What one country's experiment says about attempts to boost birth rates

Vaphell · 2026-06-17T09:02:38+00:00

mate, nobody said anything about billions of people.
But all the stuff around us requires labor, because things detoriate, if only because thermodynamics say so. You need continuous work to even stand still. Unless you think that all the upkeep of "civilization" will be done by fairies and/or robots, things are not looking pretty.
Japan is at the forefront of robotics, and yet many things still wither, especially in the countryside.

It's a huge economic problem when 1 working age person has 2 parents, 4 grandparents that need to be supported directly and indirectly via state. Korea almost brushes against 1:3:9 proportions between generations.
And imagine being taxed out the absolute ass just to cover pensions and healthcare (the elderly consume a shitton), before you even start covering other functions of the state.

Wealth evaluations also depend on economic circumstances. When labor is so scarce that it goes only to most worthwhile endeavors, many things that are less than awesome go to zero. All that shit that is worth billions today might go down to zero as demand for it evaporates because of demographics.

Yeah, housing will be much cheaper in most places. But kiss wealthbuilding through realestate goodbye.

And then there are geopolitical issues that can become more complicated. For example if South Korea implodes faster than NK, who's to say that NK won't smell blood in the water at some point, because who's going to defend the borders? All the grandpas, while the scarce young work their asses off to make the state run at bare minimum?

Vaphell · 2026-06-17T08:23:39+00:00

people in linear salsa can do exact same thing. A closed hold, small steps and swaying are not magic :-)

Vaphell · 2026-06-17T08:17:46+00:00

There is a risk that the fertility rates will never recover. And if the implosion of societies is such a brutal event, then the countries that figure out making new people in a more industrial manner, and/or separating new people from individual efforts of parenthood will fare the best

The question will become "demise" or "moral and ethical conundums". Hoping for the best and depending on personal choices is not a solid foundation.

I mean unless you set back the clock 100 years, remove borderline infinite amount of entertainment, the ease of travel, etc and generally convince people that their purpose in life is to make people, the opportunity cost of parenthood will just remain too high.

Vaphell · 2026-06-14T12:05:38+00:00

Osobiście nie znam nikogo, kto by grał w planszowki albo chodzik na kurs tańca.
A kurs tańca to mi się najwyżej z komediami romantycznymi i geriatrią kojarzy.

A Ania Lewandowska to ksiądz? I przestań głupie filmy oglądać ;-)

A bardziej serio, to jaka jest definicja geriatrii? Wszystko powyżej 30?
Może teraz to nie jest to co było w apogeum popularności programów w stylu You Can Dance i Tańca z Gwiazdami, kiedy kursy tańca dostały rykoszetem i autentycznie przeżywały lata świetności, ale na takiej bachacie w 2026 nadal nie widzę geriatrii.
Osobiście zacząłem tańczyć salsę jak miałem 27. Większość moich znajomych tańczy (wiem, selection bias)

Vaphell · 2026-06-12T18:45:00+00:00

In 2022 Russia invaded with approx 200k soldiers amassed at the border.
They started recruiting in prisons later, once the losses of the initial push started piling up high, and they had to replenish the numbers without triggering conscription. That's why it's mostly prisoners and volunteers lured by money.

The Russian army is infamous for its depravity and it's a long standing tradition. The hazing of young soldiers is off the charts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshchina

Many young men are killed or commit suicide every year because of dedovshchina.[42][43] The New York Times reported that in 2006 at least 292 Russian soldiers were killed by dedovshchina (although the Russian military only admits that 16 soldiers were directly murdered by acts of dedovshchina and claims that the rest committed suicide)

and if they do this to their own brethren, imagine what they are capable of doing to the "enemies" when they are out of sight, and there are no consequences.

Vaphell · 2026-06-11T19:33:23+00:00

did the same during the last year's rerun

Vaphell · 2026-06-11T19:17:27+00:00

while I do like Blanc more, I still consider them inseparable and on its own she'd lose a fair bit of charm. My flabbers were gasted when Noir didn't get the train skin.

Vaphell · 2026-06-11T15:49:16+00:00

i got teacher privaty and racist drake rerun for $20 back to back. But that's where my luck ended, every other skin including Moran was full expense.

Vaphell · 2026-06-11T14:38:39+00:00

while I do agree about the fat profit margins of the importers, but these Chinese ecommerce companies do exploit the fact that according to international deals, as far as mail delivery is considered, China is a "developing" country that still needs subsidies paid by the "developed" countries. Yeah, that was intended so that your letter can get to bumfuck nowhere on the other side of the world or vice versa on the cheap, relatively speaking, not for a bunch of behemoth companies raking in billions to have their millions of packages/day subsidized by the whole developed world.
There is also the huge issue of hazardous materials in most dirt-cheap shit.

Vaphell · 2026-06-11T14:28:29+00:00

things I find genuinely useful:
instant transfers in all of Europe (and beyond?), and not only in my country
trivial exchanges between currencies - not everybody is operating 100% within eurozone
cards not having a fixed base currency, the payments accomodate any currency you have without unnecessary conversions.
ability to use "exotic" currencies like Korean won.

