dagenleg

I think you make a good point about collective responsibility, and it's really quite crazy to see suggestions that a good answer to ethnic cleansing is more ethnic cleansing. This is quite literally how the whole conflict started in the first place. One would hope some lessons had been learnt since the 40ies.

However, I would advise caution in regards to historical parallels you bring up. At the end of the WW2, millions of Japanese colonists have forcibly expelled and the same happened to millions of German civilians, where at times they were displaced from the regions where they've been living for hundreds of years. Then of course you're familiar with has been happening to white population in many African countries following the decolonisation. After the fall of the USSR, Baltic countries have been doing their best to push out their Russian minorities. The unfortunate reality is that "population exchanges" and "repatriations" have been common methods of righting the historical wrongs in the modern era.

Some multinationals have their R&D offices in Israel, there's a lot of pretty good research coming out. Russia would probably be worse in terms of trust and they are openly hostile to the West unlike Israel.

I answered your question, no need to move the goalposts. Countries usually don't like having their land occupied. As far as I know the Turkish occupation zone in Syria has been dissolved.

Well, Syria and Lebanon both hold some pretty serious resentment over the recent landgrabs. With the whole "acquiring buffer zone for the buffer zone" business in former and the population expulsions in the latter.

Historically, happiness of ones subjects has very-very rarely been a marker of status, more so because it's hard to measure.

At the same time number of slaves and size of the concubine pool are pretty straightforward and intuitive metrics.

This is kind of supported by what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in her book.

There's no need to bring US nuclear forces into this discussion, we're talking about Russian authorities and their competence here.

Sure, it's possible that this one specific force is more professional than the rest, but the bar is low. Soviet Union is the state that gave us Chernobyl after all. For more recent evidence, do check out the recent Russian track record with space technologies - the 2018 ISS air leak incident is particularly telling. Or, you know, the whole war thing that's been going on.

You're claiming that everything is fine because Russians have procedures in place. Russians. You're appealing for calm based on the trust in Russian competence, after referencing Sverdlovsk incident. It's just too funny.

By this logic Biden's administration was far left.

Ukraine did notably send its army into Iraq, as one of its overtures towards NATO. There have been plenty of attempts from Ukraine to get closer and participate in the collective security arrangement.

Frankly unfair for a German to judge Ukraine for not being part of the western alliance, when it was largely Germany in the first place that was preventing it from joining.

How is USSR, a direct continuation of the Russian Empire, not an empire?

I think the parent is referring to heavy financialisation of the economy in the West. As we've recently seen, such economy can grow quite unconstrained by the material concerns such as factories, energy or workers.

Taiwan is liberal democratic china. It's doing quite okay.

It's not just large corporations, it's arguably most jobs, and it's getting worse. Wageslaves don't get to keep those proceeds either, not enough bargaining power.

The UX is horrendous, density of information is a fraction of what it was and the infinite scroll sucks

> not including geeks

Sir, this is Hackernews

edit: Sorry, I could not resist. Just does not feel like arguments to the tune of "my consumption habits do not require X, so who even needs X" really work well at the discussion forum for, ostensibly, geeks and hackers

Not the best success story, granted, but socialist revolutions in China and Russian Empire had definitely hurt the rich as a class. Definitively even.

Why is everyone on social media talking about Midea? I never see any other brand mentioned. Is this a coordinated marketing campaign?

Why Cantonese?

Are you familiar with the "proofster" concept? It's funny how poignantly on the nose some memes can be.

Why? Because killing serial killers is good, and having war is bad?

I think the person you were responding to had a more utilitarian view. When war happens, the death of conscripted young people is unavoidable. It's kill or be killed. We prefer wars not to happen, and people not to die, but it's not a choice.

Killing a serial killer who has already been apprehended is a choice. And it's here that we can actually start weighting options and see what is better for the society, bringing up possibilities of wrongful convictions, Blackstone's ratios and second order effects of the death penalty.

I can't help but notice that your definition of "utopia" includes people never disagreeing with you.

And no, you can't justify death penalty because some people "get out on a technicality". Innocent people end up in jail on technicality too.

Budapest memorandum is a worthless piece of paper that the newly independent Ukrainian state was strong-armed into signing by a joint US-Russia intimidation campaign. Just like Taiwan was pushed into abandoning it's nuclear program. The fact that these countries are now under constant threat of invasion, is not an unintended outcome, it's the whole point.

NPT exists is to keep the lesser countries in the permanent vassal state, to be exploited and treated like bargaining chip. Nuclear program is the ultimate test of sovereignty, no wonder Israel has one.

No, where are you getting this from? His value proposal was that he was a) an outsider in politics, b) russian speaking ukranian. He was elected on on the platform of reducing corruption and negotiating the end to the Donbas conflict.

30% of the population protesting - that would be absolutely enormous! Revolutions are made by single digit numbers

Second time? More like fourth time. First there was Crimea, then Donbas, then the current invasion.

I suspect a large part of that 110K would be the government's cut. Again, coming back to the french system, an employee getting 40K after taxes costs ~80K to the institution there. I didn't think of the salary taxes as overheads, we count them as direct costs.

Well, no. That money is the total grant sum, to be spent over multiple years, and PhDs are usually funded in full - in Germany a PhD takes around 5 years. Moreover, the money a PhD student gets after tax, is not the same as the money spent overall from the grant, see my other comment below.

In Europe a PhD student is a multiyear commitment, with a bunch of externalities, they are much simpler to manage as discrete units, and thus are funded as such.

This sounds like quite an outlandish figure, could you please elaborate? For example, an ERC grant would allow for a maximum of 25% of the so called "indirect costs", that is, one fourths of all the the direct costs (gross salaries, materiel, travel, etc) gets paid as a lump sum, and this usually goes to the institution. How do you end up with over 100% overheads?

These are gross overall costs for the full PhD, not yearly salary.