It’s not that large of an incursion force, I think something like 2k of some of their better troops who would normally be acting as a quick ground reaction force. So they aren’t really moving people off of the front line, though they may have lost the ability to quickly reinforce one front or another.

From what I’ve seen, the salient is being used to probe the strength of the Russian’s western flank. It doesn’t appear that Russia was expecting an offensive, and didn’t have their own version of a quick reaction force held in reserve.

Unless the Russians can move men and more importantly artillery to the area, there’s a risk the salient could be used to roll their western flank, cutting of their border guards from their supply lines.

Yep, that’s a tapered/angled roller bearing. They’re conceptually a pretty easy concept, but deceptively hard to manufacture

Pretty much anything with a turning wheel and axel relies on some sort of bearing system. That means traditional and high speed rail systems both require them.

There are some differences in types of bearing depending on what you use your rail system for. In the US we utilize antiquated plain bearings that are relatively easy to manufacture, but that’s because our rolling stock is ancient compared to most countries. Mainly because we rely heavily on trucks for transporting most goods and haven’t bothered investing in our aging rail network.

In Russia they have a much more modern rolling stock, as everything they ship goes through their rail network. Their rolling stock utilizes angled/slanted roller bearings, which can vastly increase their weight capacity, speed, and can double to triple their lifespan. The only problem is that they are complicated to manufacture.

The bearings in trains are actually pretty complicated to build. They use slanted roller bearings, not just regular old ball bearings. 10 companies in the world make like 70% of all rail bearings, and 5 of those are in Japan. Plus, only a few countries produce the two steel alloys that you make these bearings out of.

China does produce around 20% of the bearings used in trains, but pretty much all of it gets used for domestic purposes and they still have to import due to their massive rail expansion projects

That’s mainly because America mostly moves freight via trucks, and thus has very outdated rolling stock. It’s not unusual to see freight chassis that are 50 plus years old.

Russia on the other hand moves the majority of their freight via rail, and like most countries utilize tapered roller bearings for their trains. This allows them to carry a lot more weight, and the bearings last nearly 3x as long.

I’m not quite sure what would be harder, to import new bearings, build a production line from the ground up for bearings, or retrofit all their rolling stock with outdated technology.

Each choice is going to be expensive and extremely time consuming.

Bearings for rolling stock are actually relatively hard to come by, and there are only a few countries that even produce the two different steel alloys they are made from.

Ten companies in the world manufacture 75% of the bearings used in rail. With like 5 of them being located in Japan, and the rest in the US, Germany, and I believe Sweden. China only produces about 20% of bearings used in rail, but they are pretty much all for domestic use, as they are still expanding their network.

Hell hath no fury like a competitive nerd being put on a pedestal.

I think this happens a lot anytime someone who perceives themselves as being shunned by society gets too much positive feedback and an iota of power over people.

I think its the same reason why every nerdy twitch streamer ends up being outed as an abusive child predator.

(IBA) president, Umar Kremlev, saying that DNA tests had “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded”.

This incredibly misleading, and I’m guessing since the IBA is currently just a mouth piece for the incredibly homophobic Kremlin… I’m guessing intentionally so.

Just because you have a xy chromosomes, doesn’t mean you’re automatically dictated to be sexed as a male. You could very well have a XXY pairing like women with certain types of gonadal dysgenesis, something like Turner’s syndrome.

Gender is without a doubt a human construct, but so is the false dichotomy of male/female that most people outside of the medical field view sex.

The intersex population is much larger than most people presume, and the labels in which we use to classify the majority of the population don’t really serve a medical purpose for them.

There is no standardization in medicine for Sexual assignment at birth. Sexual assignment in medicine is utilized to categorize treatment needs that are commonly specific to the patient’s sex. Intersex patients will require individual assessments, as even patients with the same diagnosis can have wildly different needs.

That may be too confusing, you’re just going to end up with a bunch of magic casters on horseback.

Mongolians are mainly known for their horsemanship rather than their marksmanship. They are probably the best marksman on horseback that have ever lived, but as far as historically being known for their archery…that’s the Koreans, and they’re still pretty dominant in the Olympics.

It is a bit more complicated than that, mostly because the US isn’t a signatory to unclos, while China is. However, China does not recognize the agreed upon terms of unclos, while America for the most part does…

but news media needs to quit exploiting the fact that readers don’t know the difference between different types of waters to manufacture “more-interesting” stories.

The problem is that there is conflicting information on how the states in question interprets what they and others can do in EEZs, and how the EEZs are constituted in the first place.

