BahRamYou
9hr ago
it appears that everyone in this thread except me has not bothered to set his image.
That's what I'm talking about. And most people don't have anything else to really distinguish themselves either.
BahRamYou
10hr ago
How do you remember all that about everyone here? It's really hard for me to remember who anyone is here on sites like this where there's no profile pic or anything.
BahRamYou
10hr ago
Yes, I think this an important point that often gets missed in popular discussion about the war. The people with more military knowledge already know it and take it for granted, but the people with less knowledge about modern military equipment don't know and don't think to ask. There's basically two types of weapons for an air war like this- the high end and the low end. When the media reports things like America is running low on weapons They're talking about the most expensive, high-end weapons. They do get used up quickly in the opening stages of the war, but those stages also don't last long. It's a very high-intensity war. Dropping JDAMs means they're dropping regular old bombs, and they can keep that up basically forever with no fears of running out or even spending much money, as long as they can protect the bombers.
BahRamYou
15hr ago
Yes, my impression is that the Europeans are much more critical of the war in Iran and the US in general, for obvious reasons. Americans are... pretty split about Zionism, but a lot more likely to support Trump. But I'm just generalizing wildly based on time of day and how people write. I have no idea where most of the people here are from.
BahRamYou
15hr ago
Right now I kind of wish this place had location markers, or at least an optional flag we could choose. But the best proxy I guess is how opinions seem to change drastically depending on time of day. Specifically, it's when the European posters go to sleep and the American posters wake up.
BahRamYou
18hr ago
You asked "how do you imagine it would look like under US rule" and I gave you an example. Is it your opinion that everyone in Iran- the entire population! is a fanatic who will happily die for their Islamic theocracty? Because so far that does not seem to be the case, at all.
Well, if the IRGC doesn't have absolutely enormous stashes of at least small arms (and drone/rocket parts plus warheads) in the mountains, they didn't plan even a week ahead. I'd be very surprised.
The bailey: "the IRGC will endlessly destroy all equipment and aircraft with their infinite stocks of missiles" The motte: "They must have some small arms still buried in the mountains somewhere..."
Well, I suppose they might actually try to fight in a motte-and-bailey style, but I don't think it's going to devastate the US military like you're imagining. They seem to have mostly stopped their missile attacks already.
Also, I'd expect Russian surplus equipment and Chinese dual use goods to make it across the border.
Which border? Neither of those countries shares a border with Iran. Is China going to be sending convoys of missiles all the way across Afghanistan, do you think? Is Russia going to stop their war in Ukraine to focus on sending cargo ships across the Caspian Sea?
BahRamYou
19hr ago
I think they'd more likely be in the Quds Force or Basij. The IRGC is more like a regular military- it pays a salary and doesn't expect them to launch suicide attacks.
BahRamYou
19hr ago
I don't think it's that hard to imagine- we can just look back to what Iran looked like in the 60s and 70s under the US-backed Shah. Some political repression and violence, but also a lot of peace and prosperity. I expect we'll also see this in Venezuela.
More generally, the kind of violence you're describing- massive use of MANPADS and sophisticated explosives- doesn't just magically happen. It happens when some other country with sophisticated weapons factories is sending them weapons. Normal people on the street don't have the capability to blow up an oil refinery or shoot down an airplane. And for a long time now, the country that's been supplying most of those sophisticated weapons to insurgents was... Iran.
BahRamYou
20hr ago
It seems like a few long range missile strikes or commando operations against their pipelines and oil reserves would end all of that very quickly. They're a country with a billion people crammed tightly against the coast, utterly dependant on long rangefuel and food imports, and ideologically dependant on continuous economic growth (endure the oppression of the CCP in exchange for the promise that they can make the economy grow quickly). They seem very fragile to any sort of major war.
BahRamYou
1d ago
Ironically, "take out China" is actually easier in many ways than "defend Taiwan."
- war of choosing vs war of necessity- the US could choose the timing.
- defending against missile strikes is harder than launching them.
- china is very dependant on some critical bottlenecks like the strait of Malacca, the three Gorges Dam, and its port facilities. Of course, attacking any of these would kill millions of civilians... but it would also cripple the CCP.
- overwhelming nuclear advantage, if it comes to that.
In some ways, defending Taiwan while not destroying mainland China might be the hardest problem. What is the US supposed to do, just build interceptor missiles forever while being forbidden from counterattacks? Screw that.
BahRamYou
1d ago
My understanding is that there are three sides to this. The first is that minesweeping is just inherently difficult, for anyone. Even clearing a single mine is difficult, and this becomes vastly more difficult when there's large numbers of them. The second is that the USN in particular has problems with this, as all their attempts to build a dedicated mineclearing ship get cancelled. Maybe it's just not glamorous enough to draw funding? But the third is that the USN doesn't particularly need to be good at this. "Shoot the archer, not the arrow" is the key philosophy. Its a whole lot easier to sink a mine laying boat than to hunt all its individual mines. Thats what we've done to Iran so far. And we have the luxury of operating abroad. If anything, adversaries like China should be afraid the USN would mine its ports, which would completely crash its economy with minimal effort.
BahRamYou
1d ago
Well, I guess we'll find out. But the IRGC seems to be more of a regular army, and one with pretty bad morale and organization. Hamas seems like a group of fanatics who spent years digging tunnels- hard to actually "defeat" that without killing all of them, but the IRGC might just surrender at some point.
