domain:imgur.com
Thanks for the insight. I'm still cynical enough to believe this is what's advertised on the tin and not stuff that means any of it works well, especially when administered by the human capital involved in prisons.
The fact that it slams at the one minute around midnight is a strong Bayesian update towards system error.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
Sure
My knowledge of the Vietnam war is shaky at best. My point is that insurgencies can win just by surviving and running out the clock
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1d ago
Everyone understands that combatants are killed in war. This is unremarkable and no reasonable person seeks revenge for war. What’s less remarkable is when an Israeli soldier purposefully shoots your daughter or sister in the head for no reason. Any young male who experiences this and wouldn’t seek revenge for it is the lowest of the low coward. Certainly my American ancestors who fought in the Revolution wouldn’t have submitted to that sort of rule. Neither would my Irish fifth cousins in the IRA. I would feel content knowing that my great grandparents who were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral home by someone born in Poland speaking a German dialect would look at me as a hero. (We can see how empathy goes a long way in explaining the Gazan PoV; this is an exercise.)
notice that bombing Nazis didn't create more Nazis. Why?
Both sides were bombing each others cities, for essential military reasons that likely reduced sum total casualties over the war.
There's significant context behind some of these theories, the main one is that SIG USA is widely believed to be gaming/bribing/conning the US military procurement tests.
Some readers here may remember the release of SIG USA's replacement for the M-16, which was "adopted by the US Army" before being quietly skuttled at the cost of several hundred million dollars. Keen readers may recall that I called all that long before it happened based on nothing but the claimed weight and chamber pressures. It was such an obvious lie that any expert in the field should have been able to spot it immediately. Is that because I'm smarter than the entire Ordnance Corps, or because I'm not being paid to lie?
Some things to keep in mind. SIG USA is not Sig Sauer, it's a spun-off triple-shell corporation built out of the old Sigarms importer. But now they manufacture, and they don't manufacture anything by Sig Sauer. They just license the logo so people will think this start-up gun company that somehow got a military contract in its first ten years is actually a bespoke european manufacturer.
Now, everything OP says about people being unable to reliably recreate the discharge is true. But equally true is some of the more damning stories, some with video evidence, that show 320s going off with apparently no input. The one that killed an airman recently wasn't even being worn at the time, it was in the holster, sitting on a table some feet from any people. There was also recently a case in the state police of my state had one go off, they sent it to the FBI labs, which were able to recreate the discharge, but not reliably.
In several trials mimicking movements similar to those made by officers in the field,like pressing the gun into a wall, jumping, or running, researchers were able to make the P320 fire without the trigger being pulled. In nine out of 50 attempts using a primed case, the pistol fired after only holster manipulation and sear release, indicating failure of the striker safety lock.
Maybe a 20% chance doesn't sound conclusive, and to be fair it isn't. But you can buy other guns that are just as good as the P320 that don't have a one in five chance of putting a round in your leg if the gun jostles just right in the holster.
In the case of the M-16, Forgotten Weapons has a great show on that, basically the corrupt Ordnance Corps tried to sabotage the first major run of M-16s, and they did. But they still couldn't get the shitpile M-14 back, so they reverted the design to the one Stoner told them to use, chrome-lined the barrels and the gun was fine ever after.
The thread I think you should consider is not the conspiracy theory, which was temporarily correct, but the deep corruption of military procurement, and the sort of dirty tricks that go on there.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1d ago
Israel has been committing grave violations of international law since the King David Hotel bombing, the Nabka, etc.
they certainly aren't soldiers as the word is used in the field of international law.
Very few are complaining about the treatment of the actual men fighting Israel.
FlailingAce
1d ago
Yes it does, it's one of few handguns that I know of with an on/off safety switch, and it's quite annoying. One of a reasons why military people I know who are issued the M17/M18 don't actually use it, and prefer a Glock.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1d ago
If Israel had to buy its munitions (either in the short term or long term) it would impose more pressure to finish the war quickly, or in general do more diplomacy and less bombing. Easy to spend other people's money or take risks if your friends will bail you out, people are usually more frugal with their own money.
The US also helps Israel with key enablers that aren't really for sale - satellite surveillance, in-air refuelling, electronic signals gathering and B-2 bomber strikes. It would be impractical for Israel to try and replace what the US does for them, they can't afford a blue-water navy to put ships in the Persian gulf and shoot at Iranian missiles from there, nor can Israel really put much pressure on Yemen. Once you have a navy, using it is easy enough but if you don't then getting one is hard.