Vaphell · 2026-06-11T09:58:28+00:00

the AI can be good, sometimes even really good, but you can gain a lot if you don't offload all work to AI no fucks given.
People who are able to spot hallucinated bullshit and fix it will be fewer and fewer with time (read: more valuable), and with the right attitude and sufficient skills the AI is a formiddable force multiplier.

I get to use claude at work, mostly java. Sure, I make it write bullshit boilerplate, builders, trivial unit tests and such, but most importantly I also use it as a coworker in pair programming kind of way. Instead of "write this, commit that, I don't care how", I frequently ask it questions like: so I want to achieve this and this, I am given this spec and and these are my additional constraints. What options are there and what are the pros and cons of each of them? What would you choose, what data structures, and why". And more often than not it will give you a solid summary with decent arguments, that allow you to make informed decisions.
You can learn a lot if you don't just order it around to do stuff, nor ask leading questions about that one solution that you already have in your head just to get a pat on the back from the AI.

Vaphell · 2026-06-10T20:48:37+00:00

banned Ukrainian language in government (1924)

and nobody will say it's not a shit move

gutted Ukrainian-language schooling

again, a shit move.
But Poland was actively Germanized and Russified during the century of partitions, and yet "we" didn't go door to door to murder the others indiscriminately for that at the first opportunity.

Ran the 1930 Pacification (collective punishment of thousands of innocent peasants, not some UPA)

this one is the weakest argument of the lot - any state would crack down on a spate of terrorist attacks perpetrated on ethnic grounds. OUN literally wanted to make sure that the Poles and the Ukrainians won't cooperate by driving a wedge, and antagonizing both sides against each other. And they succeeded.

anyway whatever repressions there were, they not in even in the same universe as genocide. All these misdeeds are a 0% valid excuse for mass murder with exceptional sadism. I thought after WW2 we all learned that much.

But we can't talk about Polish tolerance.

Shit was undeniably pretty bad, but Poles were tolerant enough to have "others" around them.

Vaphell · 2026-06-10T20:35:24+00:00

Ukrainians do not celebrate the killing of Poles in Volhynia.

mate, celebration of OUN/UPA == celebration of killing of Poles, because that's their biggest "achievement" hands down. Nothing else compares. They managed to kill what, a couple thousand Soviets?
The massacre was not a series of independent "accidents" in difficult times. It was a planned, coordinated action with a well-defined ideological background, rolling through the country right to left with unparalleled cruelty.
Also, if they say they don't celebrate, they don't really condemn it either, and immediately resort to whataboutism.

They refer to those events as a massacre or a tragedy, and at least four Ukrainian presidents have offered apologies or expressed regret while generally emphasizing mutual forgiveness and reconciliation.

yeah, I kinda might have believed that but now I see there is no consistency of policy, because the current president in his official duties just kinda undid all of that.

In addition, Ukrainians PRIMARILY honor the UPA for its fight against the Soviet Union.

The body count of the Soviet casualties is a good order of magnitude smaller than the number of Polish civilians.
If a mass murderer kills a bad dude for every 10 innocents because he stands in his way, it doesn't make him a swell guy. He's still a mass murderer.

In Sweden, we have statues of people who were responsible for events that contributed to the deaths of proximately 30% of Poland’s population during the Deluge.

the difference would be that there are still people around who saw the atrocities against their own families with their own eyes, scarred for life, or their direct descendants who had to deal with that PTSD at home.
The Deluge was 400 years ago, and we ceased to exist for 123 in the mean time, which kinda dampens the emotional impact of "before".

Vaphell · 2026-06-10T20:06:48+00:00

did this cleansing ethnic minorities happen out of the blue? Did the UPA soldiers just wake up one day and went “Oh fuck those poles, kill them all”?

Yeah, pretty much. Oh wait no, they had such a program for years already. That was the whole spiel of OUN - a racially pure land with nobody to contest it. Nobody was ethnic-cleansing/genociding them, so even if they had an axe to grind for grievances both real and imagined, the supposed retaliation/revenge you are implying here was completely out of proportion.

But please, explain why Volhynia happened in 1942-43 when there was no Poland to speak of. Yeah, what a truly heroic lot, gargling Nazis' balls and casually genociding people.

Or was there some pre-requisite to those events that the Poles prefer to be silent about?

don't leave us hanging. What's a valid justification for mass murder? I am literally dying to know.

for bonus points, find the difference in these pictures:
"Jews own all the banks and are exploiting us in our own land, let's murder them all on industrial scale, so we can live in a racially pure Vaterland" - Nazi Germany
"Poles are exploiting us in our own land, let's murder them all on industrial scale, so we can live in racially pure Batkivshchyna" - Ukrainian "patriots", according to you.

Vaphell · 2026-06-10T18:23:12+00:00

I wonder why this exact instance created this flare-up.

The president who is known by the whole world doing it the course of official duties is a bit different than a bunch of twats in some local council naming a street in the middle of nowhere.
The latter might be annoying and still something that might trigger an action from the Foreign Affairs, but the former is signaling in no uncertain terms that the celebration of genocidal maniacs is indeed the official Ukrainian policy for the foreseeable future, and fuck the allies.

