A lot of people have written about this, but I want to do a summary of how all of the largest conflicts in the world today have been supplied by Russia in order to destabilize the world. We all know about Russia’s digital warfare against NATO and non-NATO democracies. This has been designed to increase …
Author Archives: stidmatt
Netanyahu overplayed his hand
Canada announced it will recognize Palestine yesterday, a day after France did the same. Israel will continue to be recognized, but the combination of factors over the last few months is starting to seriously backfire on the worst people in the world. Trump’s economic and immigration policy will drain our country of the necessary manual …
Israel, Ukraine, Russia
I’m summarizing these articles because getting a good overview of this relationship is impossible to find. So, I’m going to bring the pieces together here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel–Russia_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel-Ukraine_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon-Russia_relations In short, based on the information in just these articles: Israel refuses to impose sanctions on Russia. Israel refuses to send weapons to Ukraine. Their relationship …
Most effective presidents
As a sequel to the post Great Presidents I made in March, I was thinking how I like the logic I made to determine the effectiveness of a president, but I realize I left out the factor of whether the president was succeeded by a president from their same party after they left office. So …
How is France doing?
The headlines are abuzz. People are protesting in the streets, Macron is proposing ways to increase French revenue. The debt is out of control, and grandmere is to blame. Let’s back this up with data. Starting with GDP per capita… France has the 25th highest GDP per capita in the world, tied with Canada. They …
SR-509 vs ST3 cost comparison
I just got an email about the WA-509 completion project just south of SeaTac airport because I have a Good to Go Pass. The total budget comes out to $2.83 billion for just over 2 miles of freeway, so a cost of a little over $1 billion per mile. The SR-509 at peak capacity will …
Education and income
When putting GDP per capita on a log, there is a 95% correlation with the mean years of schooling for countries in the dataset I’ve been curating for a long time. It’s not surprising really. So the policy then becomes very clear that if you want to increase your GDP, make it easier for people …
It’s about the mines
This document by the United Nations clearly outlines why many people in Greenland want independence. https://hr.un.org/sites/hr.un.org/files/editors/u439/Greenland%20Aspirations%20for%20Independence%20in%20Times%20of%20Climate%20Change.pdf As part of Denmark, Greenland does not have its own independent visa policy. It also does not grant freedom of movement to European Union citizens. The Nordic Passport Union citizens are not interested in working in Greenlandic mines, and …
Realistic independence movements
Greenland is talking about independence, and they have had pro-independence parties in power for the last 4 years, but there has been no major movement towards independence so far. I already wrote an article about how Greenlandic independence could be worse for Greenlanders if the rights they already enjoy to live and work in the …
So what is charisma?
In the Keys to the White House, two of the keys have to do with charisma, which is defined as a candidate being able to connect with voters. To me this has always seemed like a fuzzy key, and hard to define. But I just figured out how we can measure it. A charismatic presidential …
