Knowing psychology, almost any PR advisor will advise to temporarily cease media attacks against a person who's been shot.
As a minimum, messages may need to be reworded, because Trump is likely to change his messaging after his narrow escape.
Some notes:
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almost no doubt: this will have a mobilizing effect for Trump supporters ("our great leader is being attacked", etc)
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possibly: this will improve Trump's ratings among voters with no clear political preference (a big story where he's not the villain is what he needs)
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pattern: historically, surviving an assassination attempt has improved a candidate's chances of getting elected; in the most recent example, Slovakia's prime minister Fico enjoyed a boost in ratings while in hospital after being seriously wounded
I don't blame Democrats for temporarily ceasing campaign advertisement. Two principles dictate this: "you don't kick a person who is already down" (Trump was incredibly lucky and isn't) and "you don't attack someone who has martyrdom effect". Generally, you wait until the dust settles. Democrats too will wait until the dust settles. They will also check the popularity ratings and decide how to proceed.
In my opinion, Democrats would strongly benefit from a younger candidate. I would advise getting someone under 55 to run. Among the wider population, not enough people understand that, as things are, the Democratic candidate is Kamala Harris, her name is just currently Joe Biden. :o
Overall, it seems that Trump has considerable chances of getting elected president. Preventing that will require exceptional effort and considerable luck. Only if the Democrats manage to paint a clear picture of what a Trump presidential term would bring about, and only if that picture causes their voters to show up and vote nearly without exception - only then will things turn out differently.
My personal view from Eastern Europe - contingency plans for a Trump presidency ceasing aid to Ukraine have a very high probability of occurrence now (estimated time: early 2025). Over here, everyone and their cat will researching cheap weapons systems to replace things that only the US can provide. I think that group will now include myself.
Nice to have it here, but due to the practical nature of the demonstration, I think this video could have flown better on c/technology or c/diy - or something of that sort. :)
But yep, moving heat is a lot smarter than creating it. :)
Nice and thorough overview. :)
The article is mostly correct. :)
Notes: out of the three, Latvia has serious energy storage - a 4 billion cubic meter (at normal pressure) underground gas store, sufficient to carry all three countries over the winter. So far, it's filled with fossil natural gas - but some day it could be filled with synthesized methane.
As a backup option, Estonia has oil shale - probably the worst fuel on Earth, so the price of emitting CO2 keeps those plants out of the energy market during summer. During winter, they come online though.
As for solar, we aren't planning to rely much on that. Solar capacity has of course skyrocketed, but only because it's very easy to install. For me, it provices a nice way to charge my car from April to October. But at latitudes 55 to 60, days are really very short in midwinter, so wind and waste wood are the likely candidates in future - after oil shale leaves the scene, but before synthetic gas becomes feasible.
Regarding pumped hydro - it can stabilize a day, but can't stabilize a week or month. Lithuania has a biggish (~10 GWh) pumped storage facility. The rest of Baltics don't have suitable terrain. Estonia has limestone banks, but they're under various forms of protection and even if one built a lot of pumped hydro, the low elevation difference (up to 50 meters) means one couldn't support the electric grid through more than a few days.
Regarding hydrogen - maybe. But hydrogen is difficult to store, so I'm betting on wind, and on sourcing technology from Germany to produce synthetic methane from excess power during summer, and pumping it to Latvia for storage.
Finally - connecting to the continental EU power grid allows importing energy when local wind isn't strong enough, and exporting any surplus. So far, all three countries are still in the ex-Soviet synchronization area (common with Russia and Belarus, but with no trade, just synchronization), and thus unable to connect with the EU synchronization area. Local power companies have been building synchronous compensators (devices that steer grid frequency) for the past 2 years to drop this dependency.
