Mantergeistmann
No bio...
User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
7hr ago
It's standard budget verbiage, and has been used by every administration since I've been alive. "Defense spending" and... "everything other than defense spending". But the latter is a lot more words than "non-defense".
Mantergeistmann
8hr ago
33% German, 47% Autistic. Which is weird, because normally I score weirdly low on Autism tests.
Mantergeistmann
9hr ago
Is the prestige of a SCOTUS clerkship enough for ideologically liberal students to still desire to clerk for a conservative judge (or vice-versa)?
I know that was true at least up through Scalia's tenure.
Mantergeistmann
9hr ago
“Non-defense,” spending huh? So presumably, offense?
In context of "a 10% cut in non-defense spending", it means federal/domestic programs. Research, agencies, welfare, grants, subsidies, etc.
Mantergeistmann
10hr ago
Regardless of how accurate the why is, I've always loved Truman's (much later) quote about it:
I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.
Mantergeistmann
16hr ago
You have to consider a) how many times Iran & the Houthis claimed (or social media claimed) to have hit/sunk aircraft carriers, and b) a lot of sailors are dumbass young men and flushing mop heads and mousetraps down the toilet is incompetence rather than sabotage (another claim I've seen bouncing around). Hell, the laboratory I work at had trouble convincing grown engineers and scientists to "please only flush toilet paper, don't put anything else in the toilet, you guys wonder why it clogs so often?"
It's not specifically laundry, but Fire at Sea: A 70-year Review of Fire-Related Mass Casualty Events on U.S. Aircraft Carriers may be of interest in this regard!
Since World War II, no attack on a large U.S. Navy capital ship has occurred during combat operations
we reviewed mass casualty events from major fires aboard large U.S. Navy aircraft carriers[1] from 1950 through 2020
Of 246 fires identified, 27 met inclusion criteria resulting in 1,634 casualties with a combined crew mortality of 23% of those injured.
The majority of major fire mishaps involved aircraft carriers[1], and none were the result of an enemy attack
[1] the reason behind this potential contradiction is inconsistent usage/definition of large-hull amphibious assault ships as "aircraft carriers" or not in the abstract vs text.
Mantergeistmann
19hr ago
To calibrate, what would you require to believe that story?
Mantergeistmann
20hr ago
an aircraft carrier was put out of commission ((Russian intel-aided) missiles/drones) and had to leave the theater
... you're saying a drone hit the laundry room? Or that it was a cover-up and the fire was from a drone hit elsewhere, and the US Navy suddenly has astounding Opsec and message discipline? Or is there another carrier that left for repairs recently?
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
so was, according to Trump, largest bridge in Iran.
The bridge hit is confirmed. Is Commander in Chief now picking bombing targets personally?
Liberation mode off, Genghis Khan mode on.
You say that like the Allies didn’t hit plenty of bridges during the Liberation of France, to prevent the Germans from moving troops and supplies around.
Mantergeistmann
1d ago
"Bomb them back to the stone age" is, like threatening to turn somepace in to a parking lot or unleash hell, a common phrase that is meant to be taken seriously but not literally (nobody will be replacing an entire city/nation with asphalt and parking lines, nor opening a portal to Dante's circles, after all). I'd assume that's the context here, unless I'm missing something.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
It's a meta story: the story itself is framed as being a lost manuscript.
So is The Lord of the Rings, or Dinotopia.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
everyone talks about Kharg, but Kharg is useless without the strait and un-needed with it
Kharg is a bargaining chip. It's only useful to Iran, iw basically vital to their long-term economy, and can be visibly taken and returned in a way "the strait" cannot.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
Catch-22 is both hilarious black comedy war satire, and highly quotable. I never really had trouble following the plot or parsing the time shifts. Can't speak for the rest.
Mantergeistmann
2d ago
I remember that was around when the advice for American tourists was to put Canadian flag patches on your backpack, so you wouldn't be hated for being American.
Mantergeistmann
4d ago
Wait... Kulak was progressive? That's, um, certainly a definition and category...
Mantergeistmann
5d ago
I'm looking for a drone rec. Context: my father and his wife bought her family "farm" (~40 acres + fully renovated farmhouse and barn , mixed woodland and open field, currently much of the open field is leased to a neighbor for hay). They're both very fond of it, and are looking to restore/return it to use, more in a hobbyist way than an investment way.
I'd like to buy them a not-too-pricey drone as a gift, for land surveying, a neat new perspective on the land she grew up with, and so I don't have to climb any more goddamn rickety ladders to inspect their gutters, because if the fall doesn't kill me, my own wife will.
I don't even know where to start looking in the drone space for something like this. Budget would probably be in the $500-$1000 USD range. Might be impossible, but as I said, I don't even know where to start looking.
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
The West also drew some odd boundaries in the West, post WWI, but the Treaty of Versailles was more a mess of conflicting priorities and petitions than it was "let's set up European ethnic/religious conflict!"
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
I genuinely believe this is a more compassionate move at this point.
Or, as Clausewitz put it,
Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
I've yet to find a definition of "genocide" that includes the most recent round of the Gaza conflict, but excludes the US Civil War.
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
If somehow we ranked a groups political power. Jews probably control in the neighborhood of 25% of global power despite having a minimal population. If you could some how measure influence, tech, military, etc.
Isn't that just the old "white privilege"/"male privilege" argument, but repackaged?
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
The general argument I see is that because US policy/tax dollars support these allies, it's more important to call it out over regimes which, while they may be worse, the US has fewer levers of influence to pull.
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
anti-Semitic agitation is the one sin they surely can get cancelled for by their comrades.
I think anti LGBTQ is also cancellable these days.
Mantergeistmann
6d ago
A lot of leftwingers hate Murdoch as a propaganda tool for the right.
"Currently" is doing some heavy lifting there. Just to support the US's AUKUS obligation, to say nothing of reaching the Navy's target force structure, how long do you think it would take to build just the infrastructure, industrial base, and skills needed to scale up shipbuilding, let alone the ships themselves?
I'm not saying that's what Trump has in mind, but the state of US shipbuilding -- military, civilian, and Coast Guard -- is pretty shambolic, and a defense budget increase would make perfect sense in that context (and also the same thing but on a lesser scale for armament stockpiles).
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