Huge racist anti-Indian thing going on Twitter at the moment. Haley back the ‘nativists’ - who of course aren’t.
Once again, The Nice People are oblivious to the context. Which MAGA are exploiting.
1) The Nice People signed up to NAFTA and other trade deals, removing trade barriers. 2) “If your job goes, learn to code” 3) American companies of a certain level of shittines, bought large numbers of visa’d people in (often from India) and forced their existing employees to hand over knowledge to them. Then fire the original employees.
As can be imagined, 3) goes down very very badly.
This creates a lake of gasoline, just looking for a match.
Indeed. By your standards thats a good post. Although it seems from my X feed that half of America turned white nationalist over their Turkey lunch yesterday.
It was 49.8% in November so that's not a massive shift.
I continue to be surprised at Kemi's political ineptness. What makes her think it is good politics to get into a Twitter/X spat with Farage over the numbers joining Reform? Why on earth does she want to give Farage even more publicity than he already has? (And note the spat is on her own X account, not the Conservative Party's, so it can't be blamed on poor advice). Farage will be loving it.
Huge racist anti-Indian thing going on Twitter at the moment. Haley back the ‘nativists’ - who of course aren’t.
Once again, The Nice People are oblivious to the context. Which MAGA are exploiting.
1) The Nice People signed up to NAFTA and other trade deals, removing trade barriers. 2) “If your job goes, learn to code” 3) American companies of a certain level of shittines, bought large numbers of visa’d people in (often from India) and forced their existing employees to hand over knowledge to them. Then fire the original employees.
As can be imagined, 3) goes down very very badly.
This creates a lake of gasoline, just looking for a match.
Indeed. By your standards thats a good post. Although it seems from my X feed that half of America turned white nationalist over their Turkey lunch yesterday.
It was 49.8% in November so that's not a massive shift.
I honestly see the Trump coalition imploding here. The likes of Vivek Ramaswamy have nothing in common with the MAGA base many of whom are basicaly white nationalists who hate Indians. Trump will try to hold it together but ultimately even hes not racist enough for much of his base who basically want the immigrants out and the jobs given to themselves.
Huge racist anti-Indian thing going on Twitter at the moment. Haley back the ‘nativists’ - who of course aren’t.
Once again, The Nice People are oblivious to the context. Which MAGA are exploiting.
1) The Nice People signed up to NAFTA and other trade deals, removing trade barriers. 2) “If your job goes, learn to code” 3) American companies of a certain level of shittines, bought large numbers of visa’d people in (often from India) and forced their existing employees to hand over knowledge to them. Then fire the original employees.
As can be imagined, 3) goes down very very badly.
This creates a lake of gasoline, just looking for a match.
Indeed. By your standards thats a good post. Although it seems from my X feed that half of America turned white nationalist over their Turkey lunch yesterday.
It was 49.8% in November so that's not a massive shift.
I honestly see the Trump coalition imploding here. The likes of Vivek Ramaswamy have nothing in common with the MAGA base many of whom are basicaly white nationalists who hate Indians. Trump will try to hold it together but ultimately even hes not racist enough for much of his base who basically want the immigrants out and the jobs given to themselves.
On topic, and to add to Cyclefree’s excellent article: We covered the Challenger disaster in some depth in Engineering Officer Training, and the instructor emphasised that the most crucial thing we should take away was a specific thing that was said to the senior engineers at Thiokol late in the day: “Take off your engineering hats and put your management hats on instead.”
Never ever “take off your engineering hat” in a safety-critical discussion.
Wolverhampton Wanderers two, Manchester United nil.
Don't follow football. But not at all surprised that after so many years of Alex Ferguson and his continuing influence behind the scenes his successors have all struggled. He should have retired and let go long before he did.
Nah, Musky baby said that such jet fighters were a scam, and we should just be building drone swarms instead...
It is a big deal. But whether it's something to be immediately worried about is another matter. The prototype F-35, the X-35, first flew in October 2000. The first F-35 flew in December 2006, and reached operational status in July 2015.
Six years from prototype to first flight; and another nine or so to get to initial operating capability.
Nowadays, having a plane fly is the easy bit. The hard bit is integrating all the systems on it to allow it to be a warfighter in the modern combat domains.
Huge racist anti-Indian thing going on Twitter at the moment. Haley back the ‘nativists’ - who of course aren’t.
Once again, The Nice People are oblivious to the context. Which MAGA are exploiting.
1) The Nice People signed up to NAFTA and other trade deals, removing trade barriers. 2) “If your job goes, learn to code” 3) American companies of a certain level of shittines, bought large numbers of visa’d people in (often from India) and forced their existing employees to hand over knowledge to them. Then fire the original employees.
As can be imagined, 3) goes down very very badly.
This creates a lake of gasoline, just looking for a match.
Indeed. By your standards thats a good post. Although it seems from my X feed that half of America turned white nationalist over their Turkey lunch yesterday.
It was 49.8% in November so that's not a massive shift.
I honestly see the Trump coalition imploding here. The likes of Vivek Ramaswamy have nothing in common with the MAGA base many of whom are basicaly white nationalists who hate Indians. Trump will try to hold it together but ultimately even hes not racist enough for much of his base who basically want the immigrants out and the jobs given to themselves.
But how does any 'implosion' manifest?
He's in.
It will probably mean things just get ultra chaotic as Trump thrashes around in desperation gradually ruining the country but not achieving much.
I continue to be surprised at Kemi's political ineptness. What makes her think it is good politics to get into a Twitter/X spat with Farage over the numbers joining Reform? Why on earth does she want to give Farage even more publicity than he already has? (And note the spat is on her own X account, not the Conservative Party's, so it can't be blamed on poor advice). Farage will be loving it.
Whitehall ‘braced for private schools collapse’ due to fee rises
The Independent Schools Council says the threat of closures after the imposition of VAT on fees is ‘very rea
Contingency plans are being drawn up in Whitehall for an influx in demand for state school places amid fears private schools will go bankrupt and close because of fee increases.
Officials are braced for the prospect that some independent schools may collapse when VAT on school fees comes into force in the new year.
Schools that are smaller, with lower fees and in areas with higher levels of competition are most at risk, government sources told The Times.
They are being monitored to see how they fare under the change, combined with publicly available information about their finances from Companies House.
Campaigners against the change warn some parents will be unable to pay a fee rise of 20 per cent, given some private schools are preparing to pass on the itIt in full.
The VAT imposition will come into effect on January 1, with Treasury estimates suggesting it will lead to 37,000 fewer private school pupils in the long term — equal to about 6 per cent of children at private schools.
However, there is expected to be a smaller, more immediate impact. About 3,000 children will be taken out of private schools and will need a state place before the end of the academic year, the government believes.
Smaller private schools will be hit in particular reducing parental choice.
Yet do we expect any better from this awful socialist government having already hit pensioners, business owners and farmers?
This government doesn't strike me as particularly 'socialist'.
It is the most socialist class war ridden government of my lifetime, even more than Brown's. Farmers, pensioners, small business owners, private school payments, the remaining hereditary peers, even foxhunters on scent trails are within the sights of Starmer and Reeves
If only that were true.
If it were they would already be directing Kent and Warwickshire to replace their Grammar schools with comprehensives. You are lucky I'm not Phillipson, from next September Grammar schools would all be phased out. Year one intake would be universal. Call me Mrs Thatcher if you like.
We should be holding ballots to open new grammar schools not just to close the remaining ones, absolutely not.
More pupils were in grammar schools at the end of the Thatcher and Major years than in 1979
Life changing academic assessment at aged 11 is immoral. And in those areas with Grammar schools the parents of Tim, nice but dims are paying for cramming lessons not available to Jim, clever but poor.
Clever pupils with high IQs will get in regardless of parents income or tutoring and be on a path to top universities and a profession.
All your attitude does is favour children with money who can choose private schools or state schools in wealthy catchment areas. That is why proper conservatives must fight such attitudes and push for more grammar schools
That really isn't true.
If you want a real meritocracy stick everyone in universal schools that stream in all the key subjects and see who gets the O and A levels.
No nod and a wink entry to Oxford and Cambridge because one went to Malvern College or Rodean.
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Nah, Musky baby said that such jet fighters were a scam, and we should just be building drone swarms instead...
Unfortunately Musk may well be in a position to impose his moronic views on people who make real decisions. Duncan Sandys' view in 1957 that manned fighters were obsolete cost the UK its military aviation industry.
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Well I wasn't expecting to see the Foxes 1 nil up at this point...
Huge racist anti-Indian thing going on Twitter at the moment. Haley back the ‘nativists’ - who of course aren’t.
Once again, The Nice People are oblivious to the context. Which MAGA are exploiting.
1) The Nice People signed up to NAFTA and other trade deals, removing trade barriers. 2) “If your job goes, learn to code” 3) American companies of a certain level of shittines, bought large numbers of visa’d people in (often from India) and forced their existing employees to hand over knowledge to them. Then fire the original employees.
