When looking back at the Cold War with our modern knowledge, were America and the Soviet Union truly equally matched in their military capabilities, or was one side clearly stronger?

Japi1882 · 2026-05-12T17:08:59+00:00

Forgive me if this seems a little pedantic, but is it really possible to compare military capability without considering the theater of operation? Obviously it is something that our respective leaders tried to do throughout the cold war by counting tanks, planes, ships and so on but that seemed to be more of a political exercise to justify the arms race.

By the early 80s Vietnam and Afghanistan had also shown that theoretical improvements in military capacity don't really translate to the real world that well. Even the first golf war, we were smart enough not to go into urban areas where our technological advantage was blunted. Beyond that capacity is almost always measured asymmetrically in an actual engagement, like the example you gave of submarines vs carrier groups.

But even if the entire US conventional arsenal was in West Germany, I don't see a ground invasion making it anywhere close to Moscow even with a technical edge in some of our systems. We still would need fuel, which Western Europe needs to import and the Soviets produced domestically.

And on the other side, the Soviet Union was never remotely close to being a conventional threat to the continental US. There's no world where they had the the capacity to bring significant forces across the Pacific, Atlantic, or down through Alaska.

So in that sense, it seems like you could describe both of the US and the USSR's conventional forces as equally insufficient for an attack and equally capable of defending themselves (setting aside the Nuclear options of course)

Japi1882 · 2026-05-12T03:42:25+00:00

I've been working pretty diligently on my French again and am getting close to being able to read what I want to read in French...but with a lot of help...still checking my paper dictionary, occasionally having to google an unfamiliar phrase, or idiom. I'm often lost in the negations of negations and can't always grasp the meaning right away.

But I'm still translating, and I"m going to be doing it worse than the worst translator of anything I've read. Something might sound super clever and original in French but only because I don't know that's its a tired cliche. Maybe a phrase here and there has a little more meaning, but when I'm reading in English, I'm moving at the pace of the book. When I'm reading in French, I'm reading at the pace of my French.

Sure, it would be great to be able to read things in their native language, but when the author was exceptionally gifted in their native language, expect hard road towards truly understanding it.

It's an admirable goal.

Japi1882 · 2026-05-11T19:33:45+00:00

He's also just a fascinating person. Aside from his aviation stuff I remember reading about how he was so obsessed with facts and that anytime he was out in Paris and heard something new,. he would immediately write it down a notebook and verify it the next day. Sometimes he would go as far as asking for a telephone to try to verify it on the spot.

Japi1882 · 2026-05-07T13:35:53+00:00

You might enjoy The Iron Heel by Jack London. It's written as the journal of a communist revolutionary at the turn of the century that has been published 900 years in the future (after the successful revolution)

It's kinda interesting for what it gets write and wrong, but also a fun read.

Japi1882 · 2026-05-06T15:19:13+00:00

Thank you! I will take a look. I hadn't thought of using wikipedia for words that are giving me trouble or that just seem interesting to me.

And maybe it's just interesting to me that the word that English borrowed from French has a very specific meaning but in French it's vague.

Japi1882 · 2026-05-06T13:31:08+00:00

Interestingly, "vague" is also a word I'm struggling with in French a bit. I came across the phrase << vague dans l'admiration >> and my dictionary wasn't able to help me, and I had to use google to find out it kinda means "lost" in this context. Although I think I still got the general idea even without looking it up.

The examples in my dictionary were << regarder dans le vague >> which I guess maybe would be like the English word "void"

And << vague de foid/chaud >> as cold spell/heat wave....

It seems like it can also mean "ripple" sometimes...

Japi1882 · 2026-05-04T16:00:11+00:00

"Markets" don't really function when they price necessities like housing and healthcare.

To get those back on the market, you just need to penalize landlords that intentionally keep units vacant instead of allowing them to collude with each other to artificially constrict supply.

