Even if US seems like it's acting in bad faith here, I rather the Pope not step into politics of this sort and concentrate more on the religious realm. It seems like the papacy would be stepping backwards if it got more involved in politics/geopolitics again, and not simply looking for peace.
Politics and religion are inextricably linked in the West, and as much as I wish it were otherwise Evangelical Christianity is the engine that drives American conservatism and foreign policy and the opinions of religious leaders like the Pope matter to millions of people.
If the Republicans get to claim to be the party of Christian virtue and anointed by God then the Pope weighing in on American policy seems like fair game, even if the US is far more Protestant than Catholic.
And "looking for peace" is no less a political stance than "crusade against the infidels."
You're basically right. But here's an argument to get to a renewed commitment to the good stuff in religion: the catholic church needs accountability if it gets into politics. When things move from blabbing talking points and mere POV from Rome to make it work ... I think things would change. Either they'd retreat and focus on religion or move far more strongly to avoid wars in the first place through religious instruction.
Without accountability blurbs here and there from politicians, pope's, clerics are like what a recent HN article calls being lost in the world of symbols and symbol references i.e. practical nonsense.
You can't really get to know a player unless they've got skin in the game. Short of that it's shadow boxing.
The vatican got some grief for not criticising Hitler and hence making it easier to do holocausts and the like. Maybe they feel they should avoid that sort of thing?
Pope did some little Hitler criticising, just not enough and Vatican kept neutrality. Meanwhile catholic priest Tiso became a president and literally presided over killing of Slovak Jews and their persecution.
Today you have catholic priests openly promoting semi fascist politicians and parties. Pope is taking side in that too.
You dont see people who want pope to be super neutral take issue with these. You dont see them take issue with Vance using his catholicism to tie his policies to catholicism.
What US is doing now is not an abtract politics eith no tie to religion - they claim to speak for European christianity. If pope stay silent, it will ve taken as confirmation.
If Pope steered clear of politics, he would be just leaving a space for J.D. Vance who is literally trying to use religion to promote fascism. It is ok for pope to act as counterweight against cristo-fascism.
Klerofascism is a thing and if pope does not want the catholic church going that way, he has to. Trump, J.D.Vance and Steven Miller dont get to pretend they speak for religion.
Yes, this is a simple point that possibly warrants exception to the rule that many people seem to dismiss too easily. Whether you agree with it or not, Trump is taking Europe to task for not standing strongly enough for Judeo-Christian values. When he says Europe is facing "civilization erasure", it's not like he is worried about the erasure of Islamic civilization. If you're weaponizing religion for your politics you shouldn't be surprised if the shepherd gets annoyed. It is a delicate dance regardless though.
Except for a very important one. Taiwan is not internationally recognized as an independent country by almost all nation-states. And those few that recognize Taiwan (or rather ROC) as a country do not recognize PRC as a country.
You may say that ROC is a de facto separate country, although the constitution doesn't imply necessarily so, but simply that there's a different government.
The fact that the international community and even it's own constitution doesn't recognize it as an independent country shows that it's more than legal fiction and simply that de facto China is still under civil war.
- the US doesn't have to sit IN the Malacca Straits, but oil traffic does HAVE to go that way. The US can park naval assets in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and intercept traffic coming out of the Middle East from the Arabian Sea. They have satellites and tracking to enforce a wide area of denial, far from missile intercept.
- oil pipelines, railroads, and other continental transport modes, in addition to being more expensive, slower, and limited in bandwidth, and extremely vulnerable to sabotage, political interference from countries they have to go through, etc.
Much as I wish to be optimistic, one year does not a trend make. As per the link:
The shallow decline in 2015 and 2016 was due to a slump that followed a round of stimulus measures, while zero-Covid controls caused a sharper fall in 2022.
We might be on the right path, but also the very rapid decarbonisation of primary energy and transport may be overwhelmed by growth in other sectors like cement, metal oxide reduction, or beef.
(Or not, there's at least theoretical paths to make those examples better, this is just meant to moderate hope rather than to deny it entirely).
I'm pretty sure there were children where the parents basically locked them in cages or chained them to a post in the basement, where they had almost no social contact, etc. And in these cases they were considered effectively mentally disabled by the time they were rescued.
That’s different. He’s not saying to totally isolate the child, but that the child is born to modern humans without any language or culture or knowledge but who live in a wilderness. So not a place of deprivation but a place of danger and exploration. I would argue that kids are wired to explore, and that the parents would do their best to protect the child. It’s kind of a useless thought experiment because our lineages stretch back unbroken to the beginning of life, and that includes culture and transmitted knowledge.
Not really. This is AMD investing in OpenAI (albeit in an unusual way, with stock options) not the reverse. Same as the Nvidia deal. Same as hyperscaler investment in OpenAI and Anthropic. The people selling stuff to the AI Labs are the same ones funding them.
I understood it as, OpenAI is giving AMD money, by buying 6GW of GPUs from them.
But if it results in their stock reaching 600$, then AMD will give back the money that OpenAI spent on GPUs as 10% stock options into AMD.
Which sounds like, no one is really investing in each other, they're both like exchanging money back and forth, where both hope to gain some extra money by propping up the AMD stock with the announcement, hoping it helps make AMD more competitive on the GPU landscape.
No... because the warrants can only be exercised if the share price is at certain points. If AMD goes down, the warrants can't be exercised at all. E.g. we know at least one share price points is when AMD shares are worth $600/share.
They were building new coal plants that were far more efficient, while also closing down extremely old inefficient and dirty coal plants. So overall it was a net gain.
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