for the @LibDems in #MidBedfordshire. This *might* change nearer the poll but we'd say it's a slim chance
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
Supporters of Ukraine certainly need to be thinking about a Trump presidency on the horizon. How would we deal with that? First and foremost by getting them as much support as possible NOW.
Simple, just stop Trump. There are several ways to make that happen.
Trump can stop weapons being transferred, which is bad, but an outgoing Biden administration would surely transfer tens of billions of slush fund money before the handover.
You do kind of need the actual arms.Russia has a lot of cash but struggles quite badly to get the best kit. And the US is in fact an enormously important producer of arms, and not just a wealthy uncle.
UKR is fucked if Trump wins. Yet another reason to stop him at all costs.
"This is simply an extraordinary study. Researchers gave $7,500 (CAD) to homeless people in Vancouver. The result? The program *saved* money. It helped many of them to move into housing faster, which saved the shelter system $8,277 per person. 🧵👇"
They had some screening criteria: age 19 to 65, homeless for less than 2 years, Canadian citizen or permanent resident, nonsevere levels of substance use, alcohol use, and mental health symptoms. Among people who passed the screening criteria they assigned them randomly.
So the same approach may or may not work with - say - people with drug addiction.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
Supporters of Ukraine certainly need to be thinking about a Trump presidency on the horizon. How would we deal with that? First and foremost by getting them as much support as possible NOW.
Simple, just stop Trump. There are several ways to make that happen.
Trump can stop weapons being transferred, which is bad, but an outgoing Biden administration would surely transfer tens of billions of slush fund money before the handover.
You do kind of need the actual arms.Russia has a lot of cash but struggles quite badly to get the best kit. And the US is in fact an enormously important producer of arms, and not just a wealthy uncle.
UKR is fucked if Trump wins. Yet another reason to stop him at all costs.
I am beginning to hear talk of Covid again. In the hospitality industry. Cancellations and the like. No one is sure how seriously to take it
May just be paranoia. I for one cannot go through that AGAIN
It's like flu. It's never going to go away. But as we get vaccinated and we adapt to it, the disruption to our lives lessens considerably. I'm not worried if there is another wave this year, because we've adapted now.
I am beginning to hear talk of Covid again. In the hospitality industry. Cancellations and the like. No one is sure how seriously to take it
May just be paranoia. I for one cannot go through that AGAIN
No lockdowns. No matter what. Absolutely must not do that again.
We can't afford it, it arguably didn't work after the initial - we have no idea what this is - few weeks and it is a fecking disaster long term for mental health and kids learning, country's finance and so on.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
Supporters of Ukraine certainly need to be thinking about a Trump presidency on the horizon. How would we deal with that? First and foremost by getting them as much support as possible NOW.
Simple, just stop Trump. There are several ways to make that happen.
Trump can stop weapons being transferred, which is bad, but an outgoing Biden administration would surely transfer tens of billions of slush fund money before the handover.
You do kind of need the actual arms.Russia has a lot of cash but struggles quite badly to get the best kit. And the US is in fact an enormously important producer of arms, and not just a wealthy uncle.
UKR is fucked if Trump wins. Yet another reason to stop him at all costs.
USA is fucked if Trump wins!
Indeed. But at least that would be self-inflicted rather than imposed as will happen to the Ukrainians.
You made a comment about Twitter/X's advertising revenues that was simply not true.
A meaningful proportion of Twitter's revenue decline was entirely self inflicted, and had nothing to do with the ADL or any organized conspiracy.
Within days of taking over, Twitter fired a host of engineers and switched off dozens of microservices. One of those was the two factor authentication system for advertisers. For several days. smaller advertisers simply couldn't login to spend money on advertising. And there was no-one to call!
That locked out thousands of smaller advertisers from the platform for a couple of days. And all those people will have reevaluated where they want to spend their money.
Ok, it's wrong to say that none of the decline was organic but this doesn't mean that the boycott campaign and general atmosphere of hysteria surrounding the takeover had no effect.
