Mantergeistmann
No bio...
User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
4hr ago
They don't have to, but the US submarines do. I believe the Russians and UK do, and therefore India as well. Not sure about France and China, though.
They'd be pretty useless to Iran, though, as they don't need boomers (sonce they don't have nuclear weapons, natch), and they don't need to transit significant distances at high speed. See also: why the Baltic/Nordic powers don't bother with nuclear.
That's all pretty much a moot point, though, since Iran hasn't even pretended that they were ever going to consider a nuclear propulsion program, so they can hardly use it as a fig leaf justification for enrichment.
Mantergeistmann
12hr ago
I'm going to go ahead and assume that there's therefore also no reason to recommend Burroughs's Barsoom books?
Mantergeistmann
13hr ago
Robert E Howard's Solomon Kane short stories?
There above the dead man's torn body, man fought with demon under the pale light of the rising moon, with all the advantages with the demon, save one. And that one was enough to overcome the others. For if abstract hate may bring into material substance a ghostly thing, may not courage, equally abstract, form a concrete weapon to combat that ghost? Kane fought with his arms and his feet and his hands, and he was aware at last that the ghost began to give back before him, and the fearful slaughter changed to screams of baffled fury. For man's only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.
Mantergeistmann
13hr ago
If you are not trying to achieve a tactical objective, but the goal is to spread terror, then chemical weapons are probably 10x as effective per death than bombs are, and radiological weapons might be 100x as effective as plain old explosives. That Japanese cult could have achieved the same death toll of their infamous Sarin attack by throwing a few pipe bombs into a crowded subway car at a fraction of the operational complexity of synthesizing a nerve agent. But if they had done that, their attack might not even have made the top spot in international news, and would long have been forgotten outside Japan.
It's the same as dirty bombs. The radioactivity from a dirty bomb will not, realistically, cause particularly many cancer cases. It will, however, cause an absolutely absurd amount of panic, and I mean that both in the literal sense and as an intensifier.
Mantergeistmann
14hr ago
Credit is excellent (848 Experian; 825 VantageScore); purchase is ~10k. I looked at the AmEx Platinum since they're willing to give you an offer prior to a hard credit pull, and it was only 100k points, which barely seemed worth it. I'm leaning towards going for the CSR.
Mantergeistmann
16hr ago
started the first Ukraine war
Alright, I'll bite: you can criticize him for inaction concerning Crimea, but how did he start it?
Mantergeistmann
16hr ago
They've been shrieking and whining for decades, far longer than it takes to acquire nuclear weapons.
I take it you don't believe in the concept of holding a breakout time or "screwdriver ready"?
Mantergeistmann
16hr ago
I am pretty confident that Iran could work out a deal where (1) it turns in all its enriched Uranium; (2) it destroys all of its enrichment facilities; (3) energy grade fuel rods are shipped in from South Korea or whatever; and (4) they are carefully monitored by international observers. If Iran has no interest in a weapons program, that would be a pretty good deal.
I'd heard "however much free uranium you need to run your plants if you dismantle your enrichment facilities" was indeed an offer prior to the shooting (that was refused), but of course, it's nigh impossible to tell what anyone has actually put on the table, it seems.
Mantergeistmann
16hr ago
As I understand it, you can absolutely produce Tc-99m with LEU rather than HEU. Is it optimal? No. But any explanation for Iran's enrichment other than nuclear weapons requires them to be insanely unoptimal for zero reason, so at least this would be unoptimal for a good reason.
You're also introducing a weird chicken-and-egg situation. If the reason they have a sketchy nuclear program is for medicine production, which they ony need because they've been sanctioned for having a sketchy nuclear program...
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
VTIAX, maybe? AKA "rest of the world", since VTSAX is US market only? Not necessarily more returns, but the global market does sometimes outperform the US market, and that bit of diversification isn’t a bad thing.
If you don't mind EFTs instead of mutual funds, you could always go VT, which is VTSAX + VTIAX -- aka "the entire global market in one fund". Minimum effort, maximum diversification.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
Financial adjacent question, I guess: I'm expecting to make a large purchase via credit card (and pay it off immediately). If I'm not much of a traveller, how worth it are some of the fancy credit cards with massive sign-up-bonuses (and then cancel after a year to not pay the next annual fee)? I have no interest in churning, merely taking advantage of a rare large purchase.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
I'd bet AI is similar, and picking a specific single winner is improbable
Wasn't that kind of the issue with early railroads? They wound up being transformative, but a great many of the early companies and frontrunners didn't do well?
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
Which is odd, because his previous credibility with scoops has been impressive. Either one of his reputable sources is playing him, or he chose to cash in his credibility now for some reason.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
Not hantavirus per se but biological weapons do exist, yes, along with chemical and radiological (the latter being distinct from a nuclear weapon). I believe Iraq had previously used chemical weapons during wars, at the very least.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
Despite the inconsistency on many given reasons, the US has stayed pretty consistent on one reason, Iran was working towards nukes and we gotta stop them.
Has it? I thought it was WMDs in general, rather than specifically nukes, and specifically that they hadn't fully thought through the possibility that Iran would be more concerned with maintaining regional status/deterrence via ambiguity about their programs/stockpiles than that they'd be concerned about foreign intervention.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
Alexander Pope's 1725 translation is excellent
"It is a pretty poem, Mr Pope, but you must not call it Homer."
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
this is why I believe that that the infamous "bad ending" is the canonically correct ending for Jason's story, and that the people who complain about how the game "punishes the player" for making the thematic choice by wanting to keep playing are missing the forest for the trees.
To calibrate, how did you feel about Spec Ops: The Line, and the "bad"/high chaos ending of Dishonored?
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
It's explicitly in the FBI anti-elicitation guidance, yes.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
I wonder if that's deliberate for the purposes of paying people to rat - confusing/frightening them into thinking it's a legitimate government op.
Never mind that I'm pretty sure internal is supposed to be FBI's territory, but I doubt any of the people they were going after were the sort to be familiar with three-letter-agency jurisdictional conflicts.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
I'm kind of surprised the Knights of Columbus aren't themselves on a "hateful blacklist".
Mantergeistmann
5d ago
That's the best book review I've read since Field & Stream reviewed Lady Chatterly's Lover:
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savor these sidelights on the management of a Midlands shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion this book cannot take the place of J.R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeping.
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
Why the actual fuck did that team think static defense missions were the best way to cap almost every campaign?
As a turtler who's terrible at RTS games because I'm horribly sloe to expand, I love me a good defense mission. But I'm hardly the modal player, and SC sure as hell shouldn't be catering to me.
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
If somebody controls an important pass
Question: does Pakistan also control the Strait of Hormuz? It's within range of their ASBMs, so what's stopping them from threatening to close it every time they get into a scrap with India?
Mantergeistmann
7d ago
Probably making either a curry or a dal. Easy to heat up during the week when I don't feel like cooking. Also got a leek & potato pie on tap to make at some point, although I will freely admit I just use storebought puff pastry for the topping. I do need to learn how to make a proper shortcrust at some point, since I love meat pies & pasties, but that's sure as hell not a today thing.
I think that for the most part, civilian nuclear programs are mostly unrelated to weapons programs.
I will say that the US order of things was kind of insane: nuclear bomb -> nuclear submarine reactor -> civilian reactor.
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