Interesting interview with Cornell West about pragmatism and democracy, short.
The "Inequality Paradigm": a review of three recent books on economic history, with reflections on how we use history instead of sociology to understand contemporary issues; e.g., the 1619 Project as a way of approaching racism.
Evidence that finding new knowledge is in fact getting harder.
Finland is a heavily militarized country. Besides the stuff at the link, all Finnish bridges have built-in points for placing explosives to destroy them.
At the Italian site of Salorno-Dos de la Forca, Bronze Age people were cremated at high temperatures, and then their remains were just left on the platform. A substantial pile of ash and burned bone must have built up, dominating the site.
Interesting piece in the NY Times on why staying in an unfulfilling marriage can be a good choice: "two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended up happily married five years later. . . . Five years later, unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married."
Reproductions of historical hairstyles from the Bavarian Theater Academy.
The Biden administration is leaning hard into solar power and US production of solar cells, using tools like the Defense Production Act.
The NY Times is running a very depressing series on mental health issues among teenagers. This chapter covers the hundreds of teenagers who camp out in hospital emergency rooms for days because they are suicidal or self-harming and there are no spaces for them in mental health facilities.
Manifesto of the new right in America, from Christopher Rufo: "The goal is to protect these people, Middle Americans of all racial backgrounds — working class and middle class — to protect them against what I think is a hostile and nihilistic elite that is seeking to impose its values onto the working and middle classes to bolster their own power, prestige, status and achievement." From a long NY Times piece by Nate Hochman.
Having an unfamiliar, difficult-to-pronounce name may hurt your employment chances.
The decline in college enrollments in the US is accelerating; after falling by 3.5% last spring, they are down by 4.1% this spring. Universities had hoped that an easing pandemic would lead to a rebound in enrollments, but that hasn't happened and there isn't any sign that it will.
Headed to prison? For a fee, a "prison consultant" will help you get into a less onerous facility, reduce your time in the slammer, and make the best use of your time there. Some of the rich parents in the "Varsity Blues" scandal hired them. Interesting that sentencing is a bureaucratic process that can be managed for better outcomes like any other such process, and so is the tracking of prisoners' cases that influences things like parole. (NY Times)
Ukraine Links
Lately Russia has been launching missiles at Ukrainian rail infrastructure to interdict rail movement, but this is a losing game; it costs much less to repair the railroad than to build the missile. I had been wondering about this, I mean, already during the US Civil War Sherman's army had special crews that could rebuild railroads faster than Confederate raiders could destroy them. Modern railroads are more complex, but not that much more, and modern workers have bulldozers and cranes.
Remarkable video showing the speed of modern, radar-guided counter-battery artillery fire.
Situation in Severodonetsk on June 3, with Ukraine counter-attacking.
CBC: 'In this war, the ordinary infantryman is nothing': Ukrainian soldiers in Donbas feel abandoned and outgunned. Of course infantrymen have felt this way since WW I at least.
A friend of Igor Girkin's explains what is actually behind the mutinies of L/DPR reservists: not so much opposition to the war as a protest against particular decisions by the Russian government that left them under-equipped, under-trained, and exposed.
The importance of Ukraine's counter-offensive in the south: "Ukraine’s future as a viable independent state may depend on regaining control over the Kherson region."
Constantly updated map of the combat situation.
Why is the fighting in eastern Ukraine such a trench-bound slugfest instead of a World War II-style armored contest with sweeping advances and retreats?
Why didn't Ukraine do more to prepare for the war that the US told them was coming?
In retrospect, perhaps the best argument for why many in the Ukrainian elite did not believe the US intelligence could be accurate can be found in the dismal failure of Russia’s attempt to take the major cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv.
“It just didn’t compute,” said the source close to the intelligence services. “A takeover of Kyiv and the whole country in a few days? We thought it would be a disaster for Russia. And it was. We didn’t think Putin could be that stupid.”
7 comments:
Finland is a heavily militarized country. Besides the stuff at the link, all Finnish bridges have built-in points for placing explosives to destroy them.
The Finns are good students and learned the lessons of the Winter War and the Continuation War very well.
To borrow from Pierre Trudeau, "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."
...of course, the elephants of North America are notably less aggressive and territorial than the Eastern European subspecies...
Interesting piece in the NY Times on why staying in an unfulfilling marriage can be a good choice: "two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation ended up happily married five years later. . . . Five years later, unhappily married adults who divorced or separated were no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married."
