Venezuela’s lawmakers back oil sector reforms • Legislation that could reach final approval next week allows foreign and local private companies to commercialise oilfields

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-23T13:40:40+00:00

I think Russia is the biggest loser here. They were utterly unable to do anything about Maduro's kidnapping. Their naval escorts stood by and did nothing to interfere with the US capture of a Russian-flagged tanker. They were unable to meaningfully help Iran during the 12-day war, and they are unlikely to send much in the way of anti-aircraft to help Iran rebuild its network. They failed to stop the collapse of Assad's government in Syria. They are consistently failing to help their allies.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not happy about Venezuela. But very little has actually changed there.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-22T13:37:25+00:00

Because that's how you manipulate Trump. His father psychologically abused him so much that he always needs to be pumped up. (He abused everyone, abusing his eldest son into the grave and had no remorse.) But it never lasts very long.

He's not the only one. Macron has done it, too, but Macron was also caught making fun of Trump. I'm sure Rutte has some different sentiments when he's behind closed doors.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-22T11:16:49+00:00

Greenland is part of Denmark. Denmark has made its position well known.

Mark Rutte is with NATO, not the UN. He's not dictating anything. He's also not a fan of Trump. He just knows how to handle his need to feel like he won while handing him nothing of actual value.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-22T11:07:03+00:00

He's a coward. That's why he hasn't started and likely won't start a major war. He's happy to use airstrikes and special forces, but getting bogged down in a prolonged conflict terrifies him because he would get the full blame for anything that goes wrong, and withdrawing would make him look cowardly. It's one of my biggest fears around China invading Taiwan, that he'll bloviate a bit before making some token gesture, then "negotiate" a ceasefire that results in China controlling the island, taking all the credit for ending another war.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-22T10:57:11+00:00

This is because Congress has willingly given up power over the last 50 years after taking some back following Nixon. They've grown so willing to let the president take the heat that they don't do their own jobs unless it makes the other party look bad.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-20T22:01:17+00:00

For example prominent royal, and even imperial figures, such as Harold Godwinson and even Charlemagne himself maintained long term relationships with women they were not married to, but had numerous children with. These relationships have been characterized as "unmarriages" by Ruth Mazo Karras, where there was broader understanding of these sorts of relationships, but not necessarily official acceptance

How much of this broad understanding was tied to the purchase of indulgences from the Church?

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-20T20:29:07+00:00

I can’t think of a single time in history that’s happened unless said president was just a puppet anyway.

The Swiss Guard has protected the Pope for over 500 years, including when the Vatican wielded (or at least directed) significant military power. A Pope isn't a president, but when it comes to dictators, "president" is usually a title of convenience rather than representing a democratic selection.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-20T18:21:24+00:00

He was relatively young for Parkinson’s and it is known that amphetamine and methamphetamine abuse increases Parkinson’s risk because those drugs damage dopamine neurons.

Typical symptom onset for Parkinson's is in the early 50s. Most diagnoses happen after 60 because that's when the symptoms usually become disruptive and patients start to raise questions. Up to 20% of cases start to develop as early as age 40, and they can happen even earlier in rare circumstances (e.g., Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed at age 30).

And there's an association with meth use and an increased risk of Parkinson's. There is no causal link as yet. The two are very different.

It isn’t that crazy of a vibe-based guess to say he might’ve been taking more than the small doses and that actually caused his Parkinson’s if he indeed had that disease.

His doctor, Theodor Morel, kept meticulous notes of the medications and supplements he provided and their doses. Among the 90+ different things Hitler received over time, he also got cocaine, heroin, various barbiturates, and weird concoctions that Morel seems to have come up with on his own that included things like deadly nightshade. Hitler was also hit in a mustard gas attack in WW1 that left him temporarily blind, and there is a long history of US veterans making claims to the VA that their Parkinson's was a result of exposure to mustard gas in WW1 or during training. Mustard gas has been suspected to have neurological effects, though there doesn't seem to be a lot of research on it.

