RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
Everyone would have to do it all at once or the Amish are going to get crushed by people who retain modern technology. It's not stable for some people to retain modernity and some to go without.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
Don't know, I can't find any evidence of it. Metacritic of 92, 93% positive on steam. Looks pretty good!
Meanwhile Overwatch 2 is at... 17% positive on steam. 2042 is at 45%. Fallout 76 and Cyberpunk seem to have redeemed themselves after a bad launch though, as did No Man's Sky.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
Because much of Ukraine is Russian. They speak Russian. They are Russian ethnically and live in a region historically called Novorossiya. The Eastern half of Ukraine is particularly Russian and there are considerable nationalist feelings within Russia about their co-Russians - which prompted the initial civil war in 2014. Strelkov and his band showed up and joined with locals to fight the Ukrainian army in Donetsk and Luhansk, now annexed. Strelkov is not the biggest Putin supporter in the world, he was imprisoned by the authorities. There's grassroots nationalist feeling in Russia that Putin has to respond to - formerly by suppression and now by encouragement.
The western part of Ukraine actually speak Ukrainian and can't be considered Russian. They hate Russians for a bunch of reasons, including the Holodomor. They sought to celebrate Stephen Bandera as a founding father. The Russians (and Poles) consider him a genocidal war criminal. The new 2014 regime sought to restrict the Russian language and Ukrainize the population, prompting the unrest in the east of Ukraine. Russia does not want a Russia-hating state ruling over large number of Russians right next door, aligned with the West.
Furthermore, the Eastern half of Ukraine is fairly industrialized. In the Soviet era it was supposed to be interoperable with the rest of the military industrial complex, engines for Russian helicopter gunships were made there amongst other things. There's lots of mines, coal and factories, the west is more agricultural. Eastern Ukraine also is the gateway to Crimea which is the most Russian part of Ukraine. Eastern Ukraine controls water and power supplies to the quasi-island. The land bridge and Mariupol region Russia took back in 2022 is key to holding Crimea, also a major naval base.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
France and Britain have H-bombs, why would they fear Russia? It's idiotic to wage a proxy war against your natural energy supplier, they only do it because the US is dragging them along (and not inconsiderable Euro brainrot).
Why would Russia invade NATO countries and risk nuclear war? Risk-benefit doesn't stack up.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
You're not alone: https://youtube.com/watch?v=oXMjtVnLD4o
Harden your heart Putin, Increase your attacks, Banish them all to Palestine and we shall marry Ukrainian women!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
US foreign policy is schizophrenic. Why would anyone want to negotiate with the US at this point? Obama takes great pains to advance diplomacy with Iran and join the TPP - Trump immediately reneges on the nuclear deal and leaves the TPP - maximum pressure and trade wars! Biden wants to go back to Obama policies on Iran and climate. Why should anyone trust in his word when the next guy can negate it?
Trump wants to throw Ukraine under the bus. Well, fair enough. May as well get off the sinking ship in a lifeboat rather than swim in the cold. But it's still not consistent, it's confused and certainly does Zelensky no good.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11d ago
Mossad's been gunning down Iranian researchers for ages - you are not proposing a new idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nuclear_scientists
I don't think we can separate the bad writing from broader quality issues. Take Battlefield 2042 for instance - there was no scoreboard in a team shooter. It was buggy and broken on release. Halo Infinite, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077 itself (though they later improved it), Overwatch 2, Starfield... These are major titles from formerly well-respected publishers yet many had fewer features than their predecessors, released in a shocking state or were heavily and aggressively monetized.
Halo Infinite on release was lacking custom games, no automatic rejoin, had only 10 maps (to Halo 2's 12), no region selection, no campaign co-op, no anti-cheat... I haven't played it, just watched a video ripping into it. The gameplay was apparently good but everything else wasn't: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y-VnT1QNWPg
It's not that Boeing's issues are localized solely to the bolt-screwer-in workers, there are problems in upper management and operations. Likewise in games, it's not just writing but broader issues across companies. Small, talented and motivated teams can and do make great games! Noita, Dyson Sphere Program, Grim Dawn, Ultrakill... Hey, Slay the Princess has a great story and that was 2 people! It's the big players that have been suffering. They are supposed to have the resources, time and experience to make great games yet often seem to fail. Everything about Starfield was bad AFAIK - story, graphics, gameplay, everything.
