ABigGuy4U
6mo ago
The vast majority of America’s petroleum refining facilities are right on the coast in Louisiana and Texas. That’s why gas prices shot up to 7 dollars a gallon nationwide after hurricane Katrina. Most standard non-nuclear attack submarines can launch ground strike cruise missiles out the torpedo tubes. I won’t get into the other stuff because I don’t want to end up on a watch list either.
ABigGuy4U
6mo ago
The problem is that logic goes both ways. A state actor could simultaneously collapse the US power grid and destroy the entire US petroleum industry with one submarine and 50 special forces troops.
ABigGuy4U
6mo ago
Here’s the problem with F-16s. They need a very long paved runway. The Soviet MiGs they had been using before are designed with filters over the engine intakes, so they can take off from improvised dirt or gravel runways. F-16s can’t do that, the runway has to be paved. That means you can’t move the F-16 squadrons around well or disperse forces, because the number of runways that can host them are very limited. So The two options are: 1. bunch them all up in a couple of runways and wait for them to get blown up with cruise missiles or 2. Base them out of Poland and risk making Poland a party to the conflict in a way that doesn’t easily allow them to claim article 5 if those runways are attacked. Which is why the US has been so hesitant to give them F16s in the first place.
ABigGuy4U
6mo ago
The aid doesn’t matter anymore. Ukraine is calling up 400,000 new draftees and they still won’t be able to afford to rotate out front line combat troops that have been fighting for two years. Unless NATO actually sacks up and sends multiple divisions of troops, there’s going to be a major collapse of the front in at least one area.
ABigGuy4U
6mo ago
The media/NAFO Twitter/Reddit party line was “total Ukrainian victory, including Crimea” until about fall 2023 and “comprehensive Ukrainian victory, Donbas and Luhansk reclaimed” until about two months ago.
ABigGuy4U
6mo ago
I’m talking specifically about MW2 (2009). Modern Warfare 1 was reasonably realistic.
I think Modern Warfare 2’s story is somewhat underrated. It’s objectively ridiculous in the broad scope: It reads like a nightmare Tom Clancy would have when he was in bed with a high fever. But it totally nails the queasy off-balance feeling that spiraling geopolitical crises in the 21st century would have, which makes it feel prescient. It also manages to (perhaps unintentionally) smuggle in some interesting commentary about 9/11 and the subsequent US response.
ABigGuy4U
6mo ago
The “Ukraine will turn into a frozen conflict lasting years” thing is the new media cope. Ukraine is losing multiple towns every week in the east, and their army is getting progressively more run down. The situation is going to be seriously dicey for them by June or July.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
2 to 4 years sound wise to me, but keep an eye on it. Hair plugs have come a long way, they can look very thick and natural now. I would avoid minoxidil, hormone treatments of any kind are a lot heavier than most people think.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
Neoliberals were strip mining the economy and the labor market, but the short term effects were pretty impressive. The foreign policy establishment was digging us into a hole that would eventually lead to the collapse of the empire, but in the short run in made us feel very strong. A lot like someone on a cocaine bender, ironically.
Iran has just launched a massive strike against Israel. Dozens of Shahad drones are in flight, and some number of ballistic missiles have just launched. Yemen is also launching ballistic missiles. No word if Hezbollah has joined the attack yet.
Edit 1: number of Shahad drones estimated at 400-500. Iran's Defense Minister says "any country that opens its airspace or soil to Israel to attack Iran will receive our decisive response", according to Iran's state-affiliated IRNA News Agency
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
Be careful in the medium-long term. Hitting the wall isn’t something that only happens to women, and it can creep up on you faster than you think.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
I stopped because after a while it started making my heart beat really fast. It always elevated my heart rate somewhat, but initially it was more like 90-120 beats per minute. Later on I would take one puff and it would immediately go to 200-250 BPM. That just doesn’t seem healthy from a cardiac standpoint.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
I’m not even referring to any of the HBD stuff, I think the observed physical distinctions would be enough.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
If zoologists classified humans anything close to the way they classified animals there would definitely be multiple subspecies. Zoologists will classify two morphologically identical species of fish that can interbreed as different subspecies because the fish in Pond A has a spot on its dorsal fin and the fish in Pond B does not.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
“Where are the liberals at” The liberals are on the entire rest of the internet. The whole reason it’s the Motte and not R/the Motte is that R/the Motte was worried about getting banned off of Reddit. If someone’s opinions are broadly in line with the liberal consensus there’s a million other places they could discuss things instead. We’re like the American colonies during the English Civil War: People come here because they risk getting beheaded elsewhere.