As can be imagined, 3) goes down very very badly.
This creates a lake of gasoline, just looking for a match.
Is the "Nice People" a new term for the bean peasants?
Nice People = people who don’t think that setting fire to immigrants is a policy.
The point is that there is a huge resentment at various structure and behaviours. Health care and shooting CEOs etc.
The Nice People then wonder “But how can that happen? Why are they angry?”
You have some choices.
- Come up with a way to deal with the temptation for management to outsource everything. Except management. - Come up with a voting system that excludes those who aren’t happy with things - Be really happy when they vote in Trump, Farage, Meloni etc etc.
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Well I wasn't expecting to see the Foxes 1 nil up at this point...
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
You couldnt make it up. Musk has just tweeted complaining about being trolled on his social media platform. You have created a monster you cant control Musk and you arent racist enough for your fanboys.
Here are his words of wisdom.
At risk of starting the obvious, there are many attention-seeking trolls on all social media platforms trying to yank your chain.
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Well I wasn't expecting to see the Foxes 1 nil up at this point...
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Well I wasn't expecting to see the Foxes 1 nil up at this point...
Fog not as bad as you thought?
It's a bit hard to follow.
Happy to blow the final whistle now...
My prediction is that you will still be leading after 80 minutes and then the game will be abandoned.
Huge racist anti-Indian thing going on Twitter at the moment. Haley back the ‘nativists’ - who of course aren’t.
Once again, The Nice People are oblivious to the context. Which MAGA are exploiting.
1) The Nice People signed up to NAFTA and other trade deals, removing trade barriers. 2) “If your job goes, learn to code” 3) American companies of a certain level of shittines, bought large numbers of visa’d people in (often from India) and forced their existing employees to hand over knowledge to them. Then fire the original employees.
As can be imagined, 3) goes down very very badly.
This creates a lake of gasoline, just looking for a match.
Indeed. By your standards thats a good post. Although it seems from my X feed that half of America turned white nationalist over their Turkey lunch yesterday.
It was 49.8% in November so that's not a massive shift.
I honestly see the Trump coalition imploding here. The likes of Vivek Ramaswamy have nothing in common with the MAGA base many of whom are basicaly white nationalists who hate Indians. Trump will try to hold it together but ultimately even hes not racist enough for much of his base who basically want the immigrants out and the jobs given to themselves.
But how does any 'implosion' manifest?
He's in.
By-elections, scheduled 2025 elections, mid-terms? The 2025 Virginia gubernatorial election could be interesting.
Or possibly mass arrests, deportations and rioting. Is anything unlikely now in US politics?
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Well I wasn't expecting to see the Foxes 1 nil up at this point...
I'm amazed you can see anything with all the fog at the match
(*Edit* I'm way too slow with my hilarious jokes on here)
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Well I wasn't expecting to see the Foxes 1 nil up at this point...
Fog not as bad as you thought?
It's a bit hard to follow.
Happy to blow the final whistle now...
My prediction is that you will still be leading after 80 minutes and then the game will be abandoned.
I have a sadistic streak.
Under Ruud we are not a team that parks the bus.
Stolarczyzk gives me confidence though. He has been very good when he has come in.
I have never been a particular fan of Paul Krugman. He - like many commentators - would typically start from a conclusion and work backwards.
His New York Times column was a classic example of this, designed solely to drive clicks and shares as part of the NYTimes algorithm.
Since he's got his own Substack..., well, he's transformed.
Now, I tend to find myself slightly to the right of him on many political questions. But the slightly more long form, slightly more discursive, style really suits him. I'm actually enjoying reading his pieces.
This one for example, which dwells mostly on the fact that countries very rarely economically benefit from wars (even if they win), is absolutely spot on.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
Interesting listening to The Rest is Politics 'things of the year' conversation.
Fairly innocuous answers. The one that jumped out at me slightly was Stewart dropping in an anecdote about his 'friend who owns Kitty Fisher's in Mayfair', and after a tiktok review by an influencer it is now full of Chinese Couples, including from HK, eating steaks.
Checking the menu, that's about £180 for two people, three courses, plus wine, plus coffee *. Call it £250-275 with drinks - taking a £25 retail bottle (judging by 1 or 2 iI recognise) times three for the price.
The main gripe he quoted was that they don't buy enough wine.
Alistair and Rory need to watch it, or they will get out of touch .
I wonder if they are both in the income 1% - which is currently around £180k pa (says Statista), either before or after tax (they don't say which, and won't take a gmail address for registration).
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Well I wasn't expecting to see the Foxes 1 nil up at this point...
Fog not as bad as you thought?
It's a bit hard to follow.
Happy to blow the final whistle now...
My prediction is that you will still be leading after 80 minutes and then the game will be abandoned.
I have a sadistic streak.
Under Ruud we are not a team that parks the bus.
Stolarczyzk gives me confidence though. He has been very good when he has come in.
Stolarczyzk being a footballer, and not a drug you collect from the Royal Infirmary...?
Interesting listening to The Rest is Politics 'things of the year' conversation.
Fairly innocuous answers. The one that jumped out at me slightly was Stewart dropping in an anecdote about his 'friend who owns Kitty Fisher's in Mayfair', and after a tiktok review by an influencer it is now full of Chinese Couples, including from HK, eating steaks.
Checking the menu, that's about £180 for two people, three courses, plus wine, plus coffee *. Call it £250-275 with drinks - taking a £25 retail bottle (judging by 1 or 2 iI recognise) times three for the price.
The main gripe he quoted was that they don't buy enough wine.
Alistair and Rory need to watch it, or they will get out of touch .
I wonder if they are both in the income 1% - which is currently around £180k pa (says Statista), either before or after tax.
I'd be absolutely stunned if they weren't both multiple times over that income threshold.
I have never been a particular fan of Paul Krugman. He - like many commentators - would typically start from a conclusion and work backwards.
His New York Times column was a classic example of this, designed solely to drive clicks and shares as part of the NYTimes algorithm.
Since he's got his own Substack..., well, he's transformed.
Now, I tend to find myself slightly to the right of him on many political questions. But the slightly more long form, slightly more discursive, style really suits him. I'm actually enjoying reading his pieces.
This one for example, which dwells mostly on the fact that countries very rarely economically benefit from wars (even if they win), is absolutely spot on.
Lots of studies show that a really good thing for economic growth and general progress is stability. The UK rather missed stability with Brexit and a high turnover of Prime Ministers.
Trump does not deliver stability. I posted a few days back a paper showing how his first term hit US investment. But maybe I’m just a nice liberal with my chants of “What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!”
Whilst driving to a relative's this afternoon, my dad pointed out a layby on the A50 westbound, somewhere near Sudbury. The layby has been closed and coned off for about a year, with a solitary trailer standing in it. The trailer has had some wheels stolen.
*Apparently* it is filled with asbestos. Some scrotes do asbestos removal jobs, and instead of paying the disposal costs, they just filled up the trailer and dumped it in the layby. As it's a 'dangerous' cargo, the layby's been coned off, and because no-one wants to pay for disposal, the trailer has remained there whilst the council tries to work out who owns it. Good luck to them with that...
I say it is rather off-topic, but there are connections with the topic. The cargo is seen as dangerous, but no-one wants to take responsibility. We saw this with the ammonium nitrate that was stored in Beirut for years - before that went disastrously wrong.
The trailer has already had some wheels stolen. Imagine, perhaps, if some other scrotes try to set the trailer on fire. It won't be an explosion, but the resultant clean-up will be more costly. Someone needs to take responsibility and just FDI, because it'll be more expensive to do later, and the chances of finding the 'owners' and getting the funds to do it is miniscule.
My (somewhat prestigious) $work paid a quite handsome amount of money to some contractors to find all the asbestos across the estate. All dutifully marked with stickers to let people know where they couldn't drill or batter a nail in for fear of disturbing it.
Then paid a different set of contractors to redecorate the estate. Who dutifully painted over the stickers so now no-one knows where the asbestos is.
Now bidding for a new set of contractors to come find it all again.
(And yes, the findings of the original contractors were documented. But 'the guy' who got the documents retired and has no idea where they are now. Original contractors are now named differently and claim to have no idea either).
Our Uni car parks are never full anymore. Before 2020, f you weren't there by 9.30 ish you would be in the furthest overflow car park. Same if you had to pop out during the morning. Now there is always space in the main car parks. Is it working? Arguably yes and no. For academics there is usually something that requires physical attendance (lectures, tutorials, workshops, labs etc). Lot of meetings happen on line or mixed. But where it doesn’t work so well is support staff (the civil service of the uni, if you like). Often you just need a five minute face to face to resolve issues. But said staff are working from home. Yes teams/zoom is an option, but in reality the staff are not available. I suspect their work life balance and job satisfaction has improved. But it’s not helping mine…
I have never been a particular fan of Paul Krugman. He - like many commentators - would typically start from a conclusion and work backwards.
