DBDr
2yr ago
As a tank and boat autist; the Japanese double plus rearmament is interesting to watch. They want a bunch of capabilities nobody has; specially in terms of low manpower high tech shit and missile defense.
Aegis still king; but USA can't make a fuckin smoll boat anymore 'cause of capitalism. The state kept bailing out the aerospace dudes over and over and over, but let the soggy dudes go to hell/ china.
Jappan actually still has a pretty good domestic civilian shipbuilding sector; so we might see some cool shit form them their. They have a somwhat decent modern history of it lol
DBDr
1yr ago
I'd say the unique factor in the south wasn't awfulness per se; but a planter aristocratic class who's entire position depended on directly chattel slavery right in their back yards.
In the rest of the western world, the owning class was insulated from whatever they owned by a couple layers of middle class professional technocrats. "Doing business? How dreadfully plebeian my dear, now pass the port and deal me another hand".
DBDr
1yr ago
Seconding this, and emphasizing that stoicism doesn't mean passivity; it means really truly internalizing that sometimes "You want it to be one way. But it's the other way".
You can try to change it, but you gotta accept reality first.
DBDr
1yr ago
HISD to eliminate librarians and convert libraries into disciplinary centers at NES schools
Not worth a post as top level thread on it's own; but hilariously dystopic enough to post here. It's only one (admittedly large and important) SD, but this is the type of shit Margret Atwood would write about as a totally out there thought experiment.
Hopefully enough people get mad it stops there.
DBDr
1yr ago
Man, don't ask chat GPT. Doesn't know dick about shit. Try getting it to say anything deeper than buzzfeed for your area of expertise for a laugh.
Speaking of not knowing dick, mobile homes are a closed book to me. I assume you are in a community of such; if they have a managment office they'll probably know. Failing that, probably normal house shit needs done in addition to mobile home shit.
EG, check your roof, check your door sweeps and insulation, change the anode in your water heater if it's gone, clean the filters in your range hood and furnace, flush your water heater, etc.
DBDr
1yr ago
As an SJW: You can't win. It is as impossible for you to win as it is for me to will big communism into existence ex nihlo.
We are currently playing Culture War by a set of rules that gives me infinite tries and only allowed you temporary victories; and it is the same set of rules that means I can vote in as many elections as I like and choose between two dudes representing corporate interests but one has the pride flag.
So, I win the culture war. You loose the culture war. Maybe you make some headway here or there, but in the end all your causes will fail and all of mine will succeed, until they move beyond me and I become the reactionary.
Unless there is some sort of radical reorganization of society; until the socialist or ancap revolution really comes, this is just how it do. Capitalist realism baby!
DBDr
2yr ago
Re. strategic resource: No, absolutely not.
Everything we have sent to Ukraine represents either outmoded equipment designed to fight an army from the 70's that is only still relevant because the Russian army IS from the 70's, or equipment the fulfils secondary capability requirements.
EG, HIMARS, manpads, and Javelin are all secondary, because what the US REALLY focuses on is air superiority; where we maintain a level of absolute crushing dominance unseen at any point in military history.
Want to destroy an ammo depot? Airstrike.
Want to blow up a tank? Airstrike.
Want to shoot down a plane? MOTHER FUKIN STRIKE FROM THE AIR BAAAAAABEEEEEEEEE
China and India are of course trying to match us here, but India is at least 10-20 years from fielding home grown engines that are competitive (not having btw, their engine program has been ongoing for a while and seems to be performaing well. I mean feiling home grown home made 4.5gen+ planes en mass), and china is likewise at the most pessimistic doomer almost definitely false estimates (from the US perspective) 10 years behind in BVR a to a shit, stealth, engines, and avionics.
Even without NGAD and the Raider, if we stood still china would take years to catch up, and we running boys!
And it turns out that Russia drank a fifth of ethanol based radar array coolant and passed out in a ditch instead of working on their gen 5 shit.
