Elsevier has a history of 'promoting' successful millers to more or other journals, so they can 'drive growth', as it's sometimes put in IT, there as well.
Does it, really? There haven't been any problematic issues since economists and their lore became a dominant influence over politics that could be attributed to this influence?
The LLM is just a database. It's like saying 'I own the copyright to what comes out of an API because I crafted the query' or 'I own the copyright to the responses I get from the bots on the Starship Titanic because I crafted the message they respond to'.
"GitHub only gets better if people who give a shit stick around to make it better"
This only works in democratic settings. In capitalist corporations, typical liberalist parliamentarism and so on it does not work, only coercion does, which might be peaceful, like a strike or boycott, or it might not be.
The very short explanation is that they kind of want to be not-Saud and has trouble cooperating with Saudi Arabia for a rather long time, not just over fossil fuels but also in Yemen.
Recently the UAE faction in Yemen was forcefully reined in by the house of Saud, and OPEC kind of prioritises different things than the UAE, i.e. not pushing profits hard in the short to medium term instead focusing on stability and predictability.
Currently the saudis are trying to resolve the Hormuz issue and the attack on Iran through diplomacy, which the UAE is not exactly fond of and would rather see a violent solution. In part this is coloured by the close relation between the UAE and Israel, both of which share the view that running militant factions in failed states is preferable to orderly international relations between sovereigns. The saudis aren't as keen on this type of foreign policy and in other aspects also not as friendly with Israel as the UAE.
The UAE has been signaling that they don't really want to be a part of OPEC since at least 2020 or so. Them actually leaving was to be expected, the question should have been 'when' rather than 'if'. Iranian retaliations on the UAE and subsequent damage to the reputation of mainly Dubai and Abu Dhabi as well as capital flight probably strengthened the UAE politicians longing to get out of OPEC and start pumping and selling at full capacity to try and make as much money as possible as fast as possible.
If the UAE does not do this it'll be more exposed to credit and currencies besides the US dollar, which they probably find rather inconvenient.
Americans were leaking that Saudi Arabia was pushing for the attack. Saudi Arabia was leaking that the leader pushed against the attack. Then there was a leak about them wanting USA to finish the job and just maybe, they were for it.
It all depends on how Saudi wants to be seen in the moment and what Trump thinks makes him look better in the moment.
But like, Saudi gave Americans golden planes and extraordinary amount of bribes, so one would assume they were buying something.
You're right, I underweighted that. The Abraham Accords logic sits underneath the whole US posture toward the UAE and I should have named it directly. The piece treats it as part of the "economic interests" frame but that's too abstract.
Concretely: the US has tied its Gulf diplomacy, arms sales, and regional security architecture to the normalization framework, and the UAE is the pivot. Calling out UAE arms transfers to the RSF would mean fracturing that, which nobody in Washington wants to do, Biden administration included.
On the second point I'd be more cautious. There were signals after the Iran escalation that Abu Dhabi was getting nervous about regional entanglement, and some reporting suggested a partial cooling on RSF support. But I haven't seen hard evidence that the arms pipeline has actually slowed, and the ICC evidence-gathering announcements haven't produced any UAE course correction yet. The incentive structure to keep hedging via Hemedti is still intact as long as the RSF controls Darfur and the gold flows.
Fair catch on the Accords piece though, that's a gap.
"But I haven't seen hard evidence that the arms pipeline has actually slowed"
Sure, as I understand it, it is mainly structured around flights and spread out over several logistics lines and already partly shadowed by turned-off transponders and so on. Disturbances at sea are unlikely to affect this.
However, there has already been squawks from the UAE about having to turn to the renminbi to clear oil sales and the like. China is not particularly fond of the RSF and has had good relations with the sudanese state since the fifties. Choking the Hormuz is likely to make this relation and stability in Sudan even more important to China.
More medium term the UAE now has incentive to go look for partners besides the US and Israel. At the moment they try not to, but this is highly likely to change, especially since money is pouring out eastwards from the emirates and to win it back they would need friends that seem stable in the long term, like they did until their remote and nearby allies started beating on one of their largest neighbours.
"the ICC evidence-gathering announcements haven't produced any UAE course correction yet"
That "yet" does a rather hefty deadlift. The UAE has begged the US to shield them from the ICC but as I understand it, it did not result in a clear and reliable response. Perhaps they count on the US to do for them what they've done for Israel, but since the US put all their efforts into protecting Israel during this latest iranian response and left their other allies in the region to help themselves, I kind of doubt that this can last.
Russia has an interest in the gold, but I don't think they care whether it comes to them from the RSF or the state, and they are more dependent on China than the UAE. In a pinch I'd wager they would support stability as long as the gold keeps flowing and China is happy.
Edit: Personally I believe the US to be so deficient in short-term memory that they can't manage the relations to other West Asia states than Israel with any form for strategic reliability. They might promise the UAE a dollar swap line, do a press conference about it, and then forget to actually open one, or give it to them and then a few weeks later pull the plug on it because budget reasons or whatever.
Your comment is heavily downvoted because, especially the first sentence, seems AI generated. Was this comment AI generated? HN is for human discussions
They finance projects with terms that drive business to Chinese companies. The Congo gets a highway. A Chinese construction company makes a buck. The financiers make a buck. Business relationships are created and the people who get the highway use that highway to import Chinese goods.
That's how it's supposed to work, when it works. I'm sure it's gotten better with time.
The congo is basically the worst possible example you could have found for this—china notoriously doesn't invest in local infrastructure. There are literally hundreds of better examples across africa and south and central america and central asia and southeast asia.
Clearly they don't. They don't tend to occupy other countries, not outside of immediate territorial claims like Tibet (if you think that constitutes an "other" country)
There's a difference between "sand" in the general, and sand suitable for construction purposes. There's sharp sand and soft sand, and you need sharp sand for e.g. concrete, else it will crack and rot.
There is manufactured sand, but obviously it's more expensive than good old extraction of river beds and beaches, which is scarce.
https://forbetterscience.com/2023/10/24/elsevier-choses-pape...
This type of corporation is nasty and should not be allowed to exist, but thanks to people like the Maxwell clan, they do. For now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnmFTvlrsOo
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