Israel could establish a stockpile of munitions purchased from overseas but it wouldn't be very economical or reliable compared to domestic production or getting resupplied straight from the US.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
I was struck recently by this article talking about how the underlying anxieties are more or less true in both the conspiracy and non conspiracy versions (powerful financiers getting away with stuff and having undue influence, etc) but here is how it phrased what it called the two notable holes:
For one thing, why did the conspiracy of wealthy sex perverts wait until Epstein was in prison to kill him, when it presumably would have been easier to do it after he was convicted and released the first time, or after the second time a grand jury was convened against him but before he was in federal custody? If you believe a group of powerful people killed Epstein to keep him from revealing what he knew, you have to ask why he didn’t die in a car accident, instead of during the three minutes
I mean, isn’t it a lot easier and less suspicious if he dies earlier? Aside from what I view to be some major logistical problems with a quick three minute in and out strangulation, though I admit I’m not well read in to the nitty-gritty. And:
The non-conspiracy version of events says just as much. In this version, New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Facility, the jail where Epstein died that a court ordered closed in 2021, simply didn’t work very well. The plumbing was leaking, and the building was falling apart. The camera system didn’t work right. The guards were overworked and understaffed and sat in the break room browsing the internet when they were supposed to be making their rounds. This story of institutional failure should be familiar to anyone who has been to a VA hospital or worked somewhere that got bought by a private equity fund.
Epstein literally attempted suicide a few weeks before, and actually did right about when he was denied bail and it became increasingly clear that the best case scenario for him still would involve lengthy amounts of jail time. He’s a billionaire, used to much nicer things, and was not in a nice prison. As far as suicidal logic goes, that seems pretty normal? And incompetence by prison guards is definitely my base expectation. Shit is boring, pay is often bad, and the job doesn’t attract the best.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1d ago
Right, so the comparison to the woke needs more justification (I'm sorry for the repetitiveness I've made this point before to you in the past, but I think there's some new aspects).
Most people I talk to in person who would describe themselves as woke seem to actually agree with me on at least the thing I called "individualism". Their belief is rather that the world is so far from achieving this that we have to do extremely drastic things in response. When they make mistakes, their mistakes are factual---that their extreme remedy is going to make the situation better than the status quo. These mistakes are not that hard to correct---no getting rid of standardized tests won't help because every other measure is even more skewed towards the rich, etc. In everyday life, I've found it very easy to argue/convince very woke people on most concrete policy issues relating to "individualism".
"Meritocracy" is harder, seemingly because the very woke that I know don't see its need---we already have enough, why do we need growth, why does it matter that jobs are done well, etc. However, in cases like medicine where you can argue that we don't already have enough you can argue in the same way. The "we already have enough" is also not so hard to argue against by just having them look up global GDP/capita and speculate on what sort of lifestyle that allows in comparison to what they're used to.
Conversely, a hypothetical group that actually accepts the ancestry-is-paramount interpretation of JD Vance's statement just disagrees on these values completely. There's no resolution to be had here.
Anyways, this is all theory. Since January, we can see how the comparison worked out in practice. I think even the worst 2020 wokeness was better for getting skilled people into positions in the US than the attacks on skilled immigrants from the Trump administration---the stories like this that keep coming out every few weeks and the chilling effect they create.
HereAndGone
1d ago
May you all live under the same conditions as the benign and beneficent rule of the IDF. After all, you're not trouble-makers so you'll be fine, won't you?
I suddenly feel a need for the cursing psalms.
Psalm 10
10 Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?
2 In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised.
3 For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul,
and the one greedy for gain curses[a] and renounces the Lord.
4 In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
5 His ways prosper at all times;
your judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
6 He says in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
7 His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
8 He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
9 he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
10 The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.
11 He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
12 Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
13 Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
14 But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
16 The Lord is king forever and ever;
the nations perish from his land.
17 O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear
18 to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,
so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1d ago
There are a lot of truly baffling statements in this post (Israel controls law enforcement in Gaza?), but I'll focus only on the most bizarre one:
They effectively have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
Oct 7th, and the war against Israel that Hamas has redirected all resources in Gaza towards, represent an Israeli monopoly on the use of force in Gaza. Right.
HereAndGone
1d ago
I don't believe the Israelis. After all this time, I don't trust them, I don't think they're honest, and how they are cracking down (not) on the [settlers](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c776x78517po0 who are literally and not metaphorically shooting people reveals their actual preferences, not what they're saying.
I'm going to light my hair on fire here, but Israel is imitating how Germany decided to deal with its 'Jewish problem': can we get any foreign country to take them off our hands? No, nobody wants a bunch of these guys because they are trash? Okay, let's solve this by taking their property, confining them in sequestered areas, and then shipping them off to camps - for their own protection, of course.
