And if it was as Hersh says it was, it's really a panicky bad choice for Biden to make: Germany wasn't going to go for Nordstream gas anyway as there was no energy Armageddon or even one blackout in Germany this winter. — ssu

By that time Germany had already reduced its dependence on Russian gas from ~50% to ~9% and was on course to eliminate it entirely. And it wasn't getting any gas from Nord Stream anyway, since the Russians had already shut it down indefinitely in an apparent attempt to cause as much pain for Europe as they could before they lost their leverage entirely.

I didn't want to further detail the thread, so I started a new discussion: The Past Hypothesis: Why did the universe start in a low-entropy state?

You are correct about the nature of the Past Hypothesis; that's a fine answer, but it isn't the argument I get frustrated with. By definition, there are more ways to be in a high entropy state than a low entropy state. Perhaps there is indeed a mechanism at work in the early universe that makes a later low entropy state counterintuitively more likely than a high entropy one. But, barring support for that fact, we are left with the principal of indifference, and this suggests that we weight all options equally, combinatorially if there are a finite number of states. That is, giving equal likelihood to all potential universes of X mass energy existing in an early state with all possible levels of entropy, the high entropy universes outnumber the low entropy ones, barring some other sort of explanation. Appeals to the Anthropic Principle don't address this. The same issue comes up with the Fine Tuning Problem; if we don't know the likelihood of values for constants, indifference should prevail. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am not sure that the principle of indifference can lend us any insight here. When tossing a coin, we assume that the coin has equal chances of landing heads or tails, because we are very familiar with coins and the behavior of objects of that sort. When we cannot assume that for some reason, then all that the principle of indifference does is describe the state of our ignorance: since I know nothing except that there are two possibilities, I have no greater expectation of heads than of tails. But note that, although in the latter case we have derived the same 50% probability, the meaning of this probability is not the same. We did not learn that the coin is fair through the application of the principle of indifference! All we did is learn how to bet in order to avoid Dutch Book-style exploits.

How does this help us understand the origin of the universe? It's a one-off event against the background of complete ignorance, and the outcome of this event is already known. What more can we learn from the principle of indifference? What does "the probability of this event is such and such" even mean in this case?

Positing some as of yet not understood mechanism by which this is not the case is fine, after all, we have empirical evidence that the entropy of the early universe was low (counterintuitively despite being near equilibrium, wrapping your head around negative heat is a doozy). — Count Timothy von Icarus

(My emphasis.) We haven't really talked about the Past Hypothesis itself, so let's do that now. If you take the currently observable universe and compare its entropy with the entropy of the same region of space as it was shortly after the Big Bang, you will find that the entropy is indeed much larger now (at least if we restrict ourselves to very short time horizons in each case, in which the universe can be considered quasi-static as per classical thermodynamics, because otherwise the meaning of entropy and how it should be calculated becomes unclear). And yet the universe after the Big Bang is typically described as a very uniform "particle soup." It wasn't at equilibrium, because it was quickly expanding, but if, counterfactually, there was no expansion, then the universe would have already been at its maximum entropy (and on very short time scales, during which expansion could be neglected, it was). Expansion added bucketloads of additional degrees of freedom, thus lifting the ceiling on the maximum entropy - and this is how we find ourselves, 14 billion years later, at a much higher entropy and still far from equilibrium. All thanks to the dramatic expansion of space during the time between then and now.

So, was the (relatively) low-entropy state of the early universe very special and unlikely (whatever that might mean)? Frankly, I don't see how.

As opposed to what? A world at thermodynamic equilibrium? — SophistiCat

Yes. Since there are more ways to be high entropy than low entropy we should have more worlds with high entropy than low. So why are we in a low entropy world if it is very statistically unlikely?

Some version of the past hypothesis, right? But then seeing a world where the past hypothesis is true is vanishingly unlikely, even if it occurs with probability 1, according to MWI derivations of the Born Rule. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am surprised that you went for this explanation, given what you said above about frequentist explanations. This is a textbook case where statistics does not apply because it simply does not exist.