In reality an international body of laws like unclos is only enforceable if the international court is willing to confront its members with hard power. Withholding that, it’s just a dog and pony show that has the possibility of validating an international conflict if someone oversteps their mark.

My understanding of these trophy hunts is that they only allow people to shoot the animals that are no longer contributing to the gene pool.

For now… A lot of these “conservation groups” putting out these types of studies are actually just hunting lodges owned by rich families. They claim that they are preserving the land, and that they use the proceeds from these types of hunts to protect the land.

However, these “conservationist” are typically just poachers with a marketing team. For the most part their goal is to legitimize the illegal hunts they are already committing.

Not off the top of my head, no, but my point is that the principles themselves were not Marxist nor Communist

So, just a vibe check then?

In what manner? Vibes?

Lol, in the same way as the Khmer Rouge…you never extrapolated how they were feudal to begin with.

Mao was not a deinustrialist, nor was he a nationalist. Yes, different forms of revolution are required, but intentionally setting the clock on progress backwards, rather than forwards, is inherently a reactionary position, which became self admitted!

First of all, I don’t think anyone can rightly claim Mao wasn’t a nationalist. He was an ardent anti imperialist and he wasn’t an ethno-nationalist, but still a nationalist at heart. Secondly progress is relative to the revolution, Cambodia prior to the revolution was for the most part dependent on substance farming. Adapting a centralized apparatus to control the economy is still progress.

but he was never operating under Marxist principles. At most, he took inspiration from the Chinese revolution with regards to the agrarian focus, but instead focused on deindustrialization and nationalism.

They didn’t deindustrialze, they were never industrialized to begin with.

More vibes.

Hilarious considering your arguments have been completely vibe based. Even when I ask you specify your claims… Nope just vibes.

He had denounced Marx and created a form of Feudalism.

When did he denounce Marx, do you have a quote?

Also, the same accusations of feudalism can be charged at North Korea.

His “agrarian Communism” was an expliciy rejection of Marxism from the get-go, as his concept of deindustrialization goes directly against Marxism

Or as the maoist say, Marxism with Chinese characteristics. The same charges could have been levied at aspects of the cultural revolution. Different forms of revolution are required for different forms of societal structures and limitations. The vanguard approach is not exactly going to fly in a mostly agrarian culture.

you have nothing in common with Communism except the name, you have to justify why you believe yourself to be Communist.

Lol, that’s not up to you to interpret. You are conflating nearly 50 years of history to a single decade. I could make very similar arguments about the Soviet Union based on just the 80’s as well.

I think it’s pretty obvious that we’re just trying to distance communism from a regime no one can morally defend. Nearly all the arguments you made have been levied at China, Korea, Russia, or Cuba at some point, but we tend to defend them because the ends mostly justify the means.

don’t believe I made the point that contemporaries criticized their fascism outright, I made the point that they were fascist and rejected Marx. Calling them Communist isn’t accurate in any way, plus they were stopped by the Vietnamese Communists.

I think what’s pertinent to the original argument was that they were communist while the Khmer Rouge were committing their atrocities. Labeling a country that transitioned from communism to fascism as a purely fascist government is misleading and reductive.

Also, being opposed to a communist government does not mean you’re automatically a fascist. As we know communist China attacked communist Vietnam right after the US Vietnam war.

The history of geopolitics in Asia is very complicated and cannot be summed up in a short Lemmy comment

It’s no more complicated than the history of European geopolitics. As an Asian person, I get told this by western people a lot. I think it’s just a hold over from the western interpretation of the east being based in mystery. Also, the complications of any topic does not validate the type of misleading/reductive comment you made.

my point was to distance Pol Pot from Communism, because he wasn’t a Communist and denounced Communism, nor did he implement Socialism.

I think this is completely inaccurate depending on what time you are talking about. I would say Pol Pot was probably one of the most ardent communist of the 50’s, it was just a weird type of agrarian communism. And in the regions he controlled he did attempt to construct a classless agrarian socialist society.

Pol Pot didn’t really divert from communism until the 80’s and that was a last ditch effort to get the west to support his failing regime. I don’t particularly believe that “We chose communism because we wanted to restore our nation. We helped the Vietnamese, who were communist. But now the communists are fighting us. So we have to turn to the West and follow their way.” constitutes as denouncing Marxism.

China, the USSR, and North Korea were/are Socialist, and should be judged as such, for better and for worse. Pol Pot and the gang were not, so judging them as though they were is just silly.

You haven’t supported the argument that the Khmer Rouge were never communist… Now I’m willing to compromise and say they transitioned away from communism as did the Russians, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that they were communist at some point.

How exactly was Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge not communist in the 50s-70’s?

