RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
How hard is it to simply shoot the drug dealers? Their whole revenue model is based upon getting access to the least valuable, least intelligent sections of society. That's also the recruiting base for the rank and file. In one case I'm aware of, the idiot drug dealers did their whole meeting/buying and selling under a visible, working CCTV camera.
The stupidest, drug-addled people are able to find drug dealers! Why can't police, with their wiretapping, forensics, drones, satellites, training and organization?
I've brought this up before and people say 'it can't be done', that we can't credibly threaten death for anyone who doesn't rat out their supplier, that billion-dollar bureaucracies can't just force their way up the supply chain and root out the whole network, killing anyone who doesn't comply.
Well it can be done! Shooting drug dealers is not hard. Rival gangs understand how to do it, that's how they secure their market share. They intimidate dealers from other gangs so they won't sell in their turf. States can do it, the Chinese did it. Opium is not a big problem in China anymore.
War on drugs (started century ago for openly and proudly racist reasons and on completely false pretenses that make WMDs in Iraq look like pinnacle of transparency) is worse by several magnitudes, on every metric you can imagine.
The war on drugs is not a serious effort, I agree. But it does not follow that serious efforts are impossible.
It is simple and easy to root out drug trafficking for rich, well-organized countries if they make a genuine effort. Even a moderately wealthy, organized country can manage it. It is only that American-style liberal democracies struggle with this fairly simple concept - these are the same states who managed to lose a war against impoverished, illiterate Afghan goatherders with no backing from anyone. That's because we didn't know what we wanted to do or why we were there, it was a clusterfuck of trying to manipulate the media, massage interest groups, make things look good, spend money on clients, reduce casualties. The war on drugs is the same.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
Case in point:
The entry into service of the new Chinese amphib makes for a stark contrast with the apparent loss of the USS Bonhomme Richard to a shipyard fire in San Diego. Although Bonhomme Richard would have been more capable than the new Chinese ships because of its ability to operate F-35B fighters, otherwise the two ships would have been quite comparable in capabilities. For its part, in April the first Chinese ship had its own minor fire, although the apparent damage was rapidly repaired and the fire did not seem to slow progress on construction.
https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/chinas-first-type-075-amphibious-assault-ship-begins-sea-trials/
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
As Ukraine is proving right now - having decent conventional army is also useful.
If Ukraine had nuclear weapons, they wouldn't need a decent conventional army, nor would they be fighting. Nuclear weapons are better for all defensive scenarios. Ukraine is proving that having a decent conventional army gets you five/six-figure casualties, economic devastation, power shortages and much of your country fleeing overseas. Nukes give you much better security.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
If the US is so eager to die for Ukraine, why not tell the Russians that? 'If you nuke Ukraine, we'll nuke you'!
Furthermore, if you don't understand the distinction between tactical nukes and strategic nukes, then how are you qualified to pontificate on nuclear strategy? Why would you suggest that the US will sacrifice its major cities for the remnants of Ukraine, a country it's not even allied with?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Firstly, tactical nukes would be used against formations in the field, not cities. That's what strategic weapons are for (of which Russia has 4000).
If Russia decided to vaporize Ukraine, the West would do nothing because Russia also has the capability to vaporize Europe and North America. That's what those strategic weapons were designed to do in the first place. I don't see why the US would commit national suicide by waging war against a nuclear superpower.
As I write this comment, I'm listening to Putin's live speech as he claims that other nations were threatening to use nuclear weapons against Russia, where he stated that 'the wind could blow against them.'
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7mo ago
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
Assuming you could find a court even able to try it, what punishment can even approach being proportional?
Recklessness and negligence (foreseeably) leading to megadeaths should result in people being tortured for the rest of their lives.
This is basically what happened to people at Guantanamo Bay or certain prisons in Iraq, where the prisoner's crimes were much, much, much less serious.
Have a quick skim through the wikipedia page of what happened there. 'Forced injections' and 'being locked in confined cells' are karmically appropriate but those are just the beginning. Beatings, sleep deprivation, being chained in the foetal position for 24 hours and forced to soil oneself...