It's also not to say that the new proprietor deliberately provoking political controversy and posting dodgy far right tropes didn't have a more significant effect than any 'general atmosphere of hysteria' ('hysteria' also being a right wing trope of long standing).
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
A lot of the analyses consider the possible changes in Russia, the US or Europe. The Ukrainians are actors in this, as well.
This reminds me of the debates around the Yugoslav Wars, where the Serbs were seen as having agency, as opposed to the Bosnians and Croats who were seen as passive victims, by the solemn writers of newspaper columns and the diplomats briefing them.
That is an excellent point.
I recall one column written after the start of the offensive that ended the war. The writer pretty much stated that the Croats and Bosnians, because they were fighting back and winning, were no longer the unambiguously Good Guys. Because “the arrogance and confident laughter” of some advancing Croat soldiers, riding on an APC, jarred his sensibilities. He preferred them as victims.
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
Supporters of Ukraine certainly need to be thinking about a Trump presidency on the horizon. How would we deal with that? First and foremost by getting them as much support as possible NOW.
Simple, just stop Trump. There are several ways to make that happen.
Trump can stop weapons being transferred, which is bad, but an outgoing Biden administration would surely transfer tens of billions of slush fund money before the handover.
You do kind of need the actual arms.Russia has a lot of cash but struggles quite badly to get the best kit. And the US is in fact an enormously important producer of arms, and not just a wealthy uncle.
UKR is fucked if Trump wins. Yet another reason to stop him at all costs.
USA is fucked if Trump wins!
Indeed. But at least that would be self-inflicted rather than imposed as will happen to the Ukrainians.
It is about time Europe funded more of its own defence, including for Ukraine, rather than relying on the US.
Germany especially. Whether Trump wins again next year or lot sooner or later the US will elect an isolationist President again
You made a comment about Twitter/X's advertising revenues that was simply not true.
A meaningful proportion of Twitter's revenue decline was entirely self inflicted, and had nothing to do with the ADL or any organized conspiracy.
Within days of taking over, Twitter fired a host of engineers and switched off dozens of microservices. One of those was the two factor authentication system for advertisers. For several days. smaller advertisers simply couldn't login to spend money on advertising. And there was no-one to call!
That locked out thousands of smaller advertisers from the platform for a couple of days. And all those people will have reevaluated where they want to spend their money.
Ok, it's wrong to say that none of the decline was organic but this doesn't mean that the boycott campaign and general atmosphere of hysteria surrounding the takeover had no effect.
Yes, calling for a boycott is intended to have an effect.
Its also entirely legal.
There is no law against calling for a boycott. In fact, its free speech. Something Musk supposedly supported.
There is no such thing as saying "I believe in free speech - except speech which I dislike".
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
I think most who wish to support Ukraine for as long as they wish to continue fighting, rather than urging them to settle, are most worried about moral hazard. Game theory, essentially.
I would say this is probably the dividing line within the broadly pro-Ukrainian camp.
One view is comfortable Russia can be bright to negotiate a settlement that it will either voluntarily stick to, or it can be made through diplomatic pressure to stick to. Therefore, by this logic, further bloodshed in this war is avoidable and there is a better outcome. This is the “off ramp” thinking that dominated the early days of 2022 in Western European capitals.
The other view is that peace now guarantees a worse war later. This view has zero trust in Russia to keep its word, and believes it cannot be contained diplomatically. That any settlement will be taken as a win and a chance to regroup ahead of the next invasion, cyber attack, poisoning or whatever. That Russia is a classic bully that only respects force. This is the thinking of much of Eastern Europe since 1991.
I have gone on a journey to the second of those since 2014. I was quite forgiving of Russia, enjoyed the culture, I worked with Russian colleagues and clients, visited several times. Saw Russians as simply unfortunate to live under a corrupt government. I thought Putin could be contained and managed, as indeed I still think is the case with Xi in China. After 2014 I started to sense the problem went deeper than Putin but I was still a little in denial.
It was the behaviour in Syria supporting the revolting Assad (which then made me clock just his brutal they’d been in Chechnya) and then the brazen poisonings in Salisbury and Wagner’s carrying on in Africa that made me see the Russian state itself as a uniquely poisonous criminal organisation. It was also the Salisbury poisonings that gave me that moment of clarity on Corbyn too.