His New York Times column was a classic example of this, designed solely to drive clicks and shares as part of the NYTimes algorithm.
Since he's got his own Substack..., well, he's transformed.
Now, I tend to find myself slightly to the right of him on many political questions. But the slightly more long form, slightly more discursive, style really suits him. I'm actually enjoying reading his pieces.
This one for example, which dwells mostly on the fact that countries very rarely economically benefit from wars (even if they win), is absolutely spot on.
Lots of studies show that a really good thing for economic growth and general progress is stability. The UK rather missed stability with Brexit and a high turnover of Prime Ministers.
Trump does not deliver stability. I posted a few days back a paper showing how his first term hit US investment. But maybe I’m just a nice liberal with my chants of “What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!”
Germany had ample political stability under Merkel but the legacy seems to be a number of intractable crises. Stability is overrated.
Our Uni car parks are never full anymore. Before 2020, f you weren't there by 9.30 ish you would be in the furthest overflow car park. Same if you had to pop out during the morning. Now there is always space in the main car parks. Is it working? Arguably yes and no. For academics there is usually something that requires physical attendance (lectures, tutorials, workshops, labs etc). Lot of meetings happen on line or mixed. But where it doesn’t work so well is support staff (the civil service of the uni, if you like). Often you just need a five minute face to face to resolve issues. But said staff are working from home. Yes teams/zoom is an option, but in reality the staff are not available. I suspect their work life balance and job satisfaction has improved. But it’s not helping mine…
My uni moved everyone out of individual offices into big shared spaces some years ago. Everyone hated it. Now, they’re struggling to get people to come back to the office.
Our Uni car parks are never full anymore. Before 2020, f you weren't there by 9.30 ish you would be in the furthest overflow car park. Same if you had to pop out during the morning. Now there is always space in the main car parks. Is it working? Arguably yes and no. For academics there is usually something that requires physical attendance (lectures, tutorials, workshops, labs etc). Lot of meetings happen on line or mixed. But where it doesn’t work so well is support staff (the civil service of the uni, if you like). Often you just need a five minute face to face to resolve issues. But said staff are working from home. Yes teams/zoom is an option, but in reality the staff are not available. I suspect their work life balance and job satisfaction has improved. But it’s not helping mine…
My uni moved everyone out of individual offices into big shared spaces some years ago. Everyone hated it. Now, they’re struggling to get people to come back to the office.
Is that academic staff too? How are you supposed to meet tutees? And did it apply to the uni leadership too (VC, Deans etc). It usually doesn’t…
I have never been a particular fan of Paul Krugman. He - like many commentators - would typically start from a conclusion and work backwards.
His New York Times column was a classic example of this, designed solely to drive clicks and shares as part of the NYTimes algorithm.
Since he's got his own Substack..., well, he's transformed.
Now, I tend to find myself slightly to the right of him on many political questions. But the slightly more long form, slightly more discursive, style really suits him. I'm actually enjoying reading his pieces.
This one for example, which dwells mostly on the fact that countries very rarely economically benefit from wars (even if they win), is absolutely spot on.
Lots of studies show that a really good thing for economic growth and general progress is stability. The UK rather missed stability with Brexit and a high turnover of Prime Ministers.
Trump does not deliver stability. I posted a few days back a paper showing how his first term hit US investment. But maybe I’m just a nice liberal with my chants of “What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!”
Germany had ample political stability under Merkel but the legacy seems to be a number of intractable crises. Stability is overrated.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
Our Uni car parks are never full anymore. Before 2020, f you weren't there by 9.30 ish you would be in the furthest overflow car park. Same if you had to pop out during the morning. Now there is always space in the main car parks. Is it working? Arguably yes and no. For academics there is usually something that requires physical attendance (lectures, tutorials, workshops, labs etc). Lot of meetings happen on line or mixed. But where it doesn’t work so well is support staff (the civil service of the uni, if you like). Often you just need a five minute face to face to resolve issues. But said staff are working from home. Yes teams/zoom is an option, but in reality the staff are not available. I suspect their work life balance and job satisfaction has improved. But it’s not helping mine…
My uni moved everyone out of individual offices into big shared spaces some years ago. Everyone hated it. Now, they’re struggling to get people to come back to the office.
Is that academic staff too? How are you supposed to meet tutees? And did it apply to the uni leadership too (VC, Deans etc). It usually doesn’t…
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
Our Uni car parks are never full anymore. Before 2020, f you weren't there by 9.30 ish you would be in the furthest overflow car park. Same if you had to pop out during the morning. Now there is always space in the main car parks. Is it working? Arguably yes and no. For academics there is usually something that requires physical attendance (lectures, tutorials, workshops, labs etc). Lot of meetings happen on line or mixed. But where it doesn’t work so well is support staff (the civil service of the uni, if you like). Often you just need a five minute face to face to resolve issues. But said staff are working from home. Yes teams/zoom is an option, but in reality the staff are not available. I suspect their work life balance and job satisfaction has improved. But it’s not helping mine…
My uni moved everyone out of individual offices into big shared spaces some years ago. Everyone hated it. Now, they’re struggling to get people to come back to the office.
At lot of the admin function at my place were moved out to some generic office buildings a couple of miles away from the main site to 'free up space' for more important activities. Now those generic offices are going to be torn down for redevelopment by the owners. So now we either need to 'close down space' as we have a requirement to work in the office, or move them even further away to even more generic offices (which is very different to WFH).
In some way, beyond my understanding, this is all good and justifies the salary multiplier on my elders and betters.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
But we’re all within the system.
In what sense? We haven't all been, say, government advisers.
My friend in the FCO would love to return to the office, but there isn’t an office for her to return to.
We are supposed to do a minimum of 3 days per week in the office. But when you do the maths, based on the number of staff and number of desks, it doesn't work. So to ease the problem, I make the sacrifice of only going in 2 days.
And yes, I even logged in to the desk booking app today to secure my spot for two weeks tomorrow.
Our Uni car parks are never full anymore. Before 2020, f you weren't there by 9.30 ish you would be in the furthest overflow car park. Same if you had to pop out during the morning. Now there is always space in the main car parks. Is it working? Arguably yes and no. For academics there is usually something that requires physical attendance (lectures, tutorials, workshops, labs etc). Lot of meetings happen on line or mixed. But where it doesn’t work so well is support staff (the civil service of the uni, if you like). Often you just need a five minute face to face to resolve issues. But said staff are working from home. Yes teams/zoom is an option, but in reality the staff are not available. I suspect their work life balance and job satisfaction has improved. But it’s not helping mine…
My uni moved everyone out of individual offices into big shared spaces some years ago. Everyone hated it. Now, they’re struggling to get people to come back to the office.
Is that academic staff too? How are you supposed to meet tutees? And did it apply to the uni leadership too (VC, Deans etc). It usually doesn’t…
Don't be silly.
If you put them in shared offices, somebody might notice they weren't doing any work.
My friend in the FCO would love to return to the office, but there isn’t an office for her to return to.
Merging the FCO with DFID means half the team are in Glasgow anyway, so if it's going to be on Teams, might as well be at home.
But then you wouldn't need to pay £££ for some rented offices, pay people for contract negotiations with the building owners, and most important of all project managers and ... that guy. The expensive one who does that important thing which costs a lot but is never quite identified.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
But we’re all within the system.
In what sense? We haven't all been, say, government advisers.
The government, the civil service, the quangos *and* the electorate form a system.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
But we’re all within the system.
In what sense? We haven't all been, say, government advisers.
The government, the civil service, the quangos *and* the electorate form a system.
We are The Blob.
Having just finished off an overly large bowl of spiced-up leftovers, I entirely agree.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
But we’re all within the system.
In what sense? We haven't all been, say, government advisers.
The government, the civil service, the quangos *and* the electorate form a system.
We are The Blob.
And yet one of those has much less control over what happens (or not, as is the case more often than not).
Our Uni car parks are never full anymore. Before 2020, f you weren't there by 9.30 ish you would be in the furthest overflow car park. Same if you had to pop out during the morning. Now there is always space in the main car parks. Is it working? Arguably yes and no. For academics there is usually something that requires physical attendance (lectures, tutorials, workshops, labs etc). Lot of meetings happen on line or mixed. But where it doesn’t work so well is support staff (the civil service of the uni, if you like). Often you just need a five minute face to face to resolve issues. But said staff are working from home. Yes teams/zoom is an option, but in reality the staff are not available. I suspect their work life balance and job satisfaction has improved. But it’s not helping mine…
My uni moved everyone out of individual offices into big shared spaces some years ago. Everyone hated it. Now, they’re struggling to get people to come back to the office.
Is that academic staff too? How are you supposed to meet tutees? And did it apply to the uni leadership too (VC, Deans etc). It usually doesn’t…
Don't be silly.
If you put them in shared offices, somebody might notice they weren't doing any work.