Your reasoning applies to an ergodic system that has been evolving for a long time, or an equivalent ensemble. But the early universe is nothing like that. If there is no explanation for the past hypothesis (we don't have a good theory of the universe's origin), then it makes no sense to talk about how likely or unlikely it is, because the universe was and still is far from ergodic, it hadn't been evolving for a long time (ex hypothesi), and we don't have an ensemble (unless some kind of a multiverse theory is true, but that is still very speculative, so we can't take it as given).

It seems to me that either low probability events should always be surprising and make us ask questions or they never should, not a too cute mix of both. Just bite the bullet and say the Born Rule is meaningless, a total illusion, in that case. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Eh, surprise is a tricky thing. There have been some detailed analyses of surprise in the literature, both from the purely epistemological standpoint and specifically in the context of issues like the multiverse and fine-tuning. But I find that in the latter case the arguments get too far afield. They start from some careless analogies (e.g. Leslie's firing squad) and then get bogged down in the arguments over the analogies. Given that our everyday intuitions are not trained for such exotic scenarios as multiverses, we probably shouldn't put too much stock in them.

Maybe he is not lying just making false claims. Anyways, talking about OSINT, I was aware of Oliver Alexander's review of Hersh's article: https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe

Or are you referring to somebody else? — neomac

I read something else, less comprehensive. And one can find more with a quick google. For my part, I wasn't all that interested in fact-checking Hersh's story, because I didn't take it seriously in the first place. But I knew that it would make a splash, especially in far-right/left circles. I think the real story here is not in what Hersh wrote, but in how it was received.

But I take your point. We can't take it for granted that he made up all or some of the story himself. He may have just laundered the story that he was handed by his "anonymous source" without doing any of the things that are routinely done in the corrupt western mainstream media - you know, like doing his own research and fact-checking. But my guess is that he at least contributed his own embellishments.

I have never seen a satisfactory explanation of why we should find ourselves in the world that has increasing entropy — Count Timothy von Icarus

As opposed to what? A world at thermodynamic equilibrium?

And what do you mean by explanation here? We are bound to find ourselves in one world or another. How could you explain the fact that the world that we find ourselves in is this one? Explain in terms of what?

Well, the real issue here

...is just what those peace terms are. Russia simply should exit from Ukraine, including Crimea, and respect the territorial integrity of the country what it has accepted starting when the country became independent.

Having any problem with that? — ssu

Well, at least China doesn't. This is #1 in their recent position statement:

1. Respecting the sovereignty of all countries. Universally recognized international law, including the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, must be strictly observed. The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld. All countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community. All parties should jointly uphold the basic norms governing international relations and defend international fairness and justice. Equal and uniform application of international law should be promoted, while double standards must be rejected. — China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis

China never officially acknowledged Russian territorial acquisitions, including annexation of Crimea. (Of course, they weren't thinking about Ukraine when they were writing this - they were thinking about Taiwan.)

BTW Hersh too candidly admits to lie in his profession whenever he thinks he has a good reason to (https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11719/). — neomac

In most cases, Hersh attaches a caveat—such as “I’m just talking now, I’m not writing”—before unloading one of his blockbusters, which can send bloggers and reporters scurrying for confirmation. — Sy Hersh Says It’s Okay to Lie (Just Not in Print)

Sy Hersh no longer confines his lies to talks. His latest "blockbuster" has been fact-checked using OSINT and found to be lacking in some crucial details.. I won't be digging that up, but here is an example of just how brazen and stupid his lies can be:

Today, the secretary general of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, a committed anti-communist, who served as Norway’s prime minister for eight years before moving to his high NATO post, with American backing, in 2014. He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. — How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

Vietnam War: 1955 - 1975
Jens Stoltenberg: 1959 -

So what is the perfect definition of knowledge? — Cidat

How should we define knowledge? In context. — Fooloso4

The first question to ask is: what do you what from your definition? Do you want it to reflect current use in ordinary language? That is what dictionary definitions do, so the obvious thing would be to consult a good English dictionary. Or do you want a specialized definition for something specific? Then you should be asking a more specific question.

