jkf
3hr ago
Moving your borders closer to NATO does not suggest a fear of invasion. Neither does draining your manpower and weapon stockpiles.
Creating a geographical buffer between your enemies and your core is absolutely valid strategy, even if it costs some -- what it's worth is another question of course.
My current operating model is that Russia and China are both still playing "Great Game" diplomacy, in which military wargame type considerations have a voice at the table -- most of the West is definitely not, with the US being an exception in that it's torn between Deep State 5-d chess and Fukuyama-flavoured quokka-ism.
jkf
1d ago
At least two -- tobacco has killed many multiples of plausible smallpox totals!
jkf
1d ago
It's not a goal at all though -- it's a tool in service of their (other) goals.
jkf
2d ago
Neither -- it's a demoralization tactic against the stale pale straight majority.
English people literally think that there has been significant black Representation in their population since Roman times -- this is a direct result of decades of work by progressives at the BBC.
The impact is that the native English population will put up with (seemingly) literally anything -- very helpful for the progressive project!
Similar tactics are at work in the USA -- the exact group being 'represented' is not that important; LGBTetc works just as well as racial minorities. So long as the majority is underrepresented/delegitimatized, the intended purpose is served.
jkf
5d ago
Technically speaking you can attach 'program code', but it only gets published if it's less than 300 lines, with each line under 72 characters. Which is not a lot of STL or GCODE, and you'd need either a very lax or very sympathetic patent examiner.
You could maybe describe the gcode in structured natural language, such that a 'translator' could convert it back?
ie: "we claim an arrangements of parts as follows: 'bolt': a rectangular prism 8cm*2cm*2cm with 3mm longitudinal grooves at the midpoint" etc etc etc
pretty boring patent app, but I think such a description would contravene various ghost gun regulations, and seems to fall much more obviously under free speech than a gcode file?
jkf
5d ago
are we supposing the Trump monitors are all too retarded to notice anything?
You just need to fabricate some excuse to keep them away from you -- if they object, have them arrested! (I know this sounds far-fetched, but it's literally what happened in 2020)
While this may be harder going forward (while Trump is in power, at least) there are lots of ways to do fraud that aren't readily observable at the time of counting -- "harvest ballots and don't try to hard to authenticate them on election day" for example.
"Hey guys I just had a thought, I know we don't know each other well but let's rig this election"
You are not getting it -- this conversation never happens, people just do stuff.
jkf
6d ago
how does election monitor 1 get everyone else, including ones sent by the opposing campaigns, to ignore their fiddling with the counts?
They all hate Trump too! (the opposing campaign people, you need to find a way to shut them out -- the other workers will support you in this, because those people support Trump! They are icky and annoying!)
Has this ever happened with any crime where basically everyone involved is super competent to stay hidden, despite people on the lookout for it
Nobody was on the lookout for it though -- people still make arguments like "nah, that could never happen -- we have the most secure elections ever!"
Why would anyone need to coordinate -- votes are votes, right?
jkf
7d ago
If it's just a bunch of random people doing it without greater coordination then yes it could be theoretically possible, but this would also not be what is alleged
Who alleged that? Literally everyone in many spaces hates trump; they don't need to coordinate in order for many people (particularly people in the class involved with counting/monitoring elections) to be working towards the same goal.
jkf
7d ago
Likewise if there was a mass fake voter scheme,
What if there were a number of smaller fake voter schemes? Some of them better organized/more skillfully implemented than others?
jkf
7d ago
How do you feel about the toupee fallacy? It seems like the sort of thing that you might agree with in... other contexts?
jkf
7d ago
It wasn't some youtuber, it was like a real old-fashioned TV news reporter -- I do think a lady got charged on that one, you could look it up? But I have no reason to think it was staged.
jkf
7d ago
Fact check: if you call them "indians" in canada most people will know who you are talking about -- slightly context dependent, but getting less so every day since just about nobody calls the native indians indians anymore.
"East Indians" is completely unambiguous -- "East Asians" works for slanty eyed yellow people, but "Asians" would normally mean the same thing.
I never heard anybody in Canada talk about "South Asians" until ~10-15 years ago -- I do think it came from the UK.