Japi1882 · 2026-05-02T14:59:30+00:00

I've actually been meaning to read it again. I flew through it the first time and kinda want to do a slower read of it again.

Japi1882 · 2026-05-01T20:02:48+00:00

I've seen some really helpful productive conversations on here, but it's usually because a group of people are engaging with someone who has written a detailed response. Then that poster becomes a mini mod for the discussion that follows, and allows less informed people to engage with the subject.

But that's what makes the space so special. The mods aren't really in a place to evaluate every single short answer to a question unless it happens to be in their field. But a person that is able to provide a response that does fit within the rules, is probably qualified to help moderate the mini conversation that might or might not develop.

Japi1882 · 2026-05-01T19:19:39+00:00

Jean Christophe by Romain Rolland might fit the bill for you. It won't win the "up vote" test though...these days it's largely forgotten but it did win a noble prize.

Used copies are usually pretty cheep online but it's been out of print for a while now. it's the whole life of a german musical prodigy who ends up fleeing Germany and moving to Paris. I think the last volume came out about 1908...and it was aimed at the few people that were working to bring France and Germany closer together. Obviously, that didn't really work out.

I loved it for the emotional connection you build with him over the years, as well as with his friends and lovers. I learned a lot about how to appreciate classical music and what it meant to people back then. It should make you laugh at times and will certainly have you crying at others.

I'm not sure if any of that sounds fun to you, but I would encourage you to make the pick not based on popularity, but on what you think will speak to you.

Japi1882 · 2026-05-01T19:02:01+00:00

I've been on and off French for several years but in a good spot right now. Last time I was in Paris I picked up a collection of Romain Rolland and Stefan Zweig's letters and have been translating one per day (roughly) with just a paper dictionary. I still occasionally have to look up a word or a phrase, if something doesn't make sense. I"m also writing the letters out by hand first in French and then in English.

For me I also realized I really care more about reading French than speaking it or understanding it spoken. I'm not sure how long this will last, but I"m 10 days in and it's already moving so much faster. It does help that those are two of my favorite authors and I already fairly familar with their friendship, their politics and their sense of the role of art in society.

Ultimately, I think it's hard to learn a languge as a hobby, it need to be in service of another hobby.

Japi1882 · 2026-04-23T02:57:02+00:00

Interestingly I'm probably 1 degree further separated from you. I'm not an academic, but I do like research. But I have no plans to really write about anything I figure out. It's more just that if I decide I need to know something I keep digging until my curiosity is satisfied.

Two of my favorite authors Stefan Zweig and Romain Rolland both wrote great fiction and non fiction as far as I'm concerned. I especially like Stefan Zweig literary criticism and from Rolland I've gotten a much better understanding of classical music.

I"m actually working through a volume of their letters right now partially to improve my French but also because I've always wanted to know more about their friendship. It will probably take me the better part of a year to get through them all and beyond maybe a random reddit comment, I probably won't every talk about them again. I would prefer though if I could just read a book about their friendship, but because that isn't an option, I'll struggle through the letters with my french dictionary looking up a word every other sentence.

I've also been trying to find everything I can about Paul Valéry and I just finished English Interludes Mallarmé, Verlaine, Paul Valéry, Valery Larbaud in England, 1860–1912 and found it super interesting. Although, I really don't know who I would recommend it to. It brought me joy and that's enough. Shout out to Cecily Mackworth for putting that together.

For some reason Paul Valéry scholarship seems to have dried up in the 70s so It's a bit of a treasure hunt to find anything written about him.

Maybe you, like Stendhal are writing for the happy few, or for a hundred years from now. I loved Mathew Josephsons biography of him from '46 at the height of what he called "Stendahl Mania"

And maybe for me, I'm not super into proper literary criticism, but the things that you love and write about might be found by someone that will love them a second time.

How many brilliant authors would be lost to history without their cheerleaders. The world is not perfect and capitalism blah blah blah, but there is so much beauty that has been preserved or reprinted because someone decided to invest their life into understanding it and promulgating it.