Bad games and bad writing are like peas in a pod. Go have a look at Hyenas, how everyone was laughing at such a stupid, ugly, cringeworthy concept that apparently cost Creative Assembly/Sega a hundred million. Bad designers had a bad idea and executed it poorly - failure across the board.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
I think a more compelling argument might be "back in the 1970s the Science said that we were heading for an Ice Age due to industrial pollution and emissions - plus they've been predicting catastrophic climate change (melting of the ice caps, massive temperature changes and disruption) by 2000, 2010 and 2020 so they clearly don't know what they're doing'. We don't need to get bogged down in whether the greenhouse effect works as stated.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
Only in nominal terms, in PPP Iran's economy is 3x bigger. While some have issues with purchasing power parity it does seem unreasonable to measure sanctioned countries in USD terms.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
12d ago
True - though past a certain point the cost of the marginal interceptor missile rises to infinity. It's not simple to put those things together! There's no liquid anti-missile market.
Israel seems to have been shooting at Shaheds with air to air missiles: https://twitter.com/YaariCohen/status/1779511490795511988
The cost ratio is something like 10:1 against - unsustainable. It might not even be worth the wear and tear on the aircraft.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
they might have let some of the missiles get through, lol. This is just too comical.
What world are you living in? Plenty of Iranian missiles got through. It's right there on video. Are people unironically believing the Israeli '99% shot down' routine?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
Hey, US taxpayers are paying for many of the pretty lights in the sky. How much do you think Arrow interceptors cost? Several million each. It wouldn't surprise me if Israel and co spent a cool billion on air defence today. Iran wouldn't have spent nearly so much - they come out ahead even before damage is factored in.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
Iran's firing off Shaheds that cost $10,000 to $50,000 to produce. Israel's trying to shoot them down with F-15s and F-35s, plus their air defences. Can that possibly be economical? The flying cost of an F-35 is about $30,000 to $40,000 per hour. They can shoot down multiple Shaheds on each trip but I assume they're firing air to air missiles, it's a rather small target for cannon. Sidewinders apparently cost nearly $400,000. The Israelis make their own missiles and price is unclear but one imagines it's somewhat in that hundred thousand dollar zone.
At any rate it's somewhat academic, I imagine the US will be paying the bills.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
13d ago
Those are civilian general-purpose computers, military tech has to use hardened tech against EMPs, they need special secret software and configurations, electronic countermeasures and counter-countermeasures. Can't exactly go to Taiwan, the chips are supposed to be made in the USA for supply chain security... It's super complicated.
t. Lockheed Martin shareholder
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
14d ago
Just get rid of the regulations! It's insane. In Australia, nuclear power is illegal - we're actually trying to buy US nuclear submarines because they're superior to conventional subs in range. But no, we can't have nuclear energy for civilians despite having by far the biggest uranium reserves on earth. Our geography is stable and technology is quite advanced. We have a research reactor. We should be a nuclear energy superpower, mining and enriching and building reactors.
Stalin blamed Soviet economic problems on 'wreckers', workers deliberately sabotaging machinery, undermining morale, giving false orders. Ironically the wrecking came from the top down, in incentives, laws and institutions that undermined performance. That's the problem the West faces - industry taking body blows from regulators on housing, energy, production and so on.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
14d ago
The US can make a 210 MW reactor, cram it in a submarine (with oodles of advanced stealth/sonar/missile technology) for about $2 billion. They can produce one such submarine every year. Or in the Nimitz class, they install two 550 MW reactors in a floating city/airbase/fortress for a grand total of $5 billion. The reactors surely can't be that much of the overall cost, 20% at most. The missiles and gadgetry are far more complicated, the guidance and computers are the expensive parts.
