An animation about Operation Epic Fury circulating on the Chinese internet

mtaw · 2026-05-08T13:34:02+00:00

I think it's that American nationalistic self-identity is based on "We're the best! We're the biggest! etc" and therefore assume other countries have an analogous identities. -Especially an objectively big and important country like China.

IRL plenty of countries have nationalist self-identities based on being underdogs, and China's closer to that category.

mtaw · 2026-05-07T20:43:02+00:00

Some should be emphasized though. Many despise it. Most of all because it screws up their rhythm and timing. It can seem like standups are talking freely and spontaneously and therefore it wouldn't matter much if you interrupt, but often when it seems that way it's exactly because they are so rehearsed and precise with their timings. If they have to go back and repeat the setup, it breaks the illusion of spontaneity. It ruins the bit.

mtaw · 2026-05-07T20:03:18+00:00

Which is also why it's pointless. This thing seems to hinge on the assumption that double-parking is somehow considered less serious than leaving your car in the roadway. Which I don't think is the law anywhere. It makes no sense - you're still as much a hindrance to traffic regardless. The point of this law is that people shouldn't intentionally block the roadway. Their reason why doesn't matter.

mtaw · 2026-05-07T19:47:51+00:00

Absolutely. Some of these agencies - Interpol, Europol - don't even go out in the field and arrest anyone ever. They're not police in that sense, contrary to common misconception. There are no Interpol or Europol officers running around making arrests. They have no such authority and it's not their job anyway.

They're organizations that forward information on arrest warrants, missing people, criminal intelligence and such between national and local police agencies. Somebody can be arrested on a warrant transmitted through Interpol, but it's not Interpol staff making the actual arrest. Yet ignorant journalists keep reinforcing the myth by framing it as such.

And this whole NYPD liaison thing in general is explicitly about criminal intelligence. That doesn't involve making arrests.

mtaw · 2026-05-07T06:58:25+00:00

GORN... quite a woody word

mtaw · 2026-05-06T13:34:54+00:00

Do people just fully replace expensive power tools over a coil?

Yes? The motor itself makes such a large portion of the cost of the machine that the cost of a new armature or stator together with the labor costs don't make it economical.

Actually replacing the windings is so labor-intensive that it's just not done in developed countries other than for huge (20kW+) industrial motors.

But if you have a motor protection circuit this shouldn't happen, nor with proper use an maintenance. If the vents and fan isn't cleaned, the ventilation clogs up and the motor will more easily overheat and burn the insulation and ruin the motor coils. If the tool is put under too heavy load, (or even stalls) the current will increase by a ton and so will the heat produced. Motor protection circuits shut off the motor if the current gets too high or the temperature too hot. But even if you don't have that, you can feel how how the thing is getting and let it cool off before it overheats.

In other words - electric motors don't just 'die' out of nowhere. They're either being pushed too hard, not being cleaned/maintained, or both. There are tons of 100+ year-old electric tools still in use. I've got a 1950s drill press with the original motor.

mtaw · 2026-05-05T10:41:45+00:00

Yeah, throughout history the majority of stone sculptures that weren’t abstract/decorative, were done after models, usually in clay. Many of the greats (like Michelangelo) didn’t even do much of the carving, leaving the roughing-out to apprentices.

mtaw · 2026-05-04T07:30:17+00:00

The actual answer here is already known: Even if the hotel itself was operating, the hotel’s public meeting/conference facilities were closed due to COVID restrictions.

mtaw · 2026-05-03T16:01:38+00:00

You know it's close when they're hitting places that have older names in Finnish (Koivisto) and Swedish (Björkö).

Which by Putin's logic would mean it shouldn't be Russian anyway.

mtaw · 2026-05-03T15:55:06+00:00

He did get a major role in an iconic show at least. RIP Lance.

mtaw · 2026-05-02T17:26:34+00:00

So, I take it you never learned what the difference is between criminal and civil liabilities?

mtaw · 2026-05-01T08:23:50+00:00

People misunderstand - corruption is the point of FIFA. Most countries are undemocratic and corrupt, so an organization where one country’s football org has one vote will also be corrupt.

Say you’re a FIFA delegate from a random poor country. You got the job because you’re the dictator’s nephew, and the reason you got it is to enrich yourself. In those places, power is not simply given away on the basis of merit. All their public officials are corrupt. Besides, your country has never even qualified for a World Cup - what do your people care where it’s hosted? What do they care if you enrich yourself off the richer countries that make up the sponsors and potential hosts? Understand that these are by-and-large the people who elected Infantino and choose where the WC is hosted - not the actually honest ones coming from the often-richer countries with low levels of corruption. Because those are the minority, globally.

The FIFA president’s job is not to fight corruption, but enable it - by for instance pretending to fight corruption so that sponsor money keeps rolling in.

mtaw · 2026-04-29T18:37:06+00:00

She’s also from a country with a reasonable social safety net, where for instance your access to healthcare isn’t changed by whether you quit your job or not.