These are good comments. I suppose the problem is that if you decide to go all in for a long war with Russia to avoid a worse war later, then you have to be pretty certain that you are going to win it, otherwise you lose anyway. I don't think we can have anything like that certainty at the moment. I think that is fundamentally the danger of the idea of 'backing Ukraine while they want to carry on fighting', it could be a path to just losing anyway further down the line.
There is some careful calibration I can see going on around escalation. NATO countries know they could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war and presumably the same is true of a NATO-supplied Ukraine. But as of now they’re only providing land fighting equipment - no aircraft, no naval ships (which would he practically difficult admittedly), no cruise missiles, nothing long range - because of the risks of provoking nuclear war.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
Supporters of Ukraine certainly need to be thinking about a Trump presidency on the horizon. How would we deal with that? First and foremost by getting them as much support as possible NOW.
Simple, just stop Trump. There are several ways to make that happen.
Trump can stop weapons being transferred, which is bad, but an outgoing Biden administration would surely transfer tens of billions of slush fund money before the handover.
You do kind of need the actual arms.Russia has a lot of cash but struggles quite badly to get the best kit. And the US is in fact an enormously important producer of arms, and not just a wealthy uncle.
UKR is fucked if Trump wins. Yet another reason to stop him at all costs.
USA is fucked if Trump wins!
Indeed. But at least that would be self-inflicted rather than imposed as will happen to the Ukrainians.
It is about time Europe funded more of its own defence, including for Ukraine, rather than relying on the US.
Germany especially. Whether Trump wins again next year or lot sooner or later the US will elect an isolationist President again
This is probably true. I don't think any of W.Europe has the stomach for that though.
I am beginning to hear talk of Covid again. In the hospitality industry. Cancellations and the like. No one is sure how seriously to take it
May just be paranoia. I for one cannot go through that AGAIN
I looked at the numbers for the first time in months the other day. Those sites, the gov one and Zoe are still all there. Daughter been hacking a bit for a few days, but clear today. End of summer holidays contact upswing, but nothing yet to indicate it's beyond the bounds of the last dozen undulations over the last 18 months.
You made a comment about Twitter/X's advertising revenues that was simply not true.
A meaningful proportion of Twitter's revenue decline was entirely self inflicted, and had nothing to do with the ADL or any organized conspiracy.
Within days of taking over, Twitter fired a host of engineers and switched off dozens of microservices. One of those was the two factor authentication system for advertisers. For several days. smaller advertisers simply couldn't login to spend money on advertising. And there was no-one to call!
That locked out thousands of smaller advertisers from the platform for a couple of days. And all those people will have reevaluated where they want to spend their money.
Ok, it's wrong to say that none of the decline was organic but this doesn't mean that the boycott campaign and general atmosphere of hysteria surrounding the takeover had no effect.
Yes, calling for a boycott is intended to have an effect.
Its also entirely legal.
There is no law against calling for a boycott. In fact, its free speech. Something Musk supposedly supported.
There is no such thing as saying "I believe in free speech - except speech which I dislike".
Exactly. It's his hypocrisy that is causing particular hilarity on this one, if he'd never pretended to be a free speech absolutist he'd get a lot less shit for throwing snowflakey tantrums about people saying nasty things to harm his business, especially when speech is part of that business. He did pretend to be, and it's been shown to be false.
I am beginning to hear talk of Covid again. In the hospitality industry. Cancellations and the like. No one is sure how seriously to take it
May just be paranoia. I for one cannot go through that AGAIN
No lockdowns. No matter what. Absolutely must not do that again.
We can't afford it, it arguably didn't work after the initial - we have no idea what this is - few weeks and it is a fecking disaster long term for mental health and kids learning, country's finance and so on.
Completely agree. If it’s back we just have to endure it and carry on, as our forefathers did, through plague, war, disaster, Blitz….