I remember talking to some Googlers a while back who had been told to return to the office. 'Office' in the sense of 'cube-farm'. They guy (who wasn't named anything like Erik Zchmidt) who brought in the cube-farm policy and swans about now talking about how in-office working is so much better, 100% did not have an office the size of a generous presidential hotel suite all to himself. Which he visited once in a while, when it suited him.
I have never been a particular fan of Paul Krugman. He - like many commentators - would typically start from a conclusion and work backwards.
His New York Times column was a classic example of this, designed solely to drive clicks and shares as part of the NYTimes algorithm.
Since he's got his own Substack..., well, he's transformed.
Now, I tend to find myself slightly to the right of him on many political questions. But the slightly more long form, slightly more discursive, style really suits him. I'm actually enjoying reading his pieces.
This one for example, which dwells mostly on the fact that countries very rarely economically benefit from wars (even if they win), is absolutely spot on.
Lots of studies show that a really good thing for economic growth and general progress is stability. The UK rather missed stability with Brexit and a high turnover of Prime Ministers.
Trump does not deliver stability. I posted a few days back a paper showing how his first term hit US investment. But maybe I’m just a nice liberal with my chants of “What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!”
Germany had ample political stability under Merkel but the legacy seems to be a number of intractable crises. Stability is overrated.
1 It's the Telegrunt. 2 Do people add up better if you force them into offices? 3 The "as low as 5%" in the headline turns into higher numbers of 15-20% across most buildings. That 10% looks potentially questionable. 4 We get Bufton Tufton MP saying the first half of (summarised) "This Labour Government have failed to do in 3 months ... what the previous Conservative Government failed to do in X years". 5 They manage to get in both that the offices are too small, and that they are empty. 6 But Immigration, hit on a Department, hit on the Civil Service, hit on a Trade Union, and hit on the Govt ... they are in clover.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
But we’re all within the system.
In what sense? We haven't all been, say, government advisers.
The government, the civil service, the quangos *and* the electorate form a system.
We are The Blob.
And yet one of those has much less control over what happens (or not, as is the case more often than not).
They all have less power than *the others* think.
Indeed, if you managed to work out the power of all the groups in the System, it would add up to a great deal less than 100%. The Process owns the majority of the power.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
But we’re all within the system.
In what sense? We haven't all been, say, government advisers.
Malmesbury's theory goes beyond just government, AIUI. We are all part of society.
As for me, I don't think my views on most things changed when I became (or ceased to be) a government adviser.
1 It's the Telegrunt. 2 Do people add up better if you force them into offices? 3 The "as low as 5%" in the headline turns into an average of nearly 20% in the article. 4 We get Bufton Tufton MP saying the first half of (summarised) "This Labour Government have failed to do in 3 months ... what the previous Conservative Government failed to do in X years". 5 They manage to get in both that the offices are too small, and that they are empty. 6 But Immigration, hit on a Department, hit on the Civil Service, hit on a Trade Union, and hit on the Govt ... they are in clover.
1 It's the Telegrunt. 2 Do people add up better if you force them into offices? 3 The "as low as 5%" in the headline turns into an average of nearly 20% in the article. 4 We get Bufton Tufton MP saying the first half of (summarised) "This Labour Government have failed to do in 3 months ... what the previous Conservative Government failed to do in X years". 5 They manage to get in both that the offices are too small, and that they are empty. 6 But Immigration, hit on a Department, hit on the Civil Service, hit on a Trade Union, and hit on the Govt ... they are in clover.
I listen to (or try to) the Telegraph's podcast just to try and balance out my feeds. Listening to their columnists toe the line and rant about WFH while they're clearly dialling in to the show over zoom with a bad laptop microphone really grates my gears though.
The elephant in the room is that @elonmusk , who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total fucking drag on the Trump transition. @realDonaldTrump
He’s a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago.
He told Bob Iger at @Disney to “go fuck himself” over Ad money, but he won’t tell Xi JinPing and Li Qiang to go fuck themselves and he’s perfectly happy to take their money to fund his Shanghai Giga Factory.
Elon cock blocks the nominee meetings and tries to undermine anyone and everyone who doesn’t do his bidding. It’s wildly inappropriate how a guy with no experience in politics who has been a Democrat his entire life is now staffing the Trump admin.
He’s completely compromised by the CCP and he has unfettered access to President Trump.
This is fucked up and we need to stop it NOW!
It’s the biggest elephant in the room and everyone is too scared to talk about it.
Nah, Musky baby said that such jet fighters were a scam, and we should just be building drone swarms instead...
It is a big deal. But whether it's something to be immediately worried about is another matter. The prototype F-35, the X-35, first flew in October 2000. The first F-35 flew in December 2006, and reached operational status in July 2015.
Six years from prototype to first flight; and another nine or so to get to initial operating capability.
Nowadays, having a plane fly is the easy bit. The hard bit is integrating all the systems on it to allow it to be a warfighter in the modern combat domains.
The US tested their NGAD prototype several years back.
The point isn’t that China is ‘winning’, rather, as you note, they see the need for such an aircraft. Musk is pretty clearly wrong on this. Though some time down the road, he may well be right.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
But we’re all within the system.
In what sense? We haven't all been, say, government advisers.
The government, the civil service, the quangos *and* the electorate form a system.
We are The Blob.
And yet one of those has much less control over what happens (or not, as is the case more often than not).
They all have less power than *the others* think.
Indeed, if you managed to work out the power of all the groups in the System, it would add up to a great deal less than 100%. The Process owns the majority of the power.
I believe Sir Humphrey described the government as having the engine of a lawnmower and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce. That fits, but it's made worse that the only lever the public does have is often forced to be irrelevant by the lack of choice we are allowed.
1 It's the Telegrunt. 2 Do people add up better if you force them into offices? 3 The "as low as 5%" in the headline turns into an average of nearly 20% in the article. 4 We get Bufton Tufton MP saying the first half of (summarised) "This Labour Government have failed to do in 3 months ... what the previous Conservative Government failed to do in X years". 5 They manage to get in both that the offices are too small, and that they are empty. 6 But Immigration, hit on a Department, hit on the Civil Service, hit on a Trade Union, and hit on the Govt ... they are in clover.
I listen to (or try to) the Telegraph's podcast just to try and balance out my feeds. Listening to their columnists toe the line and rant about WFH while they're clearly dialling in to the show over zoom with a bad laptop microphone really grates my gears though.
I very highly recommend their military / foreign policy podcasts, but I don't know about their business ones, and the "what's on today" ones are a bit loopy *.
* The Daily T shares Camilla Tominey with GB News. But they do not have Mike Graham yet.
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Ooo no, it's not a 90% chance from here. 75 at most. I'm on at 8/1 and seriously thinking of cashing out at where it is now.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
Not necessarily. Reason says that at some point the penny will drop with American voters WRT Trump. Not yet. Quite the reverse.
Reform' chance of doing well - even being part of the mess out of which a future government emerges - does not worsen at all by photo ops of Farage looking like part of a trad English Boxing day scene. The takeaway, if any, is that Farage is on the side of ordinary trad English volk.
Reform's chance of doing well rests on exactly two major things: Can they carry on without blowing up; Can they still be present as a voting option when enough of the middling ground decides that everyone else has had a chance and blown it, and Reform are the last man standing.
A mistake nice liberals make: Trump can't win, there aren't enough extremists. Ditto Reform. Ditto Brexit.
Millions of non extremists can and do vote Trump. Ditto Leave. It can be the same with Reform.
A mistake nice,,, I don’t know what you would call yourself, but nice whatever that is… is that they confuse “can” and “will”.
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
The thing is, that it is percent possible to come up with policies that let the air out of the Alt-Rights tires, without becoming them.
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
I do not agree with your inertia theory.
People within the system wouldn't be expected to, tbf.
But we’re all within the system.
In what sense? We haven't all been, say, government advisers.
The government, the civil service, the quangos *and* the electorate form a system.
We are The Blob.
And yet one of those has much less control over what happens (or not, as is the case more often than not).
They all have less power than *the others* think.
Indeed, if you managed to work out the power of all the groups in the System, it would add up to a great deal less than 100%. The Process owns the majority of the power.
I believe Sir Humphrey described the government as having the engine of a lawnmower and the brakes of a Rolls-Royce. That fits, but it's made worse that the only lever the public does have is often forced to be irrelevant by the lack of choice we are allowed.
That was actually Hacker, when Annie asked him who had power.
Nah, Musky baby said that such jet fighters were a scam, and we should just be building drone swarms instead...
It is a big deal. But whether it's something to be immediately worried about is another matter. The prototype F-35, the X-35, first flew in October 2000. The first F-35 flew in December 2006, and reached operational status in July 2015.
Six years from prototype to first flight; and another nine or so to get to initial operating capability.
Nowadays, having a plane fly is the easy bit. The hard bit is integrating all the systems on it to allow it to be a warfighter in the modern combat domains.
