Miscellaneous News

supersnoop said:

To be completely fair, the NYC subway is hands down the worst subway I have ever seen in my life. I’m not particularly well travelled, but it seems worse to me than even other cities within America.

The next richest city would be LA, and I did not actually take the metro there, but none of the stations I passed by looked anything like NYC.

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Well New York is supposed to be the richest city in the world and they can't find the money to upgrade their infrastructure...? Why? Because special interests see spending money on the general public as a waste of money. This is how the US operates. The infrastructure bill that Biden was pushing and Senator Joe Manchin killed... he didn't like it because it allocated money to help "poor people" which he called a waste of money. It's like I believe it was Senator Rand Paul who was against any COVID-19 relief aid to states but now recently wants it for his state because his state needs it. These politicians are okay with their districts in the flyover states getting money but they don't like it when others get money. You see this at a country level. You see this at a state level. You see it at city level. In New York you have special interests that don't take the subway so they could care less about their metro system getting money when it could be spent on things where their interests lie.

AndrewS said:

There's an old figure that China supplies 60% of the world’s supply of APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients).
But as the article below says, no one really knows.

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I feel this might actually be an issue in China's response to the trade war with the US. The Chinese government itself might not know exactly who the players are, which could be a factor in the recent rare earth consolidation.

If the world gets its supplies from China to make things, it's because it's the cheapest most reliable supplier of it. The West likes to spin that when they outsource, it's a jobs program to help those countries. No, it's because they're a bunch of cheapskate bastards wanting to make every penny they can. It also means if they abandon China, everything they make will cost more money. Look at how inflation in the West is the worst in forty years. It's because of a cascade of events that buries the fact it all started because of the West's trade war with China who was their cheapest supplier for nearly all things. They were so drunk with the power they think they have in their minds, they arrogantly ignored the costs add up at every step of the supply chain because the increased costs is passed onto the next guy. It doesn't matter if they can domestically supply themselves. It will always cost them more. Then you'll have international competitors who won't cut China out of their supply chain. They will have a less expensive product that will out compete those who chose to cut-out China. Not only the companies that cut China out will have to pay more for costs which translates to smaller profit margins, they will have less sales. The only way they can stop that is banning products of other countries that use Chinese supply chains and that results in trade wars among allies that the US needs to gang up against China. Nothing they do will stop inflation for their own citizens. And think how this was all an attempted bluff that they would scare China into submission. Think about nails. People take advantage and think there's plenty and are cheap. Take them away and it throws industries into chaos because everyone needs nails for something. That's the equivalent of what the West is doing regarding China. Yeah they can find another source but it will always cost them more. Inflation is a killer of economies. That's the reason why the West charges genocide of Uighurs against China and all they do is ban only products from Xinjiang. The whole reason for Western cowardly sanctions is hoping regular citizens suffer and they will then force change of their government for the US. All they're doing is hurting Uighurs. They don't want to cut-off the rest of China not only because it cuts-off the final product of their companies that outsource to China, it also cuts-off simple supplies that the world needs to make their products. Look at Vietnam who's suppose to be a challenger to China in outsourcing. Yeah but all the raw materials Vietnam uses to make products for foreigners come from China. Is the West going to supply the ships and make the deals around the world to get those raw materials to Vietnam... Even more money it'll cost them in the end. All this because the US thought China will surrender easily like Trump thought when he started his trade war with China four years ago, China was going to surrender day one. Even though the contrary is happening, look at how many more sanctions and bans they've added on since and China still hasn't surrendered.

supersnoop said:

To be completely fair, the NYC subway is hands down the worst subway I have ever seen in my life. I’m not particularly well travelled, but it seems worse to me than even other cities within America.

The next richest city would be LA, and I did not actually take the metro there, but none of the stations I passed by looked anything like NYC.

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That depends on which metric of worse.

NYC might not be much to ride on, but on my many trips there, it's pretty reliable and will get you to most places in New York.

Washington DC is nicer to ride on, but the service sucks (not to mention safety issues, lack of coverage compared to Chicago or NYC and construction delays).

Skywatcher said:

That depends on which metric of worse.

NYC might not be much to ride on, but on my many trips there, it's pretty reliable and will get you to most places in New York.

Washington DC is nicer to ride on, but the service sucks (not to mention safety issues, lack of coverage compared to Chicago or NYC and construction delays).

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The stations' decor was interesting.

It looked like used the same designer who built Alcatraz.

LesAdieux said:

is it possible to arm the station with laser gun to fend off this kind of voyeur and kill potential attackers?

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A laser broom doesn’t work the way you think it works. It doesn’t vaporize orbital objects directly but instead vaporizes a small portion of it to serve as reaction mass so that the debris could deep it. Something like a satellite is too large to be deorbited in such a way.

AssassinsMace said:

If the world gets its supplies from China to make things, it's because it's the cheapest most reliable supplier of it.

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It is space, time, and mass.

Space is the battlefield.
Time is the campaign.
Mass is the center of gravity (from where all the power flows from).

The world today, it globalized, that means commerce is globalized.

