RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1hr ago
The reason isn't a failure of public transport but a failure of Americans. Get rid of the lowlifes shooting up in train stations or pushing random people onto the tracks and then you can have an efficient public transport system. Normal people don't want to be around these net-negatives and will move out to the suburbs, segregate themselves away in cars because they, quite reasonably, don't trust others.
"Teens menace boy with machete and pepper spray on Queens bus" https://youtube.com/watch?v=qalXSOLvEAU
Why would you want to take a bus if this is what you might get?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3hr ago
The state provides lots of public services that aren't supposed to be revenue-neutral though. Public libraries for instance or parks.
I think a razor focus on revenue and cost is besides the point. Public transport should be more systemically efficient (1 engine for 40 rather than 40 engines for 40: economies of scale), produce less pollution than cars, take up less space... The problem in Washington isn't just that it's expensive but that it's unsafe (catching on fire for instance), not transporting good numbers of people. Probably epic amounts of corruption going on too.
Cost is important, it shouldn't be excessively expensive, but taxes are a thing for a reason. If all government services were expected to recoup their costs why would we have taxes?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15hr ago
Does this show the weakness of UBI or weakness of American administrative capacity? California can't do HSR but HSR is still possible. In many countries public transport is perfectly usable, respectable, junkie-free...
Also if we're talking about UBI how hard can it be to get a robot to drive the buses and trains and cut down labour costs? I agree that UBI in the current American political system would be a giant mess. But that's not so much about UBI but about the American system.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
19hr ago
Why would the officer corps as a whole be split? Either Hegseth commands the loyalty of the military (via purging and promoting the right cadres into key positions) or he doesn't and they topple him.
I don't see why they'd split evenly rather than cluster on one side. The key actors are all in Washington I think, the Pentagon, White House, NSA, DIA, Senate, Supreme Court and House. Controlling all that confers legitimacy and a fair bit of power.
Someone would control the troops in Washington and then they'd set the tone, determine who's the legitimate govt and who's the traitorous rats being swiftly brought to justice.
I mean, even leaving Washington during a major political crisis is a serious show of weakness, it kind of means they don't trust the troops there doesn't it? If they don't have authority over the capital, where would they have authority? It's a bad look to not control the capital.
Also, the US military (left and right) agrees that China is a massive threat, why would they decide to start killing eachother in the face of this powerful adversary rather than working out some compromise?
Thinking backwards, surely post-Soviet Russia is a far more favourable environment for a civil war than America today? Yeltsin torpedoed the economy, it sank like a stone. Oligarchs looting everything and a huge communist party - toxic combination! Military shelling Parliament with tanks. Very dodgy elections. No good reason to accept the legitimacy of the government, they created it only a few years ago. The national culture of Russia seems to be less law-abiding than the US too. But they kept it together. There seem to be structural reasons preventing civil wars.
The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together. That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently. And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.
And how many brigades is Carney raising, 'to build our strength at home'? What about H-bombs, is he making any of those? Long range missiles? Attack drones? The Canadians are buying some... from the US.
Canadian leadership is basically unserious, they're pussies and losers I think. Same with Australian leadership or European leadership with the possible exception of Poland. They talk and talk and talk about rearming but do very little. Germany raised one new brigade, Poland raised 5, France is raising 1, the British army is still shrinking. A brigade is not a very large force, roughly 3-5000 men.
Australia is buying imaginary AUKUS-class and likely-imagined Virginia class submarines from America (they probably can't be made since the US is too slack to build enough for their own needs). The Australian surface fleet is in complete shambles. There are many more pressing needs than national defence apparently, like giving enormous amounts of taxpayer money to NDIS disability scammers or propping up house prices.
These people talk about partnerships and free trade agreements (and EU integration for Ukraine) but sign no alliances. They talk about reform but do nothing substantial or make things worse in dull, boring ways. They fundamentally have no concept of what they're actually supposed to be doing as leaders, their notion of leadership is some combination of 'make people-pleasing sounds' and 'follow legalistic/moralist codes without regard for the outcome'. At no point does leadership enter the equation for them. It doesn't matter if they have to spend a fortune on welfare for tax-leeching rapey migrants, if they have to build a fish disco for a nuclear plant or wreck their energy market. They'll do all this and find some way to defend it when it's unpopular.
