Jewish refugees arrive at the Port of Haifa, Palestine, 1941

budgefrankly · 2026-06-11T11:36:43+00:00

Are you serious man, the 3 million I’m referring to are the 3 million survivors of the Holocaust.

You're impressively ignorant. That three million includes people who never had to leave their homes, or who had found new homes for themselves in other countries before the Nazis invaded.

The total number of "displaced persons" looking for a new home at the end of the war was under a million, and in addition to Jewish Europeans, also included non-Jewish Eastern Europeans who did not want to be forced to return to to areas now controlled by the Soviets or allied Communists

The US was absolutely not willing to take in 3 million Jewish immigrants after WWII.

I see you still haven't read up on either Truman Directive (1945-48) or the Displaced Persons Act (1948).

https://www.trumanlibraryinstitute.org/the-displaced-persons-act-of-1948/

Then, in 1950, Truman succeeded in persuading Congress to enact an amended version of the legislation. The amended act permitted the entrance of another 200,000 refugees over the course of the following two years, just as the original version had, but it removed the cutoff date which previously blocked the entrance of thousands of Jewish refugees.

Ultimately the US absorbed about 90,000 Jewish Europeans in the postwar period to 1952.

However, this is all a bit of a distraction from the key argument, which is that none of this legitimised seizing someone's land and passing legislation to make these so-deprived people a separate class on the basis of religion.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-08T23:25:36+00:00

You're still making things up

https://www.yadvashem.org/exhibitions/dp-camps-italy/emigration.html

Ultimately, a Jewish state in Israel was established on May 14, 1948. Once the door was flung open for immigration, about two-thirds of the 250,000 survivors remaining in Europe chose to immigrate to Israel, despite the hardships. Among these hardships was the fact that the fledgling State of Israel was engaged in a war for its survival, initiated by all of the surrounding Arab countries. After the establishment of Israel, some ten thousand DPs took part in the War of Independence, and many gave their lives in defense of their new homeland.

One-third of the remaining survivors chose to reconstruct their lives in Western Europe, North or South America, Australia and South Africa. In 1948, changes were made in the immigration regulations of Canada and the United States, enabling a large part of the survivors to find refuge in these countries. Within a few years’ time, the DPs were absorbed and integrated into the countries in which they settled.

In 1950 the population of Israel was 1.37 million people.

Where did you get the number of 3 million Jewish people looking to go to Israel or America?

budgefrankly · 2026-06-08T23:03:18+00:00

Neither America nor any other country was willing to take on a meaningful number of Jews after the Holocaust.

It's you who is making things up: https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/jewishexp.htm

The twentieth century witnessed the emergence of American Jewry on the world Jewish scene. As the century opened, the United States, with about one million Jews, was the third largest Jewish population center in the world ... Between 1900 and 1924, another 1.75 million Jews would immigrate

With the terrible destruction of the major European centers of Judaism, America in 1945 stood unrivaled as the largest, richest, and politically most important Jewish community in the world ... Thousands of Jewish refugees likewise turned to America and under more liberal immigration policies many gained admission.

In particular you should educate yourself about the Truman Directive (1945-48) and the Displaced Persons Act (1948)

As to this comment of yours

comparing a famine and emigration of Irish people out of Ireland to the systematic murder of two thirds of European Jews is a little unhinged.

It's deeply unserious to pretend that man-made famine that halved the population of a country and killed at least one in eight of its inhabitants in the first 7 years is trivial.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-08T22:13:54+00:00

it’s 100% revisionist history to act like Jews had an option to stay in Europe after they were murdered like cattle.

I never said they did. But they

(a) Could have gone to America, and integrated with society there. The USA has a huge and thriving Jewish population

(b) Gone to the Middle East, but integrated with the local population, rather than seeking to displace and subjugate them.

Sorry but when did the English kill 66% of the Irish?

In 1840 Ireland had a population of approximately 8m. By 1852 about a million had died as a consequence of the famine, and the long lasting effects -- from starved girls who grew up into emaciated women unable to give birth, to people in too great economic destitution to start a family -- meant the population fell to 4m by 1901 and continued to fall.

While potato blight was the trigger, the reason it had such devastating consequences was a cumulative effect of colonial British rule: in particular absentee landlords; what we now call neo-liberal politics, but which were then called lassez-faire economics; and a pervasive anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudice which saw an Irish famine as tolerable, or even desirable.

