My interest in literature lies at the intersection with politics and society.
I resonate with the principle that art asks questions. In decades and centuries past, art was particularly important to the masses to question society at a time when that was often forbidden, forcing the use of metaphors. Literature, plays, opera and so on.
So a result of this is that as a general rule conservative political movements cannot produce art because they don't want people to ask questions. They want to give them answers that they take unquestionably in a similar way to how religious dogma is propagated.
So you see how fascist movements, most notably the Third Reich, have treated art and have sought "objective" beauty in an acceptable aesthetic and have denounced actual art as degenerate, even subversive, leading to such terms as "cultural Bolshevism".
So I see the Great Gatsby as questioning the very society of the Roaring Twenties where you might otherwise see it more superficially as simply depicting that era. It's historically noteworthy that it was released in 1925, well before the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that was (IMHO) the inevitable consequence of an era of great inequality where wealth was accumulated, even then, through financialization. Lest we forget Nick was a bond salesman.
And on top of this system we have Tom and Daisy who are essentially parasitic, who float through life with no regard for the consequences of their actions, who produce and give back nothing in spite of their wealth and status. Other, most notably Gatsby himself, pay the price for their reckless disregard.
I first read the Great Gatsby before the dot-com bust but it seems like you can draw many parallels with the post-GFC tech boom. This is why, for me at least, the Great Gatsby is inherently anti-capitalist.
Which Venezuelans? I ask because this exact same argument was used to justify the many failed assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs debacle and sanctions on Cuba where many Cuban Americans were anti-Castro.
Now that might've been true but consider the source: many Cubans in America fled when Batista was ousted or in response to that. A famous example of that is Rafael Cruz, the father of Senator Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz famously said he hates communism because his father was tortured... by Batista [1]. And it's a failure in journalism that he wasn't challenged and lambasted for this idiotic take.
There are a lot of Venezuealsn in the US who justifiably fled the chaos there. But why was it chaotic? The US will try and tell you it's because of Maduro. But what about the sanctions? As a reminder, sanctions are a nice way of starving "we're goign to starve you and deny you medicine in the hopes you do what we want to the administration we can't otherwise topple".
Also, the US doesn't actually care about any of the crimes they accuse Maduro of. This is the same country who deposed Allende and installed Pinochet into Chile, who was a brutal dictator. That too was about resources. Oh and let's not forget Iran, who had their democratically elected government deposed to install yet another brutal dicator, the Shah, in 1953, again for oil. Or the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. The list goes on. This happens so much there's a Wikipedia page on it [2].
So, for anyone who celebates this (and I mean this generally, not at the commenter I'm responding to), you will see no benefit for this. A few billionaires will get richer, probably. The US was probably pour countless billions into supporting some puppet, probably Machado but we'll see. And I would be surprised if the lives of Venezuelans gets any better.
And if the lives of Venezuelans does actually get better, it's probably by lifting sanctions and you should be asking why we were starving them in the first place.
As a reminder, the US knows the effects of sanctions. When confronted by a report on sanctions killing 500,000 Iraqi children in 1996, then UN Ambassador and later Secretary of State responded [3]:
> “We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” asked Stahl, “And, you know, is the price worth it?”
> “I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”
All which are currently in foreign countries and are free to express their voices without fear of prosecution. I live in spain with my venezuelan girlfriend, and everybody here from her venezuelan bubble is celebrating and cheering - hoping this is a first step towards freedom. You can turn on your TV to "rtve Telediaro", it is a spanish 24h news channel where they also show venezuelan expats getting together and celebrating from within spain. Other cities in latin america are the same, just watch some news channels from the spanish-speaking world.
They were probably also cheering in the streets in the US, if they weren't afraid of ICE deportations.
Because that worked out so well for the people of Chile (under Pinochet). And Libya (post-Gaddafi). And Iran (1953 onwards). And Iraq (post-Saddam).
Whatever your (valid) criticisms of Maduro, it's important to remember that:
1. The US was intentionally starving Venezuela through sanctions. If conditions improve because the sanctions now get removed, it's not because Maduro is gone. It's because Venezuela's oppressor (the US) just stopped opressing (as much).
Let me put it this way. If I take all your people and put them into a ghetto in Warsaw and build a giant fence around it, letting nothing in or out. And I then decide to let food in once you've given me all your valuables or given up some leader and you now have something to eat, I'm still not the good guy because I later let food in after looting your people and I'm still responsible for starving you in the first place.
2. 20+ years ago the US would lie and say they're doing this to spread democracy and that the people would welcome them as liberators. This was the exact script for Afghanistan and Iraq. Even though it was all about oil they'd never say that. Now they don't even pretend. Trump has outright said that it's about oil and they're going to govern until a suitable puppet is put in place, who will let Western companies loot Venezuela's natural resources.
So good luck with the coming brutal dictatorship and kleptocracy your girlfriend and her countrymen are now celebrating.
In the 90s I had a professor from Ukraine for a math class. He grew up during Stalin and Khrushchev and worked during the Brezhnev years. At a party a group of us decried Pinochet. His response, “What is the big deal. So he killed 10,000 people. In Ukraine we would gladly kill 10,000 people to have their economy.”
I'm a Venezuelan in the USA and I think what happened is an absolutely illegal travesty. Trump and his acolytes are nothing better than criminal thugs and this needs to be fought and protested.