Resources dug out from the ground in Africa, gets shipped to China, and consumers electronics gets shipped back to Africa from China. The entire world system of economics is based on such trading relationships. That is the battlefield. That is space.

The political people in Washington DC, along with the American media, they do not understand this. They do not understand space, they do not understand the battlefield.

That is truly surprising, because it is the Americans with their efforts who built this battlefield. Now they don't like when China is winning.

Then what seems to have happened these last few years, is that the people who do not understand the battlefield, they grabbed power and now are in charge of policy in Washington DC.

The people who study the battlefield, cough cough (those pesky economists and businesses) they understand it without even thinking about it. There is a real gap between that, and those social justice warriors in charge.

That is what Clausewitz wrote about, but one of the key points, is to win the battle or war, the commander must understand, weigh, and assess the space, time, mass, correctly.

If they were in a jungle, and they did not understand the jungle, the lieutenant will be walking the patrol straight into an ambush.

The trade war. The semiconductor restrictions. All for what?

daifo said:

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Good one, China may revive Nicaragua Canal project

Gonna rant a little bit, and of course, gonna rant about Huawei.

When the US government tried to suppress Huawei, and then got really aggressive about it, after a while, you just knew something important was happening.

But what was happening? It was fight. It was not some simple fight in cage, like wrestling in WestleMania XX, this was a real fight that was global in nature.

Well, if this was warfare, then Carl von Clausewitz was definitely in that cage for WestleMania XX.

Space - the worldwide telecom operators, and deployment of 5G.
Time - the current dispute between the US government and Huawei, but also the race for 5G.
Mass - Huawei technical gear, Nokia, Ericsson, US alliances.

This was the works!

This had everything!

That was the only way I could understand it. This fight was all about space, time, mass, that was the only way we can view it in order to make sense of what was happening on the ground.

Space, that was like a two front war. Huawei and US government were fighting over market access. Which countries will use Huawei, and how the US government campaigned against it (here the CCP played a role of staying the background, but darkly warn of "consequences").

But the second front, where this war will evolve to, and which was the ultimate goal, who builds the 5G first, thereby reaping first mover advantage for the new industries spawned by 5G.

Then there was the mass, the center of gravity, where all power comes from. Huawei had the gear. That is complicated stuff because it was technical stuff about antenna, legacy gear, patents, and who had what installed, and where. Apparently, Huawei had a big lead over it rivals, something the United States truly resented. But that resentment, had no part of space, time, mass. Irrelevant! But they kept playing that Huawei is bad and we hate it and so should you hate it too, they kept playing that card. That was dumb.

Okay, this is getting too long winded.

To sum up, the space, there was two, such as the current battlefield to telecom operators worldwide, and the battlefield of the race to 5G.

The mass there was two, such as Huawei current technical abilities, and what the future 5G world would look like.

Time, the campaign, or fight, there was only one between Huawei and the US government. The fight is only this one, in the current time. After 5G is built worldwide, then that is just competition among businesses.

Essentially, the US government had to stop Huawei now, or it won't. That is what it came down to.

The space, it was about economics, and Huawei had superior gear and cheap gear.

This ties in nicely with the mass, because Huawei will let those who use it build out their 5G more cheaply and quickly, reaping economic benefits over laggards. Mass was key for Huawei, they had the better gear. That is were the power came from.

The United States, they have a lot of mass too. But this was a different kind of war. They decided their political mass, semiconductor mass, and alliances mass, was more than enough to crush Huawei worldwide.

Mass, that is always tied to the battlefield, the space. When you do not understand the battlefield space in the jungle, you walk into an ambush.

Clearly, on some points in the US government versus Huawei war, the Americans miscalculated. For example, the Germans never banned Huawei, as the Americans expected them too. Even the UAE choose Huawei 5G over F-35. The political mass was not as potent as they thought. Of course, these points we were discussing all the time on these forums.

The political mass the Americans had could not be translated onto the battlefield, which was largely an economic space.

Then there was the mass of the semiconductor supply chain where the American believed they held significant choke points.

That was time, another campaign in the war. Time is always connected to mass, power, and space, the battlefield.

What did China do? Clearly, China did not have the mass, ie power here, in IC, so what did China do? China Inc. stockpiled chips. Stockpile the chips now, build the internal IC capabilities later.

This is one principle tenet of Chinese thinking on warfare. China is a big country. You can trade territory to some actual time to regroup. This stockpiling of chips, was a retreat, to regroup, then counter attack.

Space, the battlefield, economics. Mass, the antenna, patents, cables, basestations, the chips, the IC supply chain, technology and technology is not well understood.

Then time, the actual fighting, the moves and countermoves, for the current fight that is worldwide over who is using Huawei gear, and the other fight over positioning of who will lead industry into the 5G world of the future.

This US government versus Huawei fight is epic. I truly mean that.

We need to use everything we learned to just follow what is going on. It is truly epic. It was great too! I hope it never comes to an end.

Lastly, Chairman Mao! Guess who he liked so much as a strategic thinking book? You guessed it!