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SkoomaDentist

The Greater Finnish Empire

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joined 2022 September 04 19:08:00 UTC 

				
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SkoomaDentist


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
The Greater Finnish Empire

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 19:08:00 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


East Germany




I don't think East Germany is a good comparison given how thoroughly Stasi had infiltrated every aspect of life in East Germany.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This has historically been the case, but I have heard rumblings from Ukraine that mass production of drone interceptors for Shaheds has actually pushed the price of those to below that of the attack drones.




This may have effect on future wars but has no effect on the current war on Iran or even other near term wars the US participates in, particularly given how slow such procedures change in the US military.


For the moment the attack side has significant cost advantage.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If you need skilled workforce for manufacturing you fucked up royally during the design phase.




You can't build modern high tech equipment (which interceptors definitely are) with 70s low skilled manufacturing methods. The failure rates would approach 100%.




this is why stuff needs to be able to be produced at scale, with untrained personnel, sometimes under terrible conditions.




You can do this. The inherent tradeoff is that you're going to be stuck with Vietnam war era designs. If you want things to be buildable with only a hammer and screwdriver, you're going to be limited to things that can be built with such crude tools and no skills.


Consider this: Any high reliability electronics using BGA or QFN parts need x-ray inspection to filter out boards with short circuits caused by uneven solder flow. A shitload of components are only available in BGA or QFN packages and many are fundamentally impossible to build in any other packages (simply too many pins). That means you need highly skilled labor to build them or beyond state of the art automation which is only viable at massive cost which in turn means massive production amounts. The same goes for modern passive components that can be literally the size of small sand grains. And that's just one small part of the entire supply chain.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If we produced more the cost per unit will fall dramatically.




Only if everything in the entire supply chain is reshaped with that in mind.


Mil spec anything costs ridiculous amounts because there's loads and loads of red tape, the parts have to be available for many decades, extra QC checks and parts binning, rigorous additional testing and of course because there fundamentally can't be much competition because it's not mass market so manufacturers have little incentive to reduce prices.


Yes, if the interceptors were built from COTS parts and modules with minimal bureaucratic processes, prices would fall dramatically but that's not how the US military does things.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I was just thinking about this gem yesterday.




To be fair to him, hair metal did AFAICT get mainstream airplay during Reagan's first term, so that's at least one campaign promise filled!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yeah I wonder how much of their stock of interceptors they've already burned through.




FWIW, similar speculations have been aired in Finnish newspaper analyses about USA's short term available stockpiles for the war. Fancy defence missiles are expensive and limited while Iran's ballistic missiles and Shaheds are much cheaper. Further, Iran doesn't even have to hit all that regularly and as long as they can keep the threat level up, that's going to have a major effect on the economy of several of the gulf states and shipping (which in turn will have global economic effects). Iran can't win the war but they may be able to prevent USA also from winning.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The interesting part is the "vaporizing" here. I'm pretty sure that most failure modes of such a launch would not vaporize a significant fraction of the payload or even the engine cores. The "fallout" would quite literally be tens of thousands of 1-kg pits (and a few fuel pellets) raining down from the explosion. Compared with the alternative, that contaminates a much smaller area. Manual clean-up would be possible, economical and necessary from a proliferation (and ecological, of course) perspective.




Uranium is not the problem unless you vaporize tons of it (and I do mean vaporize, not just scatter tiny nuggets around). It's far more dangerous as a toxic heavy metal than due to radiation due to its very long half life of a billion years or more. Reactor meltdowns on earth are a problem because the reactors contain significant quantities of shorter lived and thus very strongly radioactive components, most notably Cesium-137 and Iodine-131. A reactor that has barely begun operation hasn't yet had time to accumulate significant quantities of those.


Fallout really doesn't apply here as it means small heavily radioactive particles that fall down downwind of the detonation. Those particles are generated by the neutron activation of the surrounding materials and mixing up the tiny debris with radiation products from a surface burst. For airburst the quantities are smaller and are so high in the atmosphere that they've had time to decay to safer isotopes by the time they fall down in months to years.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I feel like any Terminator 2 influences weren't nearly as overt as The Matrix and everyone and their cousin trying to ape bullet time or something similar.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Now, granted, it's only a fanfic, but in principle there is no reason why it could not be filmed and become the best Terminator movie since Judgement Day.




Sure there is: It completely ignores prime parts of the franchise's setup such as rewriting Sarah Connor's personality to a weirdo rationalist character so that the author can shoehorn his ideology into a familiar story as well as magically moving the story forward by 13 years.


Or to put it another way, it's not and cannot be a sequel. At best it would be a completely different story with terminators and a completely unfamiliar character who somehow shares a name with Sarah Connor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And the Alien series. "Oh man one of these things was terrifying. How about HUNDREDS of them?"