Are you suggesting Maduro should be restored to power in Venezuela? Would that be good or bad for Venezuelan's (regardless of what happens with oil or anything else). Would you be willing to live in Venezuela under Maduro?
Its too late for that now. America has created a mess and will now be responsible for cleaning up that mess (or eschewing responsibility when things don't go as easily as Trump thinks they will, which is probably more likely). There is already a huge power vacuum that is going to be filled with chaos, it is too late to just bring Maduro back since the damage has already been done.
It's important to note only the top of the pyramid was removed here - not the entire government. Most everything will continue as usual for quite some time, or forever.
Just like removing the President of the United States wouldn't mean the country descends into chaos.
It does send a very clear message to whoever becomes the top of the pyramid next, however.
> Just like removing the President of the United States wouldn't mean the country descends into chaos.
Oh, it would definitely. There would be a power vacuum, people would wonder if the remaining government would obey the constitution or ignore it, etc...before Trump I would have said the process would have been resolved smoothly, now I have no idea.
Removing the head of a government doesn't break the government, but it definitely creates chaos before the top is filled. If the government has transitioned into a top-down autocracy, the chaos is even worse, as government agencies would have lost their ability to act independently over time. At that point, various factions start shooting at each other to try and take control of the country (aka a civil war). Throw in one or two foreign militaries in the background and there is even more reasons to start shooting.
> before Trump I would have said the process would have been resolved smoothly, now I have no idea.
Kind of absurd to say this. Even with Jan 6. - things still ran like they were supposed to, and will continue doing so. The government is huge and filled with millions of people. It would take an unprecedented level of coordination to not do what is supposed to happen.
Venezuela has a VP, and a rightfully elected President (not Maduro). I guess we'll see what happens there. The US has committed to maintaining order during the transition - so it seems unlikely to devolve into a civil war as anyone initiating such a thing would have to contend with the US military.
Time will tell... regardless - it seems clear as day Venezuelans will be better off without Maduro. The amount of money that is about to flow into Venezuela will be stunning. Yes, oil companies will swoop in, but the money spent there will rebuild a failed economy, provide untold numbers of jobs for Venezuelans, and lead to a more prosperous nation over time - like it was before Chavez/Maduro.
are you Venezuelan? did you know the country had like a 70-90% deep poverty rate before Chavez? Guess who the oil profits used to go to? Guess what Chavez lowered that poverty rate to before oil prices crashed?
Venezuela was on edge even before Trump did this, do you think they are going to be able to hold it together while the US military is demanding to take control and the people are anxious? Time will tell, but I bet this will wind up like every other case of American regime change in the last 30 years.
Tell that to the Chileans who endured Pinochet, Iranians who endured the Shah and the Ayatollah and likewise for Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Guatemala, etc.
All a puppet would've done was be a brutal dictator who suppressed and disappeared anyone who resisted while enabling Western companies to loot the natural resources and the local populace would see no benefit from that at all.
You might say that Cubans would be better off if Castro had been deposed. Is that because you'd expect the sanctions to be removed? If so, the problem is the sanctions. You're basically saying "you would've been better off if you let me install a puppet dictator and loot your natural resources because then at least I would've stopped intentionally starving you".
And if you can't see the problem with that statement, well, I'm not sure what to say.
The current Iranian regime is a direct result of US involvement in Iran. We are largely responsible for it, for two reasons:
1. By overthrowing a democratic government in the first place to make the Shah a dictator, creating the seeds of revolution; and
2. When it becamne clear that Iran was "lost" (to the West) and fearing a takeover by the Communists and Iran falling into the Soviet sphere of influence, the US got Saddam Hussein, our then-puppet in Iraq who we used to stoke a war for a decade killing more than a million people as an aside, to release the Ayatollah Khomenei from prison in the hopes that the Islamic fundamentalists rather than the communists would win the revolution.
He was imprisoned in Iran, then went to Turkey and from there to Iraq iirc, but it is long ago, so I suspect the GP meant after he was arrested by the Shah.
> Oh and let's not forget Iran, who had their democratically elected government deposed to install yet another brutal dicator, the Shah, in 1953, again for oil.
It was about the Soviet Union. The British convinced the US that Mosaddegh was going to align himself with the Soviet-proxy communist party (Tudeh) to stay in power. The British, on the other hand, did it because Iran had nationalized British oil fields. The US' oil interests were in Saudi Arabia.
Also the way people describe this is rather twisted. The Shah was not installed by the US. The Shah had been in power since 1941. He was installed by the British, same as his father. The coup replaced Mosaddegh with Fazlollah Zahedi, not the Shah.
Moreover, Mosaddegh's government was not remotely democratically elected. There's a rather in-depth State department memo from the era that describes how those "elections" worked in Iran which made clear that the people voting had little to do with who won. Elections were full of ballot stuffing, bribery and just outright manipulation by pretty much everyone - the Shah, Mosaddegh, Tudeh, foreign governments, etc. [1]
Plus, Mosaddegh had halted Parliamentary election counting early to prevent more opposition from getting elected risking his majority (his party controlled the more urban areas of Iran which finished "counting" earlier). He began ruling with emergency powers and jailing his opposition. That led to mass resignations in Parliament - to the point where they couldn't even form a quorum. Mosaddegh then dissolved Parliament and granted himself full dictatorial powers and ruled by decree after another sham election where 10% of the population "voted."