Generally, just inquiring after a definition out of context is not very productive. Words are tools, and as with all tools, we fashion them for a reason.

(This is just to expand what @Fooloso4 said.)

Russia too has means, the right amount of hawkishness and a history of false flag operations to directly or indirectly support such operation. — neomac

And Russia is the only player (that I know of) that has actually done this before. Possibly more than once. But those Georgia incidents made a lot more sense at the time. With Nord Stream it's not obvious.

Yeah, all of a sudden there's a flood of murky intelligence leaks in media. What's up with that?

New York Times: Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say
Washington Post: Intelligence officials suspect Ukraine partisans behind Nord Stream bombings, rattling Kyiv’s allies
Die Zeit: Nord-Stream-Ermittlungen: Spuren führen in die Ukraine
The Times: West kept quiet about Nord Stream attack to protect Ukraine

I'm not jumping to any conclusions. Technically, anything is possible, I suppose. The sea is very shallow there, so a diving crew operating off a boat could get to the pipes. The pipelines were not secured or actively monitored in any way. That patch of the sea was heavily trafficked, including by numerous boats that were turning off their tracking devices.

Motive remains difficult to understand though, especially given the timing.

Stupidity has always been dangerous — Wolfgang

This is the one thing that you said that even makes any sense. The rest is a confused, ungrammatical mess.

Listening to some jazz for a change: J.D. Allen

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHNJvwXuaSzTliSAmna2TA

Sonny Rollins said about him: "He’s got a nice, big, fat sound, and he’s got a lot of ideas. He doesn’t sound like he’s ever wanting to find something to play."

As you know, what morality descriptively ‘is’ and what morality normatively ‘is’ are separate questions. In traditional moral philosophy, an extreme version of this idea is that “science has nothing to offer moral philosophy”, implying that what is descriptively moral is irrelevant to what is normatively moral.

Gert contradicts this view by claiming that the "lessening of harm" component of what is descriptively moral (a subject within science's what 'is' domain) is also normatively moral by his criterion “what all rational people would put forward”. — Mark S

No, he does not. Nowhere does Gert claim that the imperative of lessening of harm is (a) descriptively moral and (b) scientifically justified.

Also, I disagree that for something to even be recognized as a moral code, it has to be acceptable by all moral agents ("rational people"). That is much too restrictive for a definition. It would mean that any rule that may not be universally endorsed is "not even wrong": it does not belong to the category of things that could be morally right or wrong, and if you use it in such a way, your interlocutors would not understand you. (Or worse yet, one would have to disqualify all dissenters as moral agents!) That is clearly not the case. Rational people can have moral (as opposed to merely definitional) disagreements.

In putting forward the normative definition of morality as "the behavioral code that... all rational persons, under certain specified conditions, would endorse," Gert identifies those who accept it with moral realists, and those who think that no code would meet this definition with moral skeptics. I don't think that is right either. A moral realist is not necessarily committed to the principle that all universal ethical truths are uncontroversial.

He does give a definition of morality (at 15:28) as "An informal public system applying to all moral agents that has the goal of lessening of harm suffered by those who are protected by this system". — Banno

Are any of you wondering how Gert’s morality can be so concrete?

He can be concrete because his subject in the video is what morality ‘is’ – the same subject as Morality As Cooperation Strategies (MACS). I don’t hear him making direct claims about what morality we somehow imperatively ought to follow (the standard focus of traditional moral philosophy). — Mark S

This formulation departs from the meta-ethical question of "what morality is". Stating that the goal of moral precepts is "lessening of harm" tells us what we imperatively ought to follow: we ought to lessen harm. It is morally good to lessen harm and morally bad to increase it.