No more hiding away and slowly but inexorably going mad - especially the kids. Enough
Paul Mason @paulmasonnews 7/ Karaganov wants Russia to pre-emptively nuke NATO countries and to make the case for doing so with the BRICS. He wants to annex Ukraine east of the Dnipro and turn the rest into an "agricultural hinterland" (as Nazi Germany intended with Ukraine)...
Paul Mason @paulmasonnews 8/ He wants to indoctrinate UA population and send 2 million prisoners to Siberia. Anybody - I don't care how many Marxist classics you have read - anybody siding with this bunch of fascist psychopaths, and anyone giving left cover to the BRICS project - you know what you're doing...
I guess you have no plan to "stop all this in its tracks", aside from giving Russia what it wants of Ukraine (the Nick Palmer approach?)
Disagreement is fine, but you shouldn't misrepresent me. I was on a platform with Jeremy Hunt denouncing the invasion and calling for support for Ukraine soon after it happened. I'm glad they were prevented from taking Kyiv and the west where literally almost nobody wants them. And thus I don't favour giving Russia Ukraine. But I favour encouraging a ceasefire on the current line.
The situation in Ukraine seems to be one which a lot of active posters behave in a tribal way, you have to agree completely with them or else you are out of the tribe. This just prevents useful discussion of it, it is true for other areas as well. If you think in this way - complete victory or nothing, good vs evil, light vs dark... then you aren't really going to develop much real insight in to issues, or be very good at predicting what is going to happen in the world.
I think it's quite possible to have useful discussions and also nuanced opinions about Ukraine, for instance to believe that whilst Ukraine should be supported to regain all its lost territory that is unlikely to happen or be supported to that full goal by Western backers. And as such to consider what unpalatable options might crop up and what might happen.
However, it is also the case that opinions can be cloaked in nuanced or mild language, yet not be very nuanced at all when broken down to their basic points, which just mirror pro or anti talking points, dressed up better. And that deserves pointing out when it happens (some might claim it of my own input, gods forbid).
It is also the case that some elements are, on a moral level, rather straightforward. Things are not usually black and white, and I'm a firm proponent of acknowledging that. But sometimes they are black and white, and an attempt at balance can lead to false conclusions, and that should be acknowledged too.
Yes this is black and white. Right is all on one side and wrong is on the other. You don't demonstrate pragmatism or free thinking or man of the worldness by saying otherwise. You're just mistaken.
But all that means is you have to want Ukraine to win. It doesn't mean you have to predict that they will or that you have to be up for supporting them militarily come what may for as long as it takes. I find that a bit postury.
This is actually quite a good example of the tribal reaction I am describing. There are loads of things going on in the world that we may find morally repulsive and can be framed in a similarly black and white way... obvious example being the Uighurs, but an endless list of others too.
The reality here is that the situation in Ukraine can go backwards just as the situation with the Taliban went backwards. The rights and wrongs of the conflict are of little consequence to predicting what might happen. In this context it just gets annoying to be lectured continuously that 'we must keep supporting them until Russia is beaten back' with appeals to morality. Why Russia and not the taliban? Why not China?
You're essentially agreeing with my post then, I think. I'm strongly supportive of keeping with Ukraine but I don't find the 'whatever it takes and come what may' rhetoric particularly sensible or appealing.
It’s back to the game theory. Either you think peace on Russian terms secures peace long term, or you think it encourages them to come back for seconds.
Taking the emotion and talk of good and evil out of it, that’s a purely tactical question.
That's not quite my point though. Even if you think at this juncture (as I do) that 'we' should be supporting Ukraine's counter offensive rather than steering them to negotiate a settlement it doesn't follow that this must always remain the case or that all other considerations must be forever trumped by the need for Russia to be totally defeated. You have to be prepared to adjust your position according to developments.
I think that’s a straw man though, I doubt many people privately think all considerations must forever be trumped by the need for Russia to be totally defeated.
It’s the sometimes unseemly enthusiasm with which some commentators seek to reach an accommodation with Russia that grates, especially when we know Russian trolls read and interact with this site.
Comments
We should have acted more robustly when Russia invaded Georgia too, and when they committed war crimes in Syria.
As a matter of fact we've been at peace with most of the world's fascist regimes.
