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Any chance you actually looked at the the other refs: This has been about a 20 year trend depending on how one measures "democracy". Your stated point was: "I actually think the jury is in. Loads of countries other than the US are democracies. It's obvious at this point that there are much better implementations of democracy than the US system (downsides of being first). But almost universally, people living in democracies (including the US) are better off than people living in autocracies. Democracies do collapse and revert to autocracies (and it feels like the US is currently skirting the danger zone on that). But autocracies also collapse and become democracies. And so far it appears that autocracies collapse at a higher rate than democracies. The overall trend so far appears to be towards greater democratization." 1. There is at best around 8 percent of the planet with true liberal democracies. And democracy is not in the majority by any stretch. 2. Democracies are not on the rise, they are in fact in decline and have been for some time. Liberal democracies have been on decline for nearly 20 years. Flawed democracies - like India and Pakistan - are also starting to decline. More bluntly put...the data does not match your initial opinion/position - which now seems to have shifted to "sure we are in a decline but can recover as we have in the past". Sure we might see a surge in democracies globally but likely not if the US continues a downward spiral. We definitely saw a Post-Cold War bump but the party appears to be over. This is why this war is an important test and has a lot at stake.

And a quick follow up with an article talking about the recent dip in democratization.: https://ourworldindata.org/less-democratic This bit seems to be the core of what the article is saying. I've added some bold.

Interview with Budanov. Nothing really new here, just a good piece reminding people that Ukraine isn't beaten and won't be: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/17/kyrylo-budanov-ukraine-general-russia-war-attacks/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3d6ca95%2F661ff4242d43a25434edb2be%2F5b6a1f5bade4e277958a3cb5%2F13%2F52%2F661ff4242d43a25434edb2be Steve

Alright, I had to restart my browser in order to open these links for some reason. I'm not seeing the downward lines you're referring to. In fact these all look pretty darn upwards to me. We are in the middle of a dip starting ~15 years ago. But dips and rises are pretty normal on any graph, and I don't think there's any reason to think that this one is any more significant than the dips in democratization at the end of the 19th century, in the 20s-40s, or in the 60s and 70s (anyone living in the 20s-40s with access to a similar graph really would have had good reason to be pessimistic about the future of democracy). My guess is that it'll continue going down for another decade or two and then either level off or start rising again, just like the last three dips. Let's check back on this in 20 years.

This reactive policy to Ukraine by the West is actually past time to end. Pledges of munitions and equipment must no longer be reactive, like closing the barn door after it burned down. No more dallying on vehicles. Bradleys, M113s, M1s, strip everything possible from NATO, and send it to Ukraine. How can we expect the Ukrainian soldier to fight and win when we can’t even be bothered to send some more m113s? past time to equip it with long range missiles. The question we have now, should not be, “what does Ukraine need the most?” It should be, what can Ukraine use now and in the future, and start making it now and shipping it now. at this point, it’s clear Russia does not have will to negotiate, therefore, the prior reactive aid to Ukraine is now a failure, and only signaling to Russia that it can outlast the West.

Right now the theory is that 1 of 2 things happened. Either both players did not complete the turns by clicking End from the final AAR screen OR the game did not send the "that was the last turn" message to the servers and a penalty was awarded because a player "stopped playing"/abandoned the battle.

Looks like a final calculation as the points that are missing are added to Dawntaker.

So far, two players have never received the AA pick-ups. I had the honor, irrespective of the mere fact that they are part of the overall atmosphere of the so-called Syrian civil war, they made their contribution under my command, in accordance with their abilities.

Don't be so sure...

you guys are just a fountain of good vibes today! Freakin glad I am already retired, and my life expectancy is such that I may be long dead before humanity implodes.

In the Operations Room video? Yeah, I suppose it does look a bit like Armored Brigade. Both The Operations Room and Armored Brigade use 2d maps with a similar balance of detail/abstraction and what looks to me like a similar art style. But I doubt they're actually using AB to generate their maps. The locations depicted in most Operations Room videos aren't present in any of the stock AB maps. So that would mean they would have to be creating custom AB maps for each video. Possible, but it's probably easier to just use a dedicated graphics program at that point.

