BahRamYou
1d ago
Increased PGM strikes and naval bombardments until they've destroyed all of the anti-ship missiles that the Houthis got from Iran. It doesn't need to be a genocide or an extended occupation. It's just the sort of thing that having more mass of conventional weapons in your military helps a lot with, which is why I support this sort of budget increase.
BahRamYou
1d ago
We could it at least give it a shot, before we give up on it entirely. Right now the US is just tickling them with small amounts of precision tomahawk missile strikes. This isn't like Vietnam or Afghanistan, where we're trying to pacify an entire large country. We just want to stop a thin strip of land near the sea from launching missiles at ships.
What is your argument exactly.... that no amount of larger military spending could possibly beat a small insurgent group like the houthis, but it's also useless against major powers because everything would just be nukes? most military simulations do not agree with either of those.
BahRamYou
1d ago
Well, knowing Trump, this is probably just empty boasting + big round numbers ("ten billion dollars") + grift for him and his cronies.
But if it actually goes through, I can see the logic to it. China is rapidly buiding up its navy, much faster than the US and allied nations. We can't use nuclear weapons because they do too (plus it's just horrible). And raw dollars are misleading, since their military gets paid a lot less, so in PPP it's a lot closer. Same with Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
Hell, we've been fighting the Houthis for over a year now, and we still haven't been able to completely shut them down. Some ships are still avoiding that area. The US can protecdt its homeland, but it doesn't have anywhere near the kind of global dominance that it once had.
BahRamYou
3d ago
Well, he's an old man and a lame-duck president. His political future was probably cooked regardless of what he did. But he'll still have all the usual presidential powers like vetos, pardons, and foreign policy. The tariffs might be the defining feature of his presidency.
BahRamYou
6d ago
I second all of this. I have messed with shorting a little (although usually by options rather than naked shorts) and it's a lot harder than being long. You're paying interest the entire time, and when it goes against you, you effectively get more leveraged, increasing your risk even while you think "cmon, this price is totally irrational, when is the bubble going to burst already!?" I know some perma-bears who have been predicting doom for the past 10 years (just from market valuations, nothing to do with Trump) and they keep getting proven wrong.
BahRamYou
7d ago
I'm also (somewhat) saved by laziness... was going to buy more (on leverage) yesterday but never got around to doing it. Never Get Up.
I'm personally getting screwed on this one because of some very aggressive options plays that I was doing. Thoughts and prayers for the stock market today, please.(I'm joking but am also seriously nervous right now)
BahRamYou
7d ago
OK, now that the site is working and I can actually read it, I can say that I really disagree with that person's opinions on RTS games. To me, they feel like the sort of opinions people have from thinking about RTS games and making them, but not so much actually playing them. Judging by this: https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/3_-_Fight_your_opponent,_not_the_UI it seems like he wants to make a game that's slower and more thoughtful. But that's just not how RTS games work... the strategy comes from which things you focus your limited attention and focus on. If you make everything too convenient and automated, there's nothing left for the player to do, and all games go the same way.
It's funny to me that he complains in that article about how much busywork is in the macro of Starcraft2. One of the big changes in that game compared to the original was that they greatly eased the task of macro, by adding automine and multiple building select. Lots of us complained about that change, and I still think we were right... the beauty of original Starcraft is that your opponent is constantly distracted with those macro tasks, so there's lots of opportunities to attack and win battles even when you're outnumbered. There was a glut of games from the 2000s that tried to "fix" RTS by automating things, including Total Annihilation (which I guess this game is a mod of?) and there's just no staying power to any of those games. Once you figure out the meta build, that's it, there's nothing left to do in them. Meanwhile, original Starcraft is still going strong after all these years with an active community of both pros and casual players.
I've never even heard the term "monospam." In what game was that a problem? I guess Total Annihilation? It was never an issue in starcraft or AOE2, since it's natural to want a combination of units unless you're doing a very early rush. If anything, noobs tended to build too many different types of units, and you have to learn as you get better to just focus on a few that share upgrades and buidings.
Still, well-written and thoughtful, so thanks for sharing it.
BahRamYou
9d ago
The site seems to be down so I can't read it there right now. But, I'm a little confused by that quote about Void Rays... what was wrong with them? I played SC2 when it first came out (after playing a lot of original Starcraft) and I thought Void Rays were fine. Charging them up by firing on your own stuff might have looked goofy, but it still required some skill and preparation. If anything, my complaint about SC2 was the opposite... everything was just too easy and automatic, so armies could all form up into one single death-ball and move around in perfect synchronization, giving little chance for players to show their skills or make a comeback wtih a smaller army.
