Links 40: European defence, and Trump tariffs
things I found interesting
Europeans want common defence
French MEP Nathalie Loiseau writes:
I am mobilized to build the Europe of Defense. Like 79% of Europeans. The ball is in the court of the heads of state and government. Let us tell them clearly: no more fine words. They must take action.
Europe's Last Chance
Fabian Hoffmann says it's Europe's last chance:
Europe stands at a point of no return. A war rages in the East, and a potentially hostile America rises in the West. Whatever slumber Europe indulged in over the past 35 years, it must now wake up—or perish. This is no exaggeration. In my view, Europe faces two possible futures: one where it regains its strength and asserts itself, or one where it capitulates and fades into irrelevance—or, worse, ceases to exist as we know it.
I agree. I also think Europe needs more cohesiveness, with a common foreign policy, one decided by something more than a simple majority but something far less than unanimity.
Europe has not been spending enough on defense.
I agree. Having said that, it must be spent efficiently and not wasted. E.g. UK spends a good deal more on defence than South Korea, and has every year this millenium, but the South Korean army is 1-20 times bigger and better equipped than the British one, with world beating equipment such as the K2 tank and K9 self propelled howitzer that they have sold to many countries. Britain on the other hand last manufactured a tank in 2001 (24 years ago!), and is buying its artillery from Sweden.
A major issue holding many European nations back (excluding those in the East and Northeast) is the failure to view military spending as a core function of statecraft. Instead, investing in defense is still perceived by too many governments and societies as a temporary nuisance—something to tolerate for now but abandon as soon as possible.
The way to fix this is for the EU (or its successor organisation) to mandate a certain level of defence spending (e.g. 2% of GDP) and capability. Countries not complying would not be able to vote on any EU decisions (but would still be bound by those decisions) until they do comply.
While politicians and governments in several countries have voiced support for higher spending, the primary goal seems to be satisfying Trump’s demands rather than recognizing defense as a fundamental, long-term priority.
It may be that countries can use Trump as an argument in order to sell it to their people. If so, I'm in favour of anything that works.
Trump to impose tariffs on Taiwan
@FinanceLancelot writes:
President Trump announces the U.S. will be placing tariffs on all semi-conductors and pharmaceuticals imported from Taiwan in the very near future
If the EU had sense (and cohesion) it would offer Taiwan membership, and also a military alliance with European troops stationed on Taiwan in peacetime (to act as a tripwire so if China invades, they're automatically at war with Europe), and similarly have Taiwanese troops stationed in Europe during peacetime (in case Russia tried anything).
Pro-growth policies
Sam Bowman and Sam Dumitriu list pro-growth policies the UK could implement:
One of the big problems with many ‘wishlists for growth’ is that they either (a) assume away political constraints, and propose ideas that would be politically very costly, without really explaining how a government is meant to be able to do them – or (b) they take political constraints as being so overwhelming that they rule out anything that is remotely controversial, dismissing moves that involve political battles that are winnable, with acceptable costs for their substantial benefits.
Labour is in an interesting position politically: its massive majority means it can probably pass any legislation it wants, but its position in the polls means that it has to be very careful about how voters view what it is doing.
I think it's the opposite is true. Labour are doing badly in the polls because people don't think they are effectively tackling Britain's problems, the main one of which is the economy and particularly the too-high cost of housing.
Labour need to throw caution to the winds and enact as many pro-growth policies as they can -- particularly ones that require none or little public funding. From Labour's position in the polls right now, they could easily lose the next election by a landslide. But if they succeed in making Britain a high-growth economy, it could undo the national feeling that Britain is a failing country, and make voters optimistic instead. And if voters are optimistic, they might re-elect the government.
Starmer contra nimbyism
The BBC reports that Starmer vows to curb nimbyism:
Major infrastructure projects like nuclear power stations, railway lines and wind farms will be built faster under new planning rules, the government has pledged.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Nimby (Not in My Back Yard) "blockers" of major infrastructure projects will have fewer chances "to frustrate growth" through repeated legal challenges.
Currently, infrastructure schemes can be challenged in the courts up to three times - ministers intend to reduce that to once in most cases.
If Starmer wants to fight nimbyism, I very much hope he succeeds. Though instead of development being able to be challenged in court once, it should be zero times.
Trump puts all DEI staff on paid leave
The BBC reports:
President Donald Trump has ordered that all US government staff working on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) schemes be put on immediate paid administrative leave. The White House confirmed that all federal DEI workers had to be put on leave by 17:00 EST (22:00 GMT) on Wednesday, before the offices and programmes in question were shut down.
[Trump] repeatedly attacked DEI practices on the campaign trail, arguing that they were discriminatory. In his inaugural address, Trump pledged to "forge a society that is colour-blind and merit-based".
Back to sanity, ending the woke nonsense.
DEI programmes aim to promote participation in workplaces by people from a range of backgrounds. Their backers say they address historical underrepresentation and discrimination against certain groups including racial minorities, but critics say such programmes can themselves be discriminatory.
The whole point of DEI is to discriminate against groups the woke dislike, such as men and white people. Thus, all DEI policies are evil and bigotted, and everyone who supports such policies is an evil racist bigot.
