there are 2 right answers here

lol this headline

"STEM breakthrough: most new students are women"

as if they've figured out fusion

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-08-27/caltech-long-male-bastion-to-enroll-majority-women-for-first-time

My impression is there are multiple good solutions already (eg jabber) but normies haven't bothered to figure them out

I think there's some truth to Curtis Yarvin's claim that Puritanism secularized itself so it could be taught in US public schools as "not religion"

https://spandrell.ch/2024/6/14/the-spandrell-declaration-for-israel-and-the-levant

"What should be done with disloyal people? Exile. Or as people like to put it today, “Remigration” . In a nation state, 'multiculturalism' is completely absurd. Under no circumstance should a country allow ethnic minorities of any kind to exist long term. What is an ethnic group ? It's a group of people who marry each other exclusively. And why would they do that? To stay distinct. And why the fuck would they want to stay distinct? How is that not a plain, blatant show of contempt towards their host nation? The only reason to do ethnic separatism is to engage in nepotism and use clique effects to benefit the group against a less organized population. It's literally a conspiracy, that's all there is. How the hell is this allowed? It boggles the mind really.

Note that the usual rationale to do ethnic conspiracies in Western countries is the ruse of 'religion'. Oh you see, we're not an ethnic mafia using the advantage of our small scale to organize better against you, oh no. We just have this “supernatural beliefs” which are just too compelling so you must let us do it or we'll burn in hell, you see. Hey look, my wife is crying. Female tears! Now submit, goyim. Note it's not just Jews doing it, it's a trick as old as sin, happened all the time since the ancient world. Understanding that is why Classical Civilization evolved universally enforced State Religions, to close that loophole and get rid of ethnic mafias. You can think of the Catholic Church as the first iteration of anti-cartel legislation. Northern Europeans weren't dumb, the first thing they did after breaking the Catholic Church was to establish State Churches of their own to close the loophole again."

https://spandrell.ch/2024/6/14/the-spandrell-declaration-for-israel-and-the-levant

"There surely is a threshold of ethnic diversity after which a nation stops being real. I would argue that threshold has already been reached, certainly in most of Western Europe. Native births (as in 100% native stock) are below 60% in Britain, France and Germany. There's some encouraging signs in the birthrate of immigrants falling quite rapidly as they adopt the worst traits of modernity. But still; Brazilification of the West is not theoretical anymore. It's already happened.

Now is Brazil hell? No, it's an ok country. Some places are positively nice. But do you want fascism in Brazil? Do you want a Strong Government in a country with Brazil's demographics? Hell no. You want the lightest, most retarded and ineffective government possible so the inevitable Bioleninist regime that raises to power in a country with an (on average) retarded population can do the least damage possible. I'm not blackpilling in that Western Europe is going to literally become Pakistan forever, although the risk does exist. But you have to be very autistic to be a fascist in the coming world where whites are barely a plurality. It's just a bad deal. Much smarter to be a libertarian or accelerationist. Or a trad; find (or build) a strong, closed-off religious group where you can isolate your family from the wider Bomali world.

What if you're not into that (I'm not into that). And you're also not exactly keen in Skynet taking over life on earth and all of us becoming synthetic computing devices. Well then it's a tough one. Very hard to find a political place to be. You can do fine in life, of course. I've been saying for years now to young people approaching me on the internet asking what to do. I always tell them to forget about politics and just focus on making a shitton of money and having babies."

https://spandrell.ch/2024/3/3/a-post-mortem-on-neoreaction

One day everything is fine, the next you're unemployed and on the street and your sister is a prostitute

A better solution is to adopt sane regulations which allow the plant to be built much more quickly which in turn dramatically reduces the total financing cost

Nuclear plants tie up a lot of resources to produce a very long-lived asset, which takes a long time to start producing a return and much longer to pay itself off. Projects of this type (whether for energy or anything else) must provide enough return to compensate for this long time period (as well as simply the material resources and labor)

(sane regulations as in something much closer to common law, in which the party is free to do as they please but held liable for any damage... in the case of nuclear perhaps insurance or some sort of surety bond can be required, but nothing more than this)

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY

It's $4 where I am but still shocking

I remember when these were a dollar

I scored highest in liberty but my 2nd-4th were the fashy ones

"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way"

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/

They claim to have tested quicklime experimentally with a reasonable control, so I'm inclined to believe the ultimate conclusion

I am skeptical that the volcanic ash is not actually helpful (assuming the claims about its ancient use & reputation are accurate)

Perhaps both are relevant

Is there some other error in thinking you've found?

