Became used in some circles due to russians using the symbol "Z" for their new great patriotic war. It can be seen as an attempt not to lump all russians together, but instead to distinguish the pro-war group (which, if you like limits, tends toward 1).
When it comes to the internet, it seems to me that "the other parties" here carries a lot of weight when it comes to disinfo, polarizing propaganda, etc.
Why, do you think that the US, where all the giant social network companies are based, isn't doing this on a massive scale, much larger than anything Russia or Iran (and probably China for now) could ever hope to do?
Because most propaganda I see online seems to have a clear direction, and because of some not-so-recent "scandals" where a bunch of American influencers/grifters were discovered to be paid by russia to incite civil war.
Because if it did, we'd know about it. If we can get researches from Russia to expose their country's nefarious dealings, at the threat of death, we could easily get French, or German, or Canadian, or British, or American, or Czech researchers or whistleblowers exposing American propaganda campaigns.
Hell, look at Twitter/X. It got acquired by a mental guy who was screaming about government propaganda and censorship (while doing Nazi salutes). Do you really think that if there was any government mandate to do anything like what the Russians are doing, he wouldn't have exposed it as "SEE, I TOLD YOU BIG GUBIMNT BAD!!" ?
Same for me, these things you mentioned either felt like stuff for edge or "convoluted hobby project", with maybe some cv padding along. Perhaps we need to buy into the full ecosystem to understand the value.
Just to be clear, I think you meant to say it's half the civilian casualty rate in Ukraine. Aside from guns, it seems like the Iranian government also pulled in foreign mercenaries to shoot on their own citizens, geez.
No, fortunately civilian casualties in Ukraine are significantly less than that (except for Mariupol where 20-50K civilians were killed during 2 months of fighting in 2022). It is the soldiers deaths, 500-1500/day each side.
Kinda envious of them that, due to sanctions, they end up with hyperscalers. Europe will never get hyperscales while being too tight with the US, and any protectionism at the service industry level would make the US go more mental than it already is.
It's not only because of sanctions. It's primarily because their leadership have deeply technical backgrounds. Most of my peers who ended up in policymaking roles in Europe (and in some cases the levers of power) all had a humanities or legal background and never worked in or adjacent to the tech industry.
Assuming Iran didn't follow the path that it did, Iran would have also ended up becoming a tech hub like Israel became today.
But this recognition should not be used to glaze a regime that has officially admitted to killing at least 5,000 protestors [0] in just 2 weeks and in reality killed significantly more people than that.
Being adept at understanding the applications of technology doesn't make one a humanist.
Iranians have a 5+ millennia culture of being highly educated, technical and creative.
That expertise wasn’t just gonna disappear in a couple of decades.
And yes, the Iranian regime is brutal and terrible. This was one time the opposition was strong enough that they may have had a chance and yet our fellow in chief decided to launch incendiary words, which only allowed the regime to paint the opposition as western funded, while not providing any actual support (there’s a reason Israel, which is at least led by competent leadership, kept quiet about the protests in Iran because they understand how their words of support would undermine them).
Iran is rich in natural resources(gas,oil), one of the richest actually. No country so rich can become a tech hub like Israel/Singapore (which just had no other options for development).
Agree with you on pretty much everything you have said. The background of policymakers in Europe really annoys me. Just to be clear, I wasn't glazing Iran or anything.
The background of most everyone in Brussels seems so wrong for the technological realities nowadays. I believe this sentiment is shared by a lot of people, and now it unfolds in Europe plainly lacking behind in technology. Which is such a shame given history of discoveries and advancement that was going on on the continent for centuries.
The whole European political elite and ruling class feels like a quasi-aristocracy (something the US is slowly moving into as well, with political dynasties and such) that is used to go to some big-name art/humanities place and then slide into the bureaucracy ladder. Totally detached people, and it's a pity because we really need Europe to be better.
Yeah, or even just protectionism. Most economists I've heard say that protectionism doesn't work, but I feel like China being quiet and protectionist in the infancy of its key industries was like the move of the century for them.
>The Iranian Information Technology Organization (ITOI) even set precise rules to evaluate candidates based on three different standards: ISO 27017 (cloud security controls), ISO 27018 (protection of personally identifiable information), and NIST SP 900-145, which concerns the American definition of cloud computing. “They want a comprehensive offer with its three components— IaaS, SaaS, and PaaShttps://incyber.org/en/article/iran-between-isolation-and-te...
