161–170 of 365 posts
US should be split up so it can't do any more damage to the world. Americans can't be trusted with putting that much power in the hands of a few people anyway.
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Don't overlook the "the people of this foreign land are yearning to be free of their current rulers, and just need a little help from their neighborly U.S. armed forces" trope. I think there are plenty of people who actually believe it.
People seem to forget that Iranians were rioting in the streets in the weeks leading up to the US attacking. The Iranian government was shooting protestors and pulled the plug on the internet. The US (well Israel) saw this as the stars aligning. Trump even called on Iranians early in the engagement to seize the opportunity. But the ground swell didn't happen, and the US got played. Trump rolled a critical fail.
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its because they have him on tape having sex with children
But what about Graham Platner? /s
The left's hypocrisy knows no bounds.
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The US in general, and this administration in particular, has bought into US exceptionalism and action movie tropes. Just gotta blow up the death star with the leader on board and then the war is over. In reality there's a chain of command and line of succession, and military equipment all around the country. If they had been smart, they would have been learning from Ukraine, because we've found ourselves in basicall…
Viewed independently, I think VZ, Ukraine, and Iran look like a hodgepodge of strange actions. There is a consistent view that joins them, namely as we approach the end of the davidson window, putting pressure on China and Russia via oil restrictions might help dissuade a larger war in the Pacific. This is just a personal opinion, but lines up with Ukraine (burning refineries), EU (seizing sanctioned tankers FINALLY)…
In his 1961 farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of establishing the military-industrial complex [1]. We are seeing the fruits of that now that despite an annual budget over $1T the US has been militarily defeated by Iran (and Afghanistan). We build $13B aircraft carriers that don't work [2]. Defense contracting is nothing more than a wealth transfer from the government to the wealthy. This is…
We do it to keep manufacturing knowledge and ability in the country. I really cannot stress enough how many thousands of companies exist purely because of the defense budget. It's never going away because it employs so many people. That's why red or blue or independent no one ever cuts it. It's welfare that creates work so the whole ideological spectrum has something to like.
The big names you mention are the names that end up on the final product, but those products often have a couple thousand different (all American) suppliers feeding them. Virtually all of the money in the defense budget flows back into the economy. The sum total of those players profits last years amounts to 2% of the budget, and that's assuming it's all military.
A simple example are screws. You cannot make a living making screws in the US. It makes zero economic sense because it's impossible to compete with 2nd/3rd world countries (read:China). But the military (well contractors with a mandate) will buy your screws at a price that allows you to live a decent life and employ a team of people.
This way when shit hits the fan, the US will still have a supply of screws (pretty damn important), a supply of people who know how to make screws, and in the mean time those people get benefits and careers.
Now take this idea and repeat it for everything from paper cups to tank shells to folding chairs to wire sheathing (the military buys literally everything, always wants American made, and will happily pay a premium for it).
US should be split up so it can't do any more damage to the world. Americans can't be trusted with putting that much power in the hands of a few people anyway.
China and Russia would love that. It would also be very bad for European security that is mostly guaranteed by U.S. strength and willingness to fight wars.
That time is gone. At this point the US is likely the biggest threat to EU.
I worked on the control systems for Predators and Reapers back in the mid and late 00s, and the inefficiencies around process were enormous. Safety is extremely important, so you expect some slowness as a result, but it got pretty extreme. I remember one time having to do 6 weeks of testing around a one-line code change because a "helpful" dev fixed a small bug that had no practical impact. Yet because it changed the…
The drone industry was allowed to basically "do whatever as long as it works", consequences be damned. So they use civilian motors, batteries and SoCs, sketchy firmware with zero code inspection, and more. Does it work perfectly? No. It works well enough.
I wonder if anyone is going to learn a lesson about overregulation.
I'm not sure if "AI for red tape mitigation" is a thing, but "AI for killer drones" sure is. I suspect that "killer drones are insufficiently smart" is easier to fix with AI than "too much red tape". Because the amount of red tape, if unopposed, will expand to consume any capacity of dealing with it, AI or not.
I worked on the control systems for Predators and Reapers back in the mid and late 00s, and the inefficiencies around process were enormous. Safety is extremely important, so you expect some slowness as a result, but it got pretty extreme. I remember one time having to do 6 weeks of testing around a one-line code change because a "helpful" dev fixed a small bug that had no practical impact. Yet because it changed the…
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> The federal government costs about $19 billion per day to operate based on an annual budget of roughly $7 trillion. $7 trillion is not operating expenses. Much goes into assets that are retained decades or more. The Interstate Highway System isn't an operating expense.
Every mile of road is an operating expense. Looking at a report from NY state: > Based on aggregate highway spending reported in 2009, the average statewide cost of maintaining a lane mile was $13,841. source (pdf): https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/local-government/publications/p...
Has, not is. Clearly you didn’t take Intro to Object-Oriented Programming in CS.
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10y rates are almost exactly where they were 20 years ago, and about 10% lower than they were 20 years before that. So...what are you talking about?
You mean just before ‘08?