The US tested their NGAD prototype several years back.
The point isn’t that China is ‘winning’, rather, as you note, they see the need for such an aircraft. Musk is pretty clearly wrong on this. Though some time down the road, he may well be right.
I don't follow the 1st, 1st and a half-th, 2nd island chains interplay in detail.
However I note that the USA are spending loads on renovating old airfields a bit further away from China.
Whitehall ‘braced for private schools collapse’ due to fee rises
The Independent Schools Council says the threat of closures after the imposition of VAT on fees is ‘very rea
Contingency plans are being drawn up in Whitehall for an influx in demand for state school places amid fears private schools will go bankrupt and close because of fee increases.
Officials are braced for the prospect that some independent schools may collapse when VAT on school fees comes into force in the new year.
Schools that are smaller, with lower fees and in areas with higher levels of competition are most at risk, government sources told The Times.
They are being monitored to see how they fare under the change, combined with publicly available information about their finances from Companies House.
Campaigners against the change warn some parents will be unable to pay a fee rise of 20 per cent, given some private schools are preparing to pass on the itIt in full.
The VAT imposition will come into effect on January 1, with Treasury estimates suggesting it will lead to 37,000 fewer private school pupils in the long term — equal to about 6 per cent of children at private schools.
However, there is expected to be a smaller, more immediate impact. About 3,000 children will be taken out of private schools and will need a state place before the end of the academic year, the government believes.
Smaller private schools will be hit in particular reducing parental choice.
Yet do we expect any better from this awful socialist government having already hit pensioners, business owners and farmers?
This government doesn't strike me as particularly 'socialist'.
It is the most socialist class war ridden government of my lifetime, even more than Brown's. Farmers, pensioners, small business owners, private school payments, the remaining hereditary peers, even foxhunters on scent trails are within the sights of Starmer and Reeves
If only that were true.
If it were they would already be directing Kent and Warwickshire to replace their Grammar schools with comprehensives. You are lucky I'm not Phillipson, from next September Grammar schools would all be phased out. Year one intake would be universal. Call me Mrs Thatcher if you like.
We should be holding ballots to open new grammar schools not just to close the remaining ones, absolutely not.
More pupils were in grammar schools at the end of the Thatcher and Major years than in 1979
Life changing academic assessment at aged 11 is immoral. And in those areas with Grammar schools the parents of Tim, nice but dims are paying for cramming lessons not available to Jim, clever but poor.
Clever pupils with high IQs will get in regardless of parents income or tutoring and be on a path to top universities and a profession.
All your attitude does is favour children with money who can choose private schools or state schools in wealthy catchment areas. That is why proper conservatives must fight such attitudes and push for more grammar schools
That really isn't true.
If you want a real meritocracy stick everyone in universal schools that stream in all the key subjects and see who gets the O and A levels.
No nod and a wink entry to Oxford and Cambridge because one went to Malvern College or Rodean.
Sounds good to me.
How do you get a universal school in Stoke or Grimsby or Knowsley to anywhere near the level of a universal school in Surrey or Kensington or Oxfordshire without some form of selection?
Nah, Musky baby said that such jet fighters were a scam, and we should just be building drone swarms instead...
It is a big deal. But whether it's something to be immediately worried about is another matter. The prototype F-35, the X-35, first flew in October 2000. The first F-35 flew in December 2006, and reached operational status in July 2015.
Six years from prototype to first flight; and another nine or so to get to initial operating capability.
Nowadays, having a plane fly is the easy bit. The hard bit is integrating all the systems on it to allow it to be a warfighter in the modern combat domains.
The US tested their NGAD prototype several years back.
The point isn’t that China is ‘winning’, rather, as you note, they see the need for such an aircraft. Musk is pretty clearly wrong on this. Though some time down the road, he may well be right.
I don't follow the 1st, 1st and a half-th, 2nd island chains interplay in detail.
However I note that the USA are spending loads on renovating old airfields a bit further away from China.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
The average RefUK voter wants to deport most immigrants and supported Trump. Do you think they are very likely to be not pro hunting too?
All the polling suggests very few people in the UK are pro-hunting, and certainly not as a sport.
There was a large poll early in the year, which had support at around 7%, and only around 12% amongst Tory voters. YouGov only last month, had just 10% support for recreational hunting. And it's not like it's a 'meh' issue either - almost everyone was against it.
Depends how you ask the question, Yougov last month found most supported rabbit and pigeon and pheasant hunting, hunting for food and hunting overpopulated species.
Man City and Chelsea drawing and losing respectively at home.
Prior to kick off later today Liverpool currently lead the league by 4 points, with 11 points over the Champions, and 2 games in hand over 2nd, 3rd and the Champions.
Find the betting odds remarkable on the League, surely Liverpool now should be overwhelming favourites?
They are overwhelming favourites (1.4).
1.4 seems to me to be remarkable value, not overwhelming favourites all things considered.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
Ooo no, it's not a 90% chance from here. 75 at most. I'm on at 8/1 and seriously thinking of cashing out at where it is now.
7 points clear at the top and a further game in hand.
Would have to drop 10 points from here without challengers dropping any - that's not a 25% chance from here.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
The average RefUK voter wants to deport most immigrants and supported Trump. Do you think they are very likely to be not pro hunting too?
All the polling suggests very few people in the UK are pro-hunting, and certainly not as a sport.
There was a large poll early in the year, which had support at around 7%, and only around 12% amongst Tory voters. YouGov only last month, had just 10% support for recreational hunting. And it's not like it's a 'meh' issue either - almost everyone was against it.
Depends how you ask the question, Yougov last month found most supported rabbit and pigeon and pheasant hunting, hunting for food and hunting overpopulated species.
I have never been a particular fan of Paul Krugman. He - like many commentators - would typically start from a conclusion and work backwards.
His New York Times column was a classic example of this, designed solely to drive clicks and shares as part of the NYTimes algorithm.
Since he's got his own Substack..., well, he's transformed.
Now, I tend to find myself slightly to the right of him on many political questions. But the slightly more long form, slightly more discursive, style really suits him. I'm actually enjoying reading his pieces.
This one for example, which dwells mostly on the fact that countries very rarely economically benefit from wars (even if they win), is absolutely spot on.
Lots of studies show that a really good thing for economic growth and general progress is stability. The UK rather missed stability with Brexit and a high turnover of Prime Ministers.
Trump does not deliver stability. I posted a few days back a paper showing how his first term hit US investment. But maybe I’m just a nice liberal with my chants of “What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!”
Germany had ample political stability under Merkel but the legacy seems to be a number of intractable crises. Stability is overrated.
Indeed: during the previous decade (1990-2000), Germany underperformed the rest of the EU; during the period from 2000 to 2020, it outperformed.
Was it due to her management of the economy that it boomed? And did she leave a toxic legacy?
No, not really.
Germany is (by far) the biggest maker and exporter of capital equipment: i.e. the machines that make things. Her time at the top coincided with China's economic boom, which sucked in hundreds of billions of dollars of equipment from Kuka, Bosch, Siemens, Thyssenkrupp, MAN and Schaeffler.
And then subsequent to her departure, China's purchases of these dramatically slowed.
Merkel was lucky to be Chancellor when China wanted what Germany made. And her successors were unlucky that demand for these dropped off.
Ironically, if the US does reindustrialize, then Germany will be the biggest beneficiary, because it'll need to import the machines to make things. And that means Germany.
This isnt going down well from Vivek. "get rid of that grubby indian" announces MAGA in reply.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 4:02 PM · Dec 26, 2024 · 8.5M Views
The problem for Vivek is he Musk and to an extent Vance are all nerds while Trump is a jock. Much like here Boris was the jock but Cummings and Rishi the nerds.
The problem for the nerds is that while their thinking may be more in depth than the jock, the jock had more charisma and ability to win elections. Discard the jock and they lose much of his voting base
This isnt going down well from Vivek. "get rid of that grubby indian" announces MAGA in reply.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 4:02 PM · Dec 26, 2024 · 8.5M Views
The problem for Vivek is he Musk and to an extent Vance are all nerds while Trump is a jock. Much like here Boris was the jock but Cummings and Rishi the nerds.
The problem for the nerds is that while their thinking may be more in depth than the jock, the jock had more charisma and ability to win elections. Discard the jock and they lose much of his voting base
This isnt going down well from Vivek. "get rid of that grubby indian" announces MAGA in reply.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 4:02 PM · Dec 26, 2024 · 8.5M Views
The problem for Vivek is he Musk and to an extent Vance are all nerds while Trump is a jock. Much like here Boris was the jock but Cummings and Rishi the nerds.
