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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: May 15th, 2019

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  • I wasn’t able to get a good read on it either. I didn’t spot anything obviously wrong from a technical standpoint, but I’m not a systems developer. It just doesn’t have much that distinguishes it on a non-technical level. The design is neat, but other OS projects like Redox have shot past it in a shorter period of time. That tells me something’s broken, whether it’s technical or social.




  • China also had a couple of twists. At least parts of the West have general counterparts to these problems.

    Some cities had infrastructure built out ahead of demand. Many of the cities did start filling up with people, which is great. However, the infrastructure aged well ahead of when it was used. So some of the infrastructure is coming due for expensive maintenance, often without a solid tax structure to pay for it. Readers of Strong Towns will recognize this general pattern of overbuilding without building a solid foundation, but it just has a Chinese character to it.

    Linked to that is a growing debt crisis at the local government level. The most current estimate I could find is 94 trillion yen (US$13 trillion). Many infrastructure investments were made that are projected to never be paid off in their lifespan. Again, Strong Town readers will recognize this general pattern.

    Going from pure speculation, I wonder whether they might have been able to avoid some of the problems with aging unused infrastructure by setting aside land and right-of-way. Here in Portland, when they were planning the I-205 freeway, one concession to transit and bike advocates was to set aside a right-of-way for a transit way and a bike path. That particular concession was made around 1975. The bike path was built immediately. The northern end was used to extend the preexisting light rail to the airport on September 10, 2001 (great timing) as part of the Red Line. The southern end became part of the Green Line later.






  • The Palestinian Authority has no claim to any mandate from the Palestinian people.

    Same for Hamas. The last election was held so long ago that the majority of Palestinians were not born yet and the vast majority could not vote. There simply is no remaining democratic mandate.

    bi-religious or secular successor state

    There are currently more Muslims in the borders of Israel-Palestine, and I doubt they’re in a forgiving mood. I think there is a good chance that a unified state would turn into a Muslim state. I don’t think it’s unfounded to say that the current situation of a large Muslim population that is essentially disenfranchised is entirely to the liking of Israel’s leaders.





  • Wall Street Journal: Mueller Doesn’t Find Trump Campaign Conspired With Russia

    That was Bill Barr’s summary of the Mueller Report. The news article you posted was written with zero knowledge of the actual report. When the actual report was released later, the summary was criticized as trying to form a false narrative that intentionally omitted important pieces of the report. He was spinning it to provide cover for his boss, in effect. Much of this rested on Mueller not declaring Trump guilty of a crime, but as was described in the report, this was always considered to be outside of the scope of Mueller’s appointment.



  • pingveno@lemmy.mltoWorld News@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    18 days ago

    Russian position says that foreign interference from the US contributed to Euromaidan (not respecting sovereignty and independence), thus, the Budapest Memorandum is null and void.

    Nah, this was just a reconned excuse. Russia invaded Crimea just a week after the 2014 revolution. The moment a hostile government was in Kyiv, Russia was intent on ripping up the Budapest Memorandum.