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To do so is a blatantly dehumanising use of language that I believe could easily prime those who engage in it to see such a group as less than human, and therefore to be dealt with in the manner you would deal with non-human pests.

You might have had a point sometime before the year 2010. But since that time we've seen this principal stretched to the point of excluding all views outside the progressive standard, and not only that, typically applied selectively. It's a slippery slope with no Schelling Fence, as the rationalists put it. So the entire principle must be discarded. Hitler wasn't the first to compare various people to non-human animals in a derogatory way, he won't be the last, and that wasn't the main problem with him. Sure, if someone's out there saying "black people are vermin", I can reasonably conclude they're scumbags, but trying to suppress that is not a good idea. And if I start building fences around that such that anything even close is also verboten, I'm likely just trying to create ideological uniformity.

To be clear, I'm not accusing him of personally wanting to genocide or start a race war against blacks or anything, nor is this about being squeamish and finding the language offensive. But I think when you normalise referring to groups in such blatantly dehumanising and contemptuous terms, there is a clear risk of it contributing to a culture that views violence against them as legitimate.

This principle, on the other hand, was never any good, and is even more obviously applied selectively. This is just "don't express your bad ideas because you might convince other people of them".

There is nothing about acknowledging HBD or even arguing for explicitly racist policy that requires you to engage in this sort of thing, and the only thing it accomplishes is to potentially egg on the next mass shooter

This principle ("stochastic terrorism") was not only not any good, it was always in bad faith (suppression of bad ideas is such an old idea I don't know about that one). Note that some Trumpists have picked it up (sometimes ironically, probably sometimes seriously) to blame the assassination attempts on Trump on their opponent's rhetoric. It's less a slippery slope than a vertical drop.

Feel good stories told by liberal/progressive/leftists go something like this:

To connect the dots, adoption and / or fostering seems to be a great way for this old man to plant trees, especially if biological children are completely ruled out. There is undeniably a population crisis and replacement rate is an issue, but from a (gross?) utilitarian perspective the population crisis is about productive members of society. Adopting and / or fostering well kills two birds with one stone: it reduces the population that is at-risk for homelessness, and creates more productive members of society.

Wow, very noble and inspiring. It speaks to one on an emotional level, fills you with hope and positivity for the future. There is no counter argument without being a bad person or uncouthly bringing up some giant baggage of heterodox arguments that immediately look bad and emotionally divorced.

So @WhiningCoil gave a feel bad story as a contrast. Or a 'feel reality' story. Depending on ones predispositions.

You would not be the first non-right wing extremist person to fail to engage with the direct 1:1 mirror rhetoric you would otherwise extol as just and noble. Faced with forlorn elements of reality laid bare.

One would be inclined to blame your environment for keeping you away from any competing emotionally resonating narratives, but as can be seen, you are the one picking those. And as someone who spent years of his life making the aforementioned heterodox arguments against all the feel good stories, and having that very fact used against me as an argument, I can't say I have much sympathy left to give for your self inflicted predicament.

What's the most interesting place you've traveled and why

Happy birthday!

At the age of 25, you're at your physical and cognitive peak, and it's all downhill from here. Your mind slows down, though your productivity is kept up by knowledge/wisdom compensating for decreased fluid intelligence. Your body slows down, becomes weaker and frailer, but this can be temporarily alleviated with exercise and a fastidious attitude towards your health.

Don't worry, it doesn't become obvious until about a decade later. The initial slope of the decline is gentle, you can make a good picnic on that plateau.

Lasers suffer from range issues in air to a great degree. Close to the ground power delivered falls with square of distance. So keeping the sky clear from 20 kilometers is really, really difficult even if you can track the target flawlessly and it'd be extremely costly even now. Not realistic.

I've heard both sides are reporting some success with some adapted laser welding units against FPVs, which aren't exactly sturdy and at 200m it might work. These units are now cheap ~$5000, but require a power supply.