The problem for the nerds is that while their thinking may be more in depth than the jock, the jock had more charisma and ability to win elections. Discard the jock and they lose much of his voting base
1 It's the Telegrunt. 2 Do people add up better if you force them into offices? 3 The "as low as 5%" in the headline turns into higher numbers of 15-20% across most buildings. That 10% looks potentially questionable. 4 We get Bufton Tufton MP saying the first half of (summarised) "This Labour Government have failed to do in 3 months ... what the previous Conservative Government failed to do in X years". 5 They manage to get in both that the offices are too small, and that they are empty. 6 But Immigration, hit on a Department, hit on the Civil Service, hit on a Trade Union, and hit on the Govt ... they are in clover.
Nah, Musky baby said that such jet fighters were a scam, and we should just be building drone swarms instead...
It is a big deal. But whether it's something to be immediately worried about is another matter. The prototype F-35, the X-35, first flew in October 2000. The first F-35 flew in December 2006, and reached operational status in July 2015.
Six years from prototype to first flight; and another nine or so to get to initial operating capability.
Nowadays, having a plane fly is the easy bit. The hard bit is integrating all the systems on it to allow it to be a warfighter in the modern combat domains.
The US tested their NGAD prototype several years back.
The point isn’t that China is ‘winning’, rather, as you note, they see the need for such an aircraft. Musk is pretty clearly wrong on this. Though some time down the road, he may well be right.
I'm interested in the laser anti-aircraft system Ukraine have deployed. It's possible that laser technology will develop to the extent that the balance swings against airborne drones a bit, but this sort of technological development at pace is the sort of situation where you have to try at least three different things to be sure that you will include the one that works best.
I actually feel 10% chance of Liverpool not winning the league from here is me being pessimistic, let alone 25% chance of it not happening from here.
Who are the challengers who could win instead and what are the odds of it actually happening?
Man City - 14 points behind and we have a game in hand. Liverpool would need to drop 17 points more than City between now and end of season to just be on par with each other. City could win every game between now and end of season (spoiler: they won't) and it might not be enough now.
Chelsea - 7 behind and a game in hand. Would need 10 points dropping to be only on par. Possible, but odds of Chelsea getting 10+ more points than Liverpool for rest of season is pretty slim.
Forest, Newcastle, Bournemouth etc? Not happening.
Most plausible challenger is Arsenal and they're 9 behind, no game in hand on them. What's the probability they get 9+ more points than Liverpool from here? Possible but not especially likely. Certainly wouldn't say a 1/4 or 1/5 chance.
Whilst driving to a relative's this afternoon, my dad pointed out a layby on the A50 westbound, somewhere near Sudbury. The layby has been closed and coned off for about a year, with a solitary trailer standing in it. The trailer has had some wheels stolen.
*Apparently* it is filled with asbestos. Some scrotes do asbestos removal jobs, and instead of paying the disposal costs, they just filled up the trailer and dumped it in the layby. As it's a 'dangerous' cargo, the layby's been coned off, and because no-one wants to pay for disposal, the trailer has remained there whilst the council tries to work out who owns it. Good luck to them with that...
I say it is rather off-topic, but there are connections with the topic. The cargo is seen as dangerous, but no-one wants to take responsibility. We saw this with the ammonium nitrate that was stored in Beirut for years - before that went disastrously wrong.
The trailer has already had some wheels stolen. Imagine, perhaps, if some other scrotes try to set the trailer on fire. It won't be an explosion, but the resultant clean-up will be more costly. Someone needs to take responsibility and just FDI, because it'll be more expensive to do later, and the chances of finding the 'owners' and getting the funds to do it is miniscule.
Of all the possible fates, getting a trailer load of asbestos to burn seems unlikely.
That said - they should have wrapped it up well, stuffed it on a load loader, taken it somewhere out of sight ASAP - leaving it there just invites others to add their rubbish.
Round my way we currently have virtual zero fly tipping because they council have really well run tips, run on a "no question asked" basis. Officially they don't take trade waste, in practice they are OK with the smaller scale local builders etc using them. Apparently from next year they are introducing a scheme were residents have to register vehicles to try and block traders - apparently as a cost saving measure. I'd bet good money that any "savings" will be more than swallowed up by the costs of the resultant fly tipping.
I actually feel 10% chance of Liverpool not winning the league from here is me being pessimistic, let alone 25% chance of it not happening from here.
Who are the challengers who could win instead and what are the odds of it actually happening?
Man City - 14 points behind and we have a game in hand. Liverpool would need to drop 17 points more than City between now and end of season to just be on par with each other. City could win every game between now and end of season (spoiler: they won't) and it might not be enough now.
Chelsea - 7 behind and a game in hand. Would need 10 points dropping to be only on par. Possible, but odds of Chelsea getting 10+ more points than Liverpool for rest of season is pretty slim.
Forest, Newcastle, Bournemouth etc? Not happening.
Most plausible challenger is Arsenal and they're 9 behind, no game in hand on them. What's the probability they get 9+ more points than Liverpool from here? Possible but not especially likely. Certainly wouldn't say a 1/4 or 1/5 chance.
I wouldn't completely rule out Forest, and the like.
Liverpool would only need to lose three games on the spin for things to look very different, and there's still 21 games left in their league season.
I've not been paying enough attention to rate how likely that is. How reliant are they on the form of a handful of players who might pick up injuries?
Larger leads later in the season have been lost before.
I know he's an unconventional politician, but who announces something like this at a fox hunt?
Being against fox hunting is one of the few issues that unites every age group, and every political persuasion.
Not if the packed Boxing Day hunt crowd round our rural way is anything to go by. Still plenty of support for the hunt in rural areas and Farage wants to be seen there to tap into it
This is another example of where Farage is a world apart from the average ReFuk voter.
At some point the penny has to drop.
The average RefUK voter wants to deport most immigrants and supported Trump. Do you think they are very likely to be not pro hunting too?
All the polling suggests very few people in the UK are pro-hunting, and certainly not as a sport.
There was a large poll early in the year, which had support at around 7%, and only around 12% amongst Tory voters. YouGov only last month, had just 10% support for recreational hunting. And it's not like it's a 'meh' issue either - almost everyone was against it.
Depends how you ask the question, Yougov last month found most supported rabbit and pigeon and pheasant hunting, hunting for food and hunting overpopulated species.
HYUFD is obviously not aware of the mass overpopulation of various game species perpetrated by the hunting community. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if they hadn't created it. Right up to the problem of red deer control because the hunting estates won't cooperate.
I have never been a particular fan of Paul Krugman. He - like many commentators - would typically start from a conclusion and work backwards.
His New York Times column was a classic example of this, designed solely to drive clicks and shares as part of the NYTimes algorithm.
Since he's got his own Substack..., well, he's transformed.
Now, I tend to find myself slightly to the right of him on many political questions. But the slightly more long form, slightly more discursive, style really suits him. I'm actually enjoying reading his pieces.
This one for example, which dwells mostly on the fact that countries very rarely economically benefit from wars (even if they win), is absolutely spot on.
Lots of studies show that a really good thing for economic growth and general progress is stability. The UK rather missed stability with Brexit and a high turnover of Prime Ministers.
Trump does not deliver stability. I posted a few days back a paper showing how his first term hit US investment. But maybe I’m just a nice liberal with my chants of “What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!”
Germany had ample political stability under Merkel but the legacy seems to be a number of intractable crises. Stability is overrated.
Indeed: during the previous decade (1990-2000), Germany underperformed the rest of the EU; during the period from 2000 to 2020, it outperformed.
Was it due to her management of the economy that it boomed? And did she leave a toxic legacy?
No, not really.
Germany is (by far) the biggest maker and exporter of capital equipment: i.e. the machines that make things. Her time at the top coincided with China's economic boom, which sucked in hundreds of billions of dollars of equipment from Kuka, Bosch, Siemens, Thyssenkrupp, MAN and Schaeffler.
And then subsequent to her departure, China's purchases of these dramatically slowed.
Merkel was lucky to be Chancellor when China wanted what Germany made. And her successors were unlucky that demand for these dropped off.
Ironically, if the US does reindustrialize, then Germany will be the biggest beneficiary, because it'll need to import the machines to make things. And that means Germany.
Generally speaking I think randomness and luck play a bigger role in a country's economic performance over any period of just a few years than the quality or policies of its government.
Nah, Musky baby said that such jet fighters were a scam, and we should just be building drone swarms instead...
It is a big deal. But whether it's something to be immediately worried about is another matter. The prototype F-35, the X-35, first flew in October 2000. The first F-35 flew in December 2006, and reached operational status in July 2015.
Six years from prototype to first flight; and another nine or so to get to initial operating capability.
Nowadays, having a plane fly is the easy bit. The hard bit is integrating all the systems on it to allow it to be a warfighter in the modern combat domains.
The US tested their NGAD prototype several years back.
The point isn’t that China is ‘winning’, rather, as you note, they see the need for such an aircraft. Musk is pretty clearly wrong on this. Though some time down the road, he may well be right.
I'm interested in the laser anti-aircraft system Ukraine have deployed. It's possible that laser technology will develop to the extent that the balance swings against airborne drones a bit, but this sort of technological development at pace is the sort of situation where you have to try at least three different things to be sure that you will include the one that works best.