Small footprint nuclear reactors are proven technology, they've been made for decades. The US chooses not to administrate civilian nuclear energy competently, there's no technical problem. This is 1960s technology, at most. There's nothing all that sophisticated about nuclear energy, even breeder reactors.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15d ago
You'll need enormous amounts of transmission capacity to take solar electricity from California over the mountains to the East Coast or down from Northern Canada. Burning thermite seems energy-inefficient - and that's another huge capital cost since you make a specialized power plant.
Power should be produced near where it's consumed, reliably and consistently. Breeder reactors are the way to go IMO, or we could rush towards fusion. Just one set of infrastructure with 90% capacity factor and minimal transmission cost. It's not hard to make reactors, the US has the technical chops to fit a 300 MW PWR reactor on a submarine along with sonar, torpedoes, stealth all for a total cost of $2 Billion.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15d ago
So your thesis is 'there's a phase-change after a certain point where organizations become more political/institutional above Dunbar's law but despite all the bad things we know about big institutions it's necessary and fine?'
Or were you opposing that, saying that you deny that recruitment is the best thing people can do, that the human, non-optimized element is good, that organizations need soul to start off with? I don't understand, is it that the strategies like tricking Coca Cola are hyperdunbar and therefore good? Bad? It seems like a really complicated thesis!
I'm guessing we all struggled through university lecturers telling us to give Topic Sentences and Introductions and it was always cringeworthy to read someone's essay that said 'in this essay I will argue that...' But I think it's important to provide some kind of guidance, especially in long essays. I'm hopelessly lost. Are other people lost or am I having a skill issue?
cherry-picking of instances that serve your argument
So far I've brought up space capabilities, naval power, air power, high tech industries like car factories, high quality scientific papers, AI, urban development and skylines, cybercriminals, green industry, coal production, diplomatic influence, cybercrime, market reforms, resistance to colonizers and post-WW2 military performance. Is that cherry-picking?
Where does India outperform China? In a green index which declares the Philippines a major leader? Meanwhile, big industrial powers like Taiwan, China and South Korea are right at the bottom.
India's level of development is just lower. I have a special interest in military affairs - the comparison is marked. The Indian army - a whole fleet of Russian T-90s and T-72s, Russian BMP-2s, Russian Tunguskas, Konkurs, Iglas. There are some Indian light vehicles, helicopters and missiles but even Brahmos is codeveloped with Russia. Most of their arsenal is imported. It's the same in aviation, they fly Migs, Su-30s, Rafales, Jaguars... and a few domestically produced and long-delayed Tejas fighters.
China is a different story. Nearly all their vehicles and equipment is made domestically. Like India they bought aircraft from the Soviets but supplemented them with hundreds of domestic J-10s and their own 5th gen aircraft, which India doesn't have at all.
India has lower CO2 emissions than China and higher birthrates. That's it. OP's original point was that China wasn't much more successful than India, which is bizarre. China is way more successful than India.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15d ago
LCS was horrendously bad, was it even suitable for Iran?
In April 2012, Chief of Naval Operations Greenert said, "You won't send it into an anti-access area"; rather, groups of two or three ships are intended to be sent into areas where access is jeopardized to perform missions like minesweeping while under the cover of a destroyer. The LCS's main purpose is to take up operations such as patrolling, port visits, anti-piracy, and partnership-building exercises to free up high-end surface combatants for increased combat availability.
Sounds like it was supposed to be handling Yemen...
By May 2022, the Navy shifted its plans to decommission nine LCS warships in Fiscal Year 2023, citing their ineffective anti-submarine warfare system, their inability to perform any of the Navy's missions, constant breakdowns, and structural failures in high-stress areas of the ships.
Or not.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15d ago
The only way there is any headway for the economy is through the establishment of Special Economic Zones
Case in point. China created SEZs, India didn't. China deregulated its economy, India didn't. Was Chinese liberalization traumatic, were there people angry about losing their iron rice bowls, was there inflation and inequality? Of course! Yet they struggled through rather than shying away from reform. You say 'weak state, strong society', I say 'qualitative difference'. Build up a strong state, change those labour laws, compete or lose - that's the rule of this world.
