The UK at their peak and also Russia, twice, tried the "normal colonial route" in Afghanistan..

Geography is the problem not technology.

On Medicare's time horizon, losing money funding those residencies for 10-20 years actually could be a great deal if it bends the cost curve.

You don't think lack of liquidity, small number of transactions etc casts some doubt on the "true value" of those shares?

Did they really go from some big number to some small number in an eyeblink with this latest transaction?

look at their about page, they have access that you don't have. They literally don't understand.

For one important example, the battle of Midway was a close thing even with the intelligence they had. Execution matters.

The tweet that TFA was reacting to specifically called out soft social science citations, where it's often someone else's "vibes" being presented as incontrovertible fact because it's a citation.

Aha, that explains the framing of citations as support instead of as a low-tech hyperlink* for people who want to know more.

(and come to think of it, it also explains why they'd even suggest an article full of hyperlinks could be a bad thing?)

* bear skins and stone knives were all we had, pre-1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web#:~:text=CERN%20...

EDIT: and let's not forget that the whole scientific edifice arose out of scholarly apparatus the doctors of divinity had been using in order to keep track of arguments about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin; we can let the eloi do eloi things if we're confident we can always eventually rederive morlock things from that protoculture.

Exercise: how does always eventually differ from eventually always?

That makes it sound like they're slapping "AI" on preexisting codegen tools.

Most hard sci-fi breaks the rules too unless it's strictly near future on earth with no space stuff.

Ramscoops don't actually work, you lose velocity collecting the mass. Everything else is subject to the tyranny of the rocket equation unless we're inventing new physics.

Citation for ramscoops not working? Losing velocity is sometimes the point (it works as a sort of magnetic sail / parachute), but I believe the kinetic energy loss is less than the potential energy represented by using the hydrogen as fusion fuel.

I found a paper when I deepdived after reading "A deepness in the sky" but I couldn't find it just now, sorry.

IIRC, it had to do with taking a velocity hit at like 0.9c and then the best you can do is send that atom out at 0.999c out the back. And also the scoop size was gigantic to get mass in sparse interstellar space.

How hidden can you keep a test that many thousands of voters take?

You don't. You'd find contemporaneous accounts from people who'd taken the test and complained about it. That's how the social science of history works. I think the consensus here is that the brain-teaser test is either not real, or was not widely used (nobody has been able to find an instance where it was).

A clarifying bit of context: there were extensive complaints about the multiple-choice constitutional interpretation tests that were given at the time.

> How hidden can you keep a test that many thousands of voters take?

After its taken, and presuming active measures were taken to prevent distribution other than for people taking it who would then return it, pretty easily. Paper is biodegradable, burns easily, can be shredded (and recycled into new paper), etc.

how do you know how many people took the test? They don't need to use the super-secret fallback test to keep every black person from voting, the test was if all the other methods to keep them from voting didn't work, and then you didn't necessarily use all the test, you used some of the test, just enough to say they failed, and then what? Do you register the test somewhere?

Since the literacy test was used at the discretion of the authorities in charge of the vote they could choose who to give it to based on how likely they were to get away with using it.

I mean if you know the black people in your district will vote for a particular party you probably don't actually want to keep the black people in your district from voting, you want that party not to win because otherwise the party might help the black people living in your district.

If there are 1800 black people and 1100 white people that can vote in your district, then maybe you only need to keep 900 people from voting to be safe.

So then you announce you will be checking outstanding warrants at the polls, 600 people don't show up. You only need to keep 300 people from voting! So you start giving literacy tests to black voters but letting the white voters through - how many black people you think you will actually need to give that literacy test to before the rest of them wise up that you aren't going to be letting them vote?

I'd say maybe 20.

Now how many of them going to get copies of that test to do something about? What if you don't want to give them a copy of the test? How they going to get that copy of the test?

I'm sorry but I think this kind of thing would be pretty under-documented, just like most crime. I'm agreeing you can't keep it thoroughly hidden but hidden enough that it is difficult to say with any specificity this was the actual test used in that district on that day to fail these people.

on edit: removed something that was probably a bit rude, sorry, was going through some problems with kid at the moment and frustration transferred to my writing.

If there is a credible threat of retaliation (violence, employment, housing) for even trying to vote, then this is very effective. Why take a big risk if you won’t get to vote anyway? This way you don’t actually have to give the test very often, everyone quickly figures out the “rules” and falls into line.

right, the test exists as the last unbeatable line of defense, not the first.

> I certainly hope you're not so naive

There is absolutely no need to take this tone, especially seeing as the person you are replying to is clearly in good faith.

Exception, companies like datadog where they're actually operating in several clouds for good business reasons (it's where their customers are).

Any links handy to justify that claim? My impression from headlines was that some massive enterprise M&A was blocked recently but not so much "startup exits". Maybe I missed it though!