Authoritarian regimes traditionally touted public transit. From "he made the trains run on time", the German autobahn (which actually predated a certain party) to the lavish halls of the Soviet subway stations, to China's highspeed rail networks, public transit is just a thing that strongmen like to do. And absolute power certainly helps when you want to plow a road/rail/bridge through a neighborhood.
I watched an in-flight documentary about the architecture of soviet rural bus stops. Each one of them looked like it cost most than the neighborhoods they serviced.
But you cannot have good public infrastructure without a strong state (strength on its own isn't authoritarianism).
A lot of western governments are rather weak, I swear baumols cost disease and spiraling social/retirement/debt spending has crippled their ability to provide for the public.
In the US, it's mostly because the urban planning field was extremely embarrassed about "urban renewal" (rightly so) and switched to a new ideology that just completely forbids ever doing anything in case it's bad for anyone.
It's also partly because they read The Population Bomb in the 70s and literally decided to ban housing/transit in order to stop people from having kids.
Switzerland has a weak federal government. The cantons are smaller than US states, but have more autonomy, and a lot of matters are decided by direct democracy. Yet they still seem to have good public infrastructure.
I mean the obvious is that Switzerland is rich, and money is power.
But it's true that public infrastructure is more dependent on local rather than federal governments. I think the best example of weak local governments has to be the UK [1].
Of course. Plenty of countries do. It is not that one requires the other. It is that when authoritarians came to power in the last century, many of them initiated lavish public transport projects.
I guess where you come from definitely determine how you think: the bus stops look better than neighborhoods does not offend me, it actually shows collectively you can have something better than on your own, which makes a lot sense to me XD
Public transport is in a lot of ways an aggregate expression of state power. It takes a lot of state capabilities to be able to execute public transport well.
"Not every authorian regime" cars are just as authorian see Gulf states. I have a hard time seeing anything less opressing than a 2 tonne hunk of steel that you need to bring along everywhere.
It is such a tiresome trope, with people gushing over cars. We do not live in 1950 anymore.
>> they usually say that the job is awful on your body without much pay.
Worse yet, when your body does fail or is injured, that wage tends to stop. Most tradespersons are working for very small companies, often incorporated as their own one-person company. If you cannot work, it all just stops.
One thing that makes the military different it that while the military can be very hard on your body (infantry) your wage does not stop if you are injured. A civilian carpenter with a broken leg must live on savings for a month. A military carpenter with a broken leg just won a month of desk duty without any drop in pay.
Absolutely. Some of my family owns a construction company and the career path for all employees in that company is basically to work your body while you're young and then move into management/estimating jobs before you do too much damage to your body.
The military equivalent is to work a few years as a grunt until you qualify for some sort of free higher education. Then you come back as an officer and get to boss around all those sergeants who once yelled at you. Depending on your exact path, its all generally pensionable time worked for the same company.
Indeed it’s hard to retire from the US military as an officer because there’s a big filter at Major. You generally need to reach LTC to make 20 years. Enlisting for four (or more) then going officer makes it easy to get 20 years and retire.
That is why the US armed forces has a rep for being so young. Other countries they dont kick people out so easily, but promotions are also much more difficult. Talk to a canadian or a brit. It is not unussual for them to be in 30+ years. And i've met canadian army captains who have been captains for 20 years, giving them more experiance than most american LTCs.
Well, yeah, not a lot of people are going to continue much past 20 years when that qualifies for immediate retirement pay and a private job can suppliment. There's up or out policies at various levels too.
Despite how maligned they've become, there are still some US trade unions who take care of their members in these situations.
But, yeah, on the whole this business about the virtue of trades and Boomer Facebook making baseless claims about how much money there is to be made is ... problematic. I've been there and these folks face all sorts of risks in the near (e.g. falls, electrocution) and long (e.g. Mesothelioma, (increased risk of) Parkinson's, etc.) terms. Working conditions have improved and seemingly everyone wears hiviz nowadays (possibly performatively / to virtue signal) but corners are absolutely still cut and I've heard many jokes and seen many eyes rolled on OSHA's account.
