Hmm. Just me then. The rest of what I said stands.

I’m not a physicist either, but I’m close enough to tell you that this:

We further modeled the universe using the equation with Einstein’s lambda formalism and found that the universe dynamics could be considered as harmonic oscillators entangled with lambda curvature. This equation can be used to describe the energy transfer between two entangled spacetimes between the same universe and between any two universes (ER=EPR).

Sounds like gibberish. At the very least, these are all things they personally developed/made up. I’d read past the abstract, but it won’t load for me. Has it already been removed?

The fact that the authors are from the most misconduct-y region of the academic world and are engineers also doesn’t inspire confidence.

Yes, that is a synonym for the headline. Pretty doubtful this is real, though.

The masses of electrons, muons, and tau can be explained by the different curvatures of universe, galaxy, and solar system, respectively.

Yeah, that sounds like numerology. All three of those things are the same vague piles of dust, as far as fundamental physics is concerned.

That America starts wars for self interest is easier to defend, but honestly I’m not convinced of that, either. There was always a lot of that neocon ideology that democracy (or just capitalism) can be spread by force, and I see no reason to expect it’s just a facade. It would be hard to prove that either way, though, because once you’re an ideological actor your ideology losing means your national influence losing as well.

More relevant to the original topic, it’s fair to say that America doesn’t always start a war that would be in it’s national interest, at least. In the 90’s, they could have gone on an expansionist spree pretty easily, but they did triumphalism instead, and just kind of rested on their laurels until 9/11 (with the possible exception of Bosnia).

TL;DW

Stuff we knew already:

The Russian economy is running very hard to stay in the same place.

Natural gas is in the toilet, oil is fine.

Electronics have been making their way into Russia just fine, despite sanctions.

Secondary financial sanctions - or the threat thereof - are making their life difficult in China. A going rate of 6% of the transaction for financial intermediaries is mentioned.

Stuff that’s new to me:

Their defense budget increase has actually been beaten (proportionally, based on Rostec numbers) by Poland during the period of the war. This could be because they’re lying about how much they spent, because they’re just that cash strapped, or because refurbishing old equipment stocks is cheaper than building new stuff.

Russia is increasingly not even publishing the cooked statistics, because sometimes you can play them off of each other and actually learn things.

“Until you go out of business, you don’t have problems, you have costs” - Pretty much the “in a nutshell” of whether sanctions can stop the war. No, but they can definitely make them lose (run out of money and/or regime support) faster, and that’s happening to some degree. The question is still who can spend longer, between them and Ukraine+the West.

“Russia is currently in the process of expending both it’s past and it’s future” - A pretty raw quote. They’re rebuilding their economy, again to a degree, around strip mining the Soviet Union, at the expense of actual industry that will keep them fed in the long term.

Y’know, there’s all these “[platform] used for [horrible deed]” headlines. It’s always weird to me, because yeah, people use Facebook for everything. I bet they wore cloths from Walmart while they did it, too! The horror!

Sadly necessary disclaimer that I don’t like social media monopolies.

You really should have put a /s on OP then, and maybe explained your actual point beneath.

“Fun” fact, before we routinely spayed and neutered animals, putting a sack of kittens or puppies in a pond was a normal chore.

It was either that, or fight starving street dogs.

Yeah, I never really felt pressured to drink by people my age. Occasionally I’ll be hanging out with older people and they’ll act like I’m lame for turning it down. That’s okay, before they know it it’ll all be prune juice, anyway.

Yes, I’ve heard the same. It’s a flavourless, hazardous form of conspicuous consumption. It’s one of those things where if someone dies from it, it’s really hard to feel sad for them.

Sure, and that accounts for the first decade, however questionably.

Nah Americans don’t go to war over anything but self interest. That might be on the right side of history but there must be a gain to be made.

Disagree. There was nothing to gain in Afghanistan, especially during the second half after Bin Laden went down. It was an ideological war. That’s a major reason why they didn’t make more progress, actually; they could barely leave their own bases for fear of taking domestically unpopular losses.

However… wars start over perceived future weakness in comparison. If <insert country> thinks war with <insert adversary> is inevitable, and adversary will grow stronger over time, the best moment for war is… Now… or at some close future date. If the country thinks their adversary will grow comparatively weaker over time, war waits.

Neglecting domestic politics, yes. Not neglecting domestic politics, Americans are not psychologically ready for total war - they don’t even understand what that means - and would need to be ideologically massaged into thinking military world domination is cool again. Right now, there’s a powerful faction that wants to go back to straight-up isolationism, and the rest of the American political mainstream is for a rough continuation of the status quo, with the Western agenda being advanced through economic policies and (military or civilian) aid.

War has very high costs. The US knows what most of their costs are… since they have been at war for most of the last 100 years. But a first strike on china makes no sense… not militarily Nor economically. They need their allies in the fight… and that will not “just” happen.

Russia just found out the hard way how long a 600 whoops… 300 billion warchest lasts… or does not last. We’re down to ~50 billion now.

China however has no clue what the costs will be… just prognoses and projections.

That could be, although it’s obviously not public. Conquest still happens, though, because people want to build an empire, for money, ideology or just a place in history.

Это означает ли ты Русский? Всегда интересный слушаю людеи из других стран.

Yeah, the West pushing the first strike and anti-second-strike envelope is a real problem, but that’s not a good example.

If the US thought they could attack China and get away with it they wouldn’t at first, but ten years in? You bet there’d be people questioning why the US is allowing [insert real or imagined Chinese human rights violation] on their watch. Is [current administration] really American enough?

That’s my assessment as a Canadian. You average CCP guy probably thinks it would be immediate, and would involve Han Chinese being treated the way their regime treats minorities.

MAD only works because it’s a Nash equilibrium not requiring good faith.

Edit: But yes, this specifically is not a good example of a MAD-threatening technology.

Aging is a lot more complex than one molecule breaking down (we have built-in DNA repair equipment), and most of the mechanisms are still unknown, so it’s hard to say.

Hey, you said you wanted to pivot towards China. What better way than to adopt the Chinese Emperor diet?

Oh, I see. I thought you meant they gave Milosevic a specific 6-month deadline or something.

If this was a conflict pretty much anywhere else, I think it would have gotten the standard UN ethnic spat protocol from the get-go. Instead, we’re at least back to the 90’s in international law.

Man, he’s really slipping these days… /s

Hey, I had trouble finding info on this with a quick search. Can I have a recap?