And it's at this point that the coup happened. The Shah, using his power under Iran's constitution, wrote a letter dismissing Mosaddegh. He was replaced with Fazlollah Zahedi and the Shah started to take a far more active role in government.
Mosaddeq sought fairer royalties for oil from what is now BP but what was then the AIOC after decades of tension and a decrease in Iran's royalties (with increasing British revenues) in the 1940s, ultimately culminating in the nationalization of AIOC in 1951 [1].
Relations deteriorated. Britain isolated Iran through sanctions and oil embargoes. The US sided with Britain but initially rebuffed attempts at a coup, I believe initially under Truman but Eisenhower was also initially reluctant.
Britain did argue that nationalization of oil and other British interests in Iran was Soviet-led and made an argument to Eisenhower's SEcretary of State that a coup was in the interests of fighting communism, something the administration was likely more receptive to given the Truman doctrine and "containment". The Korean War was ongoing at the time.
So did Britain argue this was to fight commmunism? Yes. Was it really? No. It was about Britain's oil interests and colonial ambition. It was no more about fighting communism than invading Iraq in 2003 was about spreading democracy.
Fears of the USSR played a much bigger role in the 1979 Revolution where the US got their then ally, Saddam Hussein, to release the Ayatollah Khomenei from prison to try and make Iran fundamentalist rather than falling into the Soviet sphere of influence.
As for any election abnormalities, nobody cares about that. Like, at all. It's undeniable that Mossadeq was immensely popular in the early 1950s for his stance that Iranian oil should benefit Iranians, first and foremost, rather than a colonial power.
> So did Britain argue this was to fight commmunism? Yes. Was it really? No. It was about Britain's oil interests and colonial ambition. It was no more about fighting communism than invading Iraq in 2003 was about spreading democracy.
More than one party was involved. They had different reasons for their involvement.
The United States' reason was to fight against communism (read: the Soviet Union). As quite a few internal memos make clear, the US did not particularly care about Britain's oil issues and wished to stay out of it. Rather, the US was almost single minded about it's fight against the Soviets. Britain used that to manipulate the US into getting involved.
> As for any election abnormalities, nobody cares about that.
If no one cared about it, people would stop stressing he was "democratically elected."
> It's undeniable that Mossadeq was immensely popular in the early 1950s for his stance that Iranian oil should benefit Iranians
And he was incredibly unpopular by 1953 as he was blamed for the deterioration of the economy caused by the British refusal to ship Iranian oil and he went full autocrat.
Indeed, had Mosaddegh remained popular, the Shah never would have agreed to go through with the coup. After all, he had seen what had happened after Mosaddegh resigned in 1952.
As far as one can reasonably know something it’s clear that Maduro was not the fairly elected president. Chavez and Maduro were disastrous for Venezuela and millions now have hope for a better future.
Your perception about Iran in 1953 is badly wrong.
Guessing it’s what he said in 2002? But the Tablet EIC made these remarks last week. Not really equivalent, although you’re entitled to your media choices.
A referendum to dissolve parliament and give the prime minister power to make law was submitted to voters, and it passed with 99 per cent approval, 2,043,300 votes to 1300 votes against.[83] According to historian Mark Gasiorowski, "There were separate polling stations for yes and no votes, producing sharp criticism of Mosaddeq" and that the "controversial referendum...gave the CIA's precoup propaganda campaign to show up Mosaddeq as an anti-democratic dictator an easy target".[84]
A person has to be very gullible to believe 99% of the vote went one way in a fair election involving 2+ million people.
The one part of this I will agree with is that US foreign policy is uniparty.
The disastrous War on Terror spanned 4 presidential administrations, 2 Democrat and 2 Republican. Middle East policy differences between the two parties are somewhere between superficial and nonexistent.
Even something like Ukraine where you might say Republicans and Democrats differ isn't true. Had Trump been in office when Russia invaded Ukraine, the two parties would simply be in each other's seats.
This is 100% the case when it comes to China too. Oh, and when it comes to Taiwan (and Hong Kong), official US policy is the so-called One China policy [1].
As for US manufacturing, it's dead. Because capitalists killed it by moving it to China to increase profits and (under Regan, in particular) to destroy unions and the labor movement [2].
As for China and IP, US companies did this to themselves knowingly to increase short-term profits and to break unions and suppress wages. At no point will I accept the framing that a Chinese person, a Mexican, an Indian or a person from [developing country of choice] stole someone's job. No, a capital owner made a choice to take your job and give it to someone else so he or she could become slightly richer.
I'm not sure how immigration factors into China concerns.
I'm old enough that I grew up (well) before 9/11. Many in my age bracket will describe the 90s as the last great decade. I feel sad for those who are younger who never experienced that world, the world between the Cold War and the War on Terror.
It was a time when you could walk up to the gate in an airport before the TSA. A lot of younger people don't realize that's how it actually was. They think it's one of those things made up for movies.
Houses were cheap. Rent was cheap. Cars were cheap. Gas was cheap. Food was cheap. A friend of mine had college buddies who shared a 4 bedroom house in Iowa for $175/month. Not each. Total. I rented a 2 bedroom apartment close to a train and the city center for a little over $200/month. I lived as a student just fine on $200/week (in 1995), including paying for rent. My degree cost me about $10,000.