They have no real concept that those are bad things and should be stopped. Some of them (Denmark) have cottoned on that voters don't like the rapey migrants and moved against that particular policy. But they still aren't real leaders, real leaders would foresee this issue from a base-level understanding of reality and their national interests and never even consider it. It's the difference between retracting your hand from the stove after being burnt and not being so stupid to touch the stove in the first place. Real leaders write new laws, establish new principles and adapt their policies to the times proactively. Trump may be wrong and foolish in many respects but he is at least a real leader.
So Carney can 'stop pretending' and 'name reality' but what strength is he building? Canada has three understrength brigades and only one deployable overseas + some training/reserve forces, the whole Canadian army might easily disappear in a single battle. And acting together, what is that? More conferences and blathering? What is he going to do with one deployable brigade? Pretending is all he can do.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
Well, I use Opus 4.5 on the $20 plan because I'm cheap and I find it very useful.
I think 'Ralph' is as dumb an idea as it sounds, no current AI is capable of going on autopilot like that. It needs a human to find errors for it and it needs clear human instructions for what to do or else it makes up its own vision for your software. I don't trust Opus's testing either, it has this alarming tendency of performative testing which doesn't actually test the real systems, just tests some pretend BS instead. It's much better with logging and manual checking for debugging. That's why I don't trust agents much, I find that they can just wreck the code or do weird things, go completely over the top from what you asked and are expensive to boot. But Opus on the website is basically an agent, you can just say 'edit these files inline' and it'll do so and that's good enough for me.
The code itself does work pretty reliably. I haven't seen any real technical debt, with context management and a basic understanding of what you're doing it'll work out just fine even on a fairly complex project.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
My point is that either Hegseth or the Obama era generals get arrested or shot as the military assesses its position. It's not like there are two Pentagons, one for each side.
No nuclear power has ever fought a civil war, nor have there been any major wars between nuclear powers. NATO and Russia are not at war, Pakistan and India skirmish at most.
And the whole idea is very unlikely. Look at January 6th. Red Americans didn't even bring their guns to overthrow the govt. It was the fakest coup attempt in history, riddled with intelligence assets too. America is not prepared for a civil war, fundamentally unserious in political violence.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
But that wouldn't be a civil war, it'd be like Korea where the martial law attempt failed because the military didn't really want to do a coup. If the military goes blue then the country is blue. If red then the country is red.
Only if the military actually divides then there would be a civil war. The US military really does not want to fight a potential nuclear war on US soil, against other Americans, they'll stay united, they might well decide to run the country from the Pentagon but they won't fight eachother. The moment they see the wind heading towards the blue side, they'll unite down that path, or vis versa. The Oklahomah National Guard or whoever do not want to fight massively outnumbered and outgunned, they'd lose.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
The Troubles wasn't a civil war, fighting was much less intense than in the Cultural Revolution or Germany squashing the communists. The UK government won and could've won harder at any time, if they were willing to use force more aggressively, if they didn't care about the media and fully committed to crushing the insurgency. What Cromwell did in Ireland, that's a civil war. There are major battles, sieges, multiple armies and an enormous death toll, mostly civilian.
Nuclear armed militaries have strong incentives to be united, they don't want to fight a nuclear war against themselves.
When it comes to inflicting atrocities, the state enjoys escalation dominance. They have everything militias have and much more. Even in the era of pikes and muskets (surely more accommodating to the untrained than today's weapons) Cromwell's army could singlehandedly dominate Britannia. People certainly tried to resist but the army crushed them. Only when the army divided could anything change.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
You know I was going to say 'while he is bad he didn't quite go that far' and it seems I misremembered, you are right. He clearly did:
"If I had a gun with two bullets, and I was in a room with Hitler, Bin-Laden, and Toby; I would shoot Toby twice!"
hoped Gilbert’s children would die “in their mother’s arms,” saying: “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”
One could say the first one is exaggerated but in the context of the second one...
However bad Jones is, I still think the US govt and military is far too strong for any serious civil war though. No rich industrialized nations with strong nuclear-armed militaries have ever had a civil war. Coups and smashing of dissidents are more likely. Even with an economic depression and a completely delegitimized government (suppose that the Senate and Congress were forcibly realigned under a president for life) there is still the military and if they are united on one side, that side wins. Russia in the 1990s was in a state of complete chaos and disaster and yet remained intact. The Chinese Cultural Revolution saw massive amounts of purging, street battles with heavy weapons between different factions of Maoists... but China was still united. Germany after WW1 was starving, the economy was obliterated, they'd just lost the kaiser and the war. The communists rose up and the army massacred them. Professional militaries in developed countries tend not to split into factions, I don't see why they would in the US.
