The rhetoric was trolling. It's sad that a childish troll is president but let's call this what it was. Trump trolling Trudeau. Certainly riled everyone up, changed the Canadian elections results, etc. Doesn't seem to matter if it's uneducated masses or educated masses, the intelligence of the masses seems to be a minimum function at best.
But yeah the quality of people in politics is terrible. I thought very highly of Obama in terms of intellect, honesty, pragmatism, etc. Postcard leader. but he seemingly still managed to mess lots of things up. Or maybe we over-estimate the impact this one person on the top actually has on anything.
That's how it started. I don't recall any actions that went along with that initial trolling but it's possible that I have the wrong sequence of events.
"Donald Trump’s comments about Canada becoming the 51st state began on November 29, 2024, during a three-hour dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. During the Thanksgiving weekend meeting, Trump reportedly joked that if Canada couldn't handle the economic impact of his proposed 25% tariffs, the country should simply become the 51st state, with Trudeau acting as governor.
While Canadian officials present, such as Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, initially downplayed the remark as lighthearted teasing, Trump continued to lean into the rhetoric publicly. By February 2, 2025, Trump was referring to Canada as America's "Cherished 51st state".
The actions were generally tariffs with the initial excuse being Fentanyl and border security when Trump took office.
And yes, Trudeau has been gone for a while but this is how this started.
We shall see. But Russia's invasion of Ukraine way predates the recent wars in the middle east. It's more like the inability to restrain Russia's aspirations in Ukraine have led to instability in the rest of the world. More generally the failure to sustain a more free and democratic Russia or China is perhaps the source of all the other instabilities which all involve political, military and financial support from the China/Russia axis.
I wouldn't write off the US quite yet but it's definitely more of a multi-polar world with the US and China the major powers vs. the brief single polar world that followed the fall of the USSR. Arguably the quietest and most prosperous period ever, the largest number of people worldwide rising up from poverty etc. We're gonna miss it.
By the summer of 2023 when Ukraine's big counteroffensive had failed my own view was that the situation was stalemated and Russia will wait until the West gets bored or the situation changes and Russia's geopolitical position improves. Russia has that option available to it in a way the West doesn't.
Sanctions in general don't work. They don't work against enemies. Arguably they only work against allies (eg apartheid South Africa). Sanctions were never going to work against Russia and Russia has more manpower to throw at the meat grinder than Ukraine does.
And that changing situation has come to Putin with the Iran War. The US has lost. It has been strategically and militarily defeated by a lesser regional power. It's just a matter of time before it accepts this loss.
Because of attacks from Ukraine on Russian energy infrastructure, Russia has changed from a net diesel exporter to banning diesel exports and arguably being a diesel importer. That's a big problem that we're all about to learn. China too has banned the export of refined petroleum products (including diesel) for months now. Diesel prices are about to go way up and the US is now considering a ban on diesel exports. All this "energy nationalism" is going to torch Europe, Asian economies and South America. Just you wait.
By foolishly attacking Iran, Trump has made Russia's position much stronger. So yes, the Ukraine war predates the Iran war but the Iran war has made the Ukraine war much better for Russia. That's the point.
Or maybe the lesson to Russia is that if the US can't win against Iran how is it going to win against Ukraine? Another angle to look at it is through who does China support (Russia and Iran?).
I think your perspective is interesting and not wrong. The weakness of the US (and the west) is emboldening Putin. I do still think the order of events starts with Russia, China and Iran's challenge the post USSR collapse status quo. In a parallel universe if Russia was able to embrace democracy and become a free country, and if China kept opening up and didn't reverse course, then we wouldn't have the Iran war at all (likely the regime in Iran would have long fallen). The world seemed to be on a course to more freedom, democracy, and prosperity, and less wars, when the Berlin wall fell. And then at some point we went backwards.
As to Putin and Russia it doesn't seem like he has a path to anything that looks like a win. How long he's going to persist is a good question. What is Iran's path forward here is also far from clear. I wouldn't want their sort of "win" myself. It's like Afghanistan's win against Russia maybe. None of these wars have a conclusive win so hopefully a lesson there (to China?) is to think twice before going to another war. Though those lessons seem to be forgotten too quickly.
> Iran war has made the Ukraine war much better for Russia
I think that from a geopolitical perspective it is far more advantageous to let Ukraine lose the war, than to allow a situation in which, in 20 years, Muslims will destroy the world with nuclear weapon.
Putin has the same choices Trump had: face the music or start a new song.
Trump was under pressure about the Epstein files, so he started a war. So far, so normal. It's what politicians do. He thought it would be a simple war, but that turned out not to be true. He's now under pressure from that war, so he's eyeing up Cuba.
Putin was under pressure, so started the Ukraine war. Again, he though it would be a simple quick war, but that turned out not to be true. He's now under pressure from that war, so he's eyeing up Poland.
I'm coming to agree with the folks who think Europe has to actually do more than fight the proxy war in Ukraine. It has to actually hurt Russia for this to resolve. Putin cannot recognise his loss any more than Trump can, so he's just going to continue hurting people.