If things go as planned, Baltic countries will sever those connections and join the EU grid via Poland in winter 2025. Undersea cables already go from Estonia to Finland and Lithuania to Sweden, but in the current political conditions, I don't think anyone counts of them for sure (a Chinese-owned but Russian-crewed ship broke the Estonia-Finland gas pipeline last autumn when dragging its anchor during a storm - it's still unsure if the damage was accidental or not).
But that’s not what we found. In fact, experimental manipulations that reduced support for the protesters had no impact on support for the demands of those protesters.
We’ve replicated this finding across a range of different types of nonviolent protest, including protests about racial justice, abortion rights and climate change, and across British, American and Polish participants (this work is being prepared for publication). When members of the public say, “I agree with your cause, I just don’t like your methods,” we should take them at their word.
Wow, that is both new (at least for me) and interesting - thanks for sharing this article. :)
I note a potential weakness in the method of analysis: if negative framing (e.g. by the media) reduces support for the protesters as persons (but not their cause), it may still somewhat harm their ability to bring about change, since it probably reduces people's willingness to team up with them - but not another group which has the same cause but different methods.
So, if the goal is mass action (which has a component of mobilizing like-minded people to join) I would strongly recommend a protester to choose non-controversial methods (so that even grannies can join). :)
The Ugandan military playing security guards for a China-controlled oil project... I think explaining human rights over there will have to start from zero - and may have to be backed with "or else" statements - if there exists an institution in a suitable position to issue them. :o
“It’s what we call ‘strategic incapacitation’ of groups that threaten the political order,” Walby said. “The tactics also include bogus or trumped up charges, early morning raids, and surveillance and strategic intelligence to know as much as possible about activist communications.
This wouldn't be the first time of a police force using the legal process (which is heavily tilted towards their convenience and the inconvenience of anyone suspected or accused) as a punishment. Needless to say, the process should not be tilted or burdensome, but in reality - it is.
I hope the Canadian legal system at least ensures compensation for false imprisonment and such things.
Activists would meanwhile benefit from adopting safeguards characteristic of partisans operating against a hostile government, even if their actions are peaceful and seek to inform the public. It's a shame that one has to view cops as an enemy force, but that's reality - they aren't friends of activism anywhere. In some places they just have unchecked power, while in other places their power is limited.
I would add:
- if you wanted direct and low-latency access to cameras (for machine vision)
1 C more temperature -> air can hold 7% more water vapour
...but the peaks of fringe events are quite a bit taller than +1 C. Raising the average by 1 C raises the peaks considerably more.
Summary:
But then, in the geologically abrupt space of only a few decades, this great river of ice all but halted. In the two centuries since, it has moved less than 35 feet a year. According to the leading theory, the layer of water underneath it thinned, perhaps by draining into the underside of another glacier. Having lost its lubrication, the glacier slowed down and sank toward the bedrock below.
/.../
“The beauty of this idea is that you can start small,” Tulaczyk told me. “You can pick a puny glacier somewhere that doesn’t matter to global sea level.” This summer, Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, will travel to the Juneau Icefield in Alaska to look for a small slab of ice that could be used in a pilot test. If it stops moving, Tulaczyk told me he wants to try to secure permission from Greenland’s Inuit political leaders to drain a larger glacier; he has his eye on one at the country’s northeastern edge, which discharges five gigatons of ice into the Arctic Ocean every year. Only if that worked would he move on to pilots in Antarctica.
It's not wild at all. :) The plan makes sense from a physical perspective, but should not be implemented lightly because:
- it's extremely hard work and extremely expensive to drain water from beneath an extremely large glacier
- it doesn't stop warming, it just puts a brake on ice loss / sea level rise
The interesting part: Democrat officials made public statements about going silent for a while, and those statements reached headlines even in Europe. You can go silent and still have your statements in headlines.
Also, as far as money and efficiency are involved - if they save money now, they can advertise more later. Currently, advertising against Trump would have a low efficiency, since he currently receives positive attention. I think their current action plan is "let's wait for Trump to open his mouth".