As a nonexhaustive moral imperative, "lessen harm" is uncontroversional, but that doesn't make it any less of a moral imperative. Then making it the be-all, end-all of all morality means putting forward a moral theory (known as negative utilitarianism).

Declaring the failure of reductionism seems premature. — Fooloso4

When the OP first started posting on this forum a while ago, I was driven by curiosity to quick-read some sort of paper or book chapter that he shared. I remember being struck by the breathtaking ease with which he solved long-standing problems of philosophy. He proved the existence of God in one short paragraph, then went on as if that question was now settled once and for all. He established the truth of determinism even more simply: by quoting Laplace's famous maxim (Laplace's demon). Later he did think it necessary for some reason to revisit the question of determinism in light of the challenge supposedly posed by quantum mechanics, but dismissed it right away with a reference to Bohm's pilot wave theory - thus settling, in passing, the problem of the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

As pointed out, you probably misunderstood that passage, which comes from the very beginning of the introduction. What you quoted is not a definition as such. Gert is outlining two broad senses of morality: descriptive and normative, and the formulations are intentionally broad and vague, so as to encompass most, if not all definitions in each category. The specifics that you are asking are what an actual definition would be expected to clarify, and the article touches upon them.

To what extent can well-informed, mentally normal, religious people be rational about their religion-based moral beliefs? — Mark S

"Rational" here is intended in a very broad sense:

In the normative sense, “morality” refers to a code of conduct that would be accepted by anyone who meets certain intellectual and volitional conditions, almost always including the condition of being rational. That a person meets these conditions is typically expressed by saying that the person counts as a moral agent. — Gert

(Emphasis in the original.) So, basically, "rational" in the original formulation means anyone who "counts as a moral agent."

Seems to me, in the context of the article, that Gert is not offering a definition of morality, but giving reasons why such a thing is bothersome. — Banno

Well, that's what you generally find in overviews of philosophical topics, such as those in the SEP. You get into the weeds practically as soon as you set out (the very next subchapter in Gert's article on the definition of morality questions the very possibility of defining morality...) You leave with more questions than answers, which probably frustrates some people, but that's the way I like it.

One year mark.

Few to go? — ssu

Lots of analyses and retrospectives in the press, as one would expect.

FT published a large investigation with juicy details: How Putin blundered into Ukraine — then doubled down (open access for now, or use this link: txtify.it). Some accord with what was already known or supposed (only a very narrow circle knew anything about the invasion right up until the fateful date). Some are pretty sensational: "According to two people close to the Kremlin, Putin has already gamed out the possibility of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine and has come to the conclusion that even a limited strike would do nothing to benefit Russia."

As ever, this is all based on anonymous insider information, so use your sound judgement.

The Financial Times spoke to six longtime Putin confidants as well as people involved in Russia’s war effort, and current and former senior officials in the west and Ukraine for this account of how Putin blundered his way into the invasion — then doubled down rather than admit his mistake. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. — FT

One year into a war instigated and prolonged by the United States.

The issue is 99.9% obvious and certain for you. — Paine

That's not even 99.9%. No room for questioning of the narrative is left here.

On the other hand, this isn't much better:

Yeah, yeah - this is over simplifying and there are a thousand and one details/nuances. But as I read the back & forth conversations? Both sides make some legit points - hence my comment that both sides share blame. — EricH

I understand that not everyone is invested into this issue to the same extent. But if you are not willing to make the effort, then the honest response to a controversy should not be "I don't know enough to have an informed opinion, so I'll just split the difference."

I do think that his banning will probably be more of a loss to the site than anything. — Jack Cummins

I think it's more of a loss to him than anything - and I don't mean that in a dismissive way. TheMadFool/Agent was one of the oldest members of this forum (not sure if he was on its predecessor), and he spent most of his waking life here, as far as I could see. That's going to be a big hole to fill.