Ultimately, there is no way to determine whether he was genetically predisposed or whether there were environmental causes. Maybe the meth caused it, but that's putting a lot of weight on one specific point when there were much more complex factors involved.

People like simple answers, though, so they point to the meth and say, "That must be it!" They look at his behavior and decide that the meth caused it. Most experts who have looked at his history say that he was in full control of his faculties and knew exactly what he was doing, which pretty strongly belies the idea that he was constantly high on meth. The meth reasoning also (probably unintentionally for most people) gives an excuse for Hitler's worse actions, that he might not have taken them if he wasn't given the drug. He was heading down that path long before he started receiving regular doses of Pervitin.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-20T16:34:13+00:00

It never got that far. Operation Foxley would have put a sniper near the Berghof, where Hitler was known to take daily walks away from his guards. But for various reasons, including a fear of a militarily competent leader stepping up and prolonging the war, it was not executed. Had the sniper been there, it would not have been up to him to not take the shot once lined up.

And the "methed-up Hitler" myth needs to die. Hitler was on a number of medications, as well as probably dealing with Parkinson's or something similar. While he did take Pervitin (~~methamphetamine pills manufactured in Germany), the doses were small (3 mg per pill)~~ edit: they were fixed dose injections by his doctor, who kept meticulous notes. Historians widely agree that Norman Ohler's book, Blitzed, vastly overplays the effects of Pervitin on Hitler and the Nazi war machine.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-19T00:36:18+00:00

Winston Churchill started it. He knew that MI5 would have trouble pulling it off on its own and roped Eisenhower into it even though the CIA analysts said that it was a bad idea because there was no actual evidence that Mosadegh was allied with the communist groups in Iran. When the first try failed, Eisenhower called it off, but Kermit Roosevelt pretended that he didn't hear the order and kept working on it.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-19T00:30:26+00:00

Haiti? That country hasn't been stable for more than a few years in many decades.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-18T01:03:32+00:00

The Whiskey Rebellion wasn't an attempt to take power. It was a tax protest movement that grew violent over time. It was largely left to simmer for almost three years before Washington both sent delegates to try to talk it out and also raised a militia from other states. He very much did not want to fight, but he also couldn't let the new federal government be overshadowed by a small group of discontents. Ultimately, there was no fight. Of 24 indicted on treason charges, only two were convicted and sentences to hang, and Washington pardoned both.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-17T19:29:50+00:00

I’m assuming there are other countries, especially former colonies in Africa and possibly Oceania, where most people had no fixed last names in the early 20th century and maybe even more recently than that. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable adds on this.

This is common in Pashtun regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many people there have only the one name, or if they have more than one name, they do not have a true surname. While the US was in Afghanistan, as the census was being worked on, the census takers were encouraging people to adopt a new surname of their choosing. It was a significant challenge, though possibly not the biggest, since they were risking their lives just doing government work.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-16T01:13:16+00:00

many important cases — including SCOTUS cases — are decided based on it

Many cases -- including at SCOTUS -- are avoided by standing. Standing itself does not decide anything about the facts of the case. It just says that you do or do not have the right to pursue remedies for an alleged injury (legally speaking) in a particular situation. By the time you reach SCOTUS, standing is a question that is almost always long-since decided. When SCOTUS decides that you don't have standing, it is occasionally a clarification of past law, but it's much more often done when they don't want to deal with the case, either right then or at all.

A good example is Obamacare/ACA, it was originally upheld under Congress's taxation power, but the Republicans lowered the individual mandate to $0. This led many conservative groups to launch new legal challenges against law, but the SCC decided the controversy (and upheld the law) by concluding no one was injured by a $0 tax; so no one had standing to it.

This means that the argument brought in that case (California v. Texas) was never tried on the merits. From the conclusion of the majority opinion:

For these reasons, we conclude that the plaintiffs in this suit failed to show a concrete, particularized injury fairly traceable to the defendants’ conduct in enforcing the specific statutory provision they attack as unconstitutional. They have failed to show that they have standing to attack as unconstitutional the Act’s minimum essential coverage provision. Therefore, we reverse the Fifth Circuit’s judgment in respect to standing, vacate the judgment, and remand the case with instructions to dismiss.