HereAndGone
1d ago
You know, right now I'm listening to the news on the radio and it's another interview with someone about what is happening in Gaza.
I have two options:
(1) Everyone in the world is a lying liar who loves Hamas and wants to obliterate Israel. There is no starvation, no Israeli blockades, and the hard-core Zionists who want an ethnically Jewish state for an ethnically Jewish people are just lined up waiting with bouquets and gift baskets to hand over to the Palestinians once they take control of Gaza.
(2) Maybe, just possibly maybe, the IDF are fudging the truth about what they are doing and the Israeli government is being hands-off in hopes that the problem will solve itself - no need for a Palestinian state when there are no more Palestinians (be that 'encouraged forcefully to emigrate to other countries or dead of famine and disease').
I think Hamas are terrible and should disappear if at all possible. But when people are dying, I don't give a flying fuck about their politics. Even the most obnoxious hair-dyed queer tranny activist, if they were literally starving to death, I'd say "help them" and not "hur-dur, they should have picked the right side in the political fight". Stop people dying of starvation first, worry about rooting out the terrorists second.
What I'm reading on here is awfully like all the commentary about problems in red states, with gleeful gloating about "natural disaster/economic crash serves them right for voting for Trump".
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Thanks! Wow this is fun. Who knew.
You can apply/remove/shift the ashes of war whenever you want to, but you can only have the ash applied to one weapon at a time. Ashes of war can be duplicated if you find the right item though.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1d ago
Click on the link that looks like a speech bubble near the upper right corner of the page.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
No I don't read every comment just skim the things I'm interested in. Some weeks there are barely any posts I want to participate in, some weeks it's every post.
Personally I like that the content here isn't never-ending.
TowardsPanna
1d ago
All riiiight! :)
That sounds like what I want. Thanks!
Should I put it on my Lordsworn's sword? I've already smithed it to +2, but I don't know whether I'll find a better sword soon and should thus save the ash of war for the next one...?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Holy crap I had no idea this was a thing. Thanks for sharing. How do you get back here without this link?
If Vance wanted to talk about the second case where the groups start with equal claims, he could've said something like (I'm trying to make this rhetorically charged in the same way) "church-going, law-abiding patriots have a hell of a lot more claim over America than ungrateful socialists who say they hate our country". Specifically focusing on "people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War" really makes it that Group R being privileged just based on their ancestry is a strong part of his statement.
Maybe this is too much psychoanalysis, or maybe I'm falling for some rhetorical game where Vance is baiting responses by purposefully saying something in a more controversial way then he needs to (I mean, focusing on the Civil war without specifying which side instead of the Revolutionary war definitely seems to be something like this), but my gut feel is that going out of the way to bring up such a specific thing as ancestry means that this is actually what he was trying to say.
So I honestly don't know anymore what's close to the modal Republican worldview (or more relevantly, what vision the current Republican party pushes for during the current and future times it has power). Figuring this out was the main reason for the post since I really think this forum gives a good sense of the intellectual arguments that eventually work their way down to driving Republican goals.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1d ago
Without access to the specification, contracts, logs and maintenance records, there is no real way to know.
Eupraxia
Of all words spoken, all things read / most true was that which went unsaid
1d ago
· Edited 1d ago
It's not a death blow to the redpill or anything, but the article does dispel maximalist claims that redpill types tend to imply about the reciprocity of men and women's attitudes towards each other (e.g. "women desire dominant men who are their social superiors, thus masculine men reject uppity girlbosses for submissive women who know their place"). In truth, women have a much stronger preference for dominance than men have for submissiveness. (source)
More generally, redpillers/antifeminists tend to have a myopic focus on the utility of a woman within the "trad" marriage script (cooking/cleaning/birthing/boning), to the exclusion of more general or "unfeminine" traits/considerations that might be desirable in a wife[1]. It won't make your dick hard to know that your wife has an MBA, but an intelligent and educated woman has far more potential as a proper life partner than a meek and servile tradwife.
[1] See Primaprimaprima below for further commentary in this direction.
RenOS
something is wrong
1d ago
I know that it's hard, but this imo really needs to be changed. It's bad enough for progressives to be regularly downvoted (even if I may disagree as well) but probably unavoidable, but longtime posters constantly getting filtered without mod action has to be supremely frustrating and I probably would also leave eventually.
You're right
I struggle to call this a war though. It's insurgency whack a mole with a sprinkling of ethnic cleansing
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