Here's Wiki's list:
Albania: 1939-1943; 1943-1944
Austria: 1934-1938; 1938-1945
Chile: 1932-1938
China: 1932-1945
Croatia: 1941-1945
El Salvador: 1931-1944
France: 1940-1944
Germany: 1933-1945
Haiti: 1957-1986
Hungary 1932-1945
Iran: 1975-1978 (disupted)
Italy: 1922-1945
Japan: 1931-1945
Lebanon: 1936-1990 (disputed)
Netherlands: 1923-1945
Norway: 1942-1945
Philippines: 1942-1945
Portugal: 1933-1974
Romania: 1940-1944
San Marino: 1923-1943; 1944-1945
Slovakia: 1939-1945
Spain: 1936-1975
South Africa: 1924-1994 (disputed)
Yugoslavia: 1935-1939; 1941-1945
https://x.com/johnrentoul/status/1699494552791380207
In practice, Franco's Spain was seen as a notch or two less bad than Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy; hence only one of the three was allowed to die peacefully in his bed.
"Instead, I want to introduce a new argument: that higher minimum wages may be contributing to homelessness, a problem that is, of course, particularly bad in California.
This suggestion comes from Seth J. Hill, a professor of political science at the University of California San Diego, who recently published a striking analysis of cities that raised their minimum wages between 2006 and 2019. He found that in these cities homelessness grew by double-digit percentage points. The effect was larger for cities with bigger minimum-wage increases, and it also appeared to get stronger over time."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/13/higher-minimum-wages-increase-homelessness/
Here's a link to the study, for the ambitious: https://osf.io/z2fqj/
(The overall argument reminds me of Roger Miller's "King of the Road":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c7D0YsgnrE )
Napoleon's France, on the other hand, had the first and the third, but not really the second. So I wouldn't count it as Fascist either, though it was also unpleasant.
But all these arguments ultimately come down to definitions, so I'm not sure they're of much value.
Taking the emotion and talk of good and evil out of it, that’s a purely tactical question.
Sept. 6, 2023 at 4:02 p.m.
During cross examination, Ken Paxton’s lead attorney Tony Buzbee accused former first assistant attorney general Jeff Mateer, of “staging a coup” against Paxton.
In a meandering, hours-long cross examination, Buzbee often jumped from one line of questioning to the other as he insinuated that Mateer and other senior staff were colluding against Paxton by meeting with the governor and lobbyists from the group Texans for Lawsuit Reform and by moving to have the attorney general’s office hire an outside lawyer before approaching the FBI about Paxton’s relationship with Paxton donor and friend Nate Paul.
“You were involved in staging a coup, weren’t you?” Buzbee asked.
“Absolutely not,” Mateer responded.
Buzbee also repeatedly accused Mateer of removing Paxton’s name from official letterhead, arguing that it amounted to altering a government record in violation of state law. Mateer said he signed the letter in question, but denied making any changes to the letterhead.
At times, Mateer sparred with Buzbee as Paxton’s defense lawyer tried to question Mateer’s decision making.
“You’re trying to misstate things,” Mateer said to Buzbee at one point in the cross examination. Upon conclusion of cross examination, House lawyer Rusty Hardin started a new line of follow up questions for Mateer.
SSI - new witness being questioned by lawyer for Texas House (body that impeached Paxton), think he's another former assistant state AG.
Here's the thing, though. Google's entire business - it's close to a billion dollars a day in advertising revenue - is on the back of smaller companies like Just.
Google gave us the tools to get past GEICO and Progressive and speak just to the people who might want our product.
Small companies don't have the luxury of boycotting channels because of "hysteria". I need to make my numbers, because if I don't make my numbers, then I won't be able to raise investment, and if I can't raise investment, I won't have employees or a business.
Twitter had been losing small companies for a long-time. And it was becoming increasingly dependent on big brands writing big cheques,
And that's a problem.
Budweiser cares about "reputational risk". Now, you can say this is hysteria or bullshit. But just as Smith & Wesson doesn't want to advertise in the middle of documentary about the Parkland shooting, well, some brands don't want to be placed next to people promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Musk wants Twitter to be a haven for free speech. Great!