America isn't Niger or Iraq, there are no other bodies that can plausibly contest the government's surveillance, targeting and striking power. Militias are LARPers rather than actual competitors against professional troops. I massively doubt this idea that guerrillas can snipe the drone pilot or whatever copypasta there is about America being vulnerable to an insurgency. Guerrilas don't have the ability to find and target professional troops, they don't have this huge targeting machine. The troops can just sit on base rather than commute and just execute everyone on the Palantir hit list with air power, while they listen in on comms, while they have informers infiltrating dissident groups. Consider what they did with the January 6th people, they found them and locked them up with intelligence resources. No strong state will lose to an insurgency if they actually want to win, only if they're obsessed with optics or don't really care is there a chance for the insurgents. That's why we have tanks, artillery, aircraft and professional armies and not just riflemen in civilian clothing. By definition a civil war is a serious war, the state will be fully committed.
"There seems to be some mistake, I was going to LARP Red Dawn and pepper your patrols with sniper fire."
"Dude I'm a Bolshevik, we don't believe in 'patrols'. We will take all the food and fuel and force obedience. We will shoot you for being bourgeois. Resist and I'll go after your family, I'll burn down your whole town. Then I'll propagandize that you started it, you deserved it and it never happened but it should've."
As you can see, the difference between a civil war and a cultural revolution/top down political violence isn't that reassuring.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3d ago
The prequels felt like they were real Star Wars even with their bad aspects. Much of Disney Star Wars seems plasticky, fake, interchangeable with other late 2010s/2020s media.
Where were the lightsaber battles, not one good lightsaber battle in the whole sequel trilogy! Nothing to rival Darth Maul, Dooku or Battle of the Heroes.
The space battles weren't that great either. They did to Star Wars whatever was done to make skim milk.
Still, he rules the better part of the world (in more ways than one)
Kind of?
White men do have 90%+ of the world's nuclear weapons and could theoretically subjugate the bulk of the world, extracting resources at will. Theoretically, there's military and technological supremacy over non-China. Certainly there's a fairly high standard of living.
But in actual fact, most large companies and government organizations in supposedly white-ruled countries seems to have a DEI policy that works against white men. In actual fact, the prevailing animus even in the US still seems to be anti white male. That is to say media, ads, television and video games seem to be lukewarm at best about white men, opposed at worst.
"It's OK to be white" as a slogan was treated as a serious, potentially terror-related, political crime. Maybe that's changed more recently?
White men may rule the world but they do not seem to rule their own countries, or at least rule in favour of themselves in the countries they supposedly rule. Control without accruing gains isn't true control I think. The loot flows from whites in Minnesota to blacks in Somalia, not the other way around. Supposedly white-run America enjoys overwhelming superiority in strength to Somalia but who is making gains here, who is really in control?
Military and economic strength is not as important as political strength, that pillar is the most important of all I think. When we study history, we seem to focus on the military and economic angles, the great leaders, innovations, organizing principles that seem to drive history. Or with the HBD crowd race is added to the mix. But it's political strength that is the most important factor, it's 'why' Rome could fight on after losing so many men to Hannibal but then lose their 'we will never lose' aura and fall to a force of Goths and Huns. Political strength is why Somalia stands above America in some respects, even though by any of the normal analytical frameworks we use the very notion is laughable.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
He said that one of the bigger surprises for him was how many devs, especially the more junior ones, have adopted using AI for a lot of their coding questions
Yeah it's great for that. You can ask really detailed specific questions, supply lots of context and then ask follow up questions, in real time. Whereas on a forum you're waiting and waiting...
https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/07/10/welcome-wagon-classifying-comments-on-stack-overflow/
If we take a majority vote on the rating of each comment (with ties going to the worse rating) comments on Stack Overflow break down like so... Fine 92.3% Unwelcoming 7.4% Abusive 0.3%
"This is becoming a waste of my time and you won't listen to my advice. What are the supposed benefits of making it so much more complex?"
"Step 1. Do not clutter the namespace. Then get back to us."
"The code you posted cannot yield this result. Please post the real code if you hope to get any help."
"This error is self explanatory. You need to check..."
