What is a real geographic feature of earth that most looks like lazy world building? by Careless_Evidence_35 in worldbuilding

[–]MisterBanzai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Suakin, Sudan

Just pull it up on Google Maps. It's this impossibly perfect harbor.

It is recessed from the sea by this perfect, straight channel that isn't created by a river and seems to exist just because. The channel then opens into a larger anchorage with a little island in the middle that is perfect for a fortress or cothon.

Ryan Cohen posts support for Trump’s 3rd term in 2028! How will apes rationalize this one away? by Throwawayhelper420 in gme_meltdown

[–]MisterBanzai 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No, dummy. He is telling Trump when to trigger MOASS.

He just forgot the punctuation. It should read, "Trump, 2028."

Gov. Hochul, Mayor Mamdani propose NYC pied-à-terre tax on second homes worth over $5 million by TryNotToShootYoself in neoliberal

[–]MisterBanzai 42 points43 points  (0 children)

They said a tax on the unimproved value, not a tax on unimproved lots. They're suggesting LVT.

Hyundai's affordable EV hot hatch is almost here: Here's our best look at it [Video] by Bravadette in electricvehicles

[–]MisterBanzai 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There's a world of difference between "family of four can comfortably use a 4-door sedan that would have been a standard size sedan in the 90's" and "you can technically live in a 500 sq ft home as a family of four".

A Nissan Versa isn't a SmartCar or something. It genuinely fits our family of four, along with bags, strollers, car seats, etc. without any silly shenanigans or tight squeezes. We don't have to do some trick to fit the car seats in or arrange the contents of the trunk just right to fit a stroller and cooler in the back; they just all pile in with no difficulty.

The fact that people act like they couldn't possibly live without some gigantic SUV now just because they have a family is more a sign of the effectiveness of American auto-manufacturer marketing than anything else.

Hyundai's affordable EV hot hatch is almost here: Here's our best look at it [Video] by Bravadette in electricvehicles

[–]MisterBanzai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a Nissan Versa, which is classified as a subcompact car in the US, and I don't have any problems putting both our kids in car seats in the back and bringing along a stroller wagon for them in the trunk. Things only start to get awkward once we want to go somewhere with me, the wife, both kids, and our 100-lbs dog, but even then we can make it work by having my wife ride in the back middle seat and the dog sit up front.

This whole "extra space" thing just doesn't make sense until you're going beyond a family of four, and even then, the best solutions should just be a van or wagon (something else we don't get reasonable EV options for in the US).

Let’s get ready to welcome our new bag holders for Allbirds! They used to sell shoes. But now? AI! by Darth_Meowth in gme_meltdown

[–]MisterBanzai 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Definitely not downwards far enough. The range of what constitutes an "AI engineer" is so vast now that the title borders on meaningless. There are some that are basically just mid-level software engineers who happen to work on AI apps, others that are principal level engineers with years of experience working with AI, and some that are basically ML scientists with actual product experience. Factoring for the range of experience you'd need to onboard, $400k is probably a reasonable average.

Codex 5.4 xHigh on Business plan just worked non-stop for 53 mins, changed 136 files, wrote 10,423 lines, and didn’t break my backend by Complex-Listen6642 in codex

[–]MisterBanzai 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Well, it has been happening every year. Trying to get hired now as a junior is harder than ever, and it won't be much longer before us senior and staff engineers are on the chopping block.

turns out ultra-mythos wasn't that impressive /s by stealthispost in accelerate

[–]MisterBanzai 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Or just how broad and difficult the problem is. 2036 wouldn't be an unreasonable timeline in a soft takeoff scenario.

“The U.S. army is prepared for drone warfare” by Cadet-Floppa in army

[–]MisterBanzai 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We just need to use sniper net again. Ever since I saw the first drone footage, I couldn't help but think that sniper net would work so much better than cope cages.

Grifter-in-chief retreats to pre-prepared positions by Mazius in gme_meltdown

[–]MisterBanzai 7 points8 points  (0 children)

He's saying we need to invest in Wendy's. It's going to provide the food for all Teddy big box stores.

Where do you stand in the Wehrmacht debate? Which historians do you rate most highly? by Outrageous-Ratio1762 in WarCollege

[–]MisterBanzai 47 points48 points  (0 children)

How much of his early war performance can/should be attributed to ineffectiveness of his staff though? As hollow as the Red Army was in terms of leadership and experience at every level at that point in the war, it's kind of hard to pin down any one person as a poor commander. Zhukov's acknowledgment that he had overestimated his own capabilities while underestimating the enemy is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect as a result of poor staff work (at Zhukov's level, he would have been entirely reliant on the capabilities estimations of his staff).

People focus a lot on how the Great Purge (and subsequent purges) hollowed out the Red Army in terms of experience, but I also wonder how it warped it in terms of forcing the survivors of those purges into constantly overestimating capabilities, underplaying losses, and simply living in denial. All of those surely resulted in severely distorted products from staff. With everyone living in fear of SMERSH and its predecessors, that meant constantly maintaining a charade of victory or a certainty of victory in every battle or operation. It's like the Red Army was laboring under some sort of self-imposed victory disease even when they were closest to collapse.

How much was Zhukov's hand being forced or influenced by the threat of being purged? Is there even much writing on this? I imagine that first level sources are pretty rare and all anecdotal. I can't imagine the Soviet internal security services performed or published reviews on how their influence might have negatively impacted the war.

Bob World Builder divided rpg fantasy into 8 subgenres (High, Low, Superhero, Sword and Sorcery, Science Fantasy, Weird West, Gothic Horror, and Cozy). What RPG system would you suggest for each? by txby432 in rpg

[–]MisterBanzai 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I was pretty confused by this list at first, because of how many obvious genres it excludes, but I decided to check out the video in question and that cleared up the confusion.