But you can't then complain when people say "you know what, I don't see the benefit of advertising on that channel, it's too reputationally risky."
Or at least, you can complain, but you will get laughed at.
Trump 42% (+5)
Biden 37%
Biden 35% (+2)
DeSantis 33%
@premisedata, 1,701 Adults, 8/30-9/5
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/20230906_US_Premise.pdf
* The size of the sample is dependent on the (implied or overt) test.
* You can have an implied test (where you estimate a thing to a certain accuracy, which is an implied test between your thing and the accuracy) or an overt test (is your thing significantly different to another thing).
* If you don't have an (implied or overt) test then your sample can be as big or small as you like, but because there is there no test there are few conclusions you can draw.
* So you cannot say whether a sample is too small without specifying the test for which it is too small
I mean, we can debate where he sits in the hierarchy of sh1ts, but being seen as horrible doesn't put you in danger from foreign countries. Being seen as a direct and immediate threat does.
They didn't declare war on their neighbours?
Facebook makes a lot of money from small companies which are day-to-day profitable as well, does it not? The local florist, restaurant etc?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/02/donald-trump-fascist-nazi-right-wing/
This was written before the 6th Jan riot though.
I do find Unberto Eco’s list of fascist features useful and familiar in a number of regimes.
Russia used to exist in that space, being awful and acquisitive, but most places looked the other way and hoped they would cause too much trouble close by again. But then it did happen again and the ones closest to it at least have admirably recognised that they cannot pretend anymore, since that didn't work.
People will disagree about how much the UK for example should involve itself as a result, but it is at the least a different situation to, say, a less demonstrably awful place.
https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/francos-plan-to-invade-portugal-was-serious/52399
Would the world have tried to stop him?
https://www.astronomy.com/observing/comet-nishimura-is-brightening-fast-see-it-now/
Quit hoping, wishing, & praying for something that ain’t gonna happen. Trump will be the nominee, he was always going to be the nominee, & he’s got a damn good shot of getting elected again. To defeat him, we must first accept this truth.
@WalshFreedom
It's a bit of a contrast with the 'Trump will never win and that's why he should be opposed' crowd.
- Join multinational cooperation.
- Throw a strop when it doesn't get its own way.
- Leave.
- Build its own thing and deploys it.
- Return to step one.
Remember why Concorde is spelt with an "e" on the end...It has the right logo. It links to the Premise Twitter account (https://twitter.com/premisedata).
But here's the thing:
(1) Premise Data is not a polling company
(2) the Premise Twitter feed (the one linked) has no record of this poll
(3) the Premise website has no political polling, and certainly has no record of a bi-weekly poll
I have reached out to Premise directly to see if it is their's.
Hungary under Horthy is a similar case, in my view.
Franco was a social reactionary at his core, I think.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66733736
Is the time between Trump losing cases getting shorter? Can we extrapolate forwards? Will he be losing multiple court decisions per day by 2024?
Like many a blossoming media pundit he is gradually trading in credibility for saying things fans want to hear, even if it gets more ridiculous, and in time may end up like Matt Goodwin. I don't think he's there yet though, but it is a danger he needs to be careful about.
On this issue? I've not read his take on the ECHR yet, but based on what he's written in the past few years I'd have assumed that was his longstanding position.
My point is that Twitter offers next to no targeting, and is therefore very dependent on big brands. That's clearly not true of either Google or Facebook.
The only reason Russia has not been completely crushed is its nuclear deterrent, which I suppose shows the power of nuclear deterrents.
The biggest risk leading to loss must surely be fatigue. However, I think we assume Ukraine might grow tired before Russia does because we’re used to foreign wars of Western powers that aren’t that emotionally invested in the outcome, rather than existential wars of survival which this is for Ukraine. Russia’s ambition is to delete Ukraine as a nation from the face of the planet, and make it a province of Russia.
The fatigue if it comes will come from America. That probably depends rather a lot on those US Trump v Biden opinion polls.