Unfortunately I don't believe you because I get all my news from comedy sketches

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=rcC4i9WQctw

#chess

I've been studying chess for a few years

I try to make chess simple for myself

I think many chess concepts can be collapsed into a fewer number of more general concepts without any injury to the player's capacity to understand

A common scheme is to divide a game into 3 possible phases: an opening, a middle-game, and an endgame

Instead I think it's more sensible to divide the game into only a middle-game (or main phase) and endgame.

The reason for this collapse of the opening into just a subset of the middle-game is that the same principles (in my view) govern both the opening and the middle-game.

In both opening and middle-game, players vie to increase the activity of their pieces and guard their king.

Players fight for the central squares and to preserve or win material as means of ensuring the greater activity of their pieces as compared to the opponent.

Already we see another layer of consolidated thinking: instead of the common three opening goals (activity, central influence, king safety) I see only two, with central control a mere means to the strategic goal of piece activity.

As material is removed from the board, eventually there is not enough for a direct checkmating assault. At this point more material must be brought in via pawn promotion, and in the meantime the king is safe to join the fray and it becomes a strategic necessity for him to do so. This marks the transition from the main phase of the game into the endgame.

The result of all this is that instead of a player learning some five-step checklist for the opening and then a further list of concepts for the middle-game, they instead have two related strategic goals (piece activity so I can checkmate the enemy king and king safety so he can't checkmate me).

Another area in which I have much consolidated my thinking is in tactics to win material.

A typical book on the subject may have dozens of different tactics, but I see only three.

To win material, a piece must be captured either for free or at the cost of a less-valuable piece.

This means that first something must be attacked which is insufficiently defended or more valuable than the attacker.

So why doesn't the opposing side simply move the attacked piece away?

Here I find three answers:

1) There is nowhere safe to move to, and the piece is trapped

2) There are multiple objects of attack, and a single move cannot save them all

3) The pieces are arranged in a line, so that moving away only reveals further targets

I think of each of these concepts as

1) Trapped piece

2) Multi-attack

3) Line attack

In contrast most textbooks would have a whole list of "distinct" concepts under these headings, such as

1) Trapped piece

2) Fork, discovery, removing the defender

3) Pin, skewer, x-ray, discovery, discovered check, double check, battery

In my experience, the textbook distinctions add no value.

There is no useful rule of thumb that says a pin works tactically if situation X occurs and a skewer works tactically if situation Y occurs.

At best, a few pins that can occur shortly after the game starts (eg a bishop pinning a knight to the king or queen) might have some rules of thumb (eg that it is acceptable to kick the bishop away with pawns prior to castling but not after).

However these rules of thumb do not extend to pins in general.

Instead, the player must notice the line attack and calculate what its results will be in that exact position.

This is true regardless of the exact ordering of pieces in a line and regardless of whether it is classified as a pin, skewer, or something else.

Consequently, I think it is better to develop an eye for pieces lined up generally, and to avoid training to notice only a certain ordering of pieces in a line.

Similarly, by training to see forks (where a single piece attacks multiple enemy pieces) we may be neglecting multi-attack situations in which multiple attackers assault different pieces (either at once with a discovery or over the course of multiple turns culminating in a "removing the defender" situation).

I think an overall course of chess study should look something like this:

1) Learn the rules - play dozens or hundreds of games focused on making & seeing legal moves (rather than worrying too much about brilliant strategy)

2) Learn basic checkmates, such as king+queen and king+rook

3) Learn the two strategic principles I've given

4) Train the three tactical concepts I've listed

5) Learn principles of common endgames, such as pawn endings or rook & pawn

6) (ongoing) Play many games to refine strategic/positional understanding

7) Train advanced endings

Step 4 is a big step, which consists of developing a real skill rather than merely memorizing a little bit of useful information, however this is probably the most important skill to refine for 99% of chess players. Only once both players are at something like a master level and are able to play with very few or no tactical blunders will other considerations have a big impact. Hopefully my thoughts will make this a little easier by focusing on the three methods of winning material rather than a bewildering taxonomy of positions.

Everyone uses internet without a special internet tax to build out networks. Why can't other utilities function the same way?

What do you mean by "public"?

I think it's arrogance of putting your own will over reality -> failure -> resentment

emptiness

All taxation is unjust