DBDr
2yr ago
If you will pardon some hysterical left wring political doomerism:
I think I'm having an AI risk moment, and you guys are doing it to me!
I was always kinda skeptical of leftist claims re. right wing fascism in the US.
Yes, claiming the election was stolen is a little ehhhhh, but it is also just more traditional right wing signaling about corrupt institutions and blah blah blah.
Yes, circling the wagons around Trump and friends when they were doing clearly sketchy/criminal shit was a little fucked, but could I honestly say the left or the libs wouldn't do the same thing in exchange for the presidency? Of course not.
Yes, conservative justices are openly political and have only enough respect for precedent to secure the fig leaf with blue tack, but come on now. Roe v Wade, anyone?
The reaction of right wing populists, elected officials, intellectuals, and media regarding our lovable insane maga hammerbro doing a little trolling are making me wig out. People I thought were wrong but serious passing around clear bullshit about gay escorts, pretending the dude wasn't Q radicalized, and laughing it off. It's one thing for the lunatic fringe to do that shit, it's another entirely when the largest single conservative news network and most popular intellectuals are doing it.
Then I come here for a dose of sanity, and I have to dig DEEP into the replies before I find anyone positing the plainly obvious: that if you say your political opponents are child rapist election stealing perverts, some section of the population will actually believe the literal words you are saying and "take action".
Maybe I'm just having a little moment and will regress to mean in a couple weeks, but this particular incident has shifted me from "no" to "They would if they could" regarding conservatives in this country, at least temporarily.
I was already armed because I think guns are fun and cool and are never gonna be banned regardless of how many schools get shot up so I might as well have fun, now I'm shopping around for my local John Brown chapter.
(also, if you are apolitical or don't mind some leftism from time to time and are looking for a gun club, the John Brown Gun Club and SRA are actually really chill and safe, so far. Much better than the local non-denominational clubs. I haven't been flagged once by a dude shoulder carrying his AR with closed bolt and magazine loaded yet, which is a damn sight better than the public ranges in SC.)
One last thing while I'm thinking about it: Dude once showed up to the range with the sickest Springfield armory 1911 I've ever seen, all nickel and smooth as glass and beautiful as fuck, one of their 2000$ fancy jobs. Predictably everyone gathered around and asked to see it like a bunch of 7 year olds for a foil pokemon card, then dude turns around and fucking holds me up with it practically. Scary as fuck. He let me shoot it afterwards though, so that was something.
DBDr
2yr ago
The culture angle here is the totalizing force of global capital and you. If you end up at exclusively touristy places, simply stop being a tourist.
I also travel every year, I also only take one 40l back pack, and I don't have near your level of problems because I split my trips between touristy shrines and natural sites and such, and just wandering around places and browsing satellite imagery for interesting looking shit. Eg, if you are going to Vietnam for carsts and shit, look at the googlemaps photos and avoid the area where you can see 100000 signs in english.
The other side: you are looking for authenticity that doesn't exist and never existed. There are places and people, and those people live and work in those places as component parts of the same globalized system. Everything is one thing, and everything is the same. It's dollars all the way down and has been ever since the berlin wall got blowed-up.
Traditional application of the traditional saying: If you are bored, it could be that you are boring.
DBDr
1yr ago
Those experts weren't experts then.
AI is a while from generating novel texts and scripts and such (don't ask me how long though); but it is about 15 minutes from getting fed a couple hundred hours of footage and being able convincingly replicate a specific human saying whatever the fuck you want them to say.
DBDr
1yr ago
I worked in the field for quite a while, but even before that I was simply extremely poor. The choice was learn how to plumb or have no water, because the landlord wasn't gonna do shit.
This applies to you too! Use your common sense here, but most things aren't that bad if you fuck them up. (excepting gas, electric, and non ground floor plumbing, those can be bad. be careful). Worse comes to worst, you have to do the call of shame and have someone clean up your mistake.