Boy, does that sound like a textbook case demonstrating survivorship bias!
Who do you think manages to avoid divorce or separation? People who have both the will and the capacity to solve the problems that exist between them. People whose situations aren't so bad that they have to remedy them via the drastic step of divorce or separation.
They found that the people who divorced were "no happier, on average, than unhappily married adults who stayed married"? Well, sure! But the people who stay married are overwhelmingly the ones who aren't as unhappy to begin with. The divorcees only are comparably happy because their situations improved - not because their situations weren't actually worse to begin with.
Instead of comparing the happiness of someone five years after their divorce with the happiness of someone who didn't NEED a divorce, how about they compare the happiness of the same person before and after the divorce? Because I would be astounded if they concluded that divorcees weren't much happier five years after a divorce than they were at the height of their relationship troubles.
The comparison the New York Times makes is as absurd as comparing the breathing ability of people five years after a lung transplant with that of people who never had a transplant in the first place. The ones who don't get lung transplants are the ones whose problems aren't bad enough to warrant such a drastic measure in the first place!
Having an unfamiliar, difficult-to-pronounce name may hurt your employment chances.
In related news, studies show that water might possibly be wet.
Does Tyler Cowen have zero awareness of history? Can he not fathom that huge numbers of immigrants change their names for good reasons?
I won't fault him for seemingly being unaware of his own ancestral renaming - after all, it wasn't all that recently that his MacEoghain predecessors Anglicized their name to "Cowan" or "Cowen", the better to integrate into a society that was openly hostile to the Irish and their culture. But surely he is aware on SOME level that even today, the practice of immigrants changing their names in order to be treated better is not only alive and well, but quite common still? Granted, I'm the third generation of an immigrant family myself, so perhaps I'm particularly aware of the practice due to relative recency, but honestly, it should be a realization anyone can arrive at if they only give things the barest of thought and consideration.
@G. Verloren
You> "the people who stay married are overwhelmingly the ones who aren't as unhappy to begin with"
"Were unhappy spouses who divorced
more likely to end up happily married than those who stuck with their current partners?
No. Most unhappy spouses who stuck with their marriages ended up happily married:
Sixty-four percent of unhappy spouses who avoided divorce ended up happily married
five years later.
___The most unhappy marriages experienced the most dramatic turnarounds:___
Seventy-eight percent of adults who said their marriages were very unhappy24 and who
avoided divorce ended up happily married five years later." (ie they didn't divorce and their marriage changed from very unhappy into happy)
(in a footnote they mention this could be statistical artifact, effect of regression towrds the mean)
YOU> "Who do you think manages to avoid divorce or separation? People who have both the will and the capacity to solve the problems that exist between them. People whose situations aren't so bad that they have to remedy them via the drastic step of divorce or separation."
You> "ecause I would be astounded if they concluded that divorcees weren't much happier five years after a divorce than they were at the height of their relationship troubles."
The first sentence is valid criticism. But the question is whether it's better to advise unhappily married people to divorce, or maybe to advise them to seek counselling, learning skills in solve marital problems etc?
"We were surprised by the systematic failure of divorce to be associated with
improvements in the psychological well-being of unhappily married adults. Unhappy
spouses who divorced or separated actually showed a somewhat higher number of
depressive symptoms, _compared to unhappily married spouses who stayed married_. On
the plus side, they were also somewhat more likely to report personal growth."
However this sentence suggests that your second sentence might be wrong, as the study seems to suggest the divorce does not improve well-being of unhappily married people who divorced:
"Divorce was never associated with an increase in the emotional well-being of unhap-
pily married spouses. Divorce did not make unhappily married spouses personally hap-
pier, or reduce depression, or increase personal mastery, or self-esteem, even after con-
trolling for race, income, education, age, gender, employment status, and the presence of
children in the home. "
and from the footnote:
" Mavis Hetherington recently compiled the results of 20 years of research into the consequences of divorce for both adult and child well-being. In her judgment, divorce made about 20 to 30 percent of adults better off than they had been in the marriage. About 40 percent were in second marriages of similar quality with similar problems. About 30 percent of divorced adults appeared to be worse off."
The huge exception are pairs with marital violence.