Weak player != scrub. In the weak sense of the word, the Scrub is someone who has no interest in gitting gud. Sirlin mostly uses the term in the stronger sense that the Scrub is someone who does not want to play the game that competitive players are playing because they consider some expert tactics (like throws in console fighting games) that are clearly permitted by the rules and considered a key part of the game by competitive players to be unfair. You see a bit of this in competitive bridge with the debate about exotic conventions in competitive bidding, but in general weak but competitive players play against strong opposition and hope to learn from the experience.

With the notable exception of contact sports where too large a skill gap creates an unacceptable risk of injury, the size of acceptable ability gap for social and competitive play is the point at which the weaker player never wins anything at all. In chess that is about 400 ELO points, but in bridge the luck element and more granular results (you play about 7 hands an hour) means that it is the difference between a decent club player and a world champion. I know several people who play racket sports socially in groups where the weaker players never win a match but win enough points/games to keep things interesting. You can cover an even wider range of abilities if the game supports handicapping. I don't know how large this gap is in console fighting games.

What you can't do is allow a true scrub to play against anyone who isn't playing the same crippled game that he is.

Range issues, power issues, and the fact reflective/ablative coating hasn't even been explored yet makes me bearish on lasers.

The USA's most recent DEM-SHORAD trial got sent back to the drawing board, if I remember correctly

at a price point that allows "slap one on every vehicle larger than a pickup truck"

This sentence is doing a lot of heavy lifting lol

"Ominous" how?

Probably ominius in the same way Arabs in Palestine saw it as ominious, when their neighborhood changed its "vibe" over the decades in first half of 20th century. Or maybe how American natives carefully watched their new neigbors with strange culture. And ultimately they were correct.

The bigger issue is also just that if your countermeasure is close range CIWS you're not in a great spot to begin with. That's deep in the survivability onion.

I said "first of all" but so far responses have been fixating on this point rather than the broader point that modern racism doesn't back-extrapolate to history very well at all.

If your foundation is built on shifting sand, your point collapses; no need to deal specifically with the upper stories.

The rest of the reply is just blowing smoke. That race can be determined with high accuracy based on varied physical characteristics which don't measure the usual things we associate with race (skin color, facial features) demonstrates that race 'exists'. No, it does not matter that the technique is not perfect; that something cannot be measured perfectly does not mean it does not exist.

If race does not exist, it is clearly not a Big Deal (by any reasonable definition). If race does exist, it is not proven to be a Big Deal -- but the possibility still exists. You haven't shown it's not a Big Deal. You "insist" on making that assumption, but it is unsupported.

I could have sworn that I'd previously and seriously advised him to see a psychiatrist or therapist IRL. It certainly can't hurt. I'm not supposed to diagnose him with clinical depression, but let's just say it rhymes.

Alas, I don't know of any actual happy pills, but a small helping of magic mushrooms did wonders for me.

(This is excluding the possibility that his life and personal circumstances are utterly FUBAR, which happens more often than I'd like. But what can I do about that? I'm a shrink, not a miracle worker.)

Ohhhh, yeah

Translated article from Marianne on Macron's troop proposal: https://archive.is/u1j76#selection-3005.0-3323.65

By refusing to rule out sending troops to Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron has triggered an uproar across Europe and earned a rebuke from the United States. Several French officers, speaking to Marianne on condition of anonymity, say they were “knocked sideways.” “Let’s not kid ourselves: against the Russians we’re a cheer-leading squad!” scoffs a senior officer, convinced that dispatching French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “unreasonable.” At the Élysée, the stance is unapologetic: “The President wanted to send a strong signal,” says an adviser, describing the wording as “carefully measured and calibrated.”

At the Ministry for the Armed Forces, those close to Sébastien Lecornu defend the president’s wording: “The state of Ukrainian forces is deeply worrying. The president’s remarks are meant to jolt everyone and show we’re at a turning point.” How did we get here? Several classified defence reports, seen by Marianne, speak of a “critical situation.” Here are the three key findings—far removed from official talking-points.