"I have already told how you can... If you can't make it work, you are doing something wrong."
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6d ago
AIs can add fairly complex features in fairly large existing codebases. I've tried my hand at 'gamedev but I can't code' and it does work, even for more complex things like wargame AI where it needs to move a bunch of units on a 2D map, consider relative strength and threat, manage pathfinding.
The real issue is making stuff that's actually good. If you left AI to its own devices, it'll produce extremely generic concepts, functional but uninspired. Just try it, tell the AI to one-shot a game of some kind. You'll get the exact median in all areas, boring mechanics, boring opponents, boring kinds of variety.
Human level intelligence has been achieved and achieved some time ago IMO. What's needed is wisdom, extremely long time-horizons and better vision/spatial ability. All of that probably comes with more intelligence but it's subtly different from 'can solve even more bafflingly difficult mathematical tasks' intelligence. In the real world, the mathematics is not the hard part. It's using the mathematics, the physics, the chemistry, as just one part of a long process to create a useful product or technology.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
It all makes sense now. Reflexive support of a totally unknown opposition. Great confidence in intervention, despite a poor track record. Complete assurance that this time, they really are developing WMDs... Very little interest in detail (what carrier groups are there to use for this attack, there aren't any deployed in CENTCOM right now) or any consequences of the attack. No attempt to weigh up pros and cons.
Yes, I can completely believe you worked on US foreign policy in the Middle East.
If the Venezuelan operation were done in the context of a mass uprising, who knows what would happen? A civil war, a new government or just more chaos? How does that help achieve US goals, how does that secure the oil Trump wants? These are totally different situations with different goals.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
I'm ignoring that because it's not true. The Israeli military has been eager to bomb and wreck Gaza and they've worked hard to limit and constrain food and medical supplies coming in, despite pressure from the US and EU. The ethos is not 'first world standards' but 'the bare minimum that can be dubiously defended as first world standards'.
Since when did first world countries routinely shoot children trying to collect food? Or claim just about every UN/human rights NGO is biased against them? Even Israeli sources have been going 'what is the point of this, what are we trying to achieve by setting these arbitrary lines and shooting people who try to cross them':
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
Come back when you've worked out the difference between 'skirmishing' and 'attempted regime change'. You have no idea what you're proposing, an incredibly simplistic or outright ignorant view of the relevant dynamics.
Russia and China do not care much about skirmishes, they care more about regime change. The response would be different.
Hypothetical Venezuelan protests have little to do with the situation, unless they're well-armed enough to be credible threats to the state. I already addressed this but you don't seem to understand it.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
I agree completely with the rally-around the flag effect, I expect there's probably enriched uranium or plutonium dispersed or hidden somewhere too.
But also I think air power is a bit of a mirage.
If US/Israeli air power was so great, why haven't they been able to destroy Hamas? That was their goal right? Hamas didn't have any air defences whatsoever. Israel's bombing has been extremely intensive, they've wrecked most of Gaza and gotten lots of lefties upset with how intense the bombing has been, people have been throwing out terms like 'absolute destruction', just look at all the footage. In addition Israel controls entry and exit into Gaza so they've been able to quasi-besiege it and block off food imports. But it still wasn't enough to destroy Hamas!
Nobody in the West really likes Hamas that much, they're considered a terror group. Gaza is a pretty small mini-state right next to Israel. Hamas is a tiny fraction of the Iranian military in strength. There have also been Israeli ground attacks. Even if Hamas was destroyed and Israel achieved a full victory it would not necessarily show that airpower would work in Iran, since just about every factor is much worse for an Iran campaign. And yet Hamas is still around, they're shooting collaborators.
If air power was so great, Hamas should be gone, right? You can blow up a commander, they just replace him again and again and again. I suppose that Hamas and Gazans are highly motivated to be anti-Israel and this compensates for being bombed? But it also seems that the strength of airpower is overrated if in even a highly favourable environment it fails.
The Iranian opposition don't seem to be armed, unless they're armed I don't think they're too relevant, the government can crush them if they want Tiananmen style, it's just that they don't particularly want to.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
9d ago
You haven't provided military analysis at all, all you say in your little substack post is 'bomb and good things will happen'. At no point do you investigate the value proposition, the historic success rate of these air campaigns, consider relevant factors such as 'what are the risks of starting a major war in a key energy exporting area'? Go read a RAND report, there are far smarter ways to be hawkish.
mass protests and regime change in Iran to Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
Ukraine was in the middle of a civil war when Russia invaded, the rebels there had gotten FAR further than in Iran. They actually controlled territory, were well organized into their own mini-states in Donetsk and Luhansk. And even with the Russian bombing... Even with the Russian invasion... It's still turned into a mess for Russia because Ukraine (considerably smaller than Iran) is not easily toppled. Ukraine has outside support, so would Iran.