The other side of that was the Cold War when we lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. I think this was generationally traumatic to people who grew up in the 50s (way before my time) but by the 80s? It wwas like background noise.
There was a lot of optimism with the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Union. On reflection, much later, I think this was terrible for the world. When the USSR existed as a counter to the US, the US was forced to at least do something for its citizens. The Red Scare destroyed collectivism and the US does things like the War on Terror now and, well, capturing the Venezuelan president, with complete impunity. They're open about it too: it's for oil. A handful of billionaires will get richer as a result of this.
The Big Lebowski is, to me, the most 90s movie of all time and it just gets better with age. Oh, the output of HOllywood in general was amazing in the 1990s. At that time I used to go see movies once or even twice a week. There was always something good on. Goodfellas and Terminator 2 spring to mind.
There just seemed to be more hope then. Now? I feel for anyone who was born after 2000. Crippled with debt with limited prospects of any kind of security. It's just so different to how it was.
EDIT: qualified that the $200/week figure was in 1995, not the 1980s. That's like $430 in today's money by the same inflation calculator.
Important to note here that the $200/week figure from 80s is the same as $830/week today due to inflation [0]. Rent and degrees specifically have gone up a ridiculous amount, yes, but as far as the rest of it goes, most students today would jump at the opportunity of having that much disposable income.
Not to be that guy who always turns up and points out things aren't that bad, but you can easily rent a 5 bedroom home in Iowa for quite a bit less than 830 / week ($3300 / month) today.
5 bedroom home currently goes for about $2400 / month on Zillow.
I have to think part of the issue is that people no longer want to live in Iowa / LCOL and now prefer NYC / HCOL.
You're wrong, you've mixed up the numbers. Their general living expenses were $200/week. Their rent was $200/month, that's $200 for the whole month, not per week.
I believe the Jesus Jones song, "Right Here, Right Now" has become an ironic commentary on Gen X; in that brief moment in the 90's when we thought the nuclear sword of Damocles dangling over all of us had finally been cut down...
Not a great song, but one that expresses the zeitgeist in a pretty succinct way.
We thought that we were at the cusp of a new era... one where we could overcome the injustices of the past and author a future based on the best version of ourselves.
In the end, Gen X never even got a chance to start; we watched from the sidelines as geriatric Boomers clung (and still cling) to power -- leaving less and less of that (ever more naive) dream behind.
"Right here, right now,
there's no other place I'd rather be.
Right here, right now,
watching the world wake up from history."
The song hasn't aged well & has become a cloy reminder of that time and what we didn't become.
I haven't yet seen what the legal cover for this use of military action was but there's a lot of guessing it will be the same Authorization of the Use of Military Force that was passed in response to 9/11 [1]. Yes, seriously.
The actual reason is that the Supreme Court has made Trump a dictator and Congress has abdicated any responsibility on checking the power of the president.
The people behind this don't call Trump a dictator. They couch it in softer, more legalistic language. It's called the unitary executive theory [2].
FWIW (not much), you can say that this kind of thing isn't unprecedented for a US President. I'm referring specifically to Panama's General Manual Noriega [3].
He has delegated authority, from congress, to do this. Rephrase please. This is not abdication. Are you a Chevron deference die hard too? Yes the executive and legislature didn't turn out exactly as the framers intended - deal with it in healthier ways than calling him a dictator.
You misunderstand unitary executive theory. It's not completely settled law but most of it is and requires your own interpretation of Vesting - but that has nothing to do with what happened in Venezuela so I'm not sure why you bring this up.
Unitary executive is about executive power. Go read some opinions about it, even the 5-4 opinions don't have much daylight between them. If you can cite AUMF you can read judicial review of the executive. It is so annoying to have taken the time to read these things and then come across some nitwit saying unitary executive is a softer way of saying dictator. Go say that in a law school.
If the president oversteps their supposed authority and those polices or executive orders get enforced without a legal basis and the courts and the legislature decline or fail to rein in the president, then they're effectively making new law.
There is no legal basis or even a hint of presidential immunity in the Constitution yet here we are. The Supreme Court is fully behind this unitary executive theory, at least when it comes to Trump, and they've invented all sorts of "doctrines" to contort their way into the constitutionality of various actions such as the major questions doctrine (which allows SCOTUS to ignore the executive and the legislative branches if they decide the language wasn't clear enough to their liking) and the "history and traditions" test.
SCOTUS has ruled from the emergency or shadow docket to empower the president such that there's no even a ruling to to go over in some cases.
These judges like to maintain this air of legitimacy so they can't let everything through. They occasionally rebuff the president but not in a way that's precedent setting. Instead they'll simply deny standing, meaning the plaintiff doesn't have the right to sue. So they're not ruling against the president on the merits (generally) so the administration is free to challenge again if they find some novel standing to intervene.
Watch this whenever the Supreme Court rules against the administration and see if it's because of standing. More often than not it is.
The Supreme Court is probably the worst in our history, even worse than the 1850s Supreme Court that gave us such gems as Dred Scott. There is very little pretense that they aren't ideologues acting for their political interest.
And that's how we get to a president who is effectively writing new laws. Like a dictator.