I went to law school with a guy who grew up in a state with "normal" highschools and "technical" schools for those not earmarked for higher education. Being a big football-type guy, he was directed to the latter. His mother fought to get him back into the "normal". Had she not done so, we would never have been classmates at law school. The technical school lacked the higher-level math and language courses that are important when applying to university.
Exactly the same here - after technikum you can go to uni... But statistically, your results for high school exam are going to be way lower. Or you simply won't pass.
Assuming a stable population, if some males are fathering dozens of offspring, the bulk of males are probably fathering zero. Are those males still part of society or are then shunned/killed? What does the life of a not-dominant male look like? One who isn't the king's favorite?
There used to be. There once was a host of rules one had to follow, from spelling to sentence structure. Students were tested on thier objective ability to recognize and correct grammar. That is now dead. Schools accept junk so long as it nails the citation format. Students are taught that they can rely on culture and common knowedge rather than bother with proper language.
>> Signal was an approved and whitelisted app for ... discuss top-secret matters on.
No. Just no. Anyone who has handled TS information would know how nutz that sounds. Irrespective of software, TS stuff is only ever displayed in special rooms with big doors and a man with a gun outside. The concept of having TS on an everyday-use cellphone is just maddening.
You're leaving out crucial information. Obama didn't keep his BlackBerry for classified information, he was given the then-standard government secure mobile communications device, a Secure Mobile Environment Personal Encryption Device (SME-PED).
More specifically, the device Obama was given was a Sectéra Edge [0][1] by General Dynamics, a device specifically designed to be able to operate on Top Secret voice and Secret data networks. It had hardware-level separation between the unclassified and classified sides, even having separate flash memory for both. [2]
The NSA contributed to the design and certified it and another device (L3's Guardian) on the SCIP, HAIPE, Suite A/B, Type 1, and non-Type 1 security protocols.
It was absolutely not a regular BlackBerry, it didn't run any RIM software, no data ever went through RIM's servers, and secure calls were encrypted and didn't use SS7. It was a clunky purpose-designed device for the entire US government to be able to access Secret information and conduct Top Secret voice calls on the go.
Even then, there were limitations to when and where it could be used and when a SCIF was required.
The current equivalent of the SME-PED programme is the DoD's Mobility Classified Capability[3], which are specially customised smartphones again made by General Dynamics.
There is no excuse whatsoever for the current administration's use of Signal, let alone TeleMessage Signal, for Secret and Top Secret discussions on regular consumer and personal devices. It's deeply irresponsible and worse than any previous administration has done.
Your reference [0] appears to contradict what you've said here. It speaks at length about several NSA approved options as alternatives, but says Obama used a BlackBerry.
The photo attached to the article captioned "President-elect Barack Obama checks his BlackBerry while riding on his campaign bus in Pennsylvania last March." appears to show a blackberry.
I take it from the article that this was as controversial as I remember it being at the time. Thanks for posting it.
He was allowed to keep his BlackBerry for personal communication only, not classified communication, and had to use a Sectéra Edge for classified communication. [0]
The Blackberry for personal use wasn't a stock BlackBerry, but hardened by the NSA and fitted with the SecurVoice software package to encrypt voice calls, emails, and messages. The few people he had on his approved communication list were given the same devices.[1]
That BlackBerry was, again, not used for classified communication. So it's not the same thing as the current scandal.
> He was allowed to keep his BlackBerry for personal communication only, not classified communication
Presence of the senior staff on his (very limited) contact list would seem to contradict that statement. Communication with them would be, by definition, not personal.
I agree with you that our government officials should be using the secure infrastructure our patriotic service members and civil servants work so hard to build and maintain.
Obama wasn't allowed to keep his Blackberry; he requested a secure commercial-quality cellphone to communicate with his aides, and NSA (which was, to be sure, not really happy about the request) selected the Blackberry as their platform. The end solution was a highly pared-down device that could only communicate via a hosted encryption server (a commercial product, SecurVoice) to a small number of paired devices, which were distributed to Obama's inner circle. The Presidential devices had additional security limitations (e.g., they could only connect to WHCA-controlled base stations). End of the day, what they had was an encrypted closed network of devices, some of which communicated over public wireless infra, running a very limited, NSA-reviewed, approved, and altered, software suite.
