ozborn
Joined 14 years ago
Karma
369
Submissions
112
Member since
Sep 11
Recent submissions
Comment · 1 month ago
Former Openrouter user, unhappy to report that Openrouter will expire your tokens with very little warning with absolutely no business justification other than they can. If they were a bank and tokens money, their return is -100% interest after a year. Don't expect your tokens to be there for you after a year of no use....
Comment · 7 months ago
A couple of issues, first there is a history of price collusion (see DRAM price fixing scandal on Wikipedia) and while it may be "logical" from a seller point of view to prefer large orders, this upsets a lot of people and used to be illegal in the United States (it may still be illegal, but it's not enforced)
Comment · 1 year ago
Agree, but with the caveat that space does allow the possibility of escape from broken political and economic systems. That escape may be temporary, but it is real.
Also, add me as another vote for the Expanse, both the books and TV series.
Comment · 1 year ago
Taiwan has an aboriginal population as well, there are very few countries where the original settlers are recognizable as the current population without squinting. China is one of the worst offenders, with the westward expansion of the Qing Empire contemporary with American westward expansion. Moreover, when America started serious decolonizing in the 20th Century (Philippines) and ending residential schools, China invaded Tibet and continues to pursue aggressive assimilation in its Western regions.
Comment · 2 years ago
Haven't read the whole paper yet, but what are the possibilities for academic and evaluation use of this model?
Comment · 2 years ago
Matt Stoller covers this pretty well, it's become a more common tactic now for corporations to go after prosecutors and enforcers personally. Lina Khan is (unfairly in my mind) despised by monopolists for her role in tackling the pro-inflationary, collussion friendly environment that persisted for decades until the last few years.
Comment · 2 years ago
Dividends are taxed directly and generally aren't tied to CEO compensation, unlike buybacks. Buybacks are more a sign of management incentive structure.
Comment · 2 years ago
I'm surprised SpaceX hasn't put together a proposal for ground-based ICBMs using a Falcon variant, seems right up their alley... I'm guessing the government doesn't want to be any more beholden to Elon and/or it's technically harder to convert than I realize?
Comment · 2 years ago
It was communist controlled Vietnam which got rid of the Khmer Rouge about 45 years ago ending the genocide in Cambodia, it's entirely unclear what your hypothetical "winning" South Vietnamese government would have done. The US government was still mad enough with Vietnam that it applied more sanctions on Vietnam after Vietnam invaded Cambodia and the other major player (China) supported the Khmer Rouge and invaded Vietnam in retaliation.
Comment · 2 years ago
Hearing aids are much better than most earbuds, especially with regard to power consumption. I have tinnitus, mild hearing loss, but wear cheapish Costco hearing aids as earbud replacement and the hope my tinnitus won't progress.
Comment · 3 years ago
No, that's you reading into the article. Go look at recent global demographics data, it's not restricted to "wealthy white people", it's been an issue in East Asia for decades and countries from in Latin America, to Iran, even India all are dealing with or are now fast approaching the issue.
Comment · 4 years ago
3rd step also includes political instability in China, an even riskier business environment, demographic headwinds along with rising wages and increased fixed automation costs everywhere. Globalization, once "inevitable", has been dead since 2019 and isn't coming back in the foreseeable future.
Comment · 4 years ago
You made race a part of the subject when discussing Albright. You were likely called out for disingenuous "race-baiting" since you don't provide any evidence for her animus against "brown people", a questionable claim because even if true it's not clear that Iraqis identify as "brown people" or Madeleine thinks in those terms.
Moreover, you ignore the the actual war she was more famous for and had a bigger role in, "Madeleine's War" (https://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1999/05/10/albright...). This involved her advocating (successfully) to bomb Serbia, a nation of nominally white Christian people she argued were committing genocide against a Muslim (also white) population. This was also against the UN charter due to Russian and Chinese veto. This war, more so than the Iraq war, has much more relevance in discussing her legacy today given the invasion of Ukraine but you appear to ignore it intentionally or are perhaps unaware of it entirely.
I'm not arguing that racism isn't important in understanding the Iraq war (or other wars), but it is one factor among many. Some of the most brutal wars are actually between groups of people that to outsiders appear to be be very similar (Ukraine/Russia, Serb/Croat, various civil wars, etc...)
Comment · 5 years ago
Gobi dessert doesn't produce solar power when it is night in China, but solar power from Chile can supply China at night.
Comment · 5 years ago
I agree with the gist of what you write, but I think your text below (although correct) is misleading.
"But that's not what's happening across the Western democracies."
Western democracies do indeed have poor social reproduction, but I do NOT believe "Western" or democracy is the driving factor. If anything, your statement understates the issue because below replacement fertility rates are rapidly expanding and by no means restricted to the West or to democracies. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
There are ~ 90 countries where fertility is below replacement including disparate non-Western countries like UAE, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nepal, Lebanon, etc... including those that are not democratic.