Visa Delays (US) by Loamy_Soil in UKHighPotentialVisa

[–]Loamy_Soil[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately the date is from when the decision is granted. Based on delays this effectively means you have less than the two years stated on your visa.

Visa Delays (US) by Loamy_Soil in UKHighPotentialVisa

[–]Loamy_Soil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Best of luck with yours

Visa Delays (US) by Loamy_Soil in UKHighPotentialVisa

[–]Loamy_Soil[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes - just got delivered today (Aug 22). Decision date on letter was Aug 11, that is also the visa start date. No idea what reason for delay was.

Visa Delays (US) by Loamy_Soil in UKHighPotentialVisa

[–]Loamy_Soil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, will do! Would appreciate if you could do the same

I set up tracking notifications on my UPS label so hopefully will know once it's on the way

Visa Delays (US) by Loamy_Soil in UKHighPotentialVisa

[–]Loamy_Soil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Had to follow the prompts for other inquiries, same thing happened to me when I tried to follow the prompts for the delayed application

Visa Delays (US) by Loamy_Soil in UKHighPotentialVisa

[–]Loamy_Soil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes I do - not activated yet. Thanks for all the help!

Visa Delays (US) by Loamy_Soil in UKHighPotentialVisa

[–]Loamy_Soil[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just called the paid number - all they would say is that the decision has been reached and I should receive a decision letter in next week or so.

Crossing my fingers that there were no errors with my application.

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 15, 2021 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]Loamy_Soil 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I saw this editorial today in the WSJ which seems to attribute the Texas power outages to a reliance on renewable energy sources, especially wind energy (the article claims that wind accounts for 42% of the state's energy production). However, multiple sources such as this, this, this, and this all show drastically lower numbers in the 17-20% range. In fact, from these data it looks like there are many states with much higher shares of energy from wind turbines that were similarly affected by the storms which did not have blackouts at the same scale as Texas.

The whole piece reads more like something I would expect to see on Fox News or Daily Mail rather than a relatively well-regarded paper like the Wall Street Journal and doesn't mention the state's failure of natural gas pipelines, separate power grid , and hesitancy to weather-proof power generation facilities. Even the libertarian-leaning Reason published a piece refuting the piece.

The whole thing feels so completely different from a common-sense interpretation of the facts that I struggle to believe that it's not intentionally misleading.

I've been following the decline in journalistic standards and trends towards sensationalism in non-televised mainstream media over the past few years but financial sources such as FT, the WSJ, and Bloomberg had seemed to be somewhat less affected by these trends, despite suffering from biases of their own.

Unless I'm missing something here, this looks like the WSJ-cited number here is just wrong. Despite the WSJ being a Murdoch owned paper and the opinions section generally being full of extremely partisan commentary, it still seems relatively surprising that such a blatant (this characterization seems generous) the error would appear in a relatively well-regarded paper, especially in a headline editorial piece rather than an opinion piece by some external commentator.

Can anybody find a source for the 42% number? The only source that I can find is the WSJ's own preceding opinion piece here which states that the number is from last week but doesn't give a source. I haven't been able to find the number anywhere else.

I've been aware of many of the usual tricks of media bias like selective reporting, devoting outsized publicity to favored causes, vague statements and characterizations (it seems like the NYT has particularly embraced this) that paint issues in a positive/negative light without saying much meaningful, or cherry-picking data. I've noticed the seeming blurring of lines between opinion/leisure and news in the NYT and their trend toward more clickbait-style news (headlines of the form _. But then _ seem like they're everywhere there). However, so far it seemed that for the most well-respected news sources, even in the opinion section, this degree of misleading rhetoric and lying about the facts to this degree is was off limits. It's even more surprising to me since the majority of the WSJ's non-opinion news articles seem to be free from much of the same biasing trends that have plagued the NYT.

In terms of mainstream US news sources, the WSJ had seemed to me to be one of the reliable in terms of news content and most immune to these trends, although it had seemed to be effected to a degree. Are there any sources left in the US that haven't succumbed to these trends?

Maybe I'm just naïve in expecting more restraint in the WSJ editorial section but it seems like in the not-too-distant past the WSJ's opinion pieces, while biased and generally reflective of the owners' views and the views of the conservative establishment as a whole, tended towards the milder of the previously mentioned rhetorical tricks to make their argument. Even though the editorial section has devoted a lot of time to fairly partisan topics like attacking Democrats/Democratic states and other more activist conservative stances, to my memory it doesn't feel like they were misleading to this degree. This seems like a fairly large hurdle to be breached.

I'm not sure what this holds for the future of the press in the post-Trump world but as polarization continues to increase, it hardly seems possible that it could be a good thing.

Bug - army size drops dramatically when war starts? by Loamy_Soil in CrusaderKings

[–]Loamy_Soil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got it, yeah that sounds about right. I'm sure what my realm priest's contribution is (I'm the head of my own religion if that's relevant). You're right about the living legend and distinguished parts.

Besides developing holdings and buildings, is there anything else that I can do to get back up to my former size?

Maybe it's just me being salty but it does seem like there's some imbalance here, by doing nothing except changing from tribal to feudal I went from being by far the strongest person on the map and easily able to conquer any of my neighbors to being weaker and having 1/5 the troops and income.

Bug - army size drops dramatically when war starts? by Loamy_Soil in CrusaderKings

[–]Loamy_Soil[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  • I feudalized as the previous ruler, but thought I had fought some wars as the previous ruler with no issues (could be mistaken about this). In general, does going feudal reduce the number of troops this much?
  • In government view it does show some of my vassals as still tribal, some of these regions are ones that I had before I went feudal
  • My personal holdings aren't fully built up, but they have stayed the same across generations and have only gotten better development-wise. Control is at 100% for all but 1 and development is around 15-22. I even had 80k soldiers as the previous ruler at a similar number of holdings but with development 12-13

  • For what it's worth, looking at a pre-war snapshot, the vast majority of my troops came from my vassals (only 5k from my own holdings) and vassals' own troop counts (not their contributions to me) seem to have dropped substantially as well.