General CE Chat

Okay, my turn now with a late reply.
africanspur said:
I appreciate it was a compromise. And I will bring the last bit of your post here and say that I am also 100% sure that the numbers/ percentages don't exist. You would be hard pressed to get such data on such things from these countries now, let alone back then.So that initiated my post really. How can you say there was significant or popular support?
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As I said before, the only way I see is trying to create a plausible picture from existing accounts and historiography.

What's of course important about all this is that there's no uniform "Arab World", but a number of societies, which are again heterogenous in themselves. Especially the elites/general population and urban/rural divides seem quite relevant to me when it comes to the developments of that time. What can be generally said imo, is that among intellectuals and elites pro-axis sympathies, influence of fascist ideology and European-style antisemitism were relevant (not necessarily all at once in every case). Although - as I said - the extent and impact is often disputed among academics when it comes to a specific case. Popularity among the wider population is indeed much harder to determine, and there are indications that such sentiments might have mostly gained in mass appeal post-WW II, rather than during the war itself.

From this perspective, "relevant" or "significant" aren't all-encompassing notions regarding societies, because they are not measured on population percentages, but political agency (which was vastly different for different people). "Popular" is quite definite though, and the concession of my last post applies here, of course.
africanspur said:
Those terms to me indicate a large number of people in those areas support those ideas and considering the confidence with which you wrote the message, I imagine people who may not have much knowledge of the are would come away from that conversation thinking Arabs at the time were a bunch of intrinsically jew hating Nazis
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I don't think that last bit is a fair representation of what I've written.

For me, neither of the terms "significant" and "popular" implicates such a gross generalisation. I've also explicitly said I don't want to make one, have referenced to the dividedness in scholarly opinion right away and then once again, and suggested to ask someone with much more expansive knowledge, all over the course of three short posts. That should be enough for a reader not to come to that conclusion, imo.

So while I can agree with some parts of the objection, with this is one I can't.
africanspur said:
There was of course support for the Nazis in the Arab world, just as there was in France, the UK etc. (...) And I think you're right to be honest, noting the existence of the sentiment would have been both fair and accurate, without more descriptive terms we could not really quantify.
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In the end that formula is a compromise as well imo, decidedly neutral, but even more unspecific as a consequence. But I think it's both possible and desirable to be more specific.
 
I cannot explain how revolutionary this is.
Google's DeepMind predicts 3D shapes of proteins
AI program’s understanding of proteins could usher in new era of medical progress
DeepMind entered AlphaFold into the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) competition, a biannual protein-folding olympics that attracts research groups from around the world. The aim of the competition is to predict the structures of proteins from lists of their amino acids which are sent to teams every few days over several months. The structures of these proteins have recently been cracked by laborious and costly traditional methods, but not made public. The team that submits the most accurate predictions wins.

On its first foray into the competition, AlphaFold topped a table of 98 entrants, predicting the most accurate structure for 25 out of 43 proteins, compared with three out of 43 for the second placed team in the same category.
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https://www.theguardian.com/science...gram-alphafold-predicts-3d-shapes-of-proteins

I was introduced to the scope of protein folding problems in 2014, when I was taught that it was a tough field with many new experimental and computational methods, probably one of the toughest problems in chemistry and biology.
And now the AI can crack it, entire biochemistry departments are going to have little to do. It is scary what this means for job automation - people working on protein folding would have been among the most highly trained, with very up-to-date skills, and many will soon have to re-train on something else.
 


I don't know if it is worth pointing out that the UK Defence Budget is currently around £36bn. I suppose it is all about priorities.
 
oates said:


I don't know if it is worth pointing out that the UK Defence Budget is currently around £36bn. I suppose it is all about priorities.
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I don't know why people immediately go for the defence budget when talking about money not being spent elsewhere. We spend what we're required to by NATO on defence (2%) and even then parts of our military are underfunded and we would struggle to respond to a genuine threat.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
I don't know why people immediately go for the defence budget when talking about money not being spent elsewhere. We spend what we're required to by NATO on defence (2%) and even then parts of our military are underfunded and we would struggle to respond to a genuine threat.
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I just happened to, who cares? Maybe it could have been the UK Contributions to the EU, some would prefer that. I mentioned priorities hoping to satisfy the picky.
 
oates said:
I just happened to, who cares? Maybe it could have been the UK Contributions to the EU, some would prefer that. I mentioned priorities hoping to satisfy the picky.
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It's just that the military always seems an easy part of the budget to target, when the reality is we do need a defence budget and what we spend is pretty much the minimum we need to. It's a pretty sensible amount, I'd say there's more arguments to increase it than to decrease. It should be one of our priorities to maintain a capable military.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
It's just that the military always seems an easy part of the budget to target, when the reality is we do need a defence budget and what we spend is pretty much the minimum we need to. It's a pretty sensible amount, I'd say there's more arguments to increase it than to decrease. It should be one of our priorities to maintain a capable military.
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It is an easy one to demonstrate that as you say our Nato budget is 2% and therefore that one tenth of 2% is an extraordinarily small and good value for money sum. And that contrasting £36Bn spent on killing people versus compassion for older dying people is also effective.

It is just one example, I get that you have to have an argument about it. It is so rewarding.
 
oates said:
It is an easy one to demonstrate that as you say our Nato budget is 2% and therefore that one tenth of 2% is an extraordinarily small and good value for money sum. And that contrasting £36Bn spent on killing people versus compassion for older dying people is also effective.