What's clear is that NSA put a fair amount of effort into securing and maintaining that system, so much that its use was limited to the White House; Hillary Clinton wanted a similar setup (her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, had been allowed to use unaltered "off the shelf" Blackberries under an NSA waiver, but NSA had declined to renew those waivers due to security concerns), but NSA slow-walked and effectively derailed the discussions with State's security team, perhaps because they wanted to limit the amount of technical detail discussed outside the White House, or because they were concerned that State would be unable to provide SecState with the kind of technical support necessary to secure the devices during global travel. (We all know what happened next, of course.)
If you’d prefer, we can call it unclassified communication rather than personal communication. The point is that it was not used for Secret, Top Secret, or other classified communications. For that, he had the SME-PED device.
So, again, it’s not a parallel to the current situation. Nobody is saying the SecDef and other staff shouldn’t have unclassified devices as well as their classified devices, the issue is that they’ve been using the unclassified devices to conduct Secret or Top Secret discussions.
But how could he have created accidentally a conversation for discussing targets during military attack with a journalist if secret communication was not done on his clear-text device ?
I think you're misunderstanding me, I'm referring to Obama's use of an NSA-hardened BlackBerry for unclassified communication with a select group of people, while using a purpose-built and NSA-cleared secure phone for classified communication. All of which was done correctly in terms of information security processes.
Secretary of Defence Hegseth sent Secret or Top Secret information over a channel (Signal/TM Signal and a regular mobile phone) that was never cleared for classified communications. The person I was replying to was trying to equate Obama's actions to those of Hegseth (and Waltz and others), I was providing context showing that to be a false equivalence.
That's not a counter-argument. You're introducing a hypothetical with no substantiating evidence, trying to create a parallel to a situation where we have unambiguous evidence of non-classified devices and software being used to discuss classified material. The onus is on you to prove the claim, not on others to prove a negative.
It has been eight years since Obama's presidency, had there been any use of this hardened BlackBerry for classified communications it would have emerged by now. Similarly, all messages on that device were subject to the Presidential Records Act, and are archived by NARA. You can FOIA them if you want to.
There were also no claims made during his administration that he ignored security protocols. Even his insistence on retaining a BlackBerry for unclassified communications was done through a compromise and an NSA-hardened device, not by ignoring the rules.
Similarly, how do we know that Reagan didn't hold cleartext phone calls with his aides on the Top Secret plans to contain the USSR? We don't, but in the absence of any supportive evidence over the years it's safe to assume he did not.
Person you're replying to is using an "absence of evidence" fallacy as their argument, also known as an "appeal to ignorance" [0]. They're inferring that the absence of evidence that Obama didn't use his BlackBerry "for Secret, Top Secret, or other classified communications" is potentially evidence that he did in fact do so.
(I would have replied to him directly, but the comments have since been [appropriately] flagged)
In reality, no argument could ever be made if you had to prove the negative of every argument. Some other common applications of this fallacy off the top of my head:
"Well we don't have proof that children weren't trafficked in Comet Pizza, so it's proof that it did actually happen."
"We don't have proof that no kids used litterboxes at school, so it's proof that they did use litterboxes."
My statements were complete. You were not completing them, but trying to spin them in a way that implies wrongdoing when no evidence exists of it. I can only presume you're doing so for partisan reasons, to try to defend the actions of the current administration.
Whatever the reason, I have made my case. Feel free to make yours with a similar level of evidence.
How is your voting record public? Who anyone voted for is not a matter of public record, and even if you claimed to disclose it, nobody would be able to fact check that..
Do you have evidence that Obama discussed or viewed topsecret intel on that blackberry or are you just trying to muddy the waters with a false equivalence?
You think he used it only to discuss what flavor of ice cream was being served that day in the whitehouse dining hall? With only the senior staff? If so, I have a bridge for sale which may interest you.