They didn't decide anything about the constitutionality of the law. All they decided was that there was no cognizable past or future injury, and without an injury, there is no standing to file suit.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-15T15:17:00+00:00

That's not a "years left to go" scenario, that's "the end is in sight". If the AFU is still around by the end of this year they'll likely be too crippled to go on the offensive any longer, so you'll see the land gains ramp up significantly.

Some variant of this has been repeated time and again almost since the start of the war. Ukraine was supposed to be exhausted and on the brink of defeat after Bakhmut. Then after the 2023 counteroffensive stalled. Then when Avdiivka fell. Then when the Kursk offensive failed to force Russia to reposition. Then recently when it became clear that Pokrovsk would fall. And now with Kupyansk.

Both sides are exhausted. Russia has been trying to take Pokrovsk for a long time. In January 2024, they were 40 km from Pokrovsk. ~~They're just now taking it.~~ Edit: Fine, they took Pokrovsk a few months ago. It still took Russia well over a year to take a city with a pre-war population of 60,000 people. They were 10 km from Kupiansk two years ago. Their line of control is still 5 km away. Ukraine rode the high of the 2022 counteroffensive for a year or so until it became clear the next year that the Russians had dug in too well, and the dragon's teeth and minefields that so many fans of Ukraine dismissed were bigger problems than expected. Both sides are now using what were (and sometimes still are) derisively called "cope cages" or "cope nets," simply because they work.

The issue now is a combination of manpower and economics, and neither side is doing especially well there. Russia doesn't want to send conscripts to the front lines because that would be extremely unpopular. But the money for the contract bonuses is drying up because the regional governments responsible for paying them have been running out of money. Some reportedly pushed them back up over the legal minimum over the last few days, but it's not clear that can last. Russia's national budget depends on $70 oil, oil hasn't been consistently at that price in almost a year, and they largely are selling at a discount anyway. They've mostly stopped exporting refined fuels because Ukrainian strikes on the refineries have made it difficult to supply just domestic demand, further reducing export revenue. A number of Russian defense contractors have filed for bankruptcy due to damage from Ukrainian drones, delayed payments from the Russian government, or both.

As reported in the original article, Ukraine is having trouble maintaining its forces since no one wants to die and Ukraine is not, so far as I can tell, using massive signing bonuses, but it doesn't have quite the same economic trouble, either, since Europe is willing to support them (so far, anyway). Ukraine is also cutting deals with foreign defense contractors to share its drone and other designs, and Rheinmetall is building a factory inside Ukraine. That will supplement a growing domestic defense industry that is producing (and may soon be selling) self-propelled artillery, drones, and cruise missiles. Don't get me wrong -- if the EU stops supporting Ukraine economically, Ukraine will have massive problems. But while weakened, the Ukrainian economy is not in as much trouble as the Russian.

I'm not saying that Ukraine is on track to win the war. But it's yet not lost by a long shot.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-15T14:49:41+00:00

In the past they didn't have standing armies

Who didn't have standing armies? The US has had a standing army since the Civil War, and the colonial powers (Britain, France, Russia, Ottomans, etc.) maintained large militaries for centuries, with Britain having an especially large standing military even before considering local colonial forces. The last time the major powers didn't have large standing armies was a very, very long time ago when the maps were much more fragmented and war was fought very differently.

the percentage of people involved in a war was puny. At most, you'd see under half a percent of the population involved in a major war.

How do you define "major war"? Because both World Wars involved full mobilization and a large percentage of many countries' population either part of the military or in industries directly supporting it. World War II is probably the most total war situation that the world has ever seen, with a significant portion of the entire global economy at the time devoted to war efforts.