As it is, many users on the site are alone in rooms, reaching out to other people — Jack Cummins

Yes, that's what I was thinking. But the owner and administrators of the forum would like it to be more than just a social club (yet it is that, too). There are other places that are more suitable for that purpose.

Yeah, and the fact that it bullshits and occasionally goes off the rails only adds to the authenticity of the experience :)

Yeah, so I've heard. One of what must have been hundreds of publications on this topic is this Ezra Klein podcast with psychologist, neuroscientist and AI skeptic Gary Marcus, who makes the same point: A Skeptical Take on the A.I. Revolution

Gary Marcus was also on Sean Carroll's podcast last year (but that was before ChatGPT came out). He argues that the unstructured neural network learning model that is used in AIs like ChatGPT will never be adequate, and advocates the incorporation of the old-fashioned structured approach to AI.

ChatGPT is now available in Ukraine: https://t.me/stranaua/91541

The ChatGPT neural network does have some knowledge of events after 2021 (although it warns that they are limited).

When asked "What happened in Ukraine on February 24, 2022", the bot told us about "the imposition of martial law in a number of regions" (in fact, martial law was introduced throughout the country) in connection with the "Russian military offensive in the Chernihiv region", and also about some mythical decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which allegedly canceled the amendments to the Constitution of 2020, and thereby limited the powers of the president.

"This decision led to a sharp deterioration in relations between the President of Ukraine and the Constitutional Court, and also caused a wave of political protests and accusations of misconduct," ChatGPT wrote in a completely bogus story (there were no such decisions of the Constitutional Court on that day).

Do you mean to say that most of our decisions are too trivial and petty to be measured by the lofty standards of rationality?

Rather, you are under-thinking it. Saying that we ought do what is right is trivial; that's just what "ought" is.

The joke is that any choice is rational, hence any choice is right. — Banno

This trivializes rationality and equivocates about normativity.

I suppose you had in mind rationalizations of subjects' choices such as this?

My sense of fairness is worth more that $1 or even $10. If it were $10,000, that would be a different thing. On the other hand, telling someone to go fry ice when he tries to stiff me for thousands might be worth it. — T Clark

Rationality implies certain shared epistemic standards. Those standards have to be at least enduring and widespread, if not permanent and universal, or they would have no meaning. Further, they cannot be inviolate, or else they would be superfluous. It follows then that not every decision is necessarily rational.

Further, "right" is not the same as "rational." Rationality is normative, but it does not represent the full extent of normativity.

Fundamentally, humans are driven to survival, not toward selfish promotion. If it works toward our survival that we abuse one another, we will, and the same holds true for cooperation. But we don't intuit our best survival techniques a priori. We learn through trial and error (natural selection).

So, if you toss me into a dystopia where I am to decide how much to give away to avoid your spite, I'm not fully adapted to such an environment, so I may use my adaptations gained in my normal world to my disadvantage. On the planet I evolved, we have expectations that you share a certain amount with me if you expect mutual respect from me, and consequences result if you violate that norm.

This means that how your test subjects react in this generation will vary in future generations as you continue to expose people to this new adaptation. — Hanover

We find ourselves in "dystopian" situations more commonly than you think. Evolutionary and cultural adaptations serve to improve fitness on average and over long timescales. They do not fine-tune our behavior perfectly for every possible situation that we may face in this world.

This experiment tests adaptations, not inherent human nature. — Hanover

This wording is confusing, but I think you meant that this experiment tests the ability to adapt to the situation, as opposed to acting on instinct or habit. But this too is not right: there is no right or wrong way to behave in this experiment, so those acting on instinct are not failing a test. The idea is to find out whether people will act "rationally" (in the game theoretic sense). And the conclusion is that they generally don't - presumably, because the desire for and the expectation of fairness interferes with "rational" considerations. (Could be other reasons as well, such as fucking with experimenters, but I don't think that is very common.)