I love that you leave out "China" when discussing the Korean War.
Yeah, the Chinese provided the ground troops that retook North Korea. They fought the bulk of the ground campaigns. Ground campaigns matter, I have stressed this. But the US destroying 75-90% of the standing structures in North Korea still didn't bring them to the negotiating table, do you think a few measly missiles are going to knock out Iran? Israel has bombed the shit out of Gaza and marched in troops several times, it took a long long long time to achieve a draw. And that's all they've achieved! Hamas is still in charge on the ground.
It's insanely dumb to go 'yes, the Israelis have managed, after years and years of shelling and bombing and ground invasion against a tiny poor state they outnumber and totally encircle, to get back their captives, while Hamas is still in charge - so the US and Israel can bomb a mountainous country 50x bigger than Gaza in population, 80x the size of Israel in size, a country with much greater military resources and somehow this will overthrow the regime, without even a ground invasion since even in my fantasy world that's still too far'
There's no reason why this would work!
Where were they last June?
Sending military aid takes time and depends on the situation, whether it's a tit for tat squabble or a major campaign. We've been through over 20 years of interventionists proposing 'easy' campaigns in the Middle East that almost always turn out to be long, expensive, failures and yet no lessons seem to be learnt. Iran is not even an 'easy' campaign, it is an extremely difficult campaign in a mountainous, highly populated, huge territory. It is the hardest campaign.
Bombing Iran more aggressively is the surest path to them nuclearizing.
Seriously? I thought they didn't want weapons? What are they waiting for?
You understand the concept of theory of a hypothetical scenario, right? If it's warm, I don't need a coat. But if it's cold, I'll wear a coat. I might bring a coat in my bag if I think it'll suddenly get cold enough for me to need it! I'm a latent coat-wearer.
Ensuring victory of the opposition and reducing the chance of protracted conflict and bloodshed.
What opposition? Led by who? Can you even name them? What are their goals and ideologies? Have you justified that an air campaign would result in the success of this amorphous political grouping, as opposed to tarring them with comprador status (presumed to be in alliance with foreigners trying to bomb the country)?
Imagine if you will how you would feel if Venezuela had been undergoing mass, violent protests?
'Feelings' are not supposed to come into it. Strategy via 'feelings' is stupid and usually immoral too in its final outcomes, inferior in all respects compared to sober analysis.
How would attacking Iran benefit America?
Throwing missiles around isn't going to do anything significant. How many missiles has Russia dumped on Ukraine, how many thousands of drones and missiles have they fired off? They've largely broken the Ukrainian electrical grid yet Ukraine remains in the struggle after years and years of bombing and a large-scale ground invasion.
The Saudis bombed Yemen. The US bombed Yemen. The bombing did very little.
How many bombs did the Allies drop on Germany, they flattened whole cities with firestorms comparable to nuclear strikes! This did not break the will of Nazi Germany, they fought on till ground troops conquered the country. The US flattened North Korea, they literally razed the entire country such that people were living in holes in the ground because the buildings had been destroyed. The war ended in a draw and from then on North Korea devoted massive resources into armaments and bunkerization and has taken a very hostile stance to America, as one might expect. Bombing Vietnam caused considerable casualties for Vietnam but it did not achieve the political goal, Saigon was lost. The Russians bombed the hell out of Chechnya but needed a ground invasion to secure it.
Bombing has military relevance but the political effect is very weak, often counterproductive. If you want a political effect, you need to have ground troops for an invasion and this invasion needs to be in progress or very likely to succeed to pressure leaders into surrendering. Alternately, you can aim for a military effect in that bombing can swing the tide of a relatively evenly fought civil war as in Syria or Libya. Only the bombing of Serbia worked out per the 'air campaign only' concept. Iran is a lot bigger than Serbia and a lot further away from NATO airbases. Air campaigns only work in special cases, not generally.
