The Red Count

Painting full of images of war and militarism, including a young boy with a machine gun, a swastika, and a monstrous saluting figure at right

I've been saying for quite a while that George Grosz is the historical artist who best captures the tenor of our current moment. He made this painting, "God of War," in 1940, several years after fleeing Nazi Germany for the US, where he became an influential teacher www.artic.edu/artworks/241...

Take it with a grain of salt (Murphy has clearly decided that he will run on a "I have opposed the Iran war" ticket for president) but he heavily suggests that the main US strategy (copied from the Israelis) is just "mowing the lawn" at large.

I haven't yet seen good explanations for why that is the case. Especially comparative ones.

Delayed cohort effects?

(2/2)

I have been looking at some data ahead of the BaWü state elections in Germany.

One remarkable effect in Germany is that the AfD support is concentrated in the prime to older working population. It is lowest among retirees. This is remarkably different to many other countries.

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Das ist schlichtweg falsch. Du kannst bei Proton in bar zahlen.

The KKR vs Döpfner/Springer split at the end of 2024/beginning of 2025 has gone far too unnoticed.

Döpfner is now free to build an even more ideological focused operation and he has the cash to do it.

That level isn't yet acceptable for Döpfner...

If he dresses (it up) in technofacist BS à la Thiel, he will be more than welcome.

It is scary how close we came to Döpfner owning the FT...

I would strongly recommend only using one of the ones labelled "popular", if you are a first time user.

It also greatly reduces the problem of choice.

*in Iran

Waves of refugees in Europe/Germany due to a failed state/civil war in Europe will surely be completely irrelevant to German politics...

The shortsightedness.

Germany's dependence on the US is not some fact of nature but a choice which can be changed. That there is no effort to change it is the problem.

Besides Spain manages to do it.

If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.

Unfortunately, people with an engineering mindset, often CS or engineering people but not exclusively, love the blackbox of throwing everything at the algorithm. Social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics people tend to be more inquisitive in my experience.

This is even the case in quantitative empirical work with existing datasets. The time thinking about why some variables are coded the way the are and asking what the annoying exceptions/data errors are, often starts the analysis.

It helps you write this annoying "Data Engineering" codes.

The analysis is the fun part.

Depending on the political science project, lots of engineering can be part of it.

As a Data Scientist (in industry):

Lot's of hours in this work is spend doing plumbing which is not that much fun. Literally: how do I get data from this ancient database into a format I can work with, how do I clean the data, how do I connect it with other datasets.

Here AI does really help.

Cass Sunstein was pushing prediction markets as a fairer alternative to deliberation (e.g. committees, juries) back in 2008. (This and "nudging" in lieu of policy.) The quant asshole revolution of the Obama era laid the groundwork for the gambling, scams, and bullshit vibes paradigm of today.

The least efficient version of helicopter money...

the only fucking decent European leader, again!

apparently, the rest are back to happy vassals, cheering US and Israel into another war.

Are there any German politicians talking about the use of Spangdahlem and Ramstein for these attacks and what it might mean?

The parking situation at Düsseldorf airport a few days ago makes it very obvious, what the role is...

someday the story will be told of how Germany voluntarily destroyed its soft power crown jewels -- flagship international cultural events and institutions – because of a bunch of ungrateful foreigners who wouldn't keep their mouths shut about the actual destruction of Gaza

It should be.

In reality they exist:

a.) To keep economists away from positions where they create even more harm
b.) To subsidize commercial banks
c.) To indulge creditors and to punish debtors
d.) To ensure that the CB's executives get a springboard to financial services' jobs (aka corruption).

Plöttner treibt jetzt im Verteidigungsministerium sein Unwesen.

I agree but they acknowledge that such a thing exists and can be influenced. They later is not allowed in the communications of other German business associations. There only money directly to corporates matters.

The growing disconnect between public and private corporates in Germany is vastly underrated.

And here is the key to identifying that it is coming from the BDI. The are capable of using the words "domestic demand".

The only employer association capable of actually addressing reality.

The other ones are just lobbying for 80s thatcherite recipies without understandings reality.

Es zeigt auch, dass all die Versuche derjenigen, die das Gremium "wissenschaftlicher" machen wollten, letztlich komplett sinnlos war. Dieses war m.E. vorher klar, so dass es besser gewesen wäre, wenn gleich für das Recht jeder BuRe auf ihren eigenen Beraterkreis eingetreten worden wäre.

Of course, not with the current majority/president.

The money is always there. It is ultimately just entries in a database. The question is always about political majorities/will.