It is just one example, I get that you have to have an argument about it. It is so rewarding.
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Our budget for defence has nothing to do with our budget for care. We can afford both without taking digs at another priority which is actually important.

The military is just a very easy target when people talk about spending, because people like to pretend having a defence isn't important, until it actually is because you can't predict what threats the future could hold.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
Our budget for defence has nothing to do with our budget for care. We can afford both without taking digs at another priority which is actually important.

The military is just a very easy target when people talk about spending, because people like to pretend having a defence isn't important, until it actually is because you can't predict what threats the future could hold.
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I never said it did but you are attempting to make it an argument about the Defence Budget.

Just show me where in any of my posts here that I have suggested taking any of it in favour of Care and we can continue to show you up as an argumentative poster because you would be completely wrong in this case, wouldn't you?
 
oates said:
I never said it did but you are attempting to make it an argument about the Defence Budget.

Just show me where in any of my posts here that I have suggested taking any of it in favour of Care and we can continue to show you up as an argumentative poster because you would be completely wrong in this case, wouldn't you?
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You used a lazy example which was dismissive of how important our armed forces are, and I called you out on that. You deliberately chose to point out what our defence budget is.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
You used a lazy example which was dismissive of how important our armed forces are, and I called you out on that. You deliberately chose to point out what our defence budget is.
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As I said then, nothing to back up your argument and I'd now have to add trolling.
 
RedTiger said:
Hes talking about the Spanish me thinks
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Nah, he's referencing a discussion in the Brexit thread in which I said that we should be prepared to defend Gibraltar if necessary/if Spain were to attempt to starve the people of Gibraltar that would be tantamount to declaring war.
 
oates said:
As I said then, nothing to back up your argument and I'd now have to add trolling.
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:lol:

What? You're stretching a bit here.

Again, all I did was point out that our military spending is sensible and not some waste, which you talking about 'priorities' clearly implies. I don't know why you're now trying to act any differently when it's pretty clear (from your weird comment about spending it on killing, which isn't the point of a defence budget) that you have an agenda against the military.

If the spending was on house parties, you'd have a point about misplaced priorities. You didn't, so I called you out on that .. and somehow you're now calling that trolling.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
:lol:

What? You're stretching a bit here.

Again, all I did was point out that our military spending is sensible and not some waste, which you talking about 'priorities' clearly implies. I don't know why you're now trying to act any differently when it's pretty clear (from your weird comment about spending it on killing, which isn't the point of a defence budget) that you have an agenda against the military.

If the spending was on house parties, you'd have a point about misplaced priorities. You didn't, so I called you out on that .. and somehow you're now calling that trolling.
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I'm quite rightly calling it trolling because you are continually attempting to to force an argument where one which wasn't made.
 
oates said:
I'm quite rightly calling it trolling because you are continually attempting to to force an argument where one which wasn't made.
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You made what I considered to be a lazy comment and I simply made a general point that people often treat military spending as a waste, when it is not. You then reacted sensitively to that comment and turned it in to something which it didn't need to be.

If you view that as trolling, then be my guest.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
You made what I considered to be a lazy comment and I simply made a general point that people often treat military spending as a waste, when it is not. You then reacted sensitively to that comment and turned it in to something which it didn't need to be.

If you view that as trolling, then be my guest.
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Thank you however I do not need permission since I am not your guest. Obviously you are very poor at admitting when you are wrong too.
 
oates said:
More trolling. You don't seem to be much at learning either. Dear oh dear, you are having a mare aren't you this evening?
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This is very boring, if you have an issue with me take it to pm. You appear to have thrown your toys out of the pram because I called you out for a throwaway comment.
 
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Found this interesting graph.


A **major** caveat is that this is restricted to state school data. That means it ignores the Etons and independent schools of the world. Going by their reputations and how many students they sent to universities, the white numbers will probably be much higher than this, while the income trend will be even worse. Not sure how the gender numbers will be affected by that, if at all.
But the gender gap is pretty consistent and big, and more data shows that it is reflective of a gap in applications - boys apply to univs about a third less than girls.
 
Rest In Peace, Georges.
A French Resistance hero who used his ingenuity and athleticism to save the lives of hundreds of Jewish children during the second world war has died at the age of 108.

Georges Loinger, a talented athlete and cousin of the famous mime artist and fellow Resistance member Marcel Marceau, smuggled small groups of children across the Swiss border by throwing a ball and telling them to run after it.

Another ruse involved dressing children up as mourners and taking them to a cemetery whose wall abutted the French side of the border. With the help of a gravedigger’s ladder, the “mourners” clambered over the wall and headed for the border just feet away.

The children he saved, whose parents had been killed or sent to Nazi concentration camps, were under the responsibility of the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, (OSE) a Jewish children’s aid society founded in St Petersburg in 1912.

France’s Holocaust Memorial Foundation said Loinger died on Friday. It described him as an “exceptional man”.
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Shit going down in Nairobi. Most likely Al-Shabaab who crossed over from Somalia, like the last time and the attack on the mall.
 
SwansonsTache said:
Shit going down in Nairobi. Most likely Al-Shabaab who crossed over from Somalia, like the last time and the attack on the mall.
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Not getting much attention:



Seems al-Shabaab have claimed it.
 
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