This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Unironically, you could probably also figure out a way to shoot them out of a canon. Or a literal trebuchet.
Wouldn't be the best way to do so, obviously, but if we're looking for cost-efficient airdrops, why not blimps and zepplins?
Maybe we could get steampunk zepplins after all.
yeah, I see the skepticism over cost as a challenge. 4.70 per ratpack x 2 ratpacks x 2,050,000 inhabitants = $18.8 million, so obviously the large majority of the cost estimate here is delivery. I'm pretty sure cargo planes have <10x the capacity of a helicopter with significantly lower costs per flight hour.
Greater (>10x), since you can pack a helicopter into the largest ones, and yes (mostly), but also not necessarily.
The larger issue is more the relative precision of drops. You can not only greatly increase the survival / receipt of food delivery when doing it via helicopter rather than plane, but you can also even manage a loose idea of who will receive it. Such as, say, a clan enclave that has defensible positions against a Hamas seizure/retaliation group, as opposed to airdropping into Israel or the Mediterranean. So you could absolutely carry X ration packages cheaper in the plane, but you'd also need to carry far more than X packages on Y planes to get the same effect.
High-air drops aren't really effective, and tend to assume you have relatively free mobility across the land area being dropped upon. There's a reason the Berlin Airbridge was overwhelmingly land-unloads while the airdrops were propaganda.
Just carpet-bomb the place -- make your $20M $200M and drop pallet loads of rice on chutes all over the place -- if people are literally getting machine gunned for food, they will figure it out if the odd bag breaks.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link