Finding 1: A Ukrainian military victory is now impossible.

For months European chancelleries clung to the hope that Kyiv’s 2023 spring counter-offensive, backed by Western kit, would push the Russian army all the way back to Moscow. After-action reviews written this autumn are damning. “It gradually bogged down in mud and blood and achieved no strategic gains,” states one confidential defence report on the “failure of the Ukrainian offensive.”

The planning—drawn up in Kyiv and Western headquarters—proved “disastrous.” “Planners assumed that once the first Russian defensive belts were breached the whole front would collapse … These crucial preliminary phases ignored the enemy’s moral strength on the defensive: that is, the Russian soldier’s determination to cling to the ground,” the report notes, calling Western planning a “bankruptcy.” Another lesson is the poor training of Ukrainian soldiers and NCOs: “Newly formed brigades existed mostly on paper” and training never lasted more than three weeks. Lacking cadres and a critical mass of veterans, these “Year-Two soldiers” were thrown against a Russian fortification line that turned out to be impregnable. With no air support, a mish-mash of Western kit inferior to old Soviet gear (“obsolete, easy to maintain, usable in degraded mode,” says the report), Ukrainian troops had no chance of breaking through.

Add to that “Russia’s overwhelming dominance in electronic warfare, crippling Ukrainian drone use and command systems.” Today, “the Russian army is the tactical and technical benchmark for conceiving and executing defensive operations,” the report concludes. Not only does Moscow have the heavy engineer kit to build defensive works—“almost completely absent on the Ukrainian side, and impossible for the West to supply quickly”—but the 1,200-km front, known as the Surovikin Line, is mined on a colossal scale (7,000 km of mines). Another observation: “The Russians have also managed their reserve force to ensure operational endurance.” According to the document, Moscow reinforces units before they are exhausted, mixes recruits with seasoned troops, gives regular rear-area rest periods—and “has always maintained a coherent force pool to handle the unexpected.” Far from the Western cliché of a Russian army mindlessly feeding men into the meat-grinder… “To date, the Ukrainian general staff lacks a critical mass of ground forces capable of combined-arms manoeuvre at corps level able to challenge their Russian counterparts and break the defensive line,” the classified report concludes, warning that “the gravest analytical and judgement error would be to keep looking for exclusively military solutions to end the fighting.” A French senior officer sums up: “Looking at the forces on the ground, it’s clear Ukraine cannot win this war militarily.”

Finding 2: Kyiv has been forced onto the defensive.

The conflict entered a critical phase in December. According to our military sources in Paris, the Ukrainian army has been compelled to go on the defensive. “The combat motivation of Ukrainian soldiers is deeply affected,” notes a 2024 outlook report. “Zelensky needs 35,000 men a month; he is not recruiting half that, while Putin can draw on 30,000 volunteers each month,” says an officer just back from Kyiv. The balance of materiel is just as lopsided: the failed 2023 offensive “tactically destroyed” half of Kyiv’s 12 combat brigades. Western aid has never been lower. It is therefore clear no Ukrainian offensive can be mounted this year. “The West can ship 3-D printers to make drones or loitering munitions, but it can’t print soldiers,” the report notes. “Given the situation, the idea has been floated to reinforce the Ukrainian army not with fighters but with support troops in the rear, freeing Ukrainian soldiers for the front,” admits a senior officer, confirming a “quiet build-up” of Western troops in civilian clothes. Even if two American rail-cars—likely used by the CIA—are attached to the daily train from Poland to Kyiv, the West only half-admits the presence of special forces in Ukraine. “Besides the Americans, who let the New York Times visit a CIA camp, there are plenty of Brits,” says a military source, who does not deny the presence of French special forces— notably combat swimmers on training missions…

Finding 3: The risk of a Russian breakthrough is real.