I checked if there were perhaps some AI plan which was bugged, but there's just the one and that worked when I started it.

I remain optimistic. Regardless of how fast our genes are evolving, I think our memes are evolving plenty fast enough to allow us to tackle the challenges ahead. I'll say nothing further on evolution, except to recommend A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, by Adam Rutherford (I just finished the audiobook, narrated by Adam Rutherford, on my commutes to work). It gives an excellent overview of the current state of the field of human genomics. He explains things in a way that is easy to understand, without falling into the all too common trap of oversimplifying things to the point of being misleading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-has-human-brain-evolved/#:~:text=With some evolutionary irony%2C the,important driver of this trend. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2023.1191274/full#:~:text=Von Bonin (1934) wrote%2C,smaller than Pleistocene hominin crania. I do not think one can divorce psychological, physical and social evolution. Again, I think our firmware has been relatively static but our software had changed dramatically. Physically we have undergone dramatic shifts in caloric intake and exposure to diseases - one of the major evolutions over the last 10k years is a resistance to malaria. As to why they have been shrinking...there does not seem to be widely accepted agreement. Then there is the sticky issue of epigenetic impacts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma Regardless, the underlying point is still valid - we have never tried a political power sharing system at the scope and scale of the US, as imperfect as its democracy is. At no time in history has this many people from a single collective construct ever tried this before. There is no guarantees that it will work any more than communism in the Soviet Union. Now this could be a factor of social evolution, but if you are indeed correct in that we really are not physically or psychologically evolving fast enough, then a social evolution on this scale may simply be doomed. In fact one could say that large scale human civilization is in itself a large scale experiment of only around 7000 short years. It may also be doomed, we just do not know it yet. Or conversely, perhaps humans need a burst of artificial evolution (eg AI) to allow these larger social constructs to work.

She made some comment about previously supporting space lasers for Israel's defense. Not sure what that's in reference to, but I think it was not the same as the CA fires lasers. But hey, who knows what she's talking about? I'm sure she doesn't even know, really. The fear I have is that now that Speaker Johnson has divided up the aid and humanitarian packages to be voted on separately, he'll get the aid for Israel done, and then after that passes renege on even voting for the Ukraine aid and possibly the humanitarian aid for Gaza in order to save his job, regardless of what he says he plans to do. I read a suggestion this morning that other (saner, more responsible) Republicans should play Rep. Greene's game. "Hold a vote on Ukraine aid, which WILL pass with wide support, or else we'll fill a motion to vacate the Speaker." At least then the aid would pass, and it's because the majority demanded action, not a cabal of 2-8 (depending on day of the week) dictating to 435 Representatives their own personal agenda for the whole country. Dave

I'm not disconnecting physiological and psychological evolution. We aren't changing biologically on politically relevant timescales. The biological changes that can be traced to within the last 10,000 years are minor and have no way of effecting which political systems would work (I don't think the ability to digest milk as an adult has much effect on the efficacy of democracy). Where did you hear that our brains have gotten smaller within the last 10,000 years? I have heard that homo-sapien brains are probably smaller than homo-neanderthalensis brains. But Neandertals died out 30,000 years ago. Homo-sapiens haven't visibly changed in the last 100,000 years. As to social evolution, that's the same as technological development. We are developing better methods of organizing ourselves socially just as we develop better tools for any other task. It has nothing to do with biological evolution. I'll admit that social evolution does behave a bit like biological evolution. Ideas go through a similar natural selection process as genes. This is actually why the word "meme" was coined. A meme is an idea that undergoes a natural selection process similar to a gene. An important difference is that memes evolve far more rapidly than genes.

"toilette"? Hmm sounds like you've sent a little too much time with your Poutine friends.

And on this one, the data really does not support: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-state-of-global-democracy-2022/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/how-many-people-live-in-a-political-democracy-today/ Now taking a big picture we are definitely in an era of experimentation: https://ourworldindata.org/democracy But those lines are looking downward.

The tactical maps look an awful lot like Armored Brigade. With some overlays.

She blamed Jewish Space lasers for CA fires. She hasn't gotten crazier, she is just returning to her normal level of crazy.