If the US tortured Afghans semi-randomly (per Rumsfields complaints about Guantanamo being misused "We need to stop populating Guantanamo Bay (GTMO) with low-level enemy combatants... GTMO needs to serve as an [redacted] not a prison for Afghanistan.") then it is appropriate to torture vastly more damaging people.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
My point is that Jews are enormously overrepresented in establishing and developing these sectors. The direction in which they take things tends to be more radical and transgressive. It stands to reason that if there weren't any Jews, then there would be much less in the way of pornography and casual sex generally. The most sex-oriented big dating apps are tinder and grindr, both founded by Jews. More lovey-dovey, long-term relationship apps like OKCupid and Bumble were founded by Europeans.
Not all horrendous ideas in the world are from Jews: Gentler for instance proudly sent orphans in Germany off to live with pedophiles and got dozens of men acquitted of molestation, Foucault campaigned for the abolition of the age of consent, presumably so he could have sex with children. There was a postwar vibe that was excessively libertine, where barriers that should not have been touched were broken. The Frankfurt school had a lot to do with this attitude of course.
Immigration and refugee resettlement in the US stems significantly from Jews. The 1965 Immigration Law was introduced by Emmanuel Celler. Sure, it was passed by many non-Jews too. But consider Proposition 187 which sought to stem illegal immigration in California, which was approved democratically but then blocked by Mariana Pfaelzer.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
we mostly have Chinese corporate paper
According to whom? A majority of their reserves are US treasuries according to BDO as of September 2022.
If you take a quick look at the market cap, about 20 billion Tether has been redeemed for USD since May 2022. You're giving the 2021 argument but we've moved on since then. Now that it's not printing billions a month but actually had billions withdrawn the last few months, does that invert your conclusion?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8mo ago
hollowed out by an institutional culture of lying. Of course, China is probably in a similar state,
Chinese ships don't accidentally crash into civilian shipping, nor do their light carriers burn down in port, nor is their fleet actually shrinking year-on-year. When it comes to quality and naval professionalism, China seems to be well ahead of the US navy.
As for an institutional culture of lying... the Afghanistan War? The defeat against the Taliban with about 1/100th the funding of the US/NATO force, supported by no foreign power at all? Staying on ten years despite it being clear that the US was not going to achieve its objectives, while the Taliban was? Constantly lying to the public and saying things were going fine? Junior officers being ignored when they pointed out the entire thing was a massive farce with zero chance of success, that the 'allies' they were trying to train were drug addicts and pedophiles?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
OK, let's ditch the average photos. I was looking for some kind of yardstick to measure from. That's clearly very difficult.
I think you have to be more than 'not overweight, non-white or slobby' to be attractive.
For example, take another real image, this time of the US's 1999 world cup soccer team. All but one of these women fulfills your triple criteria. Are they all attractive though? 9 is attractive IMO, followed by 11 and maybe 6. That's 2.5 or 3/11. The others aren't really attractive, though I'll concede that the camera angle isn't flattering.
My base assumption is that few 36 year old women will be attractive. Young people are more attractive than older people. Not everyone's going to get an attractive partner, that's life.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
And you can't really explain why or how I feel like I am.
You think that thinking is an example of qualia. So you think that if you are thinking then you have qualia.
Say I thought that qualia and thinking were themselves included in remsajev. That doesn't make remsajev real. Things don't become real just by defining it such that it includes other things. Qualia isn't real either. There's no mystery at all, not of remsajev or qualia.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Well I did say 'in part'... There are lots of other poisons getting into Western culture and causing different harms.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Nuclear weapons haven't been a decisive factor in any war since the invention of nuclear weapons, including the only war in which nuclear weapons were used. They haven't even been key in mitigating western aid to Ukraine, let alone stopping multiple major and embarassing operational defeats that have rendered Ukraine a strategic disaster.
Nuclear weapons are like the sea to fish. They dominate the power structure wars are fought in, post-WW2 at least. There's a reason Libya and Iraq got hammered by the US but North Korea didn't. There's a reason no two nuclear powers have fought anything more than a few skirmishes, limiting the intensity of their wars. There's a reason the US and the other nuclear powers are so keen on nuclear non-proliferation. If nuclear weapons weren't decisive, they wouldn't care so much about them. If nuclear weapons weren't decisive, Russia wouldn't have dared to infringe upon NATO's interests in this war, since they have vast conventional superiority.
I suspect that the Yom Kippur war is the strongest example you have of nuclear weapons not helping defend a country. Yet when Israel threatened to use nukes, the US quickly moved to fly in huge quantities of military aid. They didn't care about the wrath of the Arabs causing hundreds of billions of damage to the US economy via oil prices. The superpowers put huge pressure on their clients to end the conflict in a stalemate before nukes could be used, they didn't let the conflict fester as in so many other wars. Nukes don't need to be used to be decisive in controlling the situation. If they were used, they would be even more powerful.
