235700+ entries in 0.059s
mircea_popescu: familiar with the (afaik also uncontroversial) theory that the us is a nation of narcisists ?
mircea_popescu: let's take the cheapest way out. familiar wit hthe guy whose name history has lost (:P) that set fire to the whatever so his name may be remembered ?
mircea_popescu: there is no undertaking more expensive than that pavement job.
mircea_popescu: i can trivially send pizza to the "secret" subsecretary of state for whatever, and he's stuck wondering how i know ?
mircea_popescu: trinque good for you. not particularly relevant to him.
mircea_popescu: so in this sense, a junkie managing to score a hit is in fact +ev.
mircea_popescu: maybe it's because you're trying to use some sort of subjective scoring it occurs to me
mircea_popescu: there's going to be a demolished street bearing your name.
mircea_popescu: cost teh ro govt millions to try and wash it up, eventually was more or less forgotten. but finding agents willing to tail that guy was difficult for years after.
mircea_popescu: <asciilifeform> if ambling about the terrain going to/from day jobs, etc. - they just quietly pick you up << a ro guy famously caught a coupla "secret agents" tailing him in traffic, beat them up (romanian tradition) took them to police station.
mircea_popescu: they installed a bunch of autobatteries and shitnow ? /me's not been keeping up.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform afaik swiss defend themselves by "neutrality"
mircea_popescu: but for as long as the "how do they know it's not really an ambush ?" question has an obvious and correct answer, you already failed.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform no, this is possible if maintaining decent op security.
mircea_popescu: this does not work against ideologically motivated adversaries, but it works against bureaucracies something splendid. there's always another fire to put out.
mircea_popescu: swedish military doctrine, notably, is constructed around the core concept that they do not aim to defend the country, they aim to make invasion economically unfeasible. that is all.
mircea_popescu: the entire construction has very speciffic dead points, and they're anything but secret.
mircea_popescu: as long as it's clear to the da that a court showdown will end his career, you're practically unprosecutable, no matter what you do. as long as it's clear to "special ops" that there will be deaths, you're un-opable, no matter what you do. etc etc.
mircea_popescu: the cure looks very much like you'd imagine : strong encryption, strong (mental especially) discipline, minimal fortification along the riverline.
mircea_popescu: it's true : they haven't yet made a thing for something else to use for this.
mircea_popescu: this, incidentally, is ALSO not controversial - virtually half of all material prepared by the bureaucracy states in one form or another that they're "not prepared for this type of challenge"
mircea_popescu: because what, if it did exist you'd lunge at it with your waffle making hot tweezers ?
mircea_popescu: and if THAT were your lab, i wouldn't particularly be persuaded by "no tb cure could exist" type of arguments.
mircea_popescu: if your crazy genius lab consisted of shitty hot tweezers that made good sandwiches and very bad vacuum pumps that sang a capella i'd think you're uniquely ineffectual.
mircea_popescu: the us army makes excellent police and screwdrivers. bully for it.
mircea_popescu: right, but none of which are what an army is actually for.
mircea_popescu: sorta like a parade army. exactly what the italians had, right before the risorgimento.
mircea_popescu: this is why all the ridiculous military failures of the us since vietnam : it built an army which is only useful as an army if NOT fighting.
mircea_popescu: if air superiority comes to air engagement, walks away with so many broken arms it's not worth thinking about.
mircea_popescu: air superiority not useful in air engagement, but in political engagement sort of bs.
mircea_popescu: the weird thing about the situaiton of usg particularly, and of usg-likes (ie, most cancer) is that "everything is only intended to be used in the situations it wasn't designed to be used".
mircea_popescu: people who go "sure, whatever. make sure you have good AP and check the vests" are not the target of this sort of bs.
mircea_popescu: as to van : people like a congressman or an ex ciadirector are very poor examples, because a key part of the cure is maintaining very hard counter-terrorism measures on the ground. no colby, owens, petreus etc ever said "you will have to shoot me, and expect to fail unless you bring armored units, and to lose a score of operatives in any case."
mircea_popescu: imagine a device that kept paul atreides from having to fight all the idiot freemen.
mircea_popescu: NOT having to turn them down personally is empowering for you.
mircea_popescu: the other direction being that you DO NOT WISH the attenntion of most of those women.
mircea_popescu: so, filling reddit with apparently correct but actually provably falsifiable nonsense is not something that concerns me.
mircea_popescu: while also providing sufficient proof for 1% that in fact someone's trying to interfere
mircea_popescu: BUT! if the solution they come up with is to make an artefact which convinces 99% of the women sorted by stupidity that they shouldn't fuck you,
mircea_popescu: now, the reason this is stupid, on multiple planes, we won't dsiscuss here, for space.
mircea_popescu: they're all naked and dripping. suppose that someone for whatever stupid reason does not want you to fuck, because they imagine this is how you don't get to kill them.
mircea_popescu: suppose you are in a room, with women. there's 100 of them.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform ok, prepare for a lengthy explanation then.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform they will, to ~their detriment~. i'm not sure this is getting through, or that im doing a good job of explaining it, but in fact such victories are more expensive than the respective defeats they supposedly keep one from.
mircea_popescu: back to the usg-tb thing : people like a congressman or an ex ciadirector are very poor examples, because a key part of the cure is maintaining very hard counter-terrorism measures on the ground. no colby, owens, petreus etc ever said "you will have to shoot me, and expect to fail unless you bring armored units, and to lose a score of operatives in any case."
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform from what i understand the theory we're discussing, they'd be all the same thing ?
mircea_popescu: to imagine the usg, or for that matter any bureaucracy like a PERSON rather than like a disease is imo to be very, very wrong
mircea_popescu: "you mean to tell me we could use these to run bitcoin nodes ourselves ?!?! FU NOT SELLING THEM NAO"
mircea_popescu: "Can you tell me what you're wanting to do with them? " ?<< lol nubbins` got teh usms curious nao
mircea_popescu: (protip : "onlyallfours" is a very bad idea, especially on hard floors. bursitis is at thing, if you give a horse shoes to protect hooves from hard pavement, might as well give the slavegirls kneepads.)
mircea_popescu: i thought those were the nutteries we were digging aside.
mircea_popescu: i mean, sure, it's not watercooler conversation, among 10-20 an hour derps.
mircea_popescu: chomsky actually said that the joe stack grievances are legitimate, and will take over if not tackled.
mircea_popescu: whilke it's arguable if it makes the point more or less persuasively than that thing, nevertheless, it does make it, and who exactly argued with it ?