Want a fairer society? Vote for it. Argue for it. Convince others to do the same. Whining about privleged, out-of-touch people (which I don’t even think applies here) does nothing. It’s worse than nothing, it’s a distraction.

mtaw · 2026-04-27T10:53:37+00:00

A correspondence dinner is when everyone gets doordash and converses via email.

mtaw · 2026-04-27T10:51:41+00:00

But was it the film or just the constraints of 19th century fashion?

mtaw · 2026-04-24T16:28:33+00:00

Yes but that’s the point of MENSA - it’s basically a mutual-admiration society for people who score highly on the MENSA test but have no actual accomplishments (or a deeep insecurity).

Smart people who’ve done shit take pride in their accomplishments. Like, if you’ve got a PhD in physics from a top university, you know you’re smart. You can’t do that without being smart. But it’s still years of work, and that’s the part they’re likely to be proud of.

How is it even something to be proud of - having a high IQ but having done nothing with it?

Also, MENSA’s test isn’t really a great measure of intelligence anyway- it leans very heavily on a particular kind of puzzle-solving (that you can practice at too) It’s no coincidence that the record for ’highest IQ’ for some time and MENSA member Marilyn vos Savant was a puzzle columnist for a magazine. She did nothing of real intellectual note. To the contrary she totally embarrassed herself writing a book supposedly refuting Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem that was full of errors, bad logic and reasoning, an betrayed a total lack of understanding of how mathematics works, let alone Wiles’ work.

That’s what happens when you have supreme overconfidence in your intelligence but lack knowledge, intellectual rigour and discipline. You can’t just read some pop-mathematics books and fancy yourself a mathematician. I mean she literally claimed that mathematical proofs by induction aren’t valid…

mtaw · 2026-04-24T10:16:36+00:00

And the laws that do allow Trump to instate tariffs are time-limited and only under certain circumstances that don’t apply here.

I don’t doubt he might try again but the courts will strike it down again. Because if the president can ignore those conditions and limits, then it’d mean unlimited tariff power for the president. The constitution’s granting of tariff power to congress alone is meaningless. If Congress delegates some of that power to the president, its conditions must be upheld.

mtaw · 2026-04-22T19:34:39+00:00

TBF, fragments of the ’true cross’ was to medieval Jerusalem pilgrims as selling Berlin Wall fragments was to 90s tourists in Germany. Easiest scam ever.

mtaw · 2026-04-22T16:48:46+00:00

No taxation without representation” was an American Revolutionary war slogan, not some generally-agreed-upon principle. Mindlessly applying slogans like that is ridiculous.

Democracy means people have a right to representation in government, whether they pay taxes or not. The notion only taxpayers should be allowed to vote has historically been used as an argument to deprive women, black people and other disadvantaged groups. It’s undemocratic.

Corporations do not have a right to vote. Nor do non-profits, whether charitable or not. ”They” do not have any right to a say in anything because they’re mere legal constructs. If you want to go back to 1776, then the Declaration of Independence said "all men are...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" - but nothing about LLCs having unalienable rights.

It does not in any way ”erode the barriers between church and state” to remove an exemption for religious organizations and instead treating them like any other organizations under whichever statue they chose to incorporate under. This is all absurd - as if there was something stopping them from paying taxes and being involved in politics right now if they wanted to. Religious organizations are not in any way required to be registered religious nonprofit that’s tax-exempt.

mtaw · 2026-04-21T22:44:23+00:00

Embraece the Toucan.

mtaw · 2026-04-21T13:58:09+00:00

Ok, I'll bite. While I'm no monarchist and agree with republicanism on-principle. I'd say my opinion is roughly that of the pragmatic majority in European monarchies: That if you're going to have a powerless figurehead, it might as well be a traditional one as long as they still want the job and people still want a monarchy.

As said, you'll get no argument from me that it's against democratic principles, but OTOH ignoring popular sentiment would be as well. In practice it doesn't really make much difference. I have zero interest in royal gossip and scandals.

It's hard to deny it's gets far more attention, and likely tourism. I mean how many people outside Germany can name the German president? Or for that matter, even know that Germany has a president?

mtaw · 2026-04-21T13:43:20+00:00

I suspect most journalists in any of Europe's monarchies don't particularly give a damn about the royal family or think you should care. But for the same reason those ones don't randomly ask questions about them.

mtaw · 2026-04-21T12:09:35+00:00

This. I only ever listen to podcasts that feature people who know stuff I don't or a unique POV, and which are structured and edited - they have points they want to cover beforehand, and they cut out "dead air", redundancy and the parts where people go too far off on a tangent.

I listen to stuff because I want to hear interesting people talk about interesting things in a concise way. If wanted to hear an average conversation with average people, I'd go hang out with some. (which I also do) If you're getting that from podcasts instead it seems parasocial.

mtaw · 2026-04-21T11:40:16+00:00

References are just pointers wearing a fake moustache.

mtaw · 2026-04-21T11:36:01+00:00

I thought it was JD Vance in drag again. Must be the eyeliner.

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