It's not really that great of a car. I mean it's driving an iPad, basically. Also, they've been plagued with reliability issues eg limiting how much you can adjust your seat because they're so prone to breaking [1].
Also, the Cybertruck is an unmitigated disaster in practically every way.
> EVs are very much a luxury item
In the US, this is kinda true but largely due to trade barriers. Things would be very different if we could buy BYD cars.
Charging is part of the problem too combined with how much Americans drive. But Americans partly drive so much because there's practically zero robust public transit infrastructure that forces people to drive, we build houses really spread out and a common charging network isn't a state priority like it is in China.
> very slow to adopt NACS
So, Tesla's Supercharger network was the only moat Tesla had for their cars. Even now, I believe Tesla charges third-party users significantly more [2].
> An EV can last significantly longer than ICE vehicles
I see what you're saying but battery degradation is a serious problem over time, such that EV depreciation is super high.
Also, some ICE vehicles are super reliable and some of those are weirdly banned in the US. I'm thinking specifically of the Toyota Hilux. Japanese cars in general were banned (after lobbying from the auto industry) because of their extreme reliability and low price.
> I have absolutely zero interest in lease deals
Each to their own but IMHO leasing is the smartest way to currently "own" an EV, given the depreciation.
> It's not really that great of a car. I mean it's driving an iPad, basically. Also, they've been plagued with reliability issues eg limiting how much you can adjust your seat because they're so prone to breaking [1].
Do you own one? I've had one for 6 years and I've never had issues with it, it's the best car I've ever owned. I've driven lots of other EVs, and none are close.
> Things would be very different if we could buy BYD cars.
We've had BYDs and other EVs for many years in Australia, and EVs are still a luxury item.
> Each to their own but IMHO leasing is the smartest way to currently "own" an EV, given the depreciation.
I've never understood Americans and leasing. Aside from specific styles of novated/chattel leases (where there is a tax benefit), leasing a car seems to almost always be a worse deal.
> We've had BYDs and other EVs for many years in Australia, and EVs are still a luxury item.
Australia is much closer to the US than China in terms of public transit and EV infrastructure. In China, now the majority of new car sales are EVs. There are chargers everywhere and much of the time you don't need to drive because any decently sized city has robust and cheap public transit.
Australia isn't as car-dependent as the US but it's honestly not that far off. Perth, for example, is akin to Los Angeles in car dependence as well as cars owned per capita.
> I've never understood Americans and leasing.
It's complicated. It's not strictly better but it's not strictly worse either. It depends on if you want or need to drive a relatively new car vs holding on to a car until it falls apart.
Some will talk down leasing because new cars depreciate the most in the first 2-3 years, which is true. But leasing gives you the option of just handing it back or paying the balloon payment if the car hasn't depreciated as much as predicted (and priced in). This happened in the pandemic when car prices skyrocketed and, for example, used trucks were selling for at or above the MSRP of a new car for the same model because you simply couldn't buy the new one (at or below MSRP).
> There are chargers everywhere and much of the time you don't need to drive because any decently sized city has robust and cheap public transit.
It's definitely not the density of major Chinese cities, but all major cities in Australia have plenty of EV chargwrs and public transport.
> Australia isn't as car-dependent as the US but it's honestly not that far off. Perth, for example, is akin to Los Angeles in car dependence as well as cars owned per capita.
You've picked the most isolated city in the world as your example, with a heavy lean to FIFO workers and disposable income. But even going with it, Perth has high public transport usage [1] and has halved its costs for patrons in the last year [2]. This was an election promise and important to people.
I'm sorry, but I think you're pulling things out of the air here, what you're saying simply isn't accurate.
> It's definitely not the density of major Chinese cities, but all major cities in Australia have plenty of EV chargwrs and public transport.
I'm sorry but if you think ANY Australian city has good public transit, it's because you simply haven't been to any city with good public transit. Pick pretty much any major city in SE Asia and compare.
> You've picked the most isolated city in the world as your example
Irrelevant. Public transport is within a city. It doesn't matter if that city is 100km from another city or 3000km.
> with a heavy lean to FIFO workers
FIFO workers account for <3% of Perth's population so irrelevant.
> Perth has high public transport usage
It does not. If someone works full-time or is a student they account for about 400 boardings per year. At 148M annual boardings that's 370,000 people averaged out in a city of 2.3M. And I don't even know how they're accounting for transfers (eg bus to train, ferry to bus or train).
All Australian cities have commuter oriented public transport where the goal is just to go between the CBD and home so that's what most people do. As soon as you want to go anywhere else, you have to go via the city, which kills its usefulness.
Also, all of these cities have substantially grown in recent decades to the point that they have significant public transport deserts. So inner Sydney has relatively OK train support but inner Sydney is horrendously expensive to live in. The majority of Sydney's population will live in Western Sydney now, which by comparison is a desert.
So you'll also find that even when people do use public transport, a lot of them are driving to a train or bus station first.
So, even if you can go into the city for work and you choose to do so, you still have a car because you want to go places that aren't work.
I didn't pick Perth randomly. I picked because I know Perth from back when Padbury was the limit of the city in the north and when Rockingham (let alone Mandurah) were basically separate cities and not just part of a seamless unplanned urban sprawl like it is now. I've known Perth from a time when more than half the suburbs that exist now didn't exist.