There is such a thing as best practices, you can usually get good specific advice on youtube and reddit, and be mindful of common safety failures. Eg, read the warning labels on everything, climbing on roofs is taking your life into your own hands, never trust an angle grinder (or any tool that spins faster than you can pedal a bike), etc.
DBDr
2yr ago
This is one of those mexican standoff tragedy of the commons situations for me.
EG, I am strongly for NIMBY policies on homelessness until I am assured that YIMBY policies will be adopted state/nation wide.
Exemplified by the problems certain areas are having now: Some section of the nation are too cowardly to imprison or execute the homeless but poor enough in spirit to harass indigents until they fuck off somewhere else; all the way down the chain until they reach somewhere that has principles instead of standards which instantly becomes fucking awful.
If we could coordinate such that everywhere adopted YIMBY polices at once, it would be pretty much fine. Since we can't, I'm going to vote to give the brain fried PTSD'd out veteran a buss ticket back to el paso and they can go to hell.
Also: What, should the entire apparatus of the civil state stand there, limp dick in hand, watching norm after law after precedent get dynamited?
The apparatus demands lubrication, and the only substance at hand is blood. It is good and necessary that blood should flow to feed the state. That is what the state is, that is what the state is for. The state is the threat of violence perpetrated against all by consent of all for the benefit of all.
There has been a defector; why should the government even exist if it can't punish one idiot failson of a fallen business empire?
DBDr
1yr ago
I think you are overestimating Russia's ability to do get anything done on the offensive; which is at least as bad as Ukraines; and that the time limit goes both ways. Maybe Ukraine looses big daddy MICs black card and needs to go back to moletoves and prayers; maybe someone who has a whole new fleet of shiny f-35s coming in sends their old f16 block 40's to Ukrain and suddenly they have a platform that can fire air launched cruismissles well behind the lines; and can be refit to fire the shit that they aren't forbiden from WAY behind the lines.
Basically, I think Ukraine only gets knocked out of the fiight through wearieness, and the Ukrainians are still all about this shit; mainly because they can all speak russian and can watch russian TV. They know if they give up; they are not in for an easy ocupation.
DBDr
2yr ago
I just took another batch of IQ tests for some poor suffering undergrads and felt that they were hilariously swingy.
I've always scored around 130; but one or two questions can drop your right out of/into that bracket , and the pattern recognition questions are easy to get wrong through test format. Eg, in this test there was a sequence of numbers displayed such that the question number looked like it was part of the sequence. I only noticed because it made the sequence all fucky.
This ontop of the other (crapyer) test where you basically play word association half the time, the whole enterprise of IQ testing fills me with doubt. I have no doubt I am "intelligent" enough to be somewhere near where I test on the bell curve, but 97th percentile feels way too high to me. I feel like a better test would be to present my with a piece of broken machinery I've never seen before and timing me while I try to fix it, only that's kinda hard to feed into numpy for pretty graphs.
Are the IQ tests used for actual funded trials different than what is used by starving students, are all of them shakey as hell buzzfeed affairs, or am I just biased against them for some reason?
DBDr
1yr ago
Dude, yes.
The rules based international order is totally a soc-dem jam, they are all about that shit.
DBDr
2yr ago
This isn't a sneer or anything, but before I try to engage with this I want to know if this is a truly held thought or a parody of some of the other contrarian takedowns that get posted on here.
DBDr
2yr ago
I'm not, but the basics:
We still build airliners commercially, so we can build fighters.
We still build cars commercially, so we can build tanks.
We still build (tech bullshit) commercially so we can build systems, radars, etc.
We don't build ships commercially, so whenever we try to build ships that aren't super special one offs (nuclear subs, nuclear aircraft carriers, etc.) that are already inherently expensive disasters and you just have to accept it, It's an expensive disaster. Eg, Zumwalt et all.