Neoclassical economics is quite clear that targeted protectionism is desirable under certain exceptions.
As for China, they would be more wealthy without the meddling of their government. There's no reason they couldn't be like Taiwan, but bigger. The Chinese people got to where they are in spite of their anchor.
I remember half of the neoclassical economics focused articles about China from the late 90s and early 00s predicting that by not following ricardian comparative advantage China was shooting itself in the foot.
They kept predicting collapse, too.
Nobody talks much about the ricardian theory of static comparative advantage today. China's rise kind of invalidated it.
America was taken by surprise by its rise because of this. The cordial relations and trade flipped almost overnight to hostility once it was realized that China's economic power now rivaled that of that of the US and was poised to grow even more.
How do you know those economists were wrong? It's easy to conflate China's size with China's success. They liberalized their economy a great deal since the 1980s, which is responsible for the success they have had. That doesn't mean they couldn't be even more successful with further liberalization. Like a larger Taiwan.
Median wage in Taiwan is something like $14k, less than many urban areas in China, though obviously higher than the very rural areas in China. [1] It's a Reddit link, but it's using first party government data. I'm linking to it since just linking to a site in Chinese would not be very informative for most.
Huge GDP/capita in certain places is because of outsized industries that don't really translate to the average person. Ireland is another example where it's nearly twice as 'rich' as the US by that same metric, but it's just a nuance of it being an international hub for tax avoidance, not because the Irish are doing especially well.
Not really. In neoclassical economics protectionism is only justified as a necessary evil and it is always a form of militarism (spending money to weaken or defend against your enemy), rather than building yourself up.
This is what Japan's GDP/capita [1] looks like. I assume you're around my age because we grew up in a time when Japan was set to become the next economic super-power, and it looked like it might even surpass the US. But sometime around 1995, their economy peaked and they've been in pretty bad shape since then. Their current GDP/capita is about 25% lower (and falling) than it was in 1995. They work as a great argument against people who insist to just always buy the dip. What goes down does not always come back up.
By contrast this [2] is China's GDP/capita which is something really close to a vertical line. But for all the talk about economic systems, I think it's just because of good leadership and a motivated population. There's plenty of capitalist countries that aren't going anywhere, and there's endless examples of hybrid/social economic systems that have also gone nowhere. So I think there have to be explanations outside of the economic system itself.
They went from 100% communism to 90% capitalism, then had exponential growth, and we are supposed to believe the growth was because of the residual 10% communism.
If you are of the opinion that the people in China are living a better life we can stop the conversation. In that case we don't have any common ground for a fruitful discussion.
The problem is that programming logic/state is discrete and not continous so you can't assume similar behaviour given "similar state", and that possible states grow exponentially.
Selecting the desired state will mean writing an extremely detailed spec that is akin to a programming language, which is what Dijkstra hinted at in the past.
IMO, China will get back Taiwan without firing a single shot, the US is slowly de-risking itself from it and will eventually make Taiwan redundant. After seeing how the US is "helping" Ukraine, will the Taiwanese think fighting an all-out war with allies like this is worth it? China doesn't have the same genocidal intentions russia has towards Ukraine, so less reasons for people to fight it out
Edt: would love some arguments instead of downvotes
Asking for an example is ill-posed, given that democracies are rather young constructs compared to the wider human history. Mind you, I am rooting for Taiwan, but I would expect something like what happened in Hong Kong rather than all-out war if the USA rug pulls Taiwan when it comes to support.
Europe has already signaled that they won't do anything when it comes to Taiwan.
Maybe if Xi dies and the next guy is more reasonable. A lot of the animosity towards China is a result of Xi's authoritarian turn a decade or so ago...
The problem with Taiwanese (I am one) is ideological, they see themselves as too socially different than mainland China. Reliance on US support, or TSMC as another popular absurd copium, for security guarantee, is not realistic, and any Taiwanese can see this now. Absent other ways to secure its self determination, Taiwan is stuck playing a thin-line game between a crazy eagle and a very possessive panda.
I 100% agree with what you say, no discussion on that. My argument is that, if/when push comes to shove, Taiwanese leadership will pick the peace option given past US behaviour.
The democrat establishment doesn't seem interested in change, they are like a softer version of politicians getting bought out by tech. Well-mannered, but ultimately not doing long-term thing in the interest of the wider country.
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