BahRamYou
12d ago
I think it's most clear when you look at the top-down view of the arctic ocean, like this one: https://images.app.goo.gl/tTE2H6ZyXdkU5DZB8
Greenland is front-row center in the race for the arctic. And that's an entire ocean! (also, incidentally, the path for any missiles and/or satellites flying between the US and Russia/China... (as explained here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SDFqMjy172k)
BahRamYou
12d ago
It seems like you're basically describing "slice of life" anime. (which can also be manga or light novel). It's a huge genre.
BahRamYou
16d ago
Same! I hate those apps and how theyve ruined dating for everyone. Even if yiu dont use them, everyone else is if there was a movement to ban them like how they almost banned tiktok, i'd be a fanatical supporter
BahRamYou
16d ago
Agrees with all of this as a felllow alcoholic barfly. Its getting to the point where i basically assume that any young attractive woman is going to have a shitty personality and be hopelessly addicted to her phone
BahRamYou
18d ago
Well yeah.. Puerto Rico and Guam also didn't exactly become territories in a "voluntary" way...
BahRamYou
19d ago
Seems like a terrible idea from a Republican standpoint: adding ~30 million new voters to your electorate, 80%+ of whom can be assumed to be reliable Democrat voters.
One solution might be to make a territory, not a state, so they wouldn't have the right to vote.
But I really don't think Trump is serious. At least, I don't think he's thought this through in detail, he just thinks it would look cool on the map and make him famous in history.
BahRamYou
19d ago
man, what? I'm in favor of allowing them to stay and chill at the library. It seems like you're just venting and want to yell at someone on the internet at this point.
BahRamYou
19d ago
You say "just enforce laws" but what you mean is prison. All the homeless people will be sent to prison, because that's what happens when you enforce laws and prosecute people every time they break laws. This would of course cost 10x more money than the current library system, and lead to horrific human rights abuse in prison but... oh well, out of sight out of mind, right? You call it a strawman to to talk of executions, but your proposed solution is really not much better, and I'm tired of people like you who sneer that there's some quick easy solution that could be implemented overnight if only the local government could stop being pussies or whatever.
BahRamYou
20d ago
Good point, it's much better to have them out committing crimes on the streets instead. Or were you suggesting that we simply execute all of them?
BahRamYou
20d ago
Does that really make them "unusable?" I used to live in a city with a bad homeless problem, and the libraries naturally attracted a lot of homeless like you describe. The bathrooms were a nightmare. But the library was still perfectly usable. I never felt unsafe going in there, just a bit gross and sad about the state of society.
On the other hand, I also saw homeless outside doing... much worse things. So I'd much rather have them in there as a "containment center" then just about anywhere else. Sure, in a perfect world, we'd get them housing, treatment, a job placement, etc... but that's not the world we live in.
BahRamYou
22d ago
Yeah. It's the same Malthusian logic- the population grows faster than the amount of available wealth. And even if the population is shrinking, the wealth is also getting concentrated into fewer and fewer hands unless the government steps in.
BahRamYou
22d ago
And I think the hard truth is just that everyone is TRYING to capture the top 20% performers across the board, so anyone not in the top 20% performance bracket for any given category is going to be left out, and very confused as to what their real options are.
I think @KulakRevolt had a good essay related to this. I can't find it right now, but he argued that in the past, most men were pretty happy to see increased military spending because it meant jobs. Relatively good jobs that an average man could get, no experience or credentials necessary. Nowadays we tend to think there's a tradeoff between "guns or butter" where increased military spending means less money available for all the nice stuff. But the more common pattern is the opposite- war opens up opportunities, while longtime peace creates a glut of men with no clear role in society. If some of them die in a war, that just creates even more demand for young men.
BahRamYou
23d ago
Aren't you mixing up two very different time periods? After the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR fell apart, sure, everyone was happy to let Germany disarm. But everyone disarmed then, including the US and Russia. It was a very happy time. God I miss the 90s.
In the 50s, when NATO first formed, West Germany was one of the first to join and one of its most important members. It had a national draft, high military spending, and most wargames assumed that an active WW3 would be fought mostly on West German land. It also included many ex-Naxis among its ranks, since... where else would you get people with military experience at that time? The US and everyone else was just fine with that in the name of expediency.
Jesus christ. Futures respond instantly down 100. RIP my money.
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