The prior Israeli and American bombing of Iran did nothing, there was no significant military or political effect. The bombing of Fordow had no effect since Iran does not want nuclear weapons. The Israelis have been saying the Iranians are 6-18 months away from nuclear weapons for the last 30 years. The Israelis are lying. If the Iranians wanted nuclear weapons, they'd simply acquire them like other countries that want them. Pakistan didn't stay months away from nukes for decades, they just acquired them. Same with North Korea. Iran probably wants to be a latent nuclear state like South Korea or Japan, they'll only change this stance if threatened with imminent disaster.
Bombing Iran more aggressively is the surest path to them nuclearizing.
There are also a myriad of other costs of bombing Iran. Oil prices will rise and economic uncertainty will increase. The cost in munitions will reduce US strength in more important theaters like Asia. It will further worsen US diplomatic standing. Russia and China will support Iran to inflict costs on the US, they won't be alone like Serbia was. The Iranians will fight on since a ground invasion is totally impractical and a ground invasion is the only thing that can actually deliver the goal of regime change, unless there is a civil war.
If you think the regime might be collapsing and is totally unsustainable then why bomb, why should the US not just do nothing and save a lot of effort, risk and blood? If you're right then doing nothing is the most logical choice, if you're wrong (and the semi-annual major Iran riots are another nothingburger) and the US bombs, then it probably won't work?
Trump shouldn't make these rash proclamations, he should take some notes from Xi about doing nothing, developing internally and biding his time. This recent Venezuela campaign seems to be incoherent. Maduro is gone, some people are dead but the whole socialist structure is still there. Maduro is a clown, not some evil wizard holding the whole country under his thrall. Trump could've just unsanctioned Venezuelan oil if he wanted to buy it, would have probably been much cheaper than moving all these troops around. He thinks he owns Venezuela, people are making memes about conquistadors but conquistadors fought ground campaigns and actually conquered territory, putting it under their complete political control. That comes first, then comes resource extraction. Montezuma's vice-emperor didn't take over the Aztecs!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
I think people overrate the testimony of that guy.
Venezuela can't even maintain their own oil industry, the core basis of their national wealth, why would they be any good at fighting? They probably didn't know how to use their equipment and certainly couldn't maintain it. The Russians quit giving Venezuela loans to buy military equipment a few years ago, I think that even they had written Venezuela off.
Security Guard: Without a doubt. I'm sending a warning to anyone who thinks they can fight the United States. They have no idea what they're capable of. After what I saw, I never want to be on the other side of that again. They're not to be messed with.
I think this indicates he was paid to say this as part of the propaganda campaign. He was probably paid much more than he was making as a soldier. The real superpower is just having a certain level of organization and discipline.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
18d ago
Meanwhile in the realm of AI videos: https://x.com/ShitpostRock/status/2007643143257096461
Or you can just go on /gif/ and there's usually an AI thread and maybe a Grok Imagine thread too. Gooners find a way.
The ongoing adventures of George Droyd did a lot of mental damage to Google I suspect, even though it has nothing to do with Google.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
19d ago
I think what's happened here is a successful air raid, based on Trump's desire to seize Venezuelan oil. He has always been interested in other countries oil reserves and has been trying to steal their oil tankers too.
https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/2007520406199251070
President Trump says the US will use Venezuela's oil reserves and sell "large amounts" to other countries after capturing Nicolás Maduro.
Step 1, a decapitation strike on Maduro, was a complete success for the US. Unsurprisingly a non-white, non-East Asian country that can't manage its own oil industry or run agriculture properly is not going to be great at fighting. But Step 2 is the key part, getting someone in charge of the country who'll let you take and sell the oil, installing a puppet and keeping them in power. That's the part where the US has historically floundered.
The invasion of Afghanistan also started with a highly successful airborne special forces operation: the Taliban were ousted in weeks and Rumsfeld laughed at the reporters who'd been anxiously worrying about 'quagmires'. Only later did things start to go south.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
19d ago
Well at least we won't be hearing about the rules-based international order for some time now...
A US invasion of Venezuela would be a smart move to put the squeeze on Cuba, secure the hemisphere and a good amount of oil - if the US was good at imperialism that is. I expect a complete mess, lots of munitions expended for very little practical gains. Whatever military gains there are will be outweighed by failing to install a stable puppet government.
No, Americans do like to live in cities like all settled peoples. Americans invented the skyscraper!
Until recently the US had dense and highly developed urban centres. Americans failing to defend and preserve their city centres is a serious failure.
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