The Polish use for a tank army is less for if Putin attacks Poland, and more if Putin were to try and attack the Baltic states to Poland's immediate NE, were Poland would be the only realistic force beyond American immediate buildup able to interven in a Baltic scenario.
If Russia attacks, going for a fait accompli, why should the US end the war even if the Russians sweep through the Baltics in 48 hours? It makes the US look totally pathetic if they don't come in and retake that ground eventually. While I maintain that nuclear weapons are dominant, they favor defense over attack. Russia's nuclear threats to defend its army occupying the Baltic aren't as credible as NATO nuclear threats against Russian nuclear first use. Furthermore, Russia has only attacked non-NATO members in conflict with Russian minorities. Even if the Baltics get into a spat with their Russian minorities, they're still in NATO. It would be an incredibly risky and provocative move to attack the Baltics. It'd be a far more aggressive move than invading Ukraine.
Poland just needs to be part of the American alliance network and able to fly highly-valuable supplies in relatively short order in case of crisis, thus helping the higher priorities.
I'm afraid I still don't understand why Korea would care at all about such a niche scenario. They plan for some kind of highly-urgent crisis where the Koreans suddenly need more ammunition, so they fly it in from Poland? Why not just plan ahead and buy your own ammunition from your own companies before hand, store it in your own country and keep the airlift capacity for moving things you don't make like US forces or Patriot batteries? There certainly has been a syndrome where NATO countries don't bother to produce ammunition, Russia has been firing off entire years of US artillery production in weeks. But surely the simplest cure is just to produce munitions and spare parts for the weapons one designs, builds and operates!
What if the crisis strikes quickly and there's no time to airlift supplies from Poland, through hostile airspace, to South Korea? What if Poland needs its supplies because it also faces a crisis? What if South Korean defence industry needs some more cash? I agree that the Koreans want to open up markets but this is too far.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Israel faces various unconventional threats in Hezbollah and Hamas. Poland does not. Israel also likes bombing various countries like Syria, Iraq and so on. For offensive purposes you need a strong military.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
How is it bad that the Chinese are pulling off epic feats of engineering, creating a bigger high speed rail network than the rest of the world combined (and using their own companies to do so)? Being able to do mega-engineering is good actually - it compares very well to the American experience. A NYT article went viral the other day describing the French companies working in Cali who gave up and decided to move somewhere less politically dysfunctional - like North Africa.
I only link breitbart because the NYT is paywalled:
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
The US didn't bother covering up the attack because it's blatantly, absurdly obvious who did it. The US has made very open, public threats about making these pipelines disappear.
The ex-Polish foreign and defence minister knows perfectly well what's going on. This is just like attacks on Iranian scientists or centrifuges. We know perfectly well it's Israel and/or America behind it.
If I had to guess, I'd say the bombs were planted so the US could have another card up its sleeve in case Russia or Germany did anything. They just mobilized, so the US is using more pressure. But I guess that's just correlation=causation too.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Absolutely, you would need to use dozens of weapons or more. They would be effective at destroying entrenched infantry and break up any large-scale counterattacks which require concentrated forces. But the Russians have thousands of weapons.
But why does everyone think would be overwhelming pressure on the US to intervene and join a nuclear war?
Imagine you're the US president. There's a nuclear war going on between Russia and a country you're not obliged to defend by any kind of treaty. The country with the single biggest arsenal in the world is using somewhere between 0.2-1% of its tactical nukes. The remaining 1990 tactical weapons are held in reserve, ready to be used against you. The remaining 4000 strategic weapons are obviously pointed at you. The whole Russian arsenal is on very high alert because this is a major crisis.
Why do you join and make yourself a target? Do you think the Russians, after just launching nuclear strikes, will back down now? After they've done extremely costly signalling to show their desire to win? What benefit does joining a nuclear war have for the US? Why is it worth it? Everyone here seems to think the US should or would intervene but I can't understand why!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Fair enough, I just thought de Boer was in the aggravating kind of mental illness camp, as opposed to the 'fun or amusing' camp. From the tone of your post, you didn't seem interested or happy to read his content.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7mo ago
Sure - but then we go back to the original question you were responding to.