TLDR: somebody who's not racist enough to say "chink" but wants to complain about what's happening in Richmond will just say "Asian" -- in Surrey, the alternatives might be "binder/pakki" and "East Indian". ("Chug/native" if you are bitchin about some reservation or guys killing all the moose)
This is Canadian usage as I know it since the 1970s or so. Western Canadian I should say -- I don't really give a shit how Toronto wants to talk, but I don't believe it to be much different.
jkf
7d ago
A whole bunch of people saying they were signed up at the homeless shelters and that they didn't vote yet somehow votes were submitted in their name would be noticeable.
Dunno about a whole bunch, but I recently saw a reporter interviewing homeless people in LA saying that they were paid to fill out ballots for/against some ballot initiative -- so what if it's both happening and noticeable, but nobody does anything about it because the people doing the fraud keep getting elected?
jkf
14d ago
They will be too busy trying to get the SKS added to the list of banned rifles -- although watching him fumble with the stripper clip to reload makes me think that The System Is Working, maybe?
jkf
14d ago
Pretty much -- that's why countries (should) have air defenses and/or plausible deterence for such attacks.
jkf
15d ago
The fact is that any country can attack any other country at any time -- as you point out, formal declarations of war haven't been a thing for many many years; it really is the law of the jungle.
If Iran had bombed Trump's inauguration, that would be an act of war; there's no moral valance to that, just that they would get their asses kicked for it.
Did Egypt et al send a diplomat to Tel Aviv to formally slap Golda Meir with a glove or something in 1973? If you want to go to war, you just do it.
jkf
15d ago
jkf
15d ago
The US and Iran have been at war since about 1979 -- and Iran started it! Invaded sovereign territory, took hostages (diplomats!), the whole bit... seriously, I'm pretty sure there was never a truce declared or anything like that?
"Perfidy" AFAIK specifically refers to violating a flag of truce or wearing enemy uniforms -- surprise attacks don't qualify.
jkf
16d ago
duplicitous
What was duplicitous about it? Everyone has known that the relevant aspects of the US Deep State have wanted to bah-bah-bah-bah bah-bah-bomb Iran for like... forty-ish years?
"Surprise" I could live with (although, it wasn't exactly surprising!), but nobody was saying "nah, we love Iran -- we'd never bomb them!"
jkf
19d ago
Pretty great place for home decorating inspiration though! (He is building a ballroom, after all...)
jkf
23d ago
Eh, there is a new-ish 'de minimus' exemption on paperwork for lots of things, but scopes are not those things AFAIK.
Many companies don't want to mess with even the low-value exemption in any case due to people getting hammered with huge fines in the past -- but without the exemption it's pretty onerous AIUI -- to get an export permit for a scope you need to (IIRC) fill out various convoluted permit forms on the US side, which also demand import authorization from the Canadian side -- which is not a thing that Canada cares about, but that makes it worse because there's nobody in charge of processing the forms that the US side is demanding!
There are people in Canada with associated FFLs in the US that will do it for a fee -- but that fee is like $300 bucks, which gives you some idea of the hassles involved. (again, pretty much all on the US export side -- Canada doesn't really make it too hard to import actual guns even, so long as they are otherwise in compliance with our somewhat Byzantine rules around whether they are legal to have at all)
Actually militarily useful technology is right out though, even if it has relevant consumer applications -- any sort of night vision would be a common example. And an AGI that lived up to the hype would certainly be better for harming America than some shitty NVGs...
jkf
24d ago
It's still a real hassle getting something as simple as a scope for a hunting rifle from the US to Canada -- which IIRC is ITAR (the hassle is on the US side, and there were some big fines for exporters before people started paying attention), and has been the case for a number of years.
Certainly an actual AGI would be a bigger threat to US national security than a nice cheap scope from SFRC, so I guess it makes sense?
I mean that Ukraine is militarily important to Russia in a hypothetical war with tanks rolling (one way or another) through the Fulda Gap and nukes flying, so Russia prioritizes current actions to mitigate the risk of this (low probability) hypothetical. Similarly with China's policies on Tibet and/or Taiwan. (ie. they are mostly due to strategic considerations in the case of war with India or the US, rather than some deep ideological feeling that Tibet or even Taiwan ought to be Chinese)
Europe did this in the 19th century but doesn't anymore; the US kind of does it, but through puppets and diplomacy (plus CIA ops, probably) in far-flung places rather than in their own backyard.
If the US were thinking this way, they would absolutely be serious about military force in Canada (risk of becoming a Chinese puppet) and Greenland (risk of becoming a stepping stone for either China or Russia) -- I don't think Trumps ruminations on this come from the same place, it's more like trolling at this point.
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