I suppose Libya might be an example as well - no so much about being a direct threat, but Gaddafi made no real international allies worth a damn, so in a period when intervention was still blooming, he was screwed. Even China and Russia abstained on a UN vote about Libya, a tacit green light.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
Though the raspberry goes to Reddit, whose ad UI is so bad I’ve never managed to successfully place any advertising there at all.
This reminds me of the debates around the Yugoslav Wars, where the Serbs were seen as having agency, as opposed to the Bosnians and Croats who were seen as passive victims, by the solemn writers of newspaper columns and the diplomats briefing them.
Paul Mason
@paulmasonnews
7/ Karaganov wants Russia to pre-emptively nuke NATO countries and to make the case for doing so with the BRICS. He wants to annex Ukraine east of the Dnipro and turn the rest into an "agricultural hinterland" (as Nazi Germany intended with Ukraine)...
Paul Mason
@paulmasonnews
8/ He wants to indoctrinate UA population and send 2 million prisoners to Siberia. Anybody - I don't care how many Marxist classics you have read - anybody siding with this bunch of fascist psychopaths, and anyone giving left cover to the BRICS project - you know what you're doing...
https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/1699381648783991245
https://www.premise.com/blog/the-new-and-improved-premise-app-launches/
Not necessarily the most scientific survey ever maybe?
Why?
But in a real-world study, a hundred is small. It means you can get statistical significance at the 5% level if something happens to three of your guys. When the treatment and control groups aren't random but instead contingent on choice of service provider, this is far from implausible.
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/comet-nishumura-earth-space-astronomy-b2405601.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher's_exact_test
Sample size thresholds depend on the study, the test, and the effect. If you want to compare the weight of an elephant to that of a flea, you will not need a hundred of both for a valid test. Sample sizes of around 30-40 are not uncommon. People on PB are far too quick to say "oh, the sample size is too small" and every time they do you can hear me screaming in the background "too small for what???"
@williamnhutton
·
2h
Rejoining Horizon is excellent news. Of course it’s a tragedy that our leadership is over and the 3 year limbo was unnecessary, but British and European science is the stronger. Thank God. UK to return to EU’s flagship Horizon science research programme
Why is it remarkable? Because of that wound on his upper left cheekbone
He was shot straight through the head at Ypres age 20. Yet survived. Apparently he had doctors marvelling over him - as a miracle - for the rest of his days. He went on to have a rich full life of kids and grandkids and wine selling and fox hunting and died in his bed aged a million or whatever
https://www.astronomy.com/observing/comet-nishimura-is-brightening-fast-see-it-now/
To see it you'll probably need binoculars and to be up an hour before dawn. The Independent is probably making ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ do a lot of work here.
@TheProgAlliance
• OK we're calling it. We've crunched, mulled, and mashed the stats and we're suggesting a #tacticalvote for the
@LibDems
in #MidBedfordshire. This *might* change nearer the poll but we'd say it's a slim chance
• Rutherglen by election: LAB odds-on over SNP
• Tamworth: LAB
https://twitter.com/TheProgAlliance/status/1698791915859157416
https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2222103120
They had some screening criteria: age 19 to 65, homeless for less than 2 years, Canadian citizen or permanent resident, nonsevere levels of substance use, alcohol use, and mental health symptoms. Among people who passed the screening criteria they assigned them randomly.
So the same approach may or may not work with - say - people with drug addiction.
May just be paranoia. I for one cannot go through that AGAIN
We can't afford it, it arguably didn't work after the initial - we have no idea what this is - few weeks and it is a fecking disaster long term for mental health and kids learning, country's finance and so on.
Germany especially. Whether Trump wins again next year or lot sooner or later the US will elect an isolationist President again
Its also entirely legal.
There is no law against calling for a boycott. In fact, its free speech. Something Musk supposedly supported.
There is no such thing as saying "I believe in free speech - except speech which I dislike".
Lots of undecideds though
No more hiding away and slowly but inexorably going mad - especially the kids. Enough
It’s the sometimes unseemly enthusiasm with which some commentators seek to reach an accommodation with Russia that grates, especially when we know Russian trolls read and interact with this site.