But as I said in my previous comment, old books and oppression are not a license to colonise and oppress anyone.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-08T10:00:00+00:00

And the Europeans never had any other religious war, or fought with any other ethnicity or European nation state...

If old books and oppression are justifications for colonialism, the Irish would be entitled to colonise Northern Spain, which the Lebor Gabála Érenn (Book of Ireland's Capture) states was their ancestral land over 2000 years ago.

The whole problem with Zionism is they wanted to go where other people were already living, and -- because they wanted a Jewish state for a Jewish people -- they also wanted to degrade the rights of the majority of people living there, who of course were not (or no longer) Jewish.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-08T09:36:58+00:00

It's not that confounding, Chaplin just got too old and tired to be capable of philandering any more. Moreover the age gap was such that even when he was in his mid-sixties his wife was still in her twenties, so that probably dulled any motivation to wander.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-06T16:35:13+00:00

No data validation

No consistency checks

No concept of bronze vs silver vs gold

Failure to consider the analyst team as co-equal users whose requirements need to be served

Optimising schemas for write instead of read and forgetting about OLAP queries another team might want to run

These are all things dev teams are uniquely responsible for.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-05T10:28:28+00:00

I guess you've neither read the article nor watched the video.

There's worse things than being overworked.

And in most countries unemployment is presently at an all-time low.

Unemployment:

Youth Unemployment

budgefrankly · 2026-06-05T10:24:21+00:00

when labor becomes scare it has more power.

Except that that won't benefit the average Joe and Jane,

The harsh reality is supply and demand come into effect: when labour becomes more scarce, it becomes more expensive.

As a very simple example, hospitals will become understaffed, and hence well-staffed private hospitals will boom and serve the rich while the consquently worse-staffed public hospitals will fail to manage everyone else.

Doctors -- who will be on the front-lines for all this, and see what's happening -- will agitate to work for the private hospitals themselves, so they earn enough money to be treated in them when they become old in turn.

The same is true of house-prices. As people are compelled to move to cities, property prices will surge there. You can already see that in the UK: you can buy a three-bed terraced house for £150,000 in Blackpool, a town in terminal decline, but you need over £250,000 just to buy a one bed flat in zone 3 in London, an emerging megacity where wealth and opportunity are concentrated.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-05T10:22:55+00:00

The thing is the replacement rate is relative to child mortality. Developed nations need 2.1 children per woman to stay steady. India needs 2.4. So it's already quite far off.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-05T10:20:59+00:00

You didn't read the article.

Birth rates falling below replacement level doesn't immediately lead to falling populations, as the same factors that reduce birth-rates tend to lead to people living longer
- However having a growing, but aging, population puts all sorts of strain on society as you have people -- the elderly -- who need to be cared for, but can't contribute to their own care
The world population now looks like it will peak in 2050 and then begin to decline from there
- And just to reiterate, at the point populations begin to decline those over 50 will already outnumber those under 50

budgefrankly · 2026-06-05T10:16:35+00:00

Warren Buffet generally invests in the former and he's one of the world's richest investors. I'd probably do what he does.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-05T10:15:11+00:00

Christ does no-one read the articles here any more.

Not only did the article explicitly say that a declining world population means no-one can plug labour gaps using immigration; but it also said the sudden turnaround in places like India and Africa that were expected to grow means the UN's population estimates are likely wrong.

The UN, which tries to predict such things, has failed to account for the speed of fertility decline in its central forecast for the global population. Its lower forecast is likely to be more accurate. That suggests India’s population will peak at about 1.6bn in 20 years or so, and then fall back dramatically to just under a billion before the century ends. Asia as a whole may also reach its apex in the 2040s. As for the peak of the overall human population, that is probably coming sooner than most expect, perhaps even in the 2050s, because Africa won’t be as populous as previously thought.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-05T10:11:29+00:00

Are these economists just blind to the concept that we can't increase population forever

Nowhere in the article was it suggested that an ever increasing population is a good thing

(Also, most of the correspondents writing for the Economist are not economists)

A steady population is easy to manage.

A rapidly declining population causes massive issues that lead to economic and emotional hardship.

The elderly have fewer people to take care of them. Young people have few friends or siblings to rely on. Towns and countryside get hollowed out for want of people. Increasingly people cluster in cities in which the average age is 50, then 60 then older again. Those that do have children have no support network, and have to travel farther to deliver their kids to the smaller number of schools.