But what's clear to me is you simply don't know what good public transport is. Go to New York, even London, a whole bunch of European cities, any major developed city in SE Asia or pretty much any city in China (or even Japan) then get back to me.
LA has a rail system too. And buses. And they go downtown. In spite of that the density and the rates of car ownership and cars per capita are pretty similar to Perth. Or Greater Sydney. Because all of them are heavily car dependent.
> We've had BYDs and other EVs for many years in Australia, and EVs are still a luxury item
Are they very heavily tariffed? You can get electric cars made by Dacia (European), Hyundai (Korean) and BYD (Chinese) for under 20k in Ireland. That’s well under the average cost of a new car (40k); hardly luxury.
(Granted, I assume average distance driven is _way_ higher in Australia than Ireland, which may make shortish-range cars less viable.)
EDIT: Was curious, looked it up.
> The BYD Atto 1 [also known as the Seagull and Dolphin Surf in some markets] is the cheapest electric car in Australia starting from $23,990 plus on-road costs
That’s 13k euro. There is no world in which that is a luxury car.
The Atto 1 is one of very few (maybe the only?) EVs in Australia under $40k AUD. It has a range of 200km (in best conditions) and launched about 3 weeks ago.
Whilst it may have an impact and change it, the fact remains currently EVs are significantly above a normal base model new car price in Australia and this has made them a relatively luxury item.
Also for clarity, I am stating it is a luxury item - i.e outside the spending of a normal household, not a luxury car, which has its own definitions in Australia.
IPv6 is the poster child for the second system effect (or solution) [1].
IPv4 really only had 3 problems that anybody cared about:
1. Address space size;
2. Roaming; and
3. Reliable connectionless delivery; and
4. The problems created by the at most once delivery under TCP when what we really needed was at least once delivery in many, many cases.
Even the address space size problem is less of an issue than originally predicted because of improvements in NAT, up to and including cgNAT for cellular network providers (which also somewhat addressed (2) in a limited way).
Interestingly, some of the larger companies have networks simply too large for the 10.0.0.0/8 address space.
By "roaming" I mean maintaining a consistent connection while moving between networks.
(4) has kinda fallen on QUIC (now HTTP3) but this should really be core TCP/IP Layer 3.
You could also say that TCP congestion control is pretty outdated. It's not surprising. It was designed at a time before megabit (let alone gigabit) networks. And, more importantly, latency kills throughput. Some efforts have been made on this, such as Google's BBR [2], but other problems remain like MTU windows being too small for modern networks.
So what did IPv6 do? It only solved one problem, address space, and it did it in a way that kinda created new problems. First, the address space is too large (128 bits) and the last 64 bits are kinda reserved for the job that a 16 port used to do. And why was that? Originally, it was intended that the lower 64 bits were derived from a 48 bit MAC address (as used by Ethernet and later Wifi) but they realized this was a huge privacy problem so it never happened.
The example I often end up pointing to is the "rise" in left handedness [1]. It didn't actually increase. We simply stopped punishing people for it.
There have been seismic changes in the understanding of autism (and ADHD) over even the last 10-15 years, let alone 30-40+. Once autism was considered only for people who were largely or totally nonverbal. It was only in the 2010s that the consensus formed that people could have both ADHD and autism. They were previously considered to be exclusive.
I've heard many stories from teachers who, when faced with an autistic pupil, will play a game of sorts to see which parent has undiagnosed autism. With a modern understanding, it tends to be pretty easy to spot.
"Play a game of sorts" doesn't sound either systematic or predictive. Are they referring both parents to clinicians to check if the prediction from their "game" was correct, or just using it for water cooler fodder?
I, as a non-professional in the field, have no business diagnosing anybody based on casual interactions.
If I am at a party and I tell my friends “that weird person I just met is pretty autistic,” I am not diagnosing them, I am just saying something speculative behind their back.
>I, as a non-professional in the field, have no business diagnosing anybody based on casual interactions.
That's fine, because professionals don't diagnose people officially based on "casual interactions" either, nor they do that at parties.
They have systematic scripts to go through and structured interactions. That's because diagnosing is official business and must have a higher standard plus tests and paperwork to cover your ass.
Ignoring that, whether a professional or not, if you know what to look for, it's pretty easy to tell if someone is autistic by talking to them at a social context, with way better than chance accuracy (meaning aspie autistic - for asd 2 or 3 it's way more self-evident than that even).
More often than not, the subjects reveal their diagnoses themselves at a later point.
If you have guessed correctly from before the reveal for many different individuals, you can pat yourself on the back.
For those that don't reveal or might not even have a diagnosis or be aware they could be, a pile up of additional (unrelated to the initial impression) diagnostically consistent behaviors and mannerisms as you get to know them over time is also a good enough confirmation for use outside of a clinical setting.
In general, even the average non-trained or unfamiliar with the specific traits neurotypical person is good at this identification even subconsciously, they just don't know what exactly they're identifying (so pit it as "weird", "offputting" etc):
(...) across three studies, we find that first impressions of individuals with ASD made from thin slices of real-world social behavior by typically-developing observers are not only far less favorable across a range of trait judgments compared to controls, but also are associated with reduced intentions to pursue social interaction. These patterns are remarkably robust, occur within seconds, do not change with increased exposure, and persist across both child and adult age groups
"… a static image was sufficient for generating negative first impressions of those with ASD. (...) In contrast, first impressions of TD [typically developing] controls improved with the addition of a visual information, suggesting that unlike the ASD group, visual cues helped rather than hurt the impressions they made on observers."