This is the latest lesson from the Ukrainian front that gives French observers cold sweats. On 17 February Kyiv had to abandon the city of Avdiivka, north of Donetsk, until then a fortified bastion. “It was both the heart and the symbol of Ukrainian resistance in Russian-speaking Donbas,” notes a report on the “Battle of Avdiivka,” drawing a series of damning lessons. “The Russians changed their modus operandi, compartmentalising the city and, above all, using glide bombs on a large scale for the first time,” the document states. Whereas a 155 mm artillery shell carries 7 kg of explosive, a glide bomb delivers 200–700 kg and can pierce more than 2 m of reinforced concrete—hell for Ukrainian defences, which reportedly lost over 1,000 men a day. Moreover, the Russians now fit small-arms suppressors to foil acoustic detection on the battlefield. “The decision to withdraw Ukrainian forces came as a surprise,” the report notes, highlighting “its suddenness and lack of preparation,” raising fears it was “imposed on, rather than decided by, the Ukrainian command,” hinting at the start of a rout. “The Ukrainian armed forces have just shown tactically that they lack the human and material capacity… to hold a sector of the front under sustained enemy pressure,” the document continues. “The Ukrainian failure at Avdiivka shows that, despite the emergency dispatch of an ‘elite’ brigade—the 3rd Air Assault Azov Brigade—Kyiv is unable to shore up a collapsing sector locally,” the report warns. The art of “Maskovkira” What will the Russians do with this tactical success? Continue the current pattern of “nibbling and slow erosion” along the whole front, or push for a deep breakthrough? “The terrain behind Avdiivka allows it,” the recent document notes, adding that Western sources tend to “underestimate” the Russians, masters of “Maskovkira”—the practice of “appearing weak when you are strong.” According to this analysis, after two years of war Russian forces have demonstrated the ability to “develop operational endurance” enabling them to wage “a long, slow, high-intensity war based on the continuous attrition of the Ukrainian army.” A sobering conclusion for what comes next. Is this new strategic landscape—where the Russian army seems dominant and the Ukrainian army exhausted—what prompted Emmanuel Macron, “dynamically” as he put it, to consider sending troops? A realistic perspective given the current operational situation, described as “critical” by observers on the ground. “But what may look realistic from a strictly tactical standpoint can prove unrealistic from a strategic and diplomatic one,” sighs a French senior officer.

LPI radar exists, but if drones are the specific concern you could just listen acoustically (or IR) to only turn it on when it's actually necessary to emit. Drones are loud.

Lidar (leveraging self-driving car sensors) might also be worth considering, but could still be prone to detection.

He‘s always been like this. @Capital_Room , take some happy pills, for god‘s sake. @self_made_human what do you recommend?

Pretty sure they're using GLONASS, the Russian version of GPS.

Modern chips use every single satellite out there to calculate position. They probably use something similar, possibly improved to be jamming resistant.

If Russia can quickly make lots of cheap jet drones, so can Europe. Anything Russia can do, Europe can replicate.

Europe can't even supply the simplest, WW1 piece of technology Ukraine needs: artillery ammunition. We are on year 3.5 of an artillery war. Despite having what, 50x the GDP, Ukraine could theoretically get less than half of what Russia makes.

https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2025/04/22/germanys-new-plant-to-flood-nato-with-350k-artillery-shells/

Only if there's a political failure, if the whole edifice just implodes as the Turks nope out, the Serbs and Hungarians decide it's not their war, if Britain and France won't really use nukes to defend Polish or German territory..

The French army allegedly told Macron to go hang after he floated the idea of sending them into Ukraine, just as 'peacekeepers'. You know, not 'on the front' just station them around key strategic areas where they'd be getting shot at with Russian missiles. (I'll include the translated article in a reply)

They'll be hemmed in at sea. They'll still be facing vast reserves of wealth and manpower, a foe with time on his side and talent to spare

Talent? Firstly, Russians would say they don't care about Germany/Poland, and they aren't South-Africa tier idiots who would say "just not yet". And maybe they'd be even correct, what Russians really care about is Americans out and being able to deal with Europe on a country basis. Even if conquest were possible (theoretically) it'd not be worth it - mass mobilization isn't what Russian citizens want, China wouldn't want it either.