I'm not sure what these experiments really show other than how otherwise normal people might attempt to navigate a world where arbitrary power controls the random distribution of money. — Hanover

The experiments falsify game theory predictions. Despite all the "isn't it obvious?" sentiment going in this thread, that's not a trivial result, though not entirely unexpected. Game theory is a powerful and successful theory, whatever people say. It was never meant to represent the full extent of human relationships, but pragmatically, it works well enough in a lot of real-world situations.

Also a point about the experimental setup being artificial and unrealistic. That is common to experiments, which try to isolate certain features and exclude confounders. So that in itself is not a good criticism. In this case the idea was to draw a contrast with game theory predictions, and that means creating conditions where the kind of rational self-interest that a game theory solution would take into account would not predict the result. This is why the experiments try to rule out social factors - reputation, reciprocity and all that - which a sophisticated game-theoretical simulation could account for.

There's the joke. Ought we do what feels right and reject the unfair offer, or ought we follow the games-theoretical approach, and accept any offer? The Evolution of fairness article appears to offer a way to resolve this, if our intuition is actually the application of a stochastic strategy. But then in applying our intuition we are ipso facto applying a rule, and acting rationally.

So ought we apply the rule? — Banno

You are overthinking this. We ought to do what feels right (or what you think is right - whichever word you prefer). That's just what ought means.

So NATO is monitoring their targeting systems and won't allow them to strike the Russian interior? — frank

I doubt it. They know full well that Americans would not agree to that. And those systems don't have the range to strike deep in the interior anyway. More likely the Americans are second-guessing the Ukrainians, trying to conserve their expensive munitions.

Of course, no evidence yet doesn't mean there isn't any but I think, once again, we really don't know who's done it and we need to wait it out. — Benkei

I agree, and I never said otherwise. There are arguments in favor of the Russia-did-it theory (e.g. this), and I could buy some of them, but not with real money.

One thing though that makes it easier to buy the Russia theory is that the risk threshold is much lower for Russia than for any other plausible actor. They have little to lose, since their relationships with Europe are at their lowest point since the Bolshevik revolution. Worse comes to worst, they will just deny everything, like they always do, not caring at all whether they are believed.

Now this is interesting. WoPo article says that Ukraine’s rocket campaign reliant on U.S. precision targeting, officials say. What's more, while Ukrainians identify and select their targets for precision rocket strikes on their own, their NATO partners basically have a veto power.

I don't see why anyone in his place would take such a huge risk for a minor (proportionally) financial gain. — SophistiCat

Minor? Weaning Europe of Russian gas in favour of North American gas is not minor in my book. It's tens of billions of dollars in value per year. — Benkei

Sure, but that is a hypothetical that has little to do with reality, so I am not sure how this is an objection to what I said.

1. Europe was already on course to wean itself from Russian gas long before the explosions.
2. Most of the extra purchases necessitated by the shift were not going to the US, for obvious economic and logistical reasons.
3. As I was just saying, before the explosions, only two of the Nord Stream lines were ever in operation, and the explosions left one line intact (one of the Nord Stream 2 lines, which Russia lobbied for and US opposed). The supply was not constrained by this action, because European pipelines were already underutilized, and Nord Stream was not operating at all.

So the hypothetical motivation for the US would not be money, and such an action would not be taken just to earn a bit of extra cash, anyway. It would have to be a political decision. One possible motivation could be to burn the bridges to prevent backsliding, but the timing seems odd, seeing as Europeans were moving away from Russian gas full-steam.

The claim of Phenomenal Conservatism(PC) is: If it seems to S that P, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some justification for believing that P — aminima

While most everyone else here has been attacking this thesis, to me it seems almost - or even exactly - tautological. "Seeming" is nothing other than a judgement of prima facie plausibility. But perhaps rather than justification, which is customarily associated with epistemic standards that do not include mere seeming, you should talk of warrant - a less fraught term.

I suppose that a subjective Bayesian would connect seeming with the subjective prior probability - your starting point in evaluating a proposition, which you subsequently update by considering relevant evidence.