Question: What does this author think happened instead of the volley? Does he expect that archers just started randomly firing when they felt like doing so? Of course not. They waited for the order to start firing. So the first shots would, imho, constitute a "volley" in that everyone would be launching in the same few seconds. Subsequent shots would then become less coordinated, but that first wave would be a true volley. Then orders would come to stop/move/start, resulting in other coordinated volleys.
The author has an entire series of posts on how pre-modern generalship did and didn't work, including a post on issuing commands. The tl;dr is that there cannot have been a generalized order to fire on cue because pre-modern armies didn't have that kind of command resolution and speed. Best case you have a few guys who start firing because they're told to and the rest follow suit when they notice that it's started, more likely there's an established doctrine for when firing should happen and archers use their judgement for whether to start.
I don't think a command to start firing is that complicated. A simple flag wave suffices especially for <100 archers that's standing still. There are more complicated commands that a centurion had been able to do.
Because about 10% of voters are total crazy people. Let them make the occasional random decision and we will be at war with the moon people within a month.
Exactly. Venice's govt was not a democracy - the Serene Republic was designed to basically filter in only the most influential, yet had a system of checks and balances so that power wouldn't devolve to just one family (like what happened in Florence and Milan). Sortition was part of that system.
That is the weight at maximum draw. It is more like pulling back a rubber band that gets progressively harder until you hit your max. It isn't like lifting a weight which is a steady force. Similarly, a lifted weight has inertia. You cant just yank it up. A bow doesn't have inertia. You can pull it back as quick as you like, which makes it easier for a given max "weight" of pull.
(Modern bows are different. They use cams and multiple strings to create the opposite effect. They can get lighter as you draw them back, which is a really strange sensation if you aren't expecting it.)
How modern? Not modern enough for writers and directors of photography to have gotten the wrong idea, right? This trope got in early and has never gone away.
After the 18th century, virtually nobody would have used a war bow. Other than recreationists, everyone's archery experience would be of target and hunting bows. Both have much lower draws.
When I owned one, it had a 65lb draw with an 80% letoff. So it took maybe 10/15lbs to hold it at full draw. But my bow could still reliably throw arrows out to around 300m, basically double the range of an english longbow. Nobody ever aims a modern bow for max range. Doing so is incredibly dangerous. World record distance shots have broken 1000m.
I guess that’s true. And when you’re hunting a deer it’s better to not loose an arrow than to shoot it badly, so taking a beat to refine your aim would make sense.
I had a teacher that was a bow hunter. I believe he claimed it was the only arrangement fair to the deer. They had a sporting chance. I can’t imagine he fired more than a couple arrows in any hunting trip. Very different from shoot or die.
I don't think it's appropriate to call that "sporting chance" - for the deer this is not a sport, it's a very serious life or death situation, where they'd very much rather not be.
That does not leave us any conversation to have that is appropriate to HN though.
They consider it a sport, the sport requires physical discipline, and that discipline is a propos of the topic.
If you want to get into the cruelty of hunting, we will first have to decide if raising feedlot animals is less cruel than hunting, and you will absolutely lose that argument. But we aren't here to discuss any of that. We are talking about the stopping power of arrows and arrows don't care what mammal they are aimed at.
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." F Scott Fitzgerald, probably stolen from Zelda Fitzgerald.
Yes-ish. But "sporting chance" may be a way for the hunter to say that wants his recreational pastime to be difficult enough to be interesting to him. Or that he is repelled by the idea of using really modern drone & firearms technology, and slaughter-at-scale.
>Similarly, a lifted weight has inertia. You cant just yank it up.
Force is force, whether it is due to elasticity or gravity. The difference is that the drawing force increases progressively, whereas the weight of an object is (for these purposes) constant (as stated).
>> I imagine it would be next to impossible to fight the instinct to try and hunker down behind some cover.
Which is why formations were used. The inexperienced men were placed in the center, hemmed in by more experience soldiers who were less likely to run for cover. Sun Tzu would call this a death zone. A soldier will fight when to fight is his only option.
I watched an in-flight documentary about the architecture of soviet rural bus stops. Each one of them looked like it cost most than the neighborhoods they serviced.
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