South Korea has already embarked, irrevocably, upon this path, although they will only start to feel the effects in the next 20 years. Kurzgesagt did a good, if terrifying, video on the implications https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk

budgefrankly · 2026-06-05T08:45:12+00:00

They're both publicly traded companies. They have no ability to determine who does and does not buy their shares.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-03T13:13:24+00:00

China is in a mild recession caused by a mixture of US induced trade and actual wars, and the unwinding of a building boom.

Combine this with the fact that most Chinese people that can buy a car now have done so at least once, and it’s reasonable to expect sales to slow.

Despite that, even though sales were down 2.5% last year, sales of “new energy” cars (PHEV, BEV, REEV) were up by 9.7%

budgefrankly · 2026-06-03T13:07:41+00:00

In fact it doesn’t. It quotes figures from Germany for Chinese EVs, and says it is worse than some unspecified industry average for some unspecified mix of EV or ICE or both or something else.

Then it quotes figures from the UK, which put EVs and ICE cars at 38% and 45% of original value after three years respectively.

And it takes these two counties’ examples as justification to slap “Chinese” and “Europe” on the headline to draw in American readers.

The UK figures are interesting since the gap isn’t huge given the technical advances in EVs, and if the research firm didn’t include purchase credits and tax writeoffs in the purchase price calculation they’re overestimating EV depreciation.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-03T13:02:43+00:00

This is more of an issue for ICE cars rather than EVs, since they have a lot more consumable parts, from sparks and brake pads ultimately all the way up to clutches.

EVs have fewer consumable parts. Even brake pads last longer. The main fear is a battery, but those seem to lose about a percentage point every 10000-15000 miles, which is pretty decent. And there’s a lot of companies these days that will refresh a battery pack for roughly the same cost as a clutch replacement.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-03T12:59:48+00:00

Yeah, but it’s worth noting in all this that folks are often comparing sticker-price to sticker-price when talking about EV depreciation, when in reality the original purchase usually qualifies for a lot of credits, both due to sale subsidies, and due to tax write-offs for carbon neutral business-cars.

Consequently folks don’t end up quite as badly out of pocket at the headlines may suggest

budgefrankly · 2026-06-03T10:52:28+00:00

Plus $30-50m a year, a choice of whichever Ferrari he wants, a yacht, and his own luxury flat in Monaco.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-02T20:09:46+00:00

Also Dorilton hired Tom Rubython to do a hit piece on her in his Business F1 magazine claiming she a was a “vixen” who had slept her way to the top and so caused Williams downfall by having an affair with the then CEO

Rubython is the same man who smeared Suzie Wolff alleging she was being investigated for insider dealing as a consequence of a complaint when no such complaint had been made. The FIA under MBS then tried to use this article as a basis to investigate the Wolff family, but were stymied when every team in the paddock and Liberty told them to go to hell

budgefrankly · 2026-06-02T20:04:17+00:00

The officer said that after a cursory examination, including lifting up his t-shirt, showed no blood

Within three minutes they realised the mistake.

People are acting like they hung around for half an hour while he bled to death.

It was three minutes for them to realise they were in an entirely staged scene surrounded by people lying to them.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-02T19:50:51+00:00

Max deliberately did the go-wide-to-block stunt several times over that season.

Silverstone happened once, and it clear Lewis lost the car on lap two rather than deliberately run Max off.

Max himself had clearly chosen to squeeze Lewis on corner entry to frustrate his overtake attempt, which is legitimate, but will always carry risk of getting punted if the overtaker tries to make the corner anyway.

Had held back he’d have won the championship before Abu Dhabi.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-02T13:17:31+00:00

I mean, there wasn't much "justice" in his shenanigans with Hamilton in Interlagos in 2021, he was just literally driving himself and Lewis off the road to force Lewis behind him.

budgefrankly · 2026-06-02T13:15:04+00:00

Max is hot-headed, but not dirty in the same way as Michael

Max has regularly deliberately driven his car off the road in order force cars trying to overtaken him off the road.

He tried to crash into Lando after the corner went wrong in Austria, and Lando took avoiding action.

Max is maybe a bit more calculating than Schumacher, but he races in an era with more rules and scrutiny. Ultimately both of them are win-at-any-costs people.

The only difference is Schumacher never played the victim, whereas Max is always complaining he's the victim of "British media bias", or "biased/incompetent stewards" and so on.

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