• Re: US Decline, was "hobbyist" mine skip load

    From Richard Smith@21:1/5 to Jim Wilkins on Tue Dec 5 08:29:57 2023
    "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> writes:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/30/americas-undying-empire-why-the-decline-of-us-power-has-been-greatly-exaggerated

    It starts off well, discussing the big picture, and that is fine - at
    least the "landscape" being considered is recognisable.
    Then with more recent events things start to wobble. The arguments
    are propped-up with untruths, half-truths and fantasies - we suspect.
    It is easier to comment on things further back where there is the
    benefit of hindsight.
    "The Guardian" has "fallen by the wayside" along with all other formal
    media outlets. Jarring retransmissions of narrow "monomessage"
    propaganda around truths so certain that that explains the absence of
    nuance - noticeably irreconcilable with what we can see and sense of
    events unfolding.

    Geez I am feeling I am walking on unstable ground and quicksands
    trying to go this far.

    Time to go make another tea. Best wishes

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Richard Smith@21:1/5 to Jim Wilkins on Wed Dec 6 09:41:10 2023
    "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> writes:

    "Richard Smith" wrote in message news:lymsup8322.fsf@void.com...

    "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> writes:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/30/americas-undying-empire-why-the-decline-of-us-power-has-been-greatly-exaggerated


    I picked the article for its British viewpoint. ...
    ...

    My impression is:
    you will not find any "British opinion" in any "mainstream media".

    How you would find out our opinion - not going to be easy...

    We have to get on day-by-day with a complex impression guiding our
    trajectory, without time and energy to as much as start to describe
    what it is we see.

    Yet there is to a significant extent shared impressions it seems.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Richard Smith@21:1/5 to All on Wed Dec 6 21:43:05 2023
    The perils of mistranslation - you benefit from experience and travel...

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Richard Smith@21:1/5 to Jim Wilkins on Sun Dec 10 06:37:26 2023
    "Jim Wilkins" <muratlanne@gmail.com> writes:

    "Richard Smith" wrote in message news:lyy1e780t2.fsf@void.com...

    The perils of mistranslation - you benefit from experience and travel...

    ----------------------

    The applicable phrase is good judgment comes from experience, and
    experience comes from bad judgment. I hope I didn't accidentally
    insult anyone too badly. A few German beers increased the quantity of
    my foreign speech but did nothing for its quality. That applies in
    English too.

    :-)

    The good stuff. When you sign-out of the day and go to a parallel
    universe.

    I have also lived in "ciderland" - places where they make cider
    (in Britain "cider" is fermented juice of cider apples).
    That is very "parallel reality". As I explained to a local who is/was
    a prodigeous cider-drinker, it's like a train ticket. You buy a train
    ticket in Crewkerne to go to Axminster, get on the train and next time
    the doors open you are in Axminster. Likewise "loopy-juice" - you
    arrive in ciderland - good place to be back to.
    I worked in a foundry, and within minutes of leaving work you were
    mixing with holidaymakers who had come from all over Europe to be
    there. Calling in at the pub (public house) and drinking "Thatcher's
    Dry" - a "real" natural cider - after a day in the foundry.

    By the way - 80% of the burners in all the world for powerstations
    running on residual oil (it's got all the impurities concentrated in
    it) came from that foundry. I speculated that if the apple harvest
    failed the world's oil-fired powerstations would come to a stop.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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