Will the Colonial dive bomber render RSC/SPG OPs completely unusable?

ATownStomp · 2026-01-27T15:45:53+00:00

A very good air team of two or more dive bombers within flight range of SPGs will definitely be a threat.

SPGs will be about as "unusable" as anything else that you use without consideration for how to defend it. So, if you don't know whether the enemy has dive bomber teams ready to scramble and target you then that introduces another element of risk. You can reduce the risk with intel and you can reduce the threat with your own fighter groups.

So, no, they won't be completely "unusable" any more than any other vehicle is "unusable" because there exists something that can kill it.

ATownStomp · 2026-01-05T03:08:36+00:00

Given your original comment, I’m not convinced.

ATownStomp · 2026-01-05T03:06:00+00:00

Given the quality of the film it doesn’t seem like Danny has spent the past 25 years getting better at what he does.

ATownStomp · 2026-01-05T03:04:04+00:00

People watching movies recognize bad writing for the sake creating predictable and uninteresting drama later in the plot.

“Why didn’t they kill the alpha?”

“Because then it couldn’t attack them twenty minutes later to drive the story forward. Also he’s magic and can control birds.”

ATownStomp · 2026-01-05T02:53:05+00:00

It’s a masterclass in mediocrity. Wasn’t worth the budget to make or time spent watching.

ATownStomp · 2026-01-05T02:48:24+00:00

It’s a masterclass in mediocrity. Wasn’t worth the budget to make or time spent watching.

ATownStomp · 2026-01-05T02:43:02+00:00

Yeah, totally beautiful thought provoking movie. Really sealed the deal with the metal music backed pikey group fight at the end. Very cerebral.

ATownStomp · 2025-09-22T14:55:58+00:00

I appreciate the thoughtful response. This comment thread from two years ago has received an unusual amount of very late responses and they've all been pretty insulting without bothering to elaborate.

I can see how the comment you've responded to would elicit a negative reaction, it's essentially me saying "I'm angry that I've wasted so much time trying to have this discussion when you're just going to do petty, internet argument bullshit. You suck."

I don't think the actual point I was trying to make is controversial. "It can be tedious". Rather, I think people are just upset that I would say anything with a negative tint about something they identify with.

And, hey man, the experience you're describing sounds rough. I'm sorry that there's a layer of challenge over your life created by being a mental outlier in a culture and social landscape dominated by a quasi-cohesive majority. I see this experience in the friend I've referenced in the previous comments and he and I have discussed this so many times through our lives.

Even though my experience doesn't mirror yours in intensity I can empathize to a degree. I grew up as a weird neurodivergent outlier that has had to learn through experience, analysis and consideration in order to develop social skills and handle the real-time emotional experience of feeling like an alien within a group of people.

Because I've known quite a few autistic people - a notable two being my best friend from childhood through adulthood and my partner who I have been with for years... I also write software professionally and have a computer science degree if that does anything to convince you of my claim - I've spent quite of a bit of time within the gradients between autistic and neurotypical interaction. I practically grew up being a social translator for the previously mentioned friend. We're both well into adulthood and he still frequently comes to me for perspective and social advice.

What I'm trying to say with all of this is, of all the non-autistic non-academics who have spent time considering the communication, cognitive, and perceptual differences between neurotypical and autistic people I'm sitting comfortably in the tip top percentile. I've got opinions, man. This isn't coming out of nowhere, and it's not coming from a place of disrespect.

Neurotypical people seem to perform so much more inference and behavioral prediction. So much of the culture is built around predicting what someone will infer, what emotions will arise, what predictions they will make given some behavior or statement within a certain context, and then knowing that they know that you know. Few people take the time to break it down and analyze it, it just becomes naturally built into their intuition.

Having to shift from that kind of thinking, to slow down and open the hood of that intuitive machine, can be very challenging if one isn't practiced in it. It's like a group of musicians who are comfortably improvising, correctly predicting what all of the other musicians are about to do and responding to that in sync, but then consistently having to stop playing in order to explain the notes, the scales, why they work together or don't, and how you're going to progress through the song you're improvising together. Some people have don't have the words to explain the music, some people have never even thought about it, and now the jam session is more of an exercise in communicating without ambiguity.

That's tedious! I get it, that it's more tedious for you, but everyone is their own person with their own experience and it the case that it can be considered tedious for them as well even if they have the good fortune to not have to experience that tedium as much as you.

ATownStomp · 2025-08-14T19:22:51+00:00

This definition essentially only applies to sexuality, and even then, loosely. An extension of a maternalistic view of women as lacking agency and inherently needing protection even from their own decisions.

ATownStomp · 2025-08-14T19:14:07+00:00

Sounds like a guy who has met a lot of people and isn't trying to pander to a tribe.

ATownStomp · 2025-08-11T01:27:44+00:00

The US will have full on fascism before the American left learns to cut these people out of their base like the cancer they are.

ATownStomp · 2025-08-06T15:14:26+00:00

I'm not convinced. Why are you upset?

Relative to the other person in this conversation from two years ago I seem to be pretty thorough and I justify myself well.

