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Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

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Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#71
post #52

Has the rest of the democratic world been making plans to reduce reliance on the US since the first Trump administration? Will this term be the end of the craziness or is this the end of the US as a super power?

Yes. There are many in the US who have a particular strand of thinking. It goes a bit like this: The US is meddling too much in other country's affairs. Only a handful of countries actually have agency - US, Russia, China mostly. All the wars out there are actually proxy wars, because the US is up to no good and interfering with one of the other countries with agency. It follows that all that is required for global p…

Yet Canada should be the 51st state, Panama canal should be owned by the US, Greenland should be turned over to the US, Ukraine should just sign over 500B of rare earth mineral rights to US for nothing in return. Its not the end of US meddling, its the start of becoming an outright and corrupt bully without the thin veneer of democratic good guys they've tried to project before.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#72
post #67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing about these massive ships is that they take a loong time to sink. If my guesses are correct, it’ll work just long enough for another administration to take over to deal with the fallout.

Just be careful when using analogies. The massive ship named USSR sank in a matter of months.

I honestly prefer that outcome. At least that’d be a reset instead of this infinite downward cycle.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#73
post #67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing about these massive ships is that they take a loong time to sink. If my guesses are correct, it’ll work just long enough for another administration to take over to deal with the fallout.

Just be careful when using analogies. The massive ship named USSR sank in a matter of months.

I guess it could be argued that it had been in the process of sinking for a longer time, but I don't know enough about the history of the USSR to assert that being the case

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the game Civilization, there are different ways to achieve victory, one of which is a Cultural Victory. A lot of the foreign aid the US does is kind of like this, where we're attempting to shift other countries to our way of life through a mix of direct aid, loans, news, and other methods. There's a real long term ROI on these things where it's inarguably to the US' benefit that other countries want to speak Engli…

It's extremely ironic that Musk is the one defunding all the US covert influence programs, which leftists have been complaining about for decades.

Exactly my point. The only explanation possible is that left and right wing only serve one purpose: make sure the empire remains

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#75
post #65
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government is a huge ship where everything happens slowly. If you fire all sailors at once, you won't notice the difference immediately. The phantom ship continues to sail. Then engines start to heat up and fail. And if there's an obstacle along the way, it's game over. This is a dangerous game played by morons full of hubris. On June 16 YC organizes an "AI Startup School"; the first speaker is Elon Musk: https://www…

The good thing about these massive ships is that they take a loong time to sink. If my guesses are correct, it’ll work just long enough for another administration to take over to deal with the fallout.

Is it a good thing though? It means it takes the same loong time until problems are noticed and reacted upon.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#76
post #63
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there are any "nuclear codes". I think they might have been a thing at some point in history since the idea is so pervasive, but in a crisis you'd not want someone to have to figure out some non-trivial password before MAD doctrine can be applied. Maybe I'm wrong, I know more about field tactics and guerilla warfare than grand strategy.

Apparently at one point they were set to "0000000".

Reference: https://sgs.princeton.edu/00000000

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#77
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm putting this one on the voter, not Congress. As dumb as it is, Trump ran on these policies and is delivering.

No electoral mandate can make illegal actions legal, or abrogate the law. The refusal of the congressional majority to enforce their authority under article 1 is what is causing this constitutional crisis. (Also, Trump did not run on these policies -- he's implementing policies he explicitly repudiated when he lied about not being affiliated with the Project 2025 manifesto.) I don't want to let the voters off the hoo…

>Also, Trump did not run on these policies -- he's implementing policies he explicitly repudiated when he lied about not being affiliated with the Project 2025 manifesto.

Where do you think Project 2025 came from? Trump may not have run on the specific, enumerated list of items in the Project 2025 agenda, but everything in that agenda falls in line with Trumpist goals and right-wing Republican ideals, and it had deep connections with the Republican Party establishment and Trump's own network. It was published by the same group that selected Trump's Supreme Court nominees. It didn't simply emerge from the aether.

The narrative that "this isn't what Trump voters voted for" is being pushed hard right now for understandable reasons. That may be true in some cases, but it's also true that this is exactly what a lot of Trump voters voted for. At worst, they simply didn't expect the consequences of their actions to affect them, but they knew what they wanted to happen to everyone else.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#78
post #4

Bruce Schneiers thoughts : https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/doge-as-a-nat... https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/02/ai-and-civil-...

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If I am to believe the Corruption Perception Index, which I certainly would over your unsourced blanket statement, you’re wrong and Europe is actually doing rather well at having low rates of corruption. Anecdotally that has certainly been my experience. I don’t really understand the perceived competition anyhow, why not wish for everybody to do well?

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#79
post #67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing about these massive ships is that they take a loong time to sink. If my guesses are correct, it’ll work just long enough for another administration to take over to deal with the fallout.

Just be careful when using analogies. The massive ship named USSR sank in a matter of months.

> The massive ship named USSR sank in a matter of months

There was a decade of dysfunction and ossification before the USSR collapsed within a couple months

A decade of low oil prices (affecting exports), high defense spending (increasing deficit), societal unrest due to the resurgence of nationalism, and slowing productivity all happened quietly over the 1980s before catalyzing into collapse.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#80
post #72
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be careful when using analogies. The massive ship named USSR sank in a matter of months.

I honestly prefer that outcome. At least that’d be a reset instead of this infinite downward cycle.

Such resets are sometimes followed by civil wars, economy crashes style "there is no food for tomorrow" and a generational trauma. As the one who has been through it, be careful what you wish for.
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