Hersh was once a respected journalist - Pulitzer winner and all that. But he went off the rails a while ago. His wiki page mentions some of that, and you can find more info if you look for it. This type of explosive "investigation" based on a single anonymous source (who may or may not exist, for all we know) has become his modus operandi.

Of course, none of it matters to the useful idiots who will swallow any yarn if it's too good not to be true.

Now let's hear from random conspiracy nuts!

how likely is it that it's actually true? — Benkei

Let's just say that Seymour Hersh's "investigation," based entirely on a single anonymous source, doesn't move my opinion one way or another. It might as well be some random conspiracy nut (which is what Seymour Hersh has become in his dotage). But it will be amusing to watch how all the anti-American "skeptics" will jump on this juicy piece.

What woudl be mist surprising here would be that Biden had the balls... — Banno

Yeah, basically that's why I rank the US-did-it theory low. It's not just Biden though: I don't see why anyone in his place would take such a huge risk for a minor (proportionally) financial gain. Only an actor as desperate and impoverished as North Korea might have done something like this just to earn a bit of extra cash.

Besides, it doesn't even make sense from the money angle. Russia had several pipelines to Europe, which were operating well below capacity. The pipeline through Belarus had been shut down earlier that year. Nord Stream 2 was never operated. Nord Stream 1 was being shut down intermittently throughout the year, and then Russia closed it off indefinitely, not long before the explosions. The explosions took out three out of four Nord Stream lines, leaving one intact (notably, it was one of the Nord Stream 2 lines). If both Russia and Europe were willing, gas could have been flowing at the same rate or higher. The explosions as such didn't change the calculus in US's favor.

And a question for everyone.

Have I just become old and cranky, but are especially Hollywood films become worse? What do you think about current films compared to 20th Century films? Especially the last few years have seem to me as a quite downer when it comes to great films. — ssu

I don't know. At its best, Hollywood has produced quality entertainment, as well as some solid, earnest but accessible works, the kind that contend for Oscars and Golden Globes. And I don't see this trend changing in recent times. Sure, style and tone has changed somewhat, but don't they always?

Here are some recent films that are quite good, in my opinion (though I am not sure that all of them are, technically, Hollywood productions):

Anomalisa (2015)
Dunkirk (2017)
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)
Hell or High Water (2016)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Leave No Trace (2018)
Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Paterson (2016)
The Green Knight (2021)
The Shape of Water (2017)
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Seymour Hersh just posted a blow-by-blow account of How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline, going into details of secret meetings and CIA reports, communications between governments, and precise descriptions of military operations.

All of it "according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning."

(Sorry for posting on topic!)

Woke up with this playing in my head :death:

Page 3:

Pulp Fiction
Goodfellas
Dr. Strangelove
Lost in Translation
The Departed
Monty Python and the Holy Grail — Manuel

All About Eve
Blow-Up — Joshs

The Magnificent Seven
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - I'm surprised no one has mentioned this. Also:
A Fist Full of Dollars
For a Few Dollars More
Once Upon a Time in the West — T Clark

That’s why I’m a big fan of the anti-Western, and Sergio Leone’s films with Clint Eastwood were among the first of these. Anti-Westerns turn the tables on the standard view of the hero as establishment figure. The rebellious anti-establishment outlaw becomes the new hero. — Joshs

I kind of skipped classic Hollywood westerns (there are two or three that I like) and went straight for Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. So for me these are the classic westerns. In any case, though there is a great distance between Ford and Leone, I wouldn't call the latter anti-western: there is a clear line of continuity between them.

Favorite anti-western: Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Das Boot (1981): submarine films don't get better as this and perhaps the best naval warfilm. Puts the sound of sonar in a totally different perspective. — ssu

:up:

Although I think the most grim warfilm, a film that really makes war as awful as it can be is Elem Klimov's Come and See from 1985, a quite rare film from the Soviet Union. — ssu

:up:

Being John Malkovich
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon — Andrew4Handel