As with conventional systems, it’s a question of range and power (and cost and numbers). Military lasers are likely to improve fairly quickly on all metrics.
Interesting listening to The Rest is Politics 'things of the year' conversation.
Fairly innocuous answers. The one that jumped out at me slightly was Stewart dropping in an anecdote about his 'friend who owns Kitty Fisher's in Mayfair', and after a tiktok review by an influencer it is now full of Chinese Couples, including from HK, eating steaks.
Checking the menu, that's about £180 for two people, three courses, plus wine, plus coffee *. Call it £250-275 with drinks - taking a £25 retail bottle (judging by 1 or 2 iI recognise) times three for the price.
The main gripe he quoted was that they don't buy enough wine.
Alistair and Rory need to watch it, or they will get out of touch .
I wonder if they are both in the income 1% - which is currently around £180k pa (says Statista), either before or after tax.
I'd be absolutely stunned if they weren't both multiple times over that income threshold.
I have no real data. 0.1% is approx 600k+.
On the podcast, the live tour covered about 35-40k attendees in 8 venue-events. That may be the money spinner, and Fuse Energy / Electricity Switchers. Youtube ads, not so much.
This isnt going down well from Vivek. "get rid of that grubby indian" announces MAGA in reply.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 4:02 PM · Dec 26, 2024 · 8.5M Views
The problem for Vivek is he Musk and to an extent Vance are all nerds while Trump is a jock. Much like here Boris was the jock but Cummings and Rishi the nerds.
The problem for the nerds is that while their thinking may be more in depth than the jock, the jock had more charisma and ability to win elections. Discard the jock and they lose much of his voting base
That's pretty astute.
Ha, I ‘m scrolling up atm and therefore am livening up my waiting for a bus by guessing who the poster is by the post. I genuinely thought that was one of yours!
I actually feel 10% chance of Liverpool not winning the league from here is me being pessimistic, let alone 25% chance of it not happening from here.
Who are the challengers who could win instead and what are the odds of it actually happening?
Man City - 14 points behind and we have a game in hand. Liverpool would need to drop 17 points more than City between now and end of season to just be on par with each other. City could win every game between now and end of season (spoiler: they won't) and it might not be enough now.
Chelsea - 7 behind and a game in hand. Would need 10 points dropping to be only on par. Possible, but odds of Chelsea getting 10+ more points than Liverpool for rest of season is pretty slim.
Forest, Newcastle, Bournemouth etc? Not happening.
Most plausible challenger is Arsenal and they're 9 behind, no game in hand on them. What's the probability they get 9+ more points than Liverpool from here? Possible but not especially likely. Certainly wouldn't say a 1/4 or 1/5 chance.
Well you know what to do then - get lumped on at the 1.35 on offer. I still expect Liverpool to win having backed them at the start of the season but if I was flat I wouldn't open up at that. It doesn't scream value to me.
This isnt going down well from Vivek. "get rid of that grubby indian" announces MAGA in reply.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 4:02 PM · Dec 26, 2024 · 8.5M Views
The problem for Vivek is he Musk and to an extent Vance are all nerds while Trump is a jock. Much like here Boris was the jock but Cummings and Rishi the nerds.
The problem for the nerds is that while their thinking may be more in depth than the jock, the jock had more charisma and ability to win elections. Discard the jock and they lose much of his voting base
I actually think the success of Andrew Tate is he combines jock and nerd in one person.
Nah, Musky baby said that such jet fighters were a scam, and we should just be building drone swarms instead...
It is a big deal. But whether it's something to be immediately worried about is another matter. The prototype F-35, the X-35, first flew in October 2000. The first F-35 flew in December 2006, and reached operational status in July 2015.
Six years from prototype to first flight; and another nine or so to get to initial operating capability.
Nowadays, having a plane fly is the easy bit. The hard bit is integrating all the systems on it to allow it to be a warfighter in the modern combat domains.
The US tested their NGAD prototype several years back.
The point isn’t that China is ‘winning’, rather, as you note, they see the need for such an aircraft. Musk is pretty clearly wrong on this. Though some time down the road, he may well be right.
I don't follow the 1st, 1st and a half-th, 2nd island chains interplay in detail.
However I note that the USA are spending loads on renovating old airfields a bit further away from China.
This isnt going down well from Vivek. "get rid of that grubby indian" announces MAGA in reply.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 4:02 PM · Dec 26, 2024 · 8.5M Views
The problem for Vivek is he Musk and to an extent Vance are all nerds while Trump is a jock. Much like here Boris was the jock but Cummings and Rishi the nerds.
The problem for the nerds is that while their thinking may be more in depth than the jock, the jock had more charisma and ability to win elections. Discard the jock and they lose much of his voting base
For Trump, that doesn't matter. One way or another, he's not got to fight another election.
Clearly, someone on Team Donald is going to get Traitored. Only questions are who and what they do in response?
This isnt going down well from Vivek. "get rid of that grubby indian" announces MAGA in reply.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 4:02 PM · Dec 26, 2024 · 8.5M Views
The problem for Vivek is he Musk and to an extent Vance are all nerds while Trump is a jock. Much like here Boris was the jock but Cummings and Rishi the nerds.
The problem for the nerds is that while their thinking may be more in depth than the jock, the jock had more charisma and ability to win elections. Discard the jock and they lose much of his voting base
I actually think the success of Andrew Tate is he combines jock and nerd in one person.
Jock and nerd are American terms with American cultural reference points.
At my school we had 3 groups of boys: the lads, the sads, and the hard core.
The sads were essentially all of those who liked dungeons and dragons, and heavy metal. That included some of the sporty ones. The hard core were those who did all the adult things earlier than the rest (smoking, drugs, sex etc) and were a bit scary. The lads were the normcore rest, who were on a spectrum from jock to swot.
(Andrew Tate would have been part of the hardcore. Most of them were twats).
This isnt going down well from Vivek. "get rid of that grubby indian" announces MAGA in reply.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 4:02 PM · Dec 26, 2024 · 8.5M Views
The problem for Vivek is he Musk and to an extent Vance are all nerds while Trump is a jock. Much like here Boris was the jock but Cummings and Rishi the nerds.
The problem for the nerds is that while their thinking may be more in depth than the jock, the jock had more charisma and ability to win elections. Discard the jock and they lose much of his voting base
For Trump, that doesn't matter. One way or another, he's not got to fight another election.
Clearly, someone on Team Donald is going to get Traitored. Only questions are who and what they do in response?
If Trump lives to the end of his second term, he has the problem that there are a bunch of lawsuits and claims against him. He needs a MAGA successor to pardon him.
Comments
Anyone telling you this isn't a big deal is either a fool, or blinded by personal circumstances.
Anyone telling you this is a catastrophe is unfamiliar with the capabilities of American aerospace, and unaware of our progress.
Now is the time to act. Let's move like it counts...
https://x.com/NavyDigi/status/1872331480753696880
He's in.
We covered the Challenger disaster in some depth in Engineering Officer Training, and the instructor emphasised that the most crucial thing we should take away was a specific thing that was said to the senior engineers at Thiokol late in the day:
“Take off your engineering hats and put your management hats on instead.”
Never ever “take off your engineering hat” in a safety-critical discussion.
It is a big deal. But whether it's something to be immediately worried about is another matter. The prototype F-35, the X-35, first flew in October 2000. The first F-35 flew in December 2006, and reached operational status in July 2015.
Six years from prototype to first flight; and another nine or so to get to initial operating capability.
Nowadays, having a plane fly is the easy bit. The hard bit is integrating all the systems on it to allow it to be a warfighter in the modern combat domains.
Are the PB Pedantry Police on leave?
If you want a real meritocracy stick everyone in universal schools that stream in all the key subjects and see who gets the O and A levels.
No nod and a wink entry to Oxford and Cambridge because one went to Malvern College or Rodean.
Sounds good to me.
That implies a massive 30% probability that Liverpool lose the title from here - there's a chance but I'd suggest closer to 10% than 30% from here.
The point is that there is a huge resentment at various structure and behaviours. Health care and shooting CEOs etc.
The Nice People then wonder “But how can that happen? Why are they angry?”
You have some choices.
- Come up with a way to deal with the temptation for management to outsource everything. Except management.
- Come up with a voting system that excludes those who aren’t happy with things
- Be really happy when they vote in Trump, Farage, Meloni etc etc.
Thinks of it as “Making the Tough Decisions”
I’m a liberal, and I hope a nice one. I thought Trump could win this year (as he did). I think Reform UK can win the next UK general election (for some definition of “win” under a Parliamentary FPTP system). But it’s not some inevitability, determined by simple factors. They don’t get in just because it’s their turn next. We (probably) have the entire Trump Presidency before we even get to the next UK general election.
Here are his words of wisdom.
At risk of starting the obvious, there are many attention-seeking trolls on all social media platforms trying to yank your chain.
