but Putin’s invasion wouldn’t have looked like an invasion at all, if it had gone according to his plan. He infiltrates territories, creates areas heavily inhabited by Russians, assumes more and more direct control of them through puppets and only then eventually moves in with the army to “liberate them”.

And then we all collectively pretend to look the other way and resume doing business with him as soon as possible. That’s how it mainly worked with Crimea, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, so not a new thing. This time NATO didn’t play ball (and Trump is trying to go back to the usual routine).

When the “move in with the army” phase happened with Ukraine, the way I remember that last part, it was pretty abrupt as far as invasions go; “drills” was a brief excuse when they couldn’t hide all the troops that were amassing near the border, not a continuous flexing of military muscle.

Not saying that “Putin did it better” here; in fact I hope he’s going to get the right comeuppance for what he’s doing to millions of people (Ukrainians and his own). Just saying that whatever China is doing with Taiwan looks different to just-a-schmuck-on-the-internet me…

That’s probably true… Still looks a bit ridiculous though. It’s like somebody is planning to steal your wallet but instead of jumping you in a dark alley, they start showing up in front of your house every day, do 100 push ups on the sidewalk, then glare at you and leave.

Maybe Putin didn’t do enough drills before trying to invade Ukraine and that’s why he’s not done great, I don’t know. My expertise invading countries (or mugging people for that matter) is pretty low, so don’t mind me.

You make a great point. But just to stay on the example of cars: besides the innovation on EVs, there’s this horrible tendency to consider cars as tablets on wheels, both in the sense that you can forget about repairing them by yourself and in the sense that they are now increasingly becoming low-margin hardware to run higher margin subscription services. If anything warrants high valuation for a car company it would arguably be the innovation on EVs, rather than the SaaS model.

I hope the idea of Car Software As a Service dies before becoming too widespread. But if it doesn’t, maybe car companies wouldn’t become “Tech” companies, just more shitty subscription vendors. And their stock should be valued as such, not for the largely unwanted “Tech innovation”.

what is the point where having continued drills becomes just ridiculous? What is it that they are actually testing at this point?

By that measure shouldn’t Disney be considered a Tech company too? Or I guess banks and insurance companies.

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but maybe the article (at least the small part I can read with no paywall) is on to something, Companies that sell access to technology or rely on technology to sell something else (he does give the example of e-commerce) should not be “Tech” companies.

The part I didn’t get to is where the author draws the line to tell what companies ARE Tech. I guess OpenAI or Google would qualify. They sell services but they are services they invented and made, with considerable researxh and investment. But what about Amazon or Netflix?

I misread as left the country and was disappointed on second read…

Agree. The MO is totally different: funding for bis research would be cut, he would be fired and then deported very publically.

With Grok looking more and more like the only one working for Musk with enough (digital) balls to stand up to his boss, that might be better than the alternative of “Big Balls” and the rest of the Digital Oblivous Goons of Elon

Hahaha, good point. On the other hand, “cheap” depends on the perspective. From Musk’s it’s an incredibly cheap way to get a big payoff…huge ROI!

“Hey we said ‘rapidly’, nobody said anything about it still working when we’re done”

sure, but let me be just as obvious: the issue is not with what they want, it’s the “grab them by the p__y” approach to international diplomacy. You know those groups of teenagers that do stupid, violent things to be cheered by the gang? That’s modern politics, apparently.

I’m in another country and not speaking about Indians in particular, but my family have been immigrants. One thing I observed is that immigrants tend to have a stronger anti-immigration stance than other demographics.

I think it’s one part shame. You worked hard and now you feel superior to the “fresh off the boat” person you once were and (by extension) to all those new immigrants.

One part it’s that inside, we all have these shitty feelings toward other people but, as immigrants ourselves, we feel legitimised to express them openly because hey, that can’t be racist if you’re talking of your own ethnicity, right?

And then of course,in many places immigrants tend to be pigeonholed into specific types of jobs, so more immigrants not from your family = more competition. But that is not for the Usha Vance types who made it close to the top.

I see that dynamic being actively exploited for politics everywhere. The lesbian leader of the neonazi AfD in Germany, for instance. “I can’t be racist, I have an Indian wife” is just not true. You can and the Indian wife can be too.

…says the man who’s quite literally leading a witch hunt against all non-white, non-binary and non-billionaire “witches”

And he gets mad at so many things! It’s liberating, really

I wish Trump and his people to really go as far as they have to…And to stay there. Evena bit farther, I won’t complain

Today I relived the experience of walking into three different bookstores looking for a specific book I needed. Navigated there using Organic Maps.

-10% convenience +50% smugness

Technically agree that it’s one of the nastiest. Definitely in the top 200!

From a European perspective, this is very welcome news. It’s a pity that it took a Trump for us to even start discussing these things but when there is real sense of urgency, COVID taught us that Europe can move fast.

And I’m not talking about vaccines. In a few months of COVID, digiital services have leaped forward probably 10 years (at least in my country). Suddenly we can have most of our government and public services online, I can check my child school records in an app, my grampa used his digital IDs to change his family doctor from his phone.

None of this is rocket science and mostly it didn’t require building new things. But I’m pretty sure none of it was going to be done any time soon.

I hope Europe manages to get out of this more politically united, with a common defense, investment in critical infrastructure and possibly with stronger safeguards to Democracy (and since I’m basically writing my letter to Santa in advance, I’d also really like to have the UK back… )

It’s tough, because historically European countries don’t really get along well or trust each other much, and centrifugal forces are strong and too easily manipulated. But under direct threat from both sides maybe, just maybe…

They have been carefully assembled to make Trump look smart in comparison. It wasn’t an easy task.

…wait, was that a Tesla?