As to ...what talent? NATO, the organisation, basically exists as sinecures for officers. European armies are small and have zero experience with modern warfare and not much critical equipment. No vast reserves of artillery. Shortages of air-defense missiles. Drone components would have to come from China, too.

Nick, 30 ans is not willing to let himself be conscripted by the million by governments he know doesn't care about him one iota and sent to the eastern front. Do you think all the young 'citizens' of immigrant origins who don't care about Europe one bit would let themselves be conscripted by the million, without starting to chimp?

Also, under ideal conditions- no pesky politicking, no sabotage by the courts, no foreign interference and vast reserves of veterans officers, it still took Germany what, 8 years to return from a small professional force to a large conscript army.

I don't buy that they'd risk a war with NATO unless China suplexes the US in Asia, at which point we all have much bigger concerns.

Not sure they'd want to take the Baltics, but I'd not rule it out either. They really hate them, Balt elites hate them back and are very keen on anti-Russian agitation, militarily it's doable and hey, it's not like the younger population of Baltics wouldn't just emigrate.

That US bows out or gets defeated in East Asia is likely. If they couldn't take on Houthis and convincingly win, what hope is there against Chinese?.

US Navy isn't ready to fight a missile-heavy war against China, near Chinese coasts. Aircraft carriers are of little help there. It'd need a lot more missile platforms and a lot more missiles. Both are in short supply.

Or Sudan, or Myanmar

It’s funny to me that in real life, many a man will cop to being friends with various kinds of scumbags with the “yeah, I wouldn’t want him to marry my sister, but he never did anything to me” reasoning, but somehow when it comes to celebrity I’m expected to be scandalized that people stayed friends with Epstein even though he had a thing for 16 year old girls (whom they may well have believed were 18 anyway).

Even a thousand Epsteins wouldn’t be as bad as, say, the Rotherham scandal where 12 year olds were being sexually tortured and pimped to hundreds or thousands of strangers, sometimes dozens a day. Yes, what Epstein did (paying 16 year olds for sex and having them recruit their school friends for the same purpose) was cruel and wrong - and he deserved jail for it - but in the grand scheme of all sexual crimes it was far, far from the worst.

Not "in this life", but religion doesn't offer that either. Buddhism offers many lives filled with suffering before you can perhaps reach nirvana. Atheism offers just one before you reach oblivion.

I'm above average, I don't really talk about it as it's narcissistic and girls don't really care about looks. I'd be less attractive in the west, here however, being tall, long and having west shifted features makes me stand out. Looks don't matter for guys as much fortunately.

Those two girls did leave a mark on me. Sometimes I think about them and how sad life for their parents must be, I remember their laughter.

My punctuation is indeed horrible. I did finally reinstall grammarly on my laptop again after loading manjaro on it.

Quite fascinating how people here can make sense of a lot of what I write when I myself struggle to do the same when I revisit some older posts.

I'm not sure they the WSJ cares about the truth of it, presuming they want to help the Democrats right now, anything that keeps Epstein in the news cycle, including a lawsuit from Trump, is productive. That might be very well the trap here; they know Trump's ego wouldn't allow letting this be heard unchallenged, but challenging it is guaranteeing it stays in the news cycle for months.

Truly, the youth of today are uncivilized barbarians.

Unsure really. You can probably ask me about life experiences or events, I do think I'll probably do one with a girl if I want to commit to her.

I've had some interesting experiences, with or without substances. Ask away friend.

The point is that it's not new. The "revelation" that Trump is knew Epstein and indeed even traveled on Epstein's plane has been out there for a long time. Constantly forgetting and presenting it as a new revelation every time the Epstein story comes up doesn't make it new and shocking information.