This part really makes no sense to me. How can physiological and social evolution be disconnected from psychological evolution? We know we have seen significant physical evolution over the last 10k years - eg our brains are smaller. We also have seen dramatic social evolution with the creation of complex societies to sustain much larger populations than we were ever designed for. We have seen macro-social evolutions such as the introduction of monotheistic religions and ideologies on a global scale. And we have seen micro-social evolutions in areas such as male-female pairings. And yet we somehow have had our psychologies existing in glorious isolation from all this change? I have always found this "frozen psychology" argument weak. I can accept that we are living with our "firmware" from 50k year ago but our software is evolving constantly. It is what makes us such an adaptable species. https://hbr.org/1998/07/how-hardwired-is-human-behavior Regardless, your point on "our systems changing to better suite our brains" is inconsistent and illogical. If our brains are truly locked into a 6000BC chassis, then any and all systems we develop are beyond that are by default less-optimal. We had the best systems for our brains before the emergence of agrarian civilization...and by your argument, our brains prove it. We have been coping with unnatural social realities ever since.

Yesterday in Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy, Rostov oblast UKR UAVs hit the building of chemical factory, producing MLRS rocket fuel components. There is no information about the scale of detriment, just an unverified photo of probable fire in one of factory's building. Local authorities as usual claimed all drones were shot down, just one fell down on territory of the factory, damaging some windows

Two days ago UKR drone repeated attack of Russian over-horizon 29B6 "Konteiner" radar complex (it's receiver part) with 3000 km range near Kovylkino village. On the video we can see distant explosion. Some Russian TG claimed after second attack radar site isn't operational. Single research institute, which developed it almost dead and the factory, where this radar equipment was built already doesn't exist. Radar had been producing during 5 years and about 10-15 years were spent for it deployment, ajustment works and test service until it became fully operational. If this true, Russia got huge blind zone on own SW direction, so if Ukraine has super-long-range drones it can fly more free in this window to reach Volga and Syberia strategical military and civil infrastructure PS. US media as always was alarmed because of this. Newsweek issued an article that this is dangerous attack, which can cause esaclation (OMG...) because Ukraine attacked startegical radar site, intended i.e. for early warning of nuclear strike and this according Russian nuclear doctrine can be considered as a reason of nuclear weapon usage.

I'm always a bit concerned whenever I see any of my friends online advocating "tearing it all down". They never have any suggestions about what to replace it with. And anything you could replace it with would either be worse, or mostly the same but for a few modifications. The system as it is actually has the framework of a pretty good system. It just needs some tweaking. Rather that screaming into the void about tearing it all down, I think we'd do ourselves a lot more good by having constructive arguments over which tweaks would improve the system. I'd avoid using terms like "evolution" and "species". There is evidence that our species has evolved measurably in the recent past (as in "within the last 10,000 years"). The most notable sign of recent evolution being the evolution of lactase persistence in European populations (clearly a post-agriculture development, probably as a reaction to dairy farming). But there is no evidence at all that our psychology has evolved since the rise of the first civilizations (about 6,000 years ago) in a way that would have any influence on which political systems would be most effective. It's our systems that are changing to better suite the brains we have. It isn't our brains changing to allow us to use better systems. We are certainly still evolving. But the timescales involved are so long compared to the timescales on which we refine our political systems that it just isn't relevant. I actually think the jury is in. Loads of countries other than the US are democracies. It's obvious at this point that there are much better implementations of democracy than the US system (downsides of being first). But almost universally, people living in democracies (including the US) are better off than people living in autocracies. Democracies do collapse and revert to autocracies (and it feels like the US is currently skirting the danger zone on that). But autocracies also collapse and become democracies. And so far it appears that autocracies collapse at a higher rate than democracies. The overall trend so far appears to be towards greater democratization.

Unfortunately, for the last many minutes Democrats and Republicans of the Rules Committee are now bickering over who is most to blame, Trump or Biden, for the miserable situation that brought them to this point in time, leading to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, not supporting Ukraine enough for the last two years, who should get credit for the aid to Ukraine up to this point, and who to blame for not getting Ukraine the recent support they need.