BahRamYou
1d ago
BahRamYou
1d ago
From where I sit, the situation is exactly the opposite. The first week of the war was spent going high priority targets (missile launchers, SAM batteries, military leadership, etc) with expensive long-range missiles. They also had to focus a lot of attention on shooting down Iranian counterstrikes. But at this point, their air defense is gone, and their missile attacks are down 92%. The US and Israel are now free to focus on low cost, relatively low-intensity bombing, using cheap drones and JDAM bombs. This is where they'll start to focus on targets like the lower-level IRGC commanders and barracks. The IRGC might be "well trained" at massacring protesters, but it's pretty useless at defending itself from this kind of bombardment, and once all they're military is destroyed they'll be in no shape to handle mass protests or Kurdish insurgents. Their nuclear program and everyone who ever worked on it will be killed, probably by Israel if the US for some reason doesn't do it.
Iran's last hope was shutting down oil through the straight of Hormuz. They've done that so far my making it too risky to be worth the trip, but not actually mining it or making it impossible. Oil prices have risen, but not to crazy levels- oil futures still seem to be assessing that the flow will resume before too long. Saudi Arabia can build new pipelines to avoid the straight of Hormuz, while other countries like the US, Canada, and Venezuela can ramp up production. The only country that really needs to export oil through the Persian gulf is Iran.
What it shows, mostly, is that Trump is not an isolationist- he's perfectly willing to go to war overseas if he thinks its necessary. That should be good news for the people of Taiwan, although perhaps bad news if that means the increased risk of WW3. I think it will pressure Congress to approve a large increase in military funding to increase stocks of the high-end missiles that were depleted in this conflict.
BahRamYou
1d ago
Looking back, the periods in my life when I had the most friends are when we needed each other:
- as kids, stuck in this big crazy public school with a bunch of strangers, trying to survive
- as college students, living on our own for the first time
- on a summer abroad, living in a foreign country for the first time
- starting my first corporate job, trying to find other new hire to learn together with
But more and more we're all just... self sufficient. We work remotely, we learn from youtube tutorials or AI, and can hire specialists for almost any task that needs doing. There's none of those friction points that force us to be around random people, and when we do, everyone is just staring at their phone. There's also a feedback loop where, the less time you spend around other people, the more your social skills decline, and the harder it becomes to do friendly conversation or invite people to social events.
BahRamYou
2d ago
Yeah that's basically what I've come to think about it. This NYT article about its history. Basically, it was a muddy, disgusting mess, that mostly became famous because of a very carefully edited movie about it that came out a year later. The iconic Jimmy Hendrix performance was actually the last act, a day after it was supposed to end, and most of the crowd had already left. They had no no bathrooms, limited water, lots of rain, and 800 drug overdoses.
Was it less violent than the 99 version? .. maybe? The music at least was less angry. And there's less evidence of violence. But my suspicion is that there was actually a ton of sexual assault at the original event, it just didn't get recorded because there were a lot fewer cameras back then and everyone was high. Those 60s hippies were nasty, and there's lots of other disturbing accounts of their bad behavior.
BahRamYou
2d ago
The power to devastate is a great power in some ways, and quite weak in other ways. The Taliban is back in charge in Afghanistan.
Well, as long as the Taliban minds their own business and no longer harbors massive training camps for terrorists, I suppose they can handle Afghanistan as well as anyone.
Also, a big part of why they were able to return to power was that their leaders set up a safe governmemt in Pakistan. ...Perhaps the time has come to do something about that Pakistan situation? They're almost as bad as Iran in terms of "countries that shouldn't be allowed to have nukes." It would be a good demonstration for the world, that just having a few crappy nukes doesn't suddenly render your country invincible. With some forward bases in Iran on one side, and cooperation from India on the other, we could knock out Pakistan's delivery systems before they have a chance to fire anything.
BahRamYou
2d ago
It mostly comes up when I'm trying to find a place in a city i haven't been before. So I'm skimming through hundreds of reviews accross dozens of different places, and they all seem to be people who have never eaten at a restaurant before so they're just dazzled by the concept of having someone bring food to them in exchange for money.
BahRamYou
3d ago
Anyone else feel like Google maps reviews (and most other online review systems) have become totally worthless the last few years? It seems like every single place has overwhelmingly 5 star reviews, no matter how bad it is. I can't tell if it's bots, paid reviewers, or just a weird culture where people think they're "being nice" by leaving a 5 star review. Either way, i no longer trust them at all.
BahRamYou
5d ago
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. Sunken treasure galleons also have some value, although those are usually protected by the local laws of whatever country they sunk nearby. I really think there's some value to be found there. Of course, even just landing a probe on an asteroid is no easy feat. So far the only sample return mission we've done from the main surface of an asteroid just bounced off of it like a pogo stick.
BahRamYou
7d ago
Telling all of his followers to boycott the election or vote Dem because the Republicans are too pro-Israel for his liking. It just seems delusional to me.
BahRamYou
7d ago
I feel like he had a brief chance to become someone really significant, adding his followers to the general Republican coalition. He would never be able to control the Republican party, but they would have listened to him. Instead, he threw it all away for some sort of purity test, like many extremists do. He'll have no influence at all, and it's not even clear what he wants. He reminds me of Jon Stewart- very funny as a comedian, but not much of a serious thinker.
I also think he relied on 4chan /pol/ memes to do a lot of the lifting for him in generating ideas, but 4chan is kinda dead these days, which killed his best source of material.
Sounds like something a Russian spy would say...
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