Where to do you go from there without being derivative?




Alien Resurrection showed one possible way to do that. Unfortunately the movie fucked up in so many other ways, probably not helped by the setup from (equally fucked up if in other ways) Alien 3.


I think it's a mistake to think that you necessarily have to escalate. There are many other ways to add a twist. Sure, Aliens added a whole lot more aliens but it also transformed the movie into a different genre and made Ripley into one of the most badass female film characters of all time (an excellent example of how to show an actually badass female character instead of telling someone is supposed to be one).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A sequel should be another story.




For fairly good examples of this, see Indiana Jones 2 & 3. They don't try to reinvent the canon of the first movie but are simply further adventures that Indy embarks on.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What's America getting out of it?




The US is effectively a client state of Israel and the politicians go out of their way to jump when the Israeli lobby says so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
When even Israeli sources make the point that Israel in fact has knowingly propped up terrorists / militia that target Israel, that makes your "doubt" rather poorly sourced. Direct control is largely irrelevant when you go to fund someone whose target you already know.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But I doubt Israel has been doing what Iran has been doing, namely having an organization like Hezbollah, which is effectively controlled by Iran, to engage in terrorism against Israel.




Ahem.


"Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Terminator




By the time T3 came out (in 2003), the style of action scifi that the Terminator 1 & 2 were was getting too far out of style. Since then it's only gotten worse.


This may be nostalgia but to me both Terminators appear to be more "grounded" than more modern action scifi films. Yes, there are killer robots but once you get down to it most of the on-screen action could be described as "Young man and woman try to escape a monomaniacal Austrian bodybuilder in a leather jacket while falling in love" and "An Austrian bodybuilder in a leather jacket tries to protect a teenage boy and his mother from a psycho killer while learning to be more 'cool'". If you remove that groundedness, a sequel just doesn't feel like right.


Then there's is the cautiously optimistic vibe. A part of what made both T1 and T2 feel so good was that neither had a downer ending or even setting. The end of T1 implies that the bad future has been averted while T2 finishes with Sarah Connor saying "The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope, because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too". How do you make a sequel that manages to keep things reasonably optimistic without basically undoing everything that has happened?


Finally there's just the fact that both movies were just goddamn great and it really isn't easy to make a worthy successor for a movie of that caliber while having to stick to an established setting, never mind for two. Good plotting and directing, quotes galore, outstanding music and iconic characters. The T-800 is Arnold while Linda Hamilton starts as a fairly realistic slightly ditzy girl next door in T1 and evolves into a a fucking ripped warrior mama who leaves no doubt that she is capable of doing what needs to be done to protect her son all the while staying feminine (ie. no unrealistic freak territory).


Terminator 3 was a semi-ok movie as such if you're ok with John Connor looking like a hobo Beverly Hills 90210 / Dawson's Creek "teenager" but ultimately is what you get when a sequel loses the vibe and just isn't that good. Terminator: Salvation was a sequel only in name. Genisys tried to be a proper sequel but replaced Linda Hamilton with a silly little girlboss with zero credibility and the ending was frankly ridiculous. Dark Salvation was some weird dystopic and depressive attempt at probably being "gritty and real" but mostly seemed to just concentrate on removing everything good from Sarah Connor to the extent that I couldn't make myself watch more than a few scenes where Arnold showed up.


I think Terminator 3 (or perhaps right after it) was the final moment when a proper sequel was possible but that would have required involvement from James Cameran and for everyone to have been more enthusiastic about it. Any time after that there was too much baggage in modern Hollywood trends that prevented making a proper sequel (in addition to Arnold playing The Guvernator during most of the 2000s). Just compare Linda Hamilton with the girlboss replacement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 1, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The visual effects of Terminator 2 were mind-blowing on release and have aged incredibly well.




Much of this is because they were used so brilliantly. A killer machine made out of liquid metal doesn't have to look realistic as long as it looks cool and plausible. I believe they only used fancy CGI for the FX that look like FX (ie. time travel, T-1000 morphing, terminator vision) and did most of the rest with traditional techniques where the viewers are going to be much more critical about realism compared to what was achievable with CGI at the time. Contrast this with Jurassic Park where the dinosaurs look almost like upscaled rubber toys because it turns out that people have a whole lot more practical experience of how real animals move compared to killer robots.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm saying that for the SF tech crowd, actually removing so-called "cultural safety" (racial equity, transphobia etc etc) would be a much bigger deal than removing limitations on mass suirveillance. For evidence, see Google's transformation from "do no evil" to their ubiquituous spying on literally everyone.


You can't draw an equality sign between woke and self righteous moralism as wokism has no monopoly on it. See eg. the religious right, war on porn etc.