That's been my impression with all running shoes over the last few years. They fall apart. I bought myself some nice Reebok shoes and they disintegrated. The sole is gone holes develop in the sides etc. I guess they make them lighter and thinner. I would prefer something that's a bit more durable but that doesn't seem to be an option.
There are still plenty of shoes that will last for a while. You just need to avoid the super-light ones. Those are designed to go fast, not to be durable.
There's a lot of noise and confusion about what exactly "zone 2" is and why. But definitely longer easier (you're not out of breath) runs build a foundation in more ways than just your cardiovascular system. It's those other components that take a longer time to build. The key is that you are not over-training (watch your sleep and joint pain as an indicator) and can recover and that you are progressively increasing your load by lessay ~10% distance a week. Easy system would be 2 shorter runs and one longer run a week.
There are plenty of online training program generators that are pretty good and will take you from zero to running 10k. I used an online program to run my first 10k somewhere circa 1990.
There a lot of more cutting edge science online (and I follow Nick as well) but if you're not a competitive athlete and are just trying to get in better shape then the answer is mostly just do it. Over some base of running you can throw in some interval training including HIIT.
I would look into a used entry model Garmin. Something like a 235 (I have my old one sitting around). It has an HRM though it's not a terribly reliable one.
HIIT can have a pretty quick impact on your VO2MAX but that is going to level off. As others have said you will want a more balanced routine in the long run.
It is also possible you were over-training in your "moderate" intensity or conversely not increasing the load/distance enough. Training over years should result in good improvement even without HIIT. You will need to put a lot more time in.
I have a pretty diverse training load these days. Hiking, mountaineering, running, plus a few sports and some resistance. While I have overtrained in the past on running in particular, it was mostly due to lack of diversity. Nonetheless, none of those things puts the same load on the body as HIIT.
To be clear, I was objectively in good cardiovascular condition before adding HIIT. My resting heart rate has been in the 40s for years. The surprise was that there was so much easy margin left by adding HIIT to my regimen.
If your heart rate has been in the 40s for years your cardiovascular system is at the peak of what’s possible. It’s not “pretty good”. A resting heart rate in the 30s is the kind of thing Olympic distance runners touch on. You are either exaggerating or your assessment of what’s normal is way off. Most very fit people have resting rates in the 50s and 60s.
Or, like me, who has never been a runner, a heart rate in the 30's can mean that you have heart block, an electrical problem with your heart where beats are gradually spaced further apart and then there is a longish delay before a reset. In a recent 2-week heart monitor test, my longest delay was 3 seconds and I had 4 of these. There are different types of heart block: mine is type 1 Mobitz/Wenckebach. Not really dangerous - I've had it all my life and known about it for ~35 years. It shows up on all of the modern automatic heart/blood pressure machines because the delays cause unusually low readings whereas a nurse checking your pulse may miss it.
My average heart rate on the test was 58, lowest was 21 (for 3 seconds), and highest was 250 (for 6 beats). A few minutes after getting in bed, my heart rate regularly is in the 40s and sometimes low 30s.
I never implied my cardio fitness was poor, just that some metrics are relatively better than others. My RHR (currently 47-48 per various fitness trackers) has always been pretty elite. I don’t think about it and it doesn’t change much except in response to stress.
I’m more interested in getting into the 90+ percentile range on the cardio metrics where I’m closer to the average. I don’t obsess over it, it is just interesting to see how different activities that I was going to do anyway move the needle.
A long race will do it just fine. AKA Runner's High.
I also do hill sprints. I try to do one [HIIT] workout a week and also some longer runs.
Hill sprints tend to be safer then sprinting on flat surfaces. Last time I did my HIIT sprinting on level ground my knee didn't really like that at all. A stationary bike (like the "assault bike") is even safer. Or you can just do burpies. People who don't run and haven't sprinted in a long time shouldn't just jump into sprinting.
I have to disagree on both points. Long races don't do this for me - that's also the point of the paper. And I have had more close calls of spraining an ankle when running uphill. The problem with hills also is that you might want to jog down after, but that's super bad for knees.
"The One-Minute Workout: Science Shows a Way to Get Fit That's Smarter, Faster, Shorter"
EDIT: This book is maybe a bit old but covers a lot of ground on high intensity interval training vs. traditional training. I guess this study adds to the body of evidence that HIIT is effective. My take as a random person interested in this stuff is that ideally you are mixing both high intensity and longer duration workouts for their different benefits. But if you are limited in time it seems high intensity is a winner.
You get a probability curve for the next token prediction. You can just pick the highest probability. That said the non-determinism serves a real purpose- it allows different outputs and paths to be explored. So that's kind of the tradeoff.
It's hard to say. If the disk is borderline it's possible for it to be readable in one drive and not another. I have a couple of working machines with 3.5 inch drives so maybe ask around if a coworker or someone else you know has? I've read diskettes older than that but you never know. GreaseWeasel mentioned in the other comment might help as well.
But yeah the quality of people in politics is terrible. I thought very highly of Obama in terms of intellect, honesty, pragmatism, etc. Postcard leader. but he seemingly still managed to mess lots of things up. Or maybe we over-estimate the impact this one person on the top actually has on anything.
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