Who is the occupying power again? Not Egypt, Israel. Even the US state department admits this.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7mo ago
Same law that protects blacks against discrimination also protects whites and Asians.
Only de jure, as you say. It was devised not to protect Whites or Asians but to advance blacks, women and so on, so there's a logical consistency there. Intention and use were aligned. The court would not just be implementing what the words say, they're changing the fundamental meaning of the law even as everyone pretends it stays the same. I guess if we looked around we could find some case where whites were protected by the law (was there some case in Hawaii) but by and large that's not the function or goal.
This is on a different level to ruling that fish are bees or whatever for the purposes of some biodiversity preservation law, even though that's a huge change of factual content (and logically bizarre). They really need commitment from the other branches of govt to make such a meaningful change and get it to stick.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
The European half of NATO has a lot of weapons, a lot of troops, a lot of everything except tactical nukes. They spend far more than Russia on their military. There is no reason to feel threatened when you are very well armed at all levels short of nuclear war.
Someone can not be a threat in normal circumstances, yet be dangerous if antagonized. This is not a contradiction.
Ukraine is a dry run for the west’s response in case of such an emergency, and continuing support signalizes nato’s commitment to defend its members
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, it signals that the West is ready to support any anti-Russian country next to Russia. If you're worried about little green men in Estonia, why not base troops in Estonia? Or maybe you could encourage the Baltics to be more tolerant to its Russian-speaking minority? I would've thought expelling people who didn't have sufficient grasp of Latvian is a rather odd approach for an EU embracing multiculturalism and 3rd world immigration: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russians-take-language-test-avoid-expulsion-latvia-2023-05-08/
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Explain it? It just is.
Why do positive and negative charges attract? They just do. There's nothing to understand or explain, it just is. I don't need to explain qualia because it's nonsense with zero value, except to philosophers who need some make-work.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Meanwhile, the other one was just way off. Like 30 percent off the ratios. The problem is there's no good reason humans have for altering the isotope ratios of a simple metal like magnesium. There's no different properties of the different isotopes, that anybody, at least in any of the literature that is public of the hundreds of thousands of papers published, that says this is why you would do that. Now you can do it. It's a little expensive to do, but you'd have no reason for doing it.
Why would anyone irradiate magnesium to make these weird isotopes and drop it off for people to find? Surely this could only happen artificially. Are we proposing that some freak natural occurrence leaves behind some irradiated magnesium right next to a 'UAP', which in your mind is a completely separate bizarre natural occurrence?
It's like the theory that Epstein managed to kill himself in an anti-suicide room AND that the camera failed just when he did so. Two connected simultaneous unexplained events? Surely it is more plausible that there's an orchestrating party involved.
Furthermore, 25 people are dead! Either Havana Syndrome was real or there's another kind of energy that's killing people, or the professor is lying.
People with credentials are wrong all the time, and 95% of other people with credentials would dispute UFOs generally
Well they weren't with him in the lab, measuring the isotopes or examining the brains. I'm confident that 95% of people with credentials would opt out of disputing people who had seen the evidence, when they themselves have not.
The only thing that can protect Poland from Russia is nuclear weapons. If Poland is worried about having to fight Russia alone (in some nightmare scenario where NATO has disintegrated), they need nuclear weapons. Nothing else could save them. Now you might say that Poland can't get nuclear weapons because the US will throw a tantrum about it, that's the whole non-proliferation scam that they've been spruking for the last 70 years... But that's rather tangential to the massive conventional buildup.
Yes, if you don't have nuclear weapons!
If the Russians attack Estonia in the normal scenario (an extremely big if), where NATO is behind them, then Russia loses the conventional war and starts a nuclear war. Even if they go for the fait accompli of just storming in quickly (which they clearly aren't too good at), you can't just attack countries in major alliances and not expect retribution. That defeats the whole point. The US would counterattack, they have tripwire forces in the region.
In the nightmare scenario where NATO is gone and it's every state for themselves, the Poles get turned into a Russian satellite regardless of what conventional forces they have. What good are tanks if the enemy can raze your cities in minutes? I suppose they could try using conventional forces for a stalling action and desperately nuclearizing... but that's precisely the most dangerous position to be in if you face a nuclear power. That's when it's most logical to use nuclear weapons to quickly finish the war and pre-empt any nuclear counterattack.
Certainly!
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