I can look at a politician or a CEO or just someone I encounter in life and see autism (or not), narcissism, sociopathy or any number of other conditions. Is this a diagnosis? No. But it's part of my mental model for dealing with such people. I'm not sure why you played the faux offense card at people making casual observations.
It's also clear to anyone who pays attention that there is a genetic link with autism and it doesn't take much to see it.
More deeply, you rcomment reads as a typical neurotypical response (or possibly internalized ableism from someone who isn't diagnozed but probably should be). There is a real safety issue here because autistic people can spot the neurotypical vs neurodivergent difference pretty darn quickly and have come to realize that neurotypical people are a real threat, particularly in the job market.
And if you still don't think neurodivergent people can spot neurotypical people, what about the reaction autistic people get from allistic people? Allistic people tend to instinctively dislike, distrust or even bully autistic people from the moment they meet them. They create conditions where autistic people have a harder time in the workplace, are less likely to get promoted and more likely to be fired or forced to quit.
You’re making a lot of assumptions, and without going into detail, you couldn’t be farther off about my personal experience.
The point of TFA is that the mild/borderline diagnosis rate has exploded. So apparently those professionally tasked with diagnosis now see autism where they used to not see it. But now we have self-styled autism spotters out there labeling people definitively based on tweets.
Even in your response you said my response was neurotypical, OR undiagnosed atypical. You don’t see the irony?
Ok, so you're a "autism is overdiagnosed" Andy, in your own words. That likely puts you in the NT camp so you should probably sit this one out as you have absolutely no idea what impact autism has on people's lives.
I don't think I've ever seen someone diagnosed with autism who turned around and said "it's not a big deal". It always, always, always has a profound impact on understanding the trauma and difficulties they've suffered their entire lives.
These are people who once wore labels like "being a nerd" or simply "being introverted" when their brains were wired in such a way as to be at a severe disadvantage in an allistic world. There were answers to why they had few friends in school, were likely bullied, had difficulties getting and keeping jobs and had problems maintaining social relationships. These are people who sought out (or were forced into) jobs where social connections didn't matter (as much). These are people who were told their team in the office was "like a family" but were somehow always excluded and were told they were being difficult for asking qualifying questions on tasks or simply pointing out how something was doomed to failure.
What autistic people learn is that allistic people are dangerous and needy because they demand conformance to unwritten rules, who will talk about rules while ignoring them when convenient, who will talk about consistency while having none of it and will talk about morality while discarding it in a heartbeat.
It is the most allistic trait ever to simply dismiss all this as "overdiagnosis".
We are seeing the culmination of the 50+ China industrialization project at the samme time as the West's 50+ year financialization and deindustrialization project, all to concentrate even more wealth in the hands of the 0.01%.
China is really the only country capable and willing to build infrastructure. The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China is massively backfiring. The chip ban in particular has created a captive market for Chinese chips. In 1945, American exceptionalists believed the USSR would take 20+ yars to copy the atomic bomb, if they could do it at all. It took 4 years. China will do the same thing with EUV in the coming years.
Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely by government subsidies that only continues to exist because of the tariffs and import bans on BYD in the US and much of Europe.
Additionally, Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth exports for its products.
As an example of how China uses state power, a famine in the 20th century caused China to decide that food security was a national security interest. The availability of cheap, quality food is viewed as essential and the state intervenes to ensure that continues. Likewise for housing.
Western companies seem increasingly focused on the top 10% because the bottom 90% have nothing left to eextract.
I've never seen a comment simultaneously be so right on some things and so wrong on others.
> The ban on selling lithography AND chips to China is massively backfiring
Agreed. We will be screwed once China surpasses us in chip fabs, and they will. The idea that we can get a "durable advantage" by reaching AGI a few years before China is ridiculous. Using that to justify bans that only slow them down a few years at the cost of creating a chip fab juggernaut later is folly.
> Tesla is a trillion dollar company that was created entirely by government subsidies that only continues to exist because of the tariffs
Tesla is not supported by subsidies significantly more than any other car company and less than many including BYD obviously. They also compete directly with BYD without tariff protection worldwide and in China and do well. They are worth a trillion dollars because of the potential of their self-driving software which is far ahead of any other car company's including those in China.
> Tesla is completely dependent on Chinese rare earth exports for its products.
Tesla has rare earth free alternatives. There is no urgent need for them right now but they can switch if necessary.
> Agreed. We will be screwed once China surpasses us in chip fabs, and they will. The idea that we can get a "durable advantage" by reaching AGI a few years before China is ridiculous. Using that to justify bans that only slow them down a few years at the cost of creating a chip fab juggernaut later is folly.
I’m quite sure advanced semiconductor fabs are considered a strategic necessity by China regardless of restrictions. Further, China is now getting the H200 chip…
> Tesla has rare earth free alternatives. There is no urgent need for them right now but they can switch if necessary.
There are also plenty of rare earth extraction projects coming online outside of China!