Khmer Rouge was backed by the US and was lead by fascists who rejected Marx, like the Nazis.

I think that’s a highly misleading and highly reductionist interpretation. The Khmer Rouge was supported by the US, but mostly after the conflict had ended.

The Khmer Rouge was overwhelmingly supported by the CCP, especially during the Vietnam war, and before the Chinese invasion of Vietnam afterwards.

Also, PolPot wasn’t criticized for his diversion from Marxism until the 80’s, well after the most turbulent times in Cambodia. And even then Deng Xiaoping only criticised the Khmer Rouge for engaging in “deviations from Marxism-Leninism”

The only person on the left who accused him of being a fascist was Hoxha, but that was after his schism with the maoist. So to him any communist Asian was basically a barbaric fascist.

Nah, the Japanese government since WW2 has primarily been run by war criminals or the children of war criminals. Modern Japan is basically what Germany would have been if people like Goring got to skip the Nuremberg trials and instead became the president.

If however a country would be prepared to cut through the red tape and have a standard design developed for say 10 plants at the same time, the price and construction time would be decreased greatly.

That’s a pretty big ask for a democratic government where half of the politicians are actively sabotaging climate initiatives…

The only countries where this is really feasible are places where federal powers can supersede the authority of local governments. A nuclear based power grid in America would require a complete reorganization of state and federal authority.

The only way anyone thinks nuclear energy is a viable option in the states is if they completely ignore the political realities of American government.

For example, is it physically possible for us to build a proper deep storage facility for nuclear waste? Yes, of course. Have we attempted to build said deep storage facility? Yes, since 1987. Are we any closer to finishing the site after +30 years…no.

That’s not fair. I’m still kinda convinced Brandon Sanderson has clones, or has made a compact with the devil or something. How can someone write so much and not be in the throws of of some kind of manic breakdown? It’s just not fair to the other fantasy writers.

Fair enough. I think then it’s important to distinguish between what subsidies are worth tariffing and what subsidies are not. If Germany rezones an area to allow car factories to be built, is that a subsidy worth tariffing?

Eh, I don’t really have a strong opinion on tariffing. Tbh I don’t really have strong opinions about subsidizing private equity, other than they really shouldn’t really exist.

Under “free market” capitalism subsidies nor tariffs should exist by definition. And under socialism or communism, I would much prefer that the state employ the workers to do the work of the state. Subsidizing private equity just moves the people’s money into the pockets of middle men.

I think the current global regression back to an odd stage of mercantilism is the product of the moneyed class in China and the west attempting to goad political leaders into abandoning their economic principles for greater profit margins.

I mean, in this case it’s more that the developers lost money and the government gained assets sold below book value… That’s pretty good return imo. The developers’ investors got fucked, yes, but have you looked at, say, Evergrande’s ownership? Not all Chinese developers are state-owned. In fact, the distressed ones are not.

Right, but the developers are way over leveraged meaning that it’s not really their money but the banks. The banks/government is making the best out of a bad situation, but they are still loosing substantial amounts of capital. One of the reasons this kicked off in the first place was the government trying to get a handle on private equity borrowing more than their company is worth. That’s not really not criticism on the government action, it’s best to pull that bandaid off as soon as possible, but it still hurts. I think it’s mainly the fault of local banks who have probably been either careless or fraudulent in their reporting to the central bank.

Do you know how China imputes rent for their GDP calculations? It’s the construction cost depreciated linearly over the life of the building. Think about that for a second, then come back to me. I can explain it to you, but when I realized what it meant it shook me to the core so maybe it’ll have the same effect on you lol. For reference, the US imputes rent by asking “what would the homeowner have paid if they had to rent.”

Again, this just isn’t something I really care about much. GDP and how it’s calculated is mostly legal fiction, utilized primarily for international bragging rights and as a way to lull investments from foreign capital.

It sounds like China utilizes user cost approach, and the west utilizes the comparison approach. China’s approach makes sense for a more centralized lending apparatus, as it can help prevent the boom and bust cycle so common in western real estate market. But it’s still susceptible to market collapse if you miscalculated building cost or depreciation values, and makes it harder to sustain value in real estate investments unless you are constantly building more and more.

I think in the end it just creates two different types of problems. In the west the comparison approach provides less motivation for developers to build an adequate amount of housing. In China, it creates too much incentive for developers to overdevelop housing to the point where it devalues the very concept of individual investments in housing.

I think a better solution would be to consider affordable housing development to be a natural monopoly that is provided by the government without the input of private capital. But that would be a blow to GDP for both systems, and I think we both know how the capital class of both China and the west would respond to that.