They win if you respond.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1872374991800652146
Happy to blow the final whistle now...
I have a sadistic streak.
Or possibly mass arrests, deportations and rioting. Is anything unlikely now in US politics?
(*Edit* I'm way too slow with my hilarious jokes on here)
The problem is the enormous systemic inertia against any change.
Stolarczyzk gives me confidence though. He has been very good when he has come in.
His New York Times column was a classic example of this, designed solely to drive clicks and shares as part of the NYTimes algorithm.
Since he's got his own Substack..., well, he's transformed.
Now, I tend to find myself slightly to the right of him on many political questions. But the slightly more long form, slightly more discursive, style really suits him. I'm actually enjoying reading his pieces.
This one for example, which dwells mostly on the fact that countries very rarely economically benefit from wars (even if they win), is absolutely spot on.
Fairly innocuous answers. The one that jumped out at me slightly was Stewart dropping in an anecdote about his 'friend who owns Kitty Fisher's in Mayfair', and after a tiktok review by an influencer it is now full of Chinese Couples, including from HK, eating steaks.
Checking the menu, that's about £180 for two people, three courses, plus wine, plus coffee *. Call it £250-275 with drinks - taking a £25 retail bottle (judging by 1 or 2 iI recognise) times three for the price.
The main gripe he quoted was that they don't buy enough wine.
Alistair and Rory need to watch it, or they will get out of touch
I wonder if they are both in the income 1% - which is currently around £180k pa (says Statista), either before or after tax (they don't say which, and won't take a gmail address for registration).
Daily average attendance as low as 5pc in some offices, with attendance rates averaging less than 10pc in other buildings"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/26/ons-civil-servants-work-from-home-despite-year-of-mistakes/
Trump does not deliver stability. I posted a few days back a paper showing how his first term hit US investment. But maybe I’m just a nice liberal with my chants of “What do we want? Gradual change! When do we want it? In due course!”
Then paid a different set of contractors to redecorate the estate. Who dutifully painted over the stickers so now no-one knows where the asbestos is.
Now bidding for a new set of contractors to come find it all again.
(And yes, the findings of the original contractors were documented. But 'the guy' who got the documents retired and has no idea where they are now. Original contractors are now named differently and claim to have no idea either).
Now there is always space in the main car parks.
Is it working? Arguably yes and no. For academics there is usually something that requires physical attendance (lectures, tutorials, workshops, labs etc). Lot of meetings happen on line or mixed. But where it doesn’t work so well is support staff (the civil service of the uni, if you like). Often you just need a five minute face to face to resolve issues. But said staff are working from home. Yes teams/zoom is an option, but in reality the staff are not available. I suspect their work life balance and job satisfaction has improved. But it’s not helping mine…
Drawn at the break is pretty good by me.
Well, indeed.
No, of course not.
In some way, beyond my understanding, this is all good and justifies the salary multiplier on my elders and betters.
And yes, I even logged in to the desk booking app today to secure my spot for two weeks tomorrow.
If you put them in shared offices, somebody might notice they weren't doing any work.
We are The Blob.
2 Do people add up better if you force them into offices?
3 The "as low as 5%" in the headline turns into higher numbers of 15-20% across most buildings. That 10% looks potentially questionable.
4 We get Bufton Tufton MP saying the first half of (summarised) "This Labour Government have failed to do in 3 months ... what the previous Conservative Government failed to do in X years".
5 They manage to get in both that the offices are too small, and that they are empty.
6 But Immigration, hit on a Department, hit on the Civil Service, hit on a Trade Union, and hit on the Govt ... they are in clover.
Article
https://archive.is/20241226161656/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/26/ons-civil-servants-work-from-home-despite-year-of-mistakes/
It's a bit like this one from two months ago, on OFGEM:
https://archive.is/20241010112346/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/bills/energy/ofgem-blows-35m-year-on-empty-office/
Do you suppose they are training an AI?
Indeed, if you managed to work out the power of all the groups in the System, it would add up to a great deal less than 100%. The Process owns the majority of the power.
As for me, I don't think my views on most things changed when I became (or ceased to be) a government adviser.
The elephant in the room is that
@elonmusk
, who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total fucking drag on the Trump transition.
@realDonaldTrump
He’s a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago.
He told Bob Iger at
@Disney
to “go fuck himself” over Ad money, but he won’t tell Xi JinPing and Li Qiang to go fuck themselves and he’s perfectly happy to take their money to fund his Shanghai Giga Factory.
Elon cock blocks the nominee meetings and tries to undermine anyone and everyone who doesn’t do his bidding. It’s wildly inappropriate how a guy with no experience in politics who has been a Democrat his entire life is now staffing the Trump admin.
He’s completely compromised by the CCP and he has unfettered access to President Trump.
This is fucked up and we need to stop it NOW!
It’s the biggest elephant in the room and everyone is too scared to talk about it.
https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1872358453643022487
The point isn’t that China is ‘winning’, rather, as you note, they see the need for such an aircraft.
Musk is pretty clearly wrong on this. Though some time down the road, he may well be right.
* The Daily T shares Camilla Tominey with GB News. But they do not have Mike Graham yet.
However I note that the USA are spending loads on renovating old airfields a bit further away from China.
eg Tinian near Guam
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/22/asia/us-air-force-pacific-tinian-island-airfield-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
Reform voters were most likely to support hunting at all levels, then Tory voters, then LDs with Labour voters most anti hunting, including Labour voters being most anti fox hunting
"Where does the British public stand on hunting? | YouGov" https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/50958-where-does-the-british-public-stand-on-hunting
Would have to drop 10 points from here without challengers dropping any - that's not a 25% chance from here.
Well I can think of one...
Was it due to her management of the economy that it boomed? And did she leave a toxic legacy?
No, not really.
Germany is (by far) the biggest maker and exporter of capital equipment: i.e. the machines that make things. Her time at the top coincided with China's economic boom, which sucked in hundreds of billions of dollars of equipment from Kuka, Bosch, Siemens, Thyssenkrupp, MAN and Schaeffler.
And then subsequent to her departure, China's purchases of these dramatically slowed.
Merkel was lucky to be Chancellor when China wanted what Germany made. And her successors were unlucky that demand for these dropped off.
Ironically, if the US does reindustrialize, then Germany will be the biggest beneficiary, because it'll need to import the machines to make things. And that means Germany.
Much like here Boris was the jock but Cummings and Rishi the nerds.
The problem for the nerds is that while their thinking may be more in depth than the jock, the jock had more charisma and ability to win elections. Discard the jock and they lose much of his voting base
Who are the challengers who could win instead and what are the odds of it actually happening?
Man City - 14 points behind and we have a game in hand. Liverpool would need to drop 17 points more than City between now and end of season to just be on par with each other. City could win every game between now and end of season (spoiler: they won't) and it might not be enough now.
Chelsea - 7 behind and a game in hand. Would need 10 points dropping to be only on par. Possible, but odds of Chelsea getting 10+ more points than Liverpool for rest of season is pretty slim.
Forest, Newcastle, Bournemouth etc? Not happening.
Most plausible challenger is Arsenal and they're 9 behind, no game in hand on them. What's the probability they get 9+ more points than Liverpool from here? Possible but not especially likely. Certainly wouldn't say a 1/4 or 1/5 chance.
That said - they should have wrapped it up well, stuffed it on a load loader, taken it somewhere out of sight ASAP - leaving it there just invites others to add their rubbish.
Round my way we currently have virtual zero fly tipping because they council have really well run tips, run on a "no question asked" basis. Officially they don't take trade waste, in practice they are OK with the smaller scale local builders etc using them. Apparently from next year they are introducing a scheme were residents have to register vehicles to try and block traders - apparently as a cost saving measure. I'd bet good money that any "savings" will be more than swallowed up by the costs of the resultant fly tipping.
Liverpool would only need to lose three games on the spin for things to look very different, and there's still 21 games left in their league season.
I've not been paying enough attention to rate how likely that is. How reliant are they on the form of a handful of players who might pick up injuries?
Larger leads later in the season have been lost before.
Military lasers are likely to improve fairly quickly on all metrics.
Drones, too.
On the podcast, the live tour covered about 35-40k attendees in 8 venue-events. That may be the money spinner, and Fuse Energy / Electricity Switchers. Youtube ads, not so much.
The F-35C is Catobar compatible, but they won't go with that.
The article has a piccie:
Clearly, someone on Team Donald is going to get Traitored. Only questions are who and what they do in response?
At my school we had 3 groups of boys: the lads, the sads, and the hard core.
The sads were essentially all of those who liked dungeons and dragons, and heavy metal. That included some of the sporty ones. The hard core were those who did all the adult things earlier than the rest (smoking, drugs, sex etc) and were a bit scary. The lads were the normcore rest, who were on a spectrum from jock to swot.
(Andrew Tate would have been part of the hardcore. Most of them were twats).