> Tesla is not supported by subsidies significantly more than any other car company
Tesla was saved by a DOE loan [1]. Tesla was kept afloat with carbon tax credits. Yes, the Big Three got bailouts in 2008. And now, most importantly, import barriers are the only thing keeping Tesla afloat.
"Tesla got some subsidies" does not refute my argument. All carmakers get subsidies. BYD gets tons! And Tesla is selling plenty of cars in places without import barriers protecting them including China itself.
As you mentioned EUV machine, I happened to read an article from a former Executive of ZhongXin, a domestic competitor of the famouse Huawei and also sanctioned by US. He said that China had no insentive to develop lithography technology including EUV until Trump blocked the sales of EUV machine in his first term. [1]
There are tons of other cases, like EDA software, etc. It used to be a bilateral business. Now China become more and more independent of the rest of the world due to external pressure.
BTW, I've been working and living in the West (more specifically , in Canada) for almost 30 years but also have access to Chinese language media. I've been watching a lot of misunderstanding or misinformation. It's less in recentl years. I have to stay way from some of the topics to avoid being downvote because misinformation believers strongly believe I'm wrong for those topics.
1. Just to repeat myself from another comment on this thread, there is no such thing as a defensive weapon. Were it not for the various missile shields, the Israeli state wouldn't act with wanton abandon against its own citizens and its neighbours. All of the various war crimes and terror attacks are a direct consequence of the effectiveness of a "defensive" missile shield.
Let me pose this question to you: if these were purely defensive technologies, why don't we give them to everyone, including the Palestinians? and
2. Israel has already ruled out giving Ukraine the anti-missile (and assumedly anti-drone) defenses [1]; and
3. Many people, yourself included it seems, need to examine these conflicts around the world through the lens of historical materialism.
Take the genocide and conflict in Sudan. The SAF are arguably the ones with the "cheap rockets" here. Should we be giving the RSF anti-drone technology? The RSF are backed by the UAE using US weapons. Why? To loot Sudanese gold.
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Territory, access to the Black Sea, resources and to create a land bridge to Crimea that had otherwise become extremely expensive to maintain as a colonial outpost. Like, just look at a map of controlled territory.
But why is it in a stalemate? In part because Russia is a nuclear power but also because the West is unwilling to let Ukraine do the one thing it could do to defend itself properly and that is to attack Russian energy infrastructure. Despite the sanctions, Russia is still allowed to sell oil and gas to places like Hungary, Slovakia, France, Belgium, India and China.
Back to the Middle East, we have Yemen, who was devastated by war and genocide at the hands of another US ally, Saudi Arabia.
The solution to these conflicts isn't more weapons, not even "defensive weapons". It's solving the underlying economic conditions that created that conflict in the first place.
> Were it not for the various missile shields, the Israeli state wouldn't act with wanton abandon against its own citizens and its neighbours. All of the various war crimes and terror attacks are a direct consequence of the effectiveness of a "defensive" missile shield.
I'm not sure that's true, before Iron Dome, Israel would respond to many rockets from Gaza by firing mortars back at where the rocket was launched from, often the roof of an apartment building or similar, causing civilian casualties.
After Iron Dome, a lot of rockets were simply intercepted and ignored, because there was no longer political pressure from Israelis seeing rockets land in their villages and wanting to hit back.
I think you have it backwards. Israel tolerated something like ~30k rocket attacks from Gaza (between 2005-2023) before finally launching a major military campaign that sought to remove Hamas from power.
It would normally be absurd to expect a state with military superiority to tolerate ~30k rocket attacks from its weaker neighbor. That was only tenable because Israel's air defenses mitigated the bulk of the damage.
If Israel's air defenses and bunkers suddenly disappeared, Israel would be forced to respond far more aggressively to each terrorist attack.
> The solution to these conflicts isn't more weapons, not even "defensive weapons". It's solving the underlying economic conditions that created that conflict in the first place.
Collectivism will not save us. The day after we abolish markets, prices, and capitalism, there will be as many disagreements about resource allocation as there were the day before. Some of those disagreements will spiral into conflict.
I resonate with the principle that art asks questions. In decades and centuries past, art was particularly important to the masses to question society at a time when that was often forbidden, forcing the use of metaphors. Literature, plays, opera and so on.
So a result of this is that as a general rule conservative political movements cannot produce art because they don't want people to ask questions. They want to give them answers that they take unquestionably in a similar way to how religious dogma is propagated.
So you see how fascist movements, most notably the Third Reich, have treated art and have sought "objective" beauty in an acceptable aesthetic and have denounced actual art as degenerate, even subversive, leading to such terms as "cultural Bolshevism".
So I see the Great Gatsby as questioning the very society of the Roaring Twenties where you might otherwise see it more superficially as simply depicting that era. It's historically noteworthy that it was released in 1925, well before the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that was (IMHO) the inevitable consequence of an era of great inequality where wealth was accumulated, even then, through financialization. Lest we forget Nick was a bond salesman.
And on top of this system we have Tom and Daisy who are essentially parasitic, who float through life with no regard for the consequences of their actions, who produce and give back nothing in spite of their wealth and status. Other, most notably Gatsby himself, pay the price for their reckless disregard.
I first read the Great Gatsby before the dot-com bust but it seems like you can draw many parallels with the post-GFC tech boom. This is why, for me at least, the Great Gatsby is inherently anti-capitalist.
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