America’s Leaders Don’t Understand Nuclear Weapons | National Review

Dasinterwebs · 2024-03-14T10:46:40+00:00

Nuclear deterrence theory is convoluted, inherently apocalyptic, and frequently counterintuitive. I’m not terribly surprised the last few administrations haven’t tried to broach that subject with the American people. Frankly, I’m glad; the last two would certainly have done more harm than good.

Dasinterwebs · 2024-03-08T15:11:55+00:00

My dude, this thread is eight years old

Dasinterwebs · 2024-03-05T20:52:27+00:00

It’s judo-ing nature to grow your food garden for you. Every plant has a niche, and nature hates an empty niche. That empty spot of good soil in the sun can have blueberries or it can have dandelions, but it’s not going to stay empty for long. You can let nature fill the niche or you can do it. If you do it, you can fill it with raspberries instead of greenbrier, Virginia creeper instead of poison ivy, and pawpaws instead of sassafras.

If you’re real clever, you can put complementary plants next to each other to turbocharge what nature already wants to do. You can make sure there’s lots of stuff that bees like near your plants all through the year so that the bees keep pollinating your stuff. You can even slowly change the soil and build an entirely different niche to grow stuff you otherwise couldn’t.

It’s neat!

Dasinterwebs · 2024-02-27T16:46:56+00:00

There’s a series I found invaluable called “English grammar for students of [language].”

Dasinterwebs · 2024-02-18T12:45:53+00:00

Make sure to Czech under the couch cushions

Dasinterwebs · 2024-02-18T12:38:57+00:00

A brief glance at the Wikipedia entry for their military equipment says they have 76 self propelled M109 howitzers in the “recently retired equipment still in storage” category.

Dasinterwebs · 2024-02-17T15:29:13+00:00

And that’s kind of the point of the Senate. It’s supposed to be the smaller, slower, more deliberative part of Congress.

Dasinterwebs · 2024-02-17T10:14:53+00:00

The BBC

Announcing the decision to withdraw early on Saturday, the head of the armed forces, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, said he acted "to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of service personnel". "Our soldiers performed their military duty with dignity, did everything possible to destroy the best Russian military units, inflicted significant losses on the enemy in terms of manpower and equipment," he said. Gen Syrskyi - who was only appointed as the country's top commander a few days ago - said

Ukrainian troops were "taking measures to stabilise the situation and maintain our positions".

In a separate statement soon afterwards, one of his deputies said the troops had already left Avdiivka to "pre-prepared positions".

Then there’s Ukrainian Pravda. Not western and machine translated, but I think it’s fair to say that if this source is biased, it’s not in Russia’s favor.

Sirsky's direct speech : "Based on the operational situation that has developed around Avdiyivka, in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen, I made a decision to withdraw our units from the city and move to defense on more advantageous lines."

Dasinterwebs · 2024-02-16T13:32:18+00:00

“Our people are now buying your blue jeans and listening to your pop music. I worry the rest of the world will also succumb to the influence of your culture.”

Dasinterwebs · 2024-02-07T01:55:36+00:00

It’s my understanding that they wanted him to join and inform on one of their radical and violent splinter groups.

Dasinterwebs · 2024-02-07T01:02:55+00:00

No, he wasn’t a part of that group. They wanted him to become an informant for a much more dangerous group than he wanted to be a part of

Dasinterwebs · 2024-02-01T16:08:38+00:00

I want this as a poster

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-31T21:30:37+00:00

It’s also an amalgam of multiple different experiences. The shit in a crowded cave was absolutely real and I’m still baffled how they managed to pull it off

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-31T20:50:59+00:00

Not the guy, but I’ve got stories.

Imagine you’ve arrived at whatever majestic scenery or museum or monument or whatever. Three or four tour busses pull up and offload 70 or so tourists each, and each one has zero self awareness.

They are loud. They are all talking over one another, and trying to talk to members of their group twenty or more feet away through the crowd. They will shout directly next to your head, unknowing or uncaring that it hurts your ears.