“It just didn’t compute,” said the source close to the intelligence services. “A takeover of Kyiv and the whole country in a few days? We thought it would be a disaster for Russia. And it was. We didn’t think Putin could be that stupid.”
If there's one lesson the world needs to take from the past decade, it's this: never underestimate the opposition's capacity for stupidity.
People couldn't imagine Trump being elected - "The voters aren't that stupid!" they insisted. Then once he was in office, they refused to believe in the ineptitude he constantly displayed - "It's actually just a clever ruse, he secretly has a cunning plan, he just wants people to underestimate him!" they opined. When he got impeached, people were confident he'd be removed from office - Congress wouldn't be so stupid as to just let him get away with open criminality and corruption like that! Not even the GOP would stoop that low!" they promised. And not that long ago, people ignored all the warning signs of Trump's intention to instigate a coup - "He can't be THAT stupid! He wouldn't dare try something so foolish!" they assured the world.
Putin is just bluffing! He won't attack Ukraine!
But if he does... well, Russia will win swiftly! Ukraine will basically give up with a fight!
But if they don't... well, they can't beat the Russian army, which the Russians would never neglect, right?
Or even if their army turns out to be a paper tiger... they'll still win because of air superiority, yeah?
Or if they don't establish air superiority, well... they'll still win through attrition, because they have a bigger army?
Unless of course they throw away their numerical advantage with a slew of strategic blunders? In which case...!!!
Re whether Ukraine could be prepared better - I do not blame them. I surely was quite sure that would be unrational for Putin to invade. - especially given that his forces seemd to be rather inadequate for the task. However, given that in 2014 it was also unreasonable, I was not sure whether Putin was rational and that's why, especially after reading some Russian nationalist post, I've refrained of saying anything except "hard to say"
OTOH, Ukraine appeared to be suprisingly well prepared, or maybe Russia suprisingly horribly prepared, given that people were saying that if Russia would invade, Ukraine would be finished within 3 days:
https://polskatimes.pl/kiedy-to-powiedzial-zapadla-ogluszajaca-cisza-doradca-zelenskiego-o-spotkaniu-z-sikorskim/ar/c1-16270365
TRanslation by deepL
"Sergei Leshchenko, a former journalist, now an advisor to the Ukrainian president, met with Radosław Sikorski on the occasion of the Munich Security Conference, which he attended together with a group of current and former deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. The KO MEP told the Puck portal in an interview about what he said at the time.
- We had our own room where meetings were held and various people came to us: current and former defense ministers and foreign ministers of various countries," Leshchenko said. As he stressed, the last person they talked to was the former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. The Ukrainian politician said that all the people who came before him spoke "general platitudes about the war," along the lines of "Ukraine has already won. As he admitted, he took this as political demagoguery. The words of the Polish politician turned out to be in a completely different tone.
- He took a bucket, filled it with cold water and poured it over our heads. He said: "there will be a war and it will happen this week". It was Sunday, February 20 (the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24 - ed. note). You will be destroyed in three days. No one will help you unless you quickly destroy 10,000 Russian soldiers, 100 Russian aircraft and 300 Russian tanks. If you do that, countries will start giving you weapons and imposing sanctions on Russia," Leshchenko reported.
As he added, after these words "a deafening silence fell". - Our eyes were going out of our orbits, because his words were completely different from what everyone else was telling us and not at all what we wanted to hear. It was like listening to a herald of the apocalypse," Volodymyr Zelensky's advisor admitted. He stressed that what Sikorski said was engraved in his memory.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Re offensive in southern Ukraine - I've heard two contradicting opinion on that. One, a civilian analytic - not a military professional, but someone who earlier gave some predictions and opinions which were proven true and who knows a lot about military - predicted that Ukraine should break "a corridor" to the black sea, to cut in half a "Novorossiya". He opined that the terrain is favourable for the offensive in many places and that this offensive will start as soon as Ukraine will train significant new forces with equipment given from the West (including Polish equipment - Poland delivered a very significant part of heavy equipments, Kraby, tanks, howitzers, plus supposedly excellent light equipment like drones and Pioruns).
The second, a soldier with experience IIRC in Iraq and Liban, currently teaching in military school said that creating corridor would be extremely difficult and prone to danger, and that the help Ukraine receives currently is not sufficient for anything except replacing current losses, training will take time, so he is very sceptical of any succesful offensive in that theatre.
So as the saying goes, one rabbi says that, second will say something else :)
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