Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 4th January 2026
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@mirrorwitch I note that China is on the verge of producing their own EUV lithography tech (they demo'd it a couple of months back) so TSMC's near-monopoly is on the edge of disintegrating, which means time's up for Taiwan (unless they have some strategic nukes stashed in the basement).
If China *already* has EUV lithography machines they could plausibly reveal a front-rank semiconductor fab-line—then demand conditional surrender on terms similar to Hong Kong.
Would Trump follow through then?
@cstross @mirrorwitch Having the fab is worthless. (Nearly. They're expensive to build.) The irreplaceable thing is the specific people and the community of practice. (Same as with a TCP/IP stack that works in the wild, or bind; this is really hard to do and the accumulated knowledge involved in getting where it is now is a full career thing to acquire and brains are rate-limited.)
China most probably doesn't have that yet.
That is, however, not in any way the point. Unification is an axiom.
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@cstross @mirrorwitch Having the fab is worthless. (Nearly. They're expensive to build.) The irreplaceable thing is the specific people and the community of practice. (Same as with a TCP/IP stack that works in the wild, or bind; this is really hard to do and the accumulated knowledge involved in getting where it is now is a full career thing to acquire and brains are rate-limited.)
China most probably doesn't have that yet.
That is, however, not in any way the point. Unification is an axiom.
@cstross @mirrorwitch In a bunch of ways, the unspeakable 19th and 20th centuries of Chinese history are constructed as the consequences of powerlessness; the point is to do a magic to abolish all traces of powerlessness.
Retaking control of Taiwan is not a question and cannot be a question. Policy toward Taiwan is not what Hong Kong got, they're going to get what the Uyghur are getting. (The official stance on democracy is roughly the medieval Church's stance on heresy.)
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@cstross @mirrorwitch In a bunch of ways, the unspeakable 19th and 20th centuries of Chinese history are constructed as the consequences of powerlessness; the point is to do a magic to abolish all traces of powerlessness.
Retaking control of Taiwan is not a question and cannot be a question. Policy toward Taiwan is not what Hong Kong got, they're going to get what the Uyghur are getting. (The official stance on democracy is roughly the medieval Church's stance on heresy.)
the medieval Church’s stance on heresy
Im not an expert on this, but wasnt this period not that bad and it was more the early modern period where the trouble really started? (Esp the witch hunts, and also the organized church was actually not as bad re the witch hunts, the Spanish inquisition didn’t consider confessions gotten via torture valid for example, and it was an early modern thing). The medieval period tends to get a bad rap.
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the medieval Church’s stance on heresy
Im not an expert on this, but wasnt this period not that bad and it was more the early modern period where the trouble really started? (Esp the witch hunts, and also the organized church was actually not as bad re the witch hunts, the Spanish inquisition didn’t consider confessions gotten via torture valid for example, and it was an early modern thing). The medieval period tends to get a bad rap.
@Soyweiser You've forgotten the Crusades, right? Right? Or the Clifford's Tower Massacre (to get hyper-specific in English history) and similar events all over Europe? Or the Reconquista and the Alhambra Decree?
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@Soyweiser You've forgotten the Crusades, right? Right? Or the Clifford's Tower Massacre (to get hyper-specific in English history) and similar events all over Europe? Or the Reconquista and the Alhambra Decree?
The crusades/Reconquusta were more an externally aimed thing at the Muslims right? (at least in intent from the organized church side, in practice not so much, so im not talking about those rampages). So yeah I was specifically talking about heresies, and im also very much not an expert in these things, so I dont know. I have not forgotten about the Cliffords/ /Alhambra things, as I dont know about it (I will look them up when im not phone posting). I was thinking more about stuff like protestantism, witch hunts and Jan Hus (the latter does count, as it is from the late medieval period iirc).
I just dont know very much about the period, but do knew some wiccan types who had wild ahistorical stories about the witch hunts.
E: yeah, I don’t think we should put anti-semitism under anti-heresy stuff, it being its own religion and all that. But as Graydon mentioned, the Albigensian Crusade fully counts for all my weird hangups and so I was totally wrong.
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The crusades/Reconquusta were more an externally aimed thing at the Muslims right? (at least in intent from the organized church side, in practice not so much, so im not talking about those rampages). So yeah I was specifically talking about heresies, and im also very much not an expert in these things, so I dont know. I have not forgotten about the Cliffords/ /Alhambra things, as I dont know about it (I will look them up when im not phone posting). I was thinking more about stuff like protestantism, witch hunts and Jan Hus (the latter does count, as it is from the late medieval period iirc).
I just dont know very much about the period, but do knew some wiccan types who had wild ahistorical stories about the witch hunts.
E: yeah, I don’t think we should put anti-semitism under anti-heresy stuff, it being its own religion and all that. But as Graydon mentioned, the Albigensian Crusade fully counts for all my weird hangups and so I was totally wrong.
@Soyweiser @techtakes Nope. The Albigensian Crusade rampaged through the Languedoc (southern France, as it is now) and genocided the Cathars. Numerous lesser organized pogroms massacred Jews al fresco and butchered Muslims and Pagans living under Christian rule. The Alhambra Decree outlawed Islam and Judaism in Spain and set up a Holy Inquisition to persecute them: Richard III expelled all the Jews from England (he owed some of them money): and so on.
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@mirrorwitch I note that China is on the verge of producing their own EUV lithography tech (they demo'd it a couple of months back) so TSMC's near-monopoly is on the edge of disintegrating, which means time's up for Taiwan (unless they have some strategic nukes stashed in the basement).
If China *already* has EUV lithography machines they could plausibly reveal a front-rank semiconductor fab-line—then demand conditional surrender on terms similar to Hong Kong.
Would Trump follow through then?
@cstross @mirrorwitch i feel like the semi conductor race is a bit like the race to make the fastest passenger train in the 30s, makes sense in a consumer economy, once you have a large conflict it does not matter, are the chips in the drones in Ukraine that advanced?
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@cstross @mirrorwitch i feel like the semi conductor race is a bit like the race to make the fastest passenger train in the 30s, makes sense in a consumer economy, once you have a large conflict it does not matter, are the chips in the drones in Ukraine that advanced?
@thias @mirrorwitch Turns out you don't need much more than early 90s chips to build effective combat drones. What you need is trained troops, tactical doctrine, and a supply chain to support them in the field.
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@Soyweiser @techtakes Nope. The Albigensian Crusade rampaged through the Languedoc (southern France, as it is now) and genocided the Cathars. Numerous lesser organized pogroms massacred Jews al fresco and butchered Muslims and Pagans living under Christian rule. The Alhambra Decree outlawed Islam and Judaism in Spain and set up a Holy Inquisition to persecute them: Richard III expelled all the Jews from England (he owed some of them money): and so on.
Seems my edit and your reply crossed each other. No I agree, I was wrong in all the ways, thanks for the correction and information.
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Seems my edit and your reply crossed each other. No I agree, I was wrong in all the ways, thanks for the correction and information.
@Soyweiser Bear in mind that the Middle Ages (roughly 500 years!) is a longer span of time than, say, from the founding of the English and French colonies in North America to the present day, close to the Spanish/Portuguese colonization of South America. And similarly huge in extent. Lots of places/times in the Middle Ages *were* peaceful and tolerant (by the standards of the day).