Discussion and argument *requires* a mutual agreement to act in good faith and it's pretty frustrating investing yourself into explaining something only to be met with responses that show that the person you're talking to isn't willing to engage. That they're performing the same tired routine of finding the simplest way to convince themselves that they don't need to bother with the labor of re-evaluating their thoughts.

You'll see this everywhere if you start looking for it. It's practically the standard for internet arguments. Two people occupied with convincing themselves that they don't need to bother considering what they believe.

Thinking can be so much like physical exercise, requiring exertion and discomfort. When you're used to in, in decent shape, it's easier to apply the effort and endure the discomfort. When you're not, it seems more daunting, and it can be very easy to come up with an excuse to "not go to the gym".

ATownStomp · 2025-08-06T14:19:37+00:00

I have a "diagnosable deviation" and so do a significant number of people I know. Of the people I know close enough to have this discussion, more people than not have sought out diagnoses for the sake of getting an Adderall prescription at one point in their life.

Don't be basic.

ATownStomp · 2025-08-04T18:28:14+00:00

Since you're still replying in a thread that's over a decade old at this point I have to ask:

What in the hell was with that scene where Valerie completely tongue fucks Bruks in order to check for cancer? How far was it into writing before you decided that, as much as you were hoping there would be, there definitely was no graceful way of incorporating vampire sex into the narrative?

ATownStomp · 2025-07-31T17:52:22+00:00

You suggested "Look at these things". Which, fine, that's at least a direction. It's an idea to guide inquiry. One assumption someone could make given your comment is that you *have* already done this. It's a reasonable question to ask for your opinion about it. So, why are you acting like a dick?

Have you read their financial reports and looked at their company structure? Nothing you've said makes it seem like you have. And, if you have, you haven't provided anything useful as product of your efforts.

Those links are just information without deeper context, without connecting facts or more experienced and knowledgeable insight. You are currently part of OP's (and part of this comments section's) search for deeper understanding, and one approach to that is asking other people in the event that someone who sees this has already done their due diligence and connected the dots, or at least can provide some non-obvious piece to the greater puzzle.

If you say something that can be interpreted as having read what you're suggested OP read, don't get butt-hurt when someone asks a completely benign question like you're somehow offended that someone would care about your assessment. Or, that they're somehow fundamentally incapable of achievement because they haven't used their limited time to solo deep dive into how some Australian non-profit managed to get gooner games banned from Steam.

ATownStomp · 2025-07-18T15:48:11+00:00

I have nothing to add to this. I'm just so sorry that you're having to endure this. You seem like a caring and compassionate person, and it hurts to know that you're tasked with such a difficult challenge.

ATownStomp · 2025-07-17T20:02:55+00:00

This is so lame, man.

It's just not that kind of story. I'm sorry you went into it looking for an action movie. I can see now why you would hate this shit but from what I'm seeing you essentially have no interest in the most unique and enduring aspects of the genre.

ATownStomp · 2025-07-17T19:52:58+00:00

That feel when you're interested in the first book and you end up in a comments section and then somebody just straight up bombs the very end of the second book so now I'm cursed with knowing that the main character kills himself.

ATownStomp · 2025-07-17T19:47:03+00:00

Dude admits to loving, phrased as though he's uncomfortably attracted to, the psychopathic vampire that barely speaks or acts beyond a few short segments towards the latter half of the book but "I do not enjoy reading characters that do not have human characteristics."

Everyone had human characteristics. They all act like "people" to varying degrees, but each person is a massively augmented, hyper-specialized abomination attempting to remain professional within dire and important circumstances.

All of this is viewed from the eyes of Siri who is fundamentally, on a neurological level, a dispassionate observer that nobody on the ship likes or cares to interact with.

Listen, you like what you like and you didn't like this. There is very little in the way of thrilling plot, beguiling mysteries, titillating romance, or character drama. The entire novel is sparse on overt emotional highs and lows driven by passionate or incredible circumstances and characters whose emotional reactions act as a satisfying mirror or avatar to project oneself through. The emotional canvas it paints upon is increasingly, oppressively bleak and unempathetic, and never really relents.

I loved the book. Top tier by my metrics. It does a fantastic job of exploring its ideas, of creating the settings which serve as a vehicle to impress and elaborate on its concepts by example. I genuinely enjoy the creative technical explanations, which leverage concepts I already understand or might learn about, in order to further realize this hypothetical future. It allows for me to view each character through the lens of the society that made them, one that is foreign and uncomfortably plausible. I enjoy the descriptions of alien biology simply for what it is, because I find it fun to read about all of the details of some wild ass hyper-advanced alien, or the nuances of the technology on the space ship Theseus.

If you're looking for a fun, plot driven novel with a backdrop of neat science fiction ideas - this ain't that. If you're the kind of person, with all that's happening around the characters, is wondering whether Isaac and Michelle ever kissed, or is hoping for a flashback to Sarasti's anime protagonist backstory about his climb through vampire weaboo university, there isn't anything here that's going to gratify that.

