junebug2 [comrade/them, she/her]

Is the first section after the foreword accurate? It seems that assigning so much significance to two drones is almost a bizarro version of liberals and Ukros claiming that Russia was totally done for after the submarine got hit, or whenever the magical regenerating AWAC gets shot down again. My interpretation of “World War 3” so far has been the impacts that will echo the longest are financial, industrial, and diplomatic, most especially in regards to the dollar, oil prices, and global currency reserves. While the West isn’t automatically getting everything it wants right now, it’s still causing millions of casualties in service of its aims. Ansarallah’s efforts so far have been incredible. From a macro perspective, I think the US has been stalemating counterinsurgency operations at tremendous civilian cost for longer than I have been alive without losing hegemon status.

To paraphrase Andrei Martyanov’s The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, if we know the odds of one missile hitting a ship is something like 30% and that it would take 5 such missiles to sink it, there’s only a little bit of probability math to show that it would take 38 such missiles to have a better than 90% chance to sink the ship. I think the real missiles being used here are both more accurate and more potent than that hypothetical. Hypersonic missiles are uniquely threatening to US power (at least in theory, I don’t want to call anything until we see the first carrier reef) because it is a global hegemon that sees itself as rival to regional powers. The US is always the aggressor, and the defender can usually only project force outside their borders so far. The maximum range of your enemies’ anti-ship missiles is a no-go line for an intelligently run fleet, and hypersonic missiles can push that range out to a 1000 miles.

If Maryland produced 60% of the worlds’ semiconductors and was the only place that could make 3 nm chips, then more countries might be willing to risk global catastrophe over Maryland. Taiwan is a golden goose for most of the US economy that positively contributes to the line going up, and semiconductor manufacturing is one of the last technological edges the “West” has. The Department of Defense and its corporate halo are perpetually in a contrived state of disarray when it comes to talking about things that need money, from their supply chains to research. While it’s true that price gouging and rent seeking probably don’t lead to good weapon systems, I think the people writing this article are assuming the average policymaker already is onboard with the necessity of Taiwan, and they are emphasizing a shopping list of things that need evermore endless funding. If we ever actually went to war with China, then all these weapons companies would need to start making more weapons and less money.

I feel like it’s not that she doesn’t know the answers, it’s that the answers are not politically convenient. My understanding of the situation is that in the course of training the various GPTs, OpenAI and Microsoft have realistically scanned every piece of text and imagery that’s available on the internet. It didn’t matter how good or bad or who made it, the models needed every available data point. That was all well and good until covid led to a tightening of interest rates, which meant the VC overlords of Silicon Valley finally had to pay a bill. All the vapor ware companies that have never turned a profit are scrambling now, and we see the mass layoffs of the last three years. Microsoft, however, got to be King Shit of VC Mountain because one of their startups invented “AI”. Say what you will about it (and I will), the public interest in and corporate adoption of AI has meant that there is a positive revenue for a tech company. Now regardless of rationality, all tech executives must find a way to cash in on the Golden Calf. Some companies are designing new applications or creating new services. The majority are realizing that they some how, sort of kind of, are the original data the models were made from, and they’re trying to extract rents from it. For now, that’s really only for content in the future. If the CTO here publicly claims that their product relies on YouTube or anything, Alphabet or whatever parent would be stupid not to come and sue for whatever they might get.

#Tradle #742 6/6

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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle

#Tradle #743 1/6
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#Tradle #744 5/6
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https://games.oec.world/en/tradle How do you make the drop down arrow spoiler text?

thanks!

I have not read Samir Amin. My understanding of the passage you’re quoting is as follows:

1. Religious interpretation, like many other social relations, is shaped by the structures of the society it is in.
2. Religious interpretation has adapted to the rise of modernization, secularism, and democracy.
3. Religious interpretation could adapt to the social forces that arise from a socialist society, potentially molding into something more compatible. That seems fine, and we can see shades of that in, for instance, how liberation theology emerged from the milieu of the Catholic Church and the material conditions of Latin America.

Speaking of the Catholic Church, I think it’s worth pointing out that the material reality of most religions is not their interpretations, but their institutional power. I am not Catholic, but I have completed the relevant sacraments and education because of my family and where I live. In the transition from feudalism to capitalism, I think we can see the religious interpretation of Catholicism liberalize, while the institutions don’t unless forced to. Just as the Catholics conceded that maybe lay people can have bread and wine at the same time without heresy, they maintained and reinforced social relics like the total exclusion of women from religious and political authority; strict hierarchies of seniority, both priest over laypeople, within the priesthood, and within the family; and the use of capital on gilded vanity projects.

I am by no means saying the Catholic Church is the reason any of those social forces exist, or even the sole reason they are maintained. They exist as an institution to uphold them. Even if doctrinal interpretation might shift to match socialism, the institutional power will act conservatively (working only to maintain itself in stasis). The vast majority of religious institutions are reactionary organizations, and I am skeptical that they would change of their own accord. I agree with your point about the eventual compatibility between religious beliefs and communism. I don’t think any religions proper can be.

#Tradle #745 X/6
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