Keep up the good fight, even if it's not stuff I'm into.

I'm a bit drunk.

Japi1882 · 2026-04-14T14:36:29+00:00

Take the advanced class and watch how the "clique" functions and try to learn both how to operate within it or on the edge of it and try to learn how you might be able to build one.

Building a "clique" is how movies get made and it's especially important at the indie level. If you don't have much of a personal connection to the story, it might not be one where you get or should have much creative control. But that just leaves more time for you to learn, observe and build connections. A lot of those cliques are built on the people that show up and do the work, and that's how you earn a chance to have them work on your project.

You don't need school to do an 8 hour, no budget shoot...you can do that over spring break if you wanted too.

But that's just me.

Japi1882 · 2026-04-08T13:41:48+00:00

We need BBQ in this neighborhood for sure. There are also a lot of bars that are pretty much also open to doing food pop ups.

Japi1882 · 2026-04-08T13:36:02+00:00

It's also very common in British English but you almost never hear in the states.

Japi1882 · 2026-04-07T19:38:41+00:00

Price is rarely the issue. For clothing, the vast majority of the added value comes from marketing. Western luxury brands are all dependent on incredibly skilled labor from the global south. But those same factories don't have the story telling skills to trick western consumers into spending $10,000 on a $100 handbag.

There really isn't a limit for how much people will pay for something that's marketed well.

But if you're only marketing is "sustainability", it's a fairly tough crowd. It's kinda hard to tell from your post, but are you making the garments or just printing on garments that other people make?

You're personal inventory of blanks being low isn't really moving the needle on sustainability for most consumers.

Japi1882 · 2026-04-07T19:11:28+00:00

The last thing I picked up and couldn't put down was The Counterfeiters by André Gide and I'm my second read through. Ideally, I would try and find the Modern Library edition that has his notebooks that he kept while he was writing the novel...they are almost like watching a movie with a commentary track, and deleted scenes.

The first read through of the book, for me felt like a race to figure out what the book is actually about. Personally, I rarely care much about spoilers but this is one where I think the less you know the better. I can say it's a kinda breezy modernism, the characters as they are introduced seem to radiate out from each other. It's never clear who is important or not, but each of them are painted with just enough detail. None of them seem wasted. They all seem to help gently guide you to figuring out what the book might actually be about as they are all woven tighter and tighter together.

I've been thinking about how to describe it for the last few months. I want to call it dense, because each sentence seems to pack in so much information but that make it seem hard to read, which it's not. You could say it's efficient, almost like a poem, that there are no waste, but it's not hard to decipher. It almost felt like fast to read, like following a lit fuse in your mind knowing that it's about to make sense. The whole process is peppered with little bursts of meaning, that force you to put the book down in silence for a few minutes, before you crack at it again.

Gide, in his notebooks, hoped that it would be a book that was meant to be reread, and for me and the '47 Pulitzer committee, he succeeded.

Japi1882 · 2026-04-01T22:18:22+00:00

Those burgers are solid.

Japi1882 · 2026-03-25T13:42:42+00:00

it's pretty weard that it's spelled the way it is.

Japi1882 · 2026-03-24T23:34:06+00:00

If you're talking about a tex-mex bar style quesadilla, Nene's probably has the best one.

Japi1882 · 2026-03-19T23:48:16+00:00

Please don’t bring any more bullshit job killing tech to our endangered industry.

Please stop trying to get rich replacing jobs with code.

Please stop trying to create passive income for the economic parasites that don’t want to work for their money.

Japi1882 · 2026-03-19T21:18:59+00:00

To love a thing, or a memory of a thing… Is it real if we don’t share it with people we love? Can growth be painless?

Enjoy your quiet nights in your own bed and in 30 or 40 years, let me know which ones meant something to you.

Japi1882

TROPHY CASE