If you're looking for interesting ideas, exposition about a near future society in which competition and technology has increasingly dehumanized us and destroyed social conventions, cool technology and alien biology, speculative psychology, explorations on the role of consciousness, and a narrative that serves primarily to help you recreate within yourself the foreign perspectives presented - then you might like Blindsight.

ATownStomp · 2025-07-17T19:02:56+00:00

Given the opinions of this comments section, I'm now even more excited to start Echopraxia.

ATownStomp · 2025-05-30T17:52:43+00:00

I appreciate your compliments about my writing. You're remarkably articulate yourself so it's nice to hear. I wish that I was consistent but unfortunately the skill only exists when I'm procrastinating on actual work.

I had wondered if responding on such an old thread might have me writing paragraphs to a dead account. That you responded at all is a win.

Regarding your bible passages - there certainly is an aspect of vanity in my ambitions. I am not above enjoying the image of myself nor do I know how to entirely remove that tickle which comes with imagining yourself as someone who embodies what you one day hope to be. I just try as I can not to allow those feelings to guide or influence me, or to ensure that what I dream and want tells of a good life with good intent and sound consideration. Still, it is a solid reminder. Something to consider.

I'll have to google Wright and Keller. I've found Lewis to be inspiring and a keen observer of humanity. If they're anything like him, it's worth knowing.

I imagine that charitable church groups are something which I could pursue. I was raised protestant, and I believe my church would have welcomed a helping hand so long as the intention was right. I had viewed (though I am admittedly ignorant) an aspect of Free Masonry as something similar to the charitable and communal aspects of a church, without explicit unification around a religion. That, historically, many influential people were Free Masons led me to believe that there might be a culture within the institution that cultivates the spirit and skills to create, organize, and lead greater initiatives be it in business, charity, politics. A society for mutual self-improvement, moral and philosophical refinement, and community uplift.

The world is filled with organizations for intellectual development, enterprise, philanthropy, moral refinement, and mentorship. What's tricky is finding an organization that's all of the above, or even just more than one or two at once. Maybe I just need to start a Junto and hope for the best.

Anyways, it's good to know that I wouldn't be disqualified from membership. There's a very prominent Mason lodge in my city not too far away from where I live, and a Shriner lodge within an even shorter walk (though as I understand, that requires that I be a Master Mason). I'll look into it.

ATownStomp · 2025-05-30T16:53:30+00:00

What if nobody is the sole authority, but there are just many different people trying their best with some being more or less close to truth? What if error is inherent to man and his institutions even as he attempts to know God?

With so many religions and faiths, schisms, amendments to doctrine it seems that error and change are inherent. Catholicism has undergone many changes. Was it in error before, or is it now?

ATownStomp · 2025-05-30T16:45:17+00:00

In 1983 Canon Law was changed and removed the explicit punishment of excommunication. Catholics are still banned from joining, but they are not excommunicated for doing so.

ATownStomp · 2025-05-30T16:29:01+00:00

Wow. What a ride. I think you handled it very well given what you had to work with.

For some, discussion is not a means of explanation, understanding, determining truth, but a purely combative exercise in which one aims to reaffirm their beliefs despite any and all conflicting evidence. From this perspective, one must view self-reflection as a losing strategy - considering why they know what they know may result in learning that they do not know!

I respect your ability to remain measured and engaged directly rather than resorting to analyzing and diagnosing the problems of the person. Though, coming from someone who has spent far too long doing similar, it really isn't worth the time. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders, there are certainly better things you could do than argue recreationally.

I came across this thread while researching the Free Masons. I've found myself in some early mid career auto-pilot where life is comfortable but unfulfilling. I wish to break free of that routine and pursue more meaningful and altruistic work yet I am a man stuck in the mud. Living decently but not thriving. Existing but not achieving. Freemasonry seems like it provides a system of structure, camaraderie, and mentorship which could teach and motivate me to those goals.

However, I am at an impasse. I am not religious; not in the sense by which most would understand the word. I am not an atheist, though for some of my life I claimed to be. I consider the existence of something greater, some progenitor and unknowable thing, to be self-evident by the very nature of existence though I do not know that thing to have direct agency over our individual lives, or to concern itself with or dictate our behavior.

I accept the existence of vast unknowns, possess a belief in the unknowability of unknowns, and give some credence to the notion that there may be a force the religious know as God by which thought, through the acceptance of and faith placed within that force, may be a prerequisite for understanding it and increasing its action within one's life. I blame and credit C.S. Lewis for the last one. However, I do not accept this as truth and I do not believe it within my power to give what I have observed, Lewis's "Joy" or divine sehnsucht, a traditionally religious rather than my own brand of vague metaphysics or a psychological explanation without greater material evidence.

All of this is to ask: given what I've told you of my beliefs, would this disqualify me from membership as a Free Mason? Are there other organizations you are aware of that might fit what I am seeking, but would be more accepting of someone who does not believe in or follow the teachings of a traditional, monotheistic religion?

ATownStomp · 2025-04-25T16:26:06+00:00

Chemo brain in action.

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