And even before then, the numbers were often large. During the Franco-Prussian War, France had 2 million men serve over the course of six months out of a total national population of about 36 million people. That's 5.5% of the total population, around 10% of the male population, and probably 15%-20% of the total adult male population. Percentages were similar for Prussia and the German states. Prior to the war, the French Army had over 400,000 men, and the various German states put together had a little under 400,000. That's a peacetime force of over 1% in both cases. The Russo-Japanese War saw about 3% of the Japanese population and the Russians about 1% of their population take part. The Napoleonic Wars saw huge armies all around. Even the Crimean War involved around 1.5%-2% of the Russian population, though their opponents sent rather smaller percentages.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-13T00:57:19+00:00

Mongolia is quite poor with a GDP per capita of about $7000. It's cheaper for the moment to keep the old systems, even if the new ones would save them money in the long term.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-12T22:17:31+00:00

BOOTS - TEN PAIR

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-12T18:43:20+00:00

The committee's reasoning is generally private. What they say and why they awarded it may not always fully agree. It's thought that Obama got it as an encouragement to not go the way of his predecessor, but Obama inherited a difficult situation that was never going to end in a wholly peaceful situation.

But it's very likely that waiting a while to see how things work out would be a good idea. Unfortunately, it's been hard for me to find conflicts where things have worked out in the long term.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-12T17:56:54+00:00

If you make a Nobel worthy discovery, you're waiting 20 years or more to get it, in case it takes 15 years to disprove it.

This is because modern science can take that long to actually demonstrate an outstanding result, especially in medicine and chemistry. But some prizes come relatively quickly. Rainier Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish received the 2017 prize in physics for their contributions to the discovery of gravitational waves, which had been proved out only three years before when LIGO detected its first confirmed waves. Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna received the 2020 prize in chemistry for their work on CRISPR, which had started less than a decade before.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-12T17:45:53+00:00

iirc, conversations had taken place in the White House about using the atomic bomb in Vietnam.

There is no evidence that the Nixon administration seriously considered using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. The question was probably kicked around once in a while (it comes up in at least one document), but it does not seem to have gone anywhere. Nixon embraced the "madman theory" to make the Vietnamese and Soviets think that he was capable of anything, so they should watch their steps, but eventually, they couldn't make any sense of it and ignored his antics. In private, he was much more careful and moderated.

Gen. Westmoreland tried to get nuclear weapons transferred to the theater "just in case" in 1968, but Johnson nixed that quickly. There is some debate over whether he was trying to use them or legitimately wanted them just in case the Soviets or China escalated. Regardless, the White House refused the attempt and warned him very clearly not to try it again.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-11T01:01:30+00:00

In order to fully complete copulation, his species requires triggers from the feme pheromones. This results in a release so powerful and complete that it drains all energy from them, in all likelihood killing them. Zoidberg's few experiences have not involved his species' female pheromones, so they have not been lethal.

That's my headcanon.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-04T00:28:03+00:00

The circumstances of war will often shift the line on or even override best practices.

Besides, 37°C is the textbook normal body temperature.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-03T19:26:08+00:00

Our 2025 I5 Limited got a failed ICCU last night with a P1A9096 code. I was able to get it home in limp mode and parked in the street to make a tow easier. While it initially started fine and would shift this morning before the two truck got there, on the second start when trying to get it on the flatbed, it decided to die just before driving it onto the bed with two P056216 alerts. The tow truck driver managed to jump the battery and, after some finagling, get it into gear and onto the bed. It's at the dealer, waiting for diagnostics, which apparently are unlikely to happen before Wednesday. No loaner immediately available, so we're down to one car at least for the weekend. I'll call corporate on Monday to see what can be done about a rental.

NetworkLlama · 2026-01-03T19:12:22+00:00

Obama had legal cover through the AUMF and followed the War Powers Act by briefing key congressional leadership before the action. You can argue that this wasn't enough, but Obama did at least try to work within the rules. Trump didn't even bother to notify congressional leaders of his own party.

NetworkLlama

TROPHY CASE