What I mean is that I think the end goal is to eventually attack a more marginal NATO member (probably Poland or the Baltic states) and then get Germany and France and the US to back down on doing anything about it, thus be-clowning NATO as an institution. Edited to add: Ukraine has the largest army in Europe besides Russia, and thanks to international support is one of the best equipped armies in the world. It was supposed to be Europe’s buffer against Russia for the next 20 years. It’s not Liechtenstein-tier like many people on Reddit assume. It’s not a minor conquest, and the “three days to Kiev” quote that’s often bandied about was from western sources, not Russia itself.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
I mean “crack NATO” in the sense of pushing things far enough that France, Germany and the United Kingdom have to either weenie out or consign themselves to the Third World War.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
I suspect Russia has taken about a US in Vietnam amount of casualties, and that Ukraine’s casualties are absolutely horrific. I’m in the process of writing a big effort-post about that, but I’m trying to find some mainstream sources for myself beyond “muh gut” “4chan” and “it was revealed to me in a dream”
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
Massive riots and bio warfare attacks would be counterproductive this cycle because Biden is sitting in the chair to take the blame. The Great George Floyd Fracas and COVID worked because no matter what Trump did the media could light him up for it.
Lockdowns>“Trump is a tyrant!” No lockdowns>“Trump is doing nothing while millions of Americans die!” Send out Federal law enforcement and National Guard to stop rioters>“Trump is a racist tyrant!” Trump doesn’t do anything about the riots>“look at all the chaos that Trump’s America has wrought!”
None of that works with Biden in the Oval Office. You see how much trouble the Israel/Gaza thing alone has caused for Democrats, with Biden getting criticism for supporting Israel while simultaneously getting criticism for not supporting Israel enough.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
Technically, but in practice it’s whatever the NATO members want to do. If they really want to get into the Ukraine war, “the merest sop to the critical intellect will do.” And it doesn’t have to be all of NATO, a coalition of the willing could jump the gun.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
At this point I’m not sure Russia would accept a peace treaty. They’ve already put in the hard yeoman work of attriting Ukrainian forces and and NATO ammunition stocks, and punching through through the built up fortification networks in the east. That’s 80 percent of the work needed to conquer the whole country. I don’t think they would just quit now without getting any of the dividends. Also I suspect the end goal of the war is to crack the NATO alliance, not just take Ukraine.
ABigGuy4U
7mo ago
What bugs me about AI anti-doomers is that they don’t realize how much even a non-sentient mid level AI could wreck society. In two years, digital animators are all going to be obsolete. If someone brings to market an AI that can write emails and push paper reasonably well, there goes 60 percent of white collar jobs. Couple that with a halfway decent Tesla android, there goes 40 percent of working class jobs. Making half of the people in the job market unemployed in the span of five years would cause major, major political social and economic problems. And I doubt our corporate overlords are going to respond to suddenly having 3 billion new useless eaters by going “UBI for everyone!” Hell, even a Skynet apocalypse scenario doesn’t require a God-like AGI it just requires a reasonably smart non sentient system with basic self preservation instincts and access to armaments. And that’s not even getting into the trouble that human actors could cause with good-but-not great AI systems.
Israel has struck multiple targets in Ishfan, Iran. The location of these strikes would suggest that they hit one of Iran’s major nuclear research facilities.
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