US military industrial capacity hasn't actually meaningfully declined in most ways. We still can produce enough to arm ourselves and fill orders from foreign buyers and we are world leaders in quantity production of planes that don't suck, excepting ships where we can only build space age nuclear powered wunderwaffe or fucking disasterpiece boondoggles.
That said, you don't know how good the foundation is until the earth starts shaking. Lots of (wrong) people said that Russia had gotten some of it's soviet mojo back ala-making cool shit, which did not actually happen when they got put to the test.
Defense economics info is dry as hell to read; but there are some good youtube channels on it (Perun, for example).
DBDr
2yr ago
Because they (meaning the white middleclass subset you refer to and also myself) don't actually hate America, they hate the red tribe.
When they criticize America, they are implicitly only criticizing the Red parts of the present and the past. Eg, the native genocide, slavery, apartheid, social conservatism, republicans even existing at all, etc and so forth.
Having filled the pages of my passport, I actually think that America is the strongest, most important and most vibrant nation in the world, and so do american leftists only implicitly. Only america has the freedom to be ontologically evil, because we are so powerful that nobody could stop us from being perfectly good, style of thing.
Like when the Reds go off on the downfall naratives they are only talking about their hobby horses; which is why the countries they point to as positive counterexamples are usually kinda pathetic in the ways that I care about.
DBDr
1yr ago
Nor is it fraud to sign a piece of paper saying you believe.
It literally is fraud to do that though, is the thing. That's what fraud is.
DBDr
1yr ago
I know this isn't helpful, but my flinch reaction to dudes who have masculinity problems is to scoff and feel contempt.
Like, what's so fucking hard about it? And then I remember normal mind bias and tell myself that what I just said is "Listen, picking up heavy stuff is easy! Just lift more than you can lift!"
I will say that building your masculinity on the attention of a particular woman or women in general is cuck behavior, and needs to be discouraged wherever possible. Even the MGTOW dudes still construct their whole identity around women, you gotta stop that shit.
But that runs into "Just stop feeling that way! Lift more than you can lift!" again.
DBDr
1yr ago
Because there can only be one definitive undefinitive source and despite the bubble effect of sites like this one the Liberal opinion on (most) factual questions is the popular opinion.
Wikipidea is undefinitive because it is a democracy; you will never get conservative wins in an open platform because there are less conservatives than liberals.
DBDr
1yr ago
Re. the apology thing:
I've noticed that an apology is an admission that doesn't guarantee forgiveness; so forgiveness has to be given before the apology or the apology is pointless.
This is similar to how it was in my small jungle town in the middle of nowhere; where you needed an intermediary to be sure the beef was crushed before anyone tried to do any actual working it out so you didn't eg get beat with some horseshoes on the end of a chain.
DBDr
1yr ago
At least there exists good rap; good rap is theoretical possible. The design specifications of rap allow for good.
The essential element of stadium country is that it is vapid garbage for people that hate music. It is mid 2000's R&B level worthless trash.
Here are the things that are good about pop country: You can dance to it.
It's the Mcdonald's of music. Bland, overproduced, overpriced, and super salty all the time.
Wait, hold on, I have more bitching in me! And it's deffo not all sour grapes that my guys never break into the mainstream!
It's a real thing. When temperature and relative humidity get high enough at the same time, homeostasis breaks down. Sweating can no longer bring your body temperature low enough to prevent heat stroke, you brain starts to cook, your kidneys stop working, etc.
Eg, when the wet bulb temp. is above homeostasis and you have 100% relative humidity, you physically can't cool down even in the shade and you are guaranteed to die pretty quickly if you can't get inside or in a cave or something.
This is an unusual condition in the modern history of the planet and even in the BAD climate change timeline will be seasonal and local, but it has already started to happened in short bursts in eg. pakistan and the punjab region of india; where you get just extraordinarily shitty weather even in good times.
More options
Context Copy link