Readers of this blog will know I don't like Trump, but he is clearly doing the right thing here.
Obviously the Starmer government isn't going to follow the American lead in this, but the next UK government probably will, particularly if it is lead by Farage or Badenoch, both of whom are against wokism.
Aella on Onlyfans
I once said of OnlyFans that it:
promises people intimacy, and then doesn't give it to them. ([by] "promises people intimacy" I mean it creates a parasocial relationship between creators and fans).
A recent post by Aella seems to confim this:
I ended up talking to a man who claimed to run the largest OF agency at the time, and I asked him a thousand questions about how it worked.
He said he had rented out a cheap warehouse somewhere outside of new york and staffed it with a bunch of minimum wage workers. These workers would log onto their clients’ accounts and chat as them. The chatters got a quick sheet with a bunch of facts about the girls they were impersonating to make sure they were being consistent about basic life things (like general personality/tone, where the girl lived, etc). Their primary goal was to sell content directly to the men through DMs.
“You have to set your monthly subscription price to $5”, he said. I didn’t like this idea, I was at $19 and didn’t want to seem like I was devaluing myself. “No, we have the data. Girls’ incomes steadily increase as you drop the subscription price, up to about $5, but below that they decrease again.”
He was running a very different business model than me. I saw a monthly subscription price as an important part of my income, but he viewed it as trivial. The real money was in the DMs, upselling was the goal. The purpose of a $5 monthly sub price was to be low enough to get as many men as possible, but high enough to filter out the men who were too stingy to spend anything in DMs. You didn’t want your minimum wage warehouse workers wasting valuable time by trying to sell to a guy who wasn’t going to put out, after all.
Since then, agencies have only grown. Probably the vast majority of high-earning OF accounts are being run by agencies, which take a substantial fraction of the money (the amount varies widely, but often a minimum of 50%, on top of the 20% OF already takes). Agencies are more customizable, more sophisticated. One of the more full-service agencies I talked to would do everything; they’d fly a girl out to a fancy airBnB for a few days, shoot a huge amount of content, and send her back. They’d do all the chatting, splice up and organize all her content, build her payment structure, funnel in new subscribers. She’d take 10-20% of the proceeds and never log into her Onlyfans once.
Radiation-eating fungus at Chornobyl
Ukrainian scientists have discovered radiation-eating fungus at the Chornobyl site:
Ukrainian scientists have regularly visited the plant to study these organisms' ability to thrive under extreme radiation. Eventually, a team led by Ukrainian scientist Nelli Zhdanova identified more than 200 species of fungi at the site. Many of them were rich in melanin—a pigment also found in humans that gives color to skin, eyes, and hair, while also protecting the body from ultraviolet radiation.
Three species of fungi with the pigment melanin — Cladosporium sphaerospermum, Wangiella dermatitidis and Cryptococcus neoformans — grew faster and accumulated nutrients (acetate) in an environment with extremely high radiation levels. In this case, they were growing in locations where the radiation was 500 times higher than normal.
This process was similar to photosynthesis in plants. Only this was radiosynthesis, in which the fungi converted dangerous radiation into chemical energy to help them grow.
Starmer contra knives
Starmer wants a crackdown on knives:
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Jan 22 pledged tougher measures to stop under-18s buying knives online.
Mr Starmer described the process as “shockingly easy” after it was revealed that the teenager who murdered three young girls in a stabbing spree in July 2024 purchased the knife he used from Amazon online.
Axel Rudakubana was 17 at the time of the attack. He has pleaded guilty and is due to be sentenced on Jan 23 at Liverpool Crown Court.
“Tragically, he was still able to order the murder weapon off of the internet without any checks or barriers. A two-click killer. This cannot continue,” Mr Starmer said, writing in The Sun daily on Jan 22.
It's as if the ruling class are deliberately wilfully missing the point. Knives are not the problem. Bad people who use a knife to stab or kill are the problem. And it would be very hard to prevent knives from being available to would-be murderers, since every kitchen in the country has them.
Springtime for Elon
Springtime for Elon and the GOP:
(Although note Americans that it's correctly pronounced gop not jee-oh-pee)
AGI is coming
Tomas Pueyo says The Most Important Time in History Is Now:
AI is progressing so fast that its researchers are freaking out. It is now routinely more intelligent than humans, and its speed of development is accelerating. New developments from the last few weeks have accelerated it even more. Now, it looks like AIs can be more intelligent than humans in 1-5 years, and intelligent like gods soon after. We’re at the precipice, and we’re about to jump off the cliff of AI superintelligence, whether we want to or not.
Six months ago, I wrote What Would You Do If You Had 8 Years Left to Live?, where I explained that the market predicted Artificial General Intelligence (AGI, an AI capable of doing what most humans can do) eight years later, by 2032. Since then, that date has been pulled forward. It’s now predicted to arrive in just six years, so six months were enough to pull the date forward by one year.
Modi supports Bose
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted this tweet:
Today, on Parakram Diwas, I pay homage to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. His contribution to India’s freedom movement is unparalleled. He epitomised courage and grit. His vision continues to motivate us as we work towards building the India he envisioned.
