Hmm... Maybe we taught people they could be what they wanted to be rather than what their society told them they wanted to be? Maybe they wanted to be parents, home or working. Maybe they didn't want to be parents, home or working.
And as others have said, today's society has too many financial requirements and distractions to make it easy to "live traditionally". People don't seem willing to give up their economic freedom/toys, either.
I'm going to be VERY disappointed if there's no Pink Floyd music or commentary from the Artemis mission. Particularly now. Life's short, and one can't be serious all the time...
Wallis and Gromit would be a partial substitute, but the boomers are still around.
Absolutely. Last year we went to Italy and I played “The Count of Tuscany” in the car while driving in Chianti region. My wife does not really enjoy Dream Theater but that was in the rider for the Italy trip :-)
If this argument is true, who will pay the toll? Europe or the Gulf states or both? Oil is a global market, but the suppliers have to get to market. And the Gulf states sit behind a gate via a vis the straits.
Not sure what the plan could ever thought to be?
Anyone dare to explain this layman?
Make Europe jump to another more solid economic and defense ally? Increasing even further the difficulties to do a preemptive attack?
The whole thing is a whole mess. Why didn't they seized the strait first? Why didn't they secure pathways to their own control first?
I see that not telling any of the allies first was a strategic decision with consequences for decades to come.
If not attacking European and Asian economies was not the main goal I can't comprehend what was even the plan.
Or would the plan be creating the scenario for another world war? That is even stupid as it only made the other economies attack to want to retaliate hard. And on the other side would be everyone else with nuclear weapons. The only outcome would be the end of the world.
(To be fair, all mega rich have built super bunkers)
> Not sure what the plan could ever thought to be? Anyone dare to explain this layman?
IMO, they watched too many movies and simply assumed their own victory.
> Make Europe jump to another more solid economic and defense ally? Increasing even further the difficulties to do a preemptive attack?
While they do seem to want Europe to spend more on defence, I think it's genuinely not occurred to them that threatening to seize Greenland and Canada (and Iceland even if by accident) and dishonouring all the allies who lost servicepersons while assisting the US on previous missions, and putting tariffs on everyone, and interfering with everyone else's domestic politics, might make us all unwilling to assist in their adventures.
Basically, yes, they want Europe to be a solid economic and defence ally (and culture-war ally), but in the NPC sense, not as actual sovereign nations with our own interests* who aren't just simple computer programs that exist solely to make their lives more interesting.
> The whole thing is a whole mess. Why didn't they seized the strait first? Why didn't they secure pathways to their own control first?
If "they" is "the US armed forces", the answer is: they can't.
The geography massively favours the defender; and even if the geography didn't, developments in drone warfare since current US materiel was developed has shifted hard enough to render it similar utility to the Russian materiel vs. Ukraine.
> (To be fair, all mega rich have built super bunkers)
I don't see this helping them, but like that one with the carbon fibre submarine, I don't think you get them to understand why it's the wrong kind of strength.
* even though we also broadly agree that Iranian leadership and nuclear ambitions are a threat, for most of us they're quite a long way down the list, for the average person in the UK I think Iran was somewhere between bus timetables and the price of organic cocoa before this second concurrent "3 day special military operation" started
It makes no sense to me. Trump is clearly desperate for the strait to be opened again (see his last tweet); the US navy is not able to escort anyone through it without taking huge risks; the insurance backstop is useless- almost no ships passed through the strait, period- the ones that do have an agreement with Iran, not the US. Increased oil prices hurt US citizens almost as much as they hurt everyone else. It all sounds like an attempt to make a quagmire look like 4d chess.
What is happening instead is that Iran is making agreements with various countries to let their ships through. These countries stand to lose it all again in case of a US attack, so they have an interest in trying to stop it.
World-class faculty rarely teach undergraduate courses. They're too busy raising money, speaking and even doing research. And I suspect the Ivy League veneer is in the undergraduate business school and the graduate schools in business, law and probably medicine.
Invertebrates all over the world have enabled the current situation. People and governments have to stop clutching pearls and start organizing and calcifying their spine.
Local goods, regional goods, choice of international goods are there for the picking.
Gee, they could call such an effort “the voice of America/X”. Pity they killed the very mechanism they now propose to create. Planning and past history is a b*tch, eh?
The problem shown by Ukraine was that large, expensive solutions were not effective when cheap weapons were used. The solution, which will take time, is to recreate some of the cheap defensive solutions that used to be available - guns, radar-bearing weaponry, etc. these are quite boring to the high tech industry, who prefer things like lasers, rail guns, etc. but ww ii showed they worked, and I suspect the approach speed of drones is similar to kamikazes.
There are also fewer ships than in the 80’s, and everything costs too much. F-35’s vs. F16 birds, the gripen argument in Canada or Europe. How to get companies and staff to embrace low tech solutions in a rapid mapper.
Perhaps they can remember history and make planes that support ground operations rather than high tech birds. Having more, slower birds with cannons would help with drone warfare. Armour also helps.
And yeah, selling ads vs more interesting tech solutions was a cliche 10+ years ago.
When the aches, pains and symptoms of growing old appear, you’ll appreciate having somebody to share the load with. This doesn’t have to be a spouse or a life partner, but having a strong friend or two, or a strong roommate relationship will greatly help things out. You can go your own way together as it were, helping each other over the bumps but not restricting their choices.
I agree. But I don’t think friends can be a substitute. Most friendships disappear with time, as life goes through different phases. And when you have difficulties especially, friends quickly disappear. Family is different and is more likely to support you when you need it.
That’s why I mentioned roommates. People can share the cost of housing and the rest and be there when needed. But it lacks the full attributes of marriage (good and bad). There are things that really need somebody to help out with and as as you say, there has to be some commitment to be there. Can’t always go where the family is and it might not have the closeness you’d like.
Nobody will care if the conference isn’t held in Philly. Holding it elsewhere will probably make it a little easier and possibly a little cheaper for people to attend. I doubt mathematicians are part of the 1%, so cash and travel hassle should matter. And given today’s Internet, there’s going to be remote attendance which can happen most anywhere.
While it’s still convenient to gather together to discuss a field, it’s not crucial as it was in past times. Easier to do what’s best for the largest number of people.
It's just grandstanding.They are mathematicians not political activists. If they want their organization to slide into irrelevance, getting involved in left wing (or right wing, but with academia it's usually left wing) politics is a great way to do that.
Anyone can be a "political activist". An activist is just an ordinary person who has had enough. Unless you believe the only valid way to influence political discourse is with money.
Sure, anyone can be an activist but it is clear that academia has been turned into an activist training centre. It is also remarkable how these supposedly intelligent people go astray when it comes to the causes they support, from supporting Hamas to defending those who'd throw them off high buildings or putting them against the wall if they got their chance.
Training would imply that it made effective activists, but activism from these quarters tends to alienate outsiders. It's more purity spiral than activism.
Well, no, I don't think training necessarily would make them effective given the context of academic activism. If the whole world would look like a college campus it might but there is such a big disconnect between the real world and academia that even the best trained academic activist ends up doing just what you describe. In some parts of society it has worked though, viz. the rise of the 'DEI' phenomenon driven in part by the infusion of academics into organisations who used their positions to bring in more academics of similar mindset while shunning those who did not subscribe to the desired narrative. Where it used to be said that it did no harm to let those silly students larp revolutionaries because they'd drop all that when they re-entered 'the real world' the truth turned out to be reversed in that they took all that ideological baggage with them into society.
And as others have said, today's society has too many financial requirements and distractions to make it easy to "live traditionally". People don't seem willing to give up their economic freedom/toys, either.
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