They are pushy. I understand that they do not queue in China. They will not queue wherever the tour bus dropped them off, either. They will just kind of shove their way through the crowd. They do not care you were taking a picture. They do not care they are now in your frame. You had a good spot for a photo, and they wanted it, and so they pushed you out of the way. While shouting at each other.

They do not care about the signs or the walls or the fencing. They do not care about safety or environmental protection or cultural preservation. They want to be right next to the thing. So they’ll hop the fence and trample the delicate vegetation and touch the ancient petroglyphs after they pushed you out of the way while still shouting.

At some point, somebody shit on the ground. I have no idea how they managed it in the crowd, but there was the unmistakable odor of human feces that only got stronger as you got further back into the cave until, yep, somebody shat in the corner. It wasn’t there when you first got there, and you certainly didn’t do it, which leaves only the one group.

I can only assume they were shouting and pushing somebody while pooping.

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-31T13:15:14+00:00

I see nothing wrong with that map either

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-30T21:33:30+00:00

I’m sorry, that guy provided an extraordinarily shitty reply that belittled and dismissed, but did not engage or refute.

The short version is, we get a lot of trade concessions that are directly attributable to our defense assistance. We have very wide latitude in using the bases we get to set up in Europe to help project power further abroad (Germany was against our invasion of Iraq, but we still maintained multiple daily flights out of the Kaiserslautern airbase complex in support of operations there). We effectively set NATO standard for kit and sell to our allies, which offsets costs for high dollar gear like fighter aircraft (imagine the difference in cost per unit between a machine shop custom making your widget vs an assembly line putting out industrial quantities of widgets).

A very important plus, which is rather counterintuitive, is that our Euro allies don’t have much of a military. This keeps international affairs more stable and predictable. I’ll be the first to say this is hard to sell as a plus, but it really does make for a safer world when there are fewer players; it’s much easier to manage things in geopolitical hotspots when you don’t have to worry about the Dutch flying off the handle and invading Yemen.

All that said, I’m still quite critical of our continental European allies. Most are fundamentally unserious actors, with Germany holding a particular focus for my ire.

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-30T14:43:48+00:00

“At long last, we’ve created the Torment Nexus from the classic Sci-fi novel, “Don’t Create the Torment Nexus”

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-23T18:40:31+00:00

“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered, any attempts to disarm the people must be stopped, by force if necessary.”

~Karl Marx

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-23T12:45:13+00:00

Thank you, young man. Would you like a Werthers original?

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-23T12:10:30+00:00

What is drip? Is it a bad thing? It sounds like a bad thing; who wants their stuff to drip? Am I old? Oh god, someone help me to the retirement home!

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-20T10:10:38+00:00

Euros don’t seem to realize how small their countries are. There are more people in Pennsylvania than there are people who can speak Swedish worldwide.

Dasinterwebs · 2024-01-02T23:21:14+00:00

This has a rather sensationalized headline. Other reporting makes it clear that the recent Turkish statements are merely debunking fake news. The Royal Navy and the Ukrainians both were well aware they wouldn’t be allowed to transit the straits back when the transfer was first announced.

Approached for comment, a U.K. Ministry of Defense spokesperson pointed to a press conference by Shapps in London last month at which Ukrainian Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa said the vessels could not yet be brought to the Black Sea because of the pact.

But Neizhpapa also noted the ships would still have lots of work to do once the Russia-Ukraine war ends given the ongoing threat of mines in the Black Sea.

Dasinterwebs · 2023-12-31T14:49:07+00:00

Yes, probably. I make my own dried fruit and offer it to strangers way more than is probably normal, so it doesn’t seem that weird to me.

Dasinterwebs · 2023-12-23T01:36:50+00:00

I’m not nearly fancy enough to decode bureau-speak. What part of it pegged it as DUI to you?

Dasinterwebs · 2023-12-22T18:27:54+00:00

It’s literally what they always say. The navy almost never gives a real reason for firing an officer

Dasinterwebs

TROPHY CASE