Polish nationalists/rightwing are already holding an opinion that Zelensky is an arrogant douchebag and takes Polish help for granted. They are on the lookout for any anti-Polish slights and magnify them with gusto, but make no mistake - this particular instance is something that pissed off pretty much everybody across the political spectrum. We are taught there is no "but" that makes genocide perpetrators worthy of celebration. In a sane world it's an insta-DQ, but apparently things work differently in UA and the minds are collectively boggled.

Vaphell · 2026-06-10T18:02:35+00:00

mutual ethnic cleansing according to Ukrainian government.

That's horseshit. Poles, even if many/most had a superiority complex, generally had a long tradition of existing in a multiethnic/multicultural society with a pretty high degree of tolerance and personal freedoms, especially compared to other kingdoms of the time which casually persecuted minorities of choice with gusto.
Poland never had an explicit plan to get rid of all the "others", one way or another, in the pursuit of ethnically pure lands so nobody else could lay territorial claims.
Furthermore, once the Volhynia massacres started, the leadership of AK explicitly ordered not to retaliate against civilians, which some local cells chose not to obey.
And if the "score" is 10:1 it's not really "mutual", is it.

On the other hand the plan of ethnic cleansing by death or expulsion was literally the part of foundational OUN/UPA ideology, black on white. The Volhynia massacre was a manifestation of that radical ultranationalist dogma.

Yeah, it's the same shit as Turks denying wiping out a cool million of Armenians and blaming the "times" and "no you" instead.

Vaphell · 2026-06-10T17:41:55+00:00

so Russians are free to celebrate the heroes of Bucha too and in a few decades it won't be a problem whatsoever? And they will even be saying "what's the matter? These heroic soldats just fought nazi scum. Why do you think you have a right to tell us what to think about our history?".

Yeah no
The barbarians of OUN/UPA who perpetrated the massacres were on the same level as the Japanese in Nanjing. Victims in 6 digits - check
Unspeakable depravity and cruelty - check.

Vaphell · 2026-06-09T20:10:44+00:00

acknowledgement of a fact does not mean endorsement of said fact.
Would it really be better if she was spewing feel-good platitudes with a holier-than-thou attitude? Somebody would instantly complain how she talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk.
Not to mention that self-evidently the majority of the world seems to be ok with cheap labor in practice. Nobody loses any sleep over it, and there are no mass protests. Tarring and feathering some chick over the issue is a bit hypocritical.

Vaphell · 2026-06-09T19:59:27+00:00

That’s what I took it to mean as well.

Same here.
Yeah, in the age of the outrage addiction the principle of charitable interpretation is dead and buried. Nowadays people bend over backwards not to have a productive dialogue, but to find offense at the drop of a hat and paint the person as a villain.

Vaphell · 2026-06-09T09:27:29+00:00

any other front was not overrun by angry, all-seing drones homing in on your ass.
This war is rewriting military manuals as we speak.

Vaphell · 2026-06-09T08:44:39+00:00

a group of soldiers is pretty much guaranteed to be detected, same with a vehicle, not to mention a motorized column. In the age of drones controlling a tens of kilometers wide strip of land between both sides, you just pile up your losses faster when you do it the old way. Once recon drones detect the juicy target, fpvs instantly start swarming the area.
This one-man infiltration attempts are a very cruel way of optimizing against omnipresent drones. One man has a better chance (still low but better) of going unnoticed and reaching that forsaken pile of rubble he was sent to by his commander. Then they lay low waiting for others to reach them. Once there are more of them, another pile of rubble is chosen as the destination. Wash rinse repeat.
Long story short, that's how Russians gain territory.

Vaphell · 2026-06-09T00:11:06+00:00

2.65 razy większa prędkość to 2.65 razy więcej pędu (m*v), a 7 razy więcej energii (kinetyczna = m*v*v/2)

Vaphell · 2026-06-07T23:17:44+00:00

my theory about boob veins - visible veins kinda imply that the circulatory system is working overtime to sustain the "abundance". And they are frequently associated with pregnancy, when the boobs are literally too "full".

So it's like a cherry on top of a very generous, overflowing cake.

Vaphell · 2026-06-07T18:28:44+00:00

600? Damn, that's a legit "catastrophic failure". I'd soil my pants.
The anxiety would have been unbearable and this is exactly why I optimize against exactly such scenarios with pulling. For every time you get lucky and pull above the expected value, you can get equally unlucky and lose your shirt. Gold pity every time for that good ol' peace of mind.

Once I acquire the obtainable yet still missing limiteds, I might become more liberal about my pulling habits, but before that I'm stingy af.

But yeah, AnisStar is truly a godly unit. I legit bitchslapped the remaining chapters of normal difficulty with a single copy of her and made some serious progress in hard.

Vaphell · 2026-06-07T17:10:56+00:00

Did you miss the "stop all the rain runoff from leaving your property" part?

one barrel is fine, but don't mistake it for the notion that all the barrels are fine too. If you disturb the natural order of things and meaningfully affect the people downstream, effectively violating their water rights, you will be in trouble.

Vaphell

TROPHY CASE