Yeah, you wouldn't have happened to hear about the 700 years of constant Islamic conquest
Did China have foreign invasions? Yes, they had to deal with the Mongols and the Manchus. They had to deal with the Japanese. They had to deal with the Europeans too.
Yeah, the seat that the UN originally offered to India and India conceded to China.
OK, so India made a massive blunder helping the PRC. Nevertheless China was rewarded for its wartime performance with a veto, they used their strength and diplomatic abilities to take their seat from ROC. And it's the same today. All around the world, China flexes its muscles - they help Russia in Ukraine, they arrange Saudi-Iranian rapprochement. What does India do? Buy Russian oil and military technology because their own defence-industrial base is pretty poor. India's influence in world affairs? Pretty minimal.
Why do you think China that dropped down to 51st spot on Climate Change Performance Index is better than India that ranks 7th.
The reason India ranks so highly on the Climate Change Performance Index is because it's poor - I bet if they included Congo or Malawi they'd be even higher still - the Phillipines is even higher than India. Very low emissions there! Climate change is a joke and the Chinese clearly don't care - they're building loads of coal power as well. Yet they see renewables as a market to dominate like all the others.
Modi boasts about reaching 1/4 of Chinese coal production, India doesn't care either but they'll opportunistically ask for aid: https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/1774844651394228422
Compare the national attitudes! China says 'we're a renewables/electric cars/industrial superpower' as they advance their own global strategy as a competitor to the West, India says 'give us more money', coming to the West as a supplicant.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
16d ago
They have the edge in a few places, but it's not a massive or universal advantage.
A few places? Where's the Indian space station, where's the Indian navy, the Indian air force, the Indian high-tech industries in comparison to China? Where are the robotized gigafactories?
Xiaomi car factory: https://youtube.com/watch?v=a5KhnLLpoQ0
High quality scientific papers by country: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/annual-tables/2022/country/all/all
India is apparently less scientifically productive than Australia, albeit improving. The population of Australia is 26.6 million. There's an absolutely monstrous gap between India and China. China makes 5x more cars than India, they're so far ahead in AI and computing it's incomparable. In China big cities have this cyberpunk aesthetic - during COVID lockdowns they had drones flying around saying "Please restrain your soul's desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing." I don't want to live there - I want freedom and artistic expression. Even so, the aesthetic is pretty good!
Shanghai: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bw3yXaVHuLs
Big Indian cities have a Malthusian slum aesthetic - a totally different kind of dystopia. When it comes to cybercrime, Indian thieves tend to prefer scamming credulous octogenarians with gift cards - Chinese hackers steal 5G tech, turbines, sensitive and secret documents. When it comes to climate change, China builds all the solar panels and wind turbines, India asks for climate finance. There's a qualitative difference between India and China.
Mumbai: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gV5EU6daoVI
Even in history, India was conquered by the British - China got wrecked but not colonized. They fought bravely and desperately against all comers rather than rolling over. China was if not one of the Big Three in WW2, at least the Fourth of Roosevelt's Four Policemen. They got their UNSC veto, India begs for one. Postwar, China fought the US to a stalemate in Korea, skirmished with the Soviet Union and Vietnam. India just clobbered Pakistan a couple of times and lost a skirmish with China.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
16d ago
There are ways to use military power to get what you want non-violently. The US quelled the Chinese in the last Taiwan Straits crisis by sailing a carrier group in and demonstrating China's military weakness back in 1996. They blockaded Cuba in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US created a bunch of international institutions that serve US interests using military/economic power - they invented the UN for instance.
If you're strong enough you can bomb other countries with impunity like the US and Israel do in Syria.
Finally, use of strength can be profitable! Wagner's gold mines and holdings in Central Africa for instance, that's sustainable warfare. Or annexing land, that's how countries get their borders and the basis for their strength. Show me a major power and I'll show you a successful war-winner and land-annexer.
Alliances can also be a source of strength yet they are also fractious and problematic. Are all five countries equally threatened, do they take the enemy seriously? Are the weaker allies passing the buck to the stronger countries?
I was going to say... don't you control the troops? Just Lincoln the media if they go against the party line, corporations can eat an Alex-Jones sized fine, unions can be nationalized.
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