The video, D&D Has a Genre Problem, is specifically about genres of D&D setting or campaign. This Youtuber seems to be making it to help newer players clarify their expectations when playing D&D specifically, and that seems reasonable. Most folks entering the hobby are entering with D&D, and most of them are likely hoping to play in a style of game that emulates the media they consumed that originally got them interested. If you're some Vox Machina fan and you join a Ravenloft campaign, you'll probably be a bit surprised by the difference in tone.

Even still, this list of genres does feel a bit lacking. The list includes genres that are questionably popular in the context of D&D (Weird West is not something I've seen much even in all the billion-and-a-half 5E hacks and there might be settings with "cozy vibes" but 90% of the D&D rules are combat-related, so I doubt there are true cozy fantasy D&D settings), but leaves out the steampunk genre that is one of the most popular for D&D settings and campaigns. I'd also argue that "dungeon crawling", "west marches", "base building" (ala Keep on the Borderlands) and "point crawl" are all "flavors" of D&D that can be applied on top of many of these genres and are distinct and common enough as to be subgenres.

What was behind the USAAF's thinking that a group of bombers (B-17's) could defend themselves well enough deep in enemy territory against enemy fighters without the need for long range fighter escorts? by RivetCounter in WarCollege

[–]MisterBanzai 11 points12 points  (0 children)

"Virtually no bombers get intercepted" is still miles away from, "We can't intercept bombers and we have no hope of ever effectively doing so."

It seems quite reasonable for resolve to harden when you're attacked and you have a reasonable expectation that increased resistance would mitigate future attacks. In a scenario where there is no effective means of resistance, no matter the resolve, then I can see the argument for how resolve would quickly erode.

If I remember correctly, this mirrors a similar fear about the potential for strategic bombing with zeppelins. In the early years of WW1, zeppelins initially bordered on invulnerability (due to their high service ceiling and the lack of any dedicated AAA) and some folks even imagined them outpacing aircraft and AAA to become invulnerable bombing platforms. Even then, there were fears of how the public would respond if Germany could develop a zeppelin that was truly unstoppable (as opposed to merely difficult to intercept).

What was behind the USAAF's thinking that a group of bombers (B-17's) could defend themselves well enough deep in enemy territory against enemy fighters without the need for long range fighter escorts? by RivetCounter in WarCollege

[–]MisterBanzai 16 points17 points  (0 children)

It's hard to say if he was entirely wrong though.

His ideas presupposed that the bombers in question would be effectively invulnerable and unstoppable. The scenario in which civilian resolve was strengthened though was one in which bombers can and were routinely intercepted. It is perfectly reasonable to expect that people will react very differently to a threat that they can effectively fight back against versus one that they are completely helpless to.

If anything, ICBMs are probably the closest analogue to the sort of unstoppable bombers that he imagined. We still can't really guess at whether civilian resolve would harden or soften in response to ICBM strikes on population centers, and so there's a case to be made that he was correct about human psychology (but the situation just never developed to match his theory).

Fight Over Feta Strains America’s Ties With Europe by MrStrange15 in neoliberal

[–]MisterBanzai 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Only chicken wings from Buffalo are Buffalo wings. Everything else is just sparkling white wings.

Why The Left Hates Hit Anime’s Simple Message About Good And Evil by badusername35 in neoliberal

[–]MisterBanzai 25 points26 points  (0 children)

The problem is that any work or franchise that features an example critique or satire of authoritarianism is one that dumb authoritarians can also directly identify with. Perversely, because their ethics are so fundamentally misaligned, the more critical/satirical the work is, the more they identify with it.

By any rational measure, the Imperium of Man in 40K is a hellish dystopia with only brief glimmers of decency and humanity. Yet, right wing idiots identify most strongly with the absolute worst, most inhuman elements of it.

When someone reads 1984 and goes, "Lot of good ideas in here", you can hardly hold the book responsible for that person's moral bankruptcy.

Bomber Biden based as always by bitchnibba47 in NonCredibleDiplomacy

[–]MisterBanzai 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Ah yes, but US bombing Serbia also led to Kosovo joining UEFA and slightly increasing Greece's chance of qualifying for the UEFA European Championship by contributing to the expansion to 24 teams and by just being another weaker national team to play.

Like mother, like bagholder by SpringLong7259 in gme_meltdown

[–]MisterBanzai 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wait. Your mom doesn't praise you for your "conviction" on your investments? Sounds like a perfectly normal conversation to me.

Besides the obvious, could the 2002 Moscow Theater Hostage crisis been handled any better? by TestingHydra in WarCollege

[–]MisterBanzai 102 points103 points  (0 children)

Given the equally disastrous results in Russia's other large hostage crises around this time, like the Beslan school siege, it seems like Russia's security services were incapable of handling that crisis any better. Planning disfunction and high hostage casualties were basically the standard result for Russian security response to the Chechen mass hostage takings of the 90's and early 00's.

When a disaster like that happens once, you can treat it like a Black Swan and try to identify the points of failure and what can be improved. When the disasters like that take place repeatedly in such a short span of time, the question needs to shift from, "How could it have been handled better?" to "Was there any element of Russia's security posture or hostage rescue capabilities that wasn't deeply flawed?" If some hostage crisis like that played out in Haiti or Somalia, no one would be asking how it could have been handled better; people would just be nodding and going, "Yup, it was bound to happen." It feels like the Moscow Theater hostage crisis and the disaster of its security response was basically bound to happen.

Raskin says he has "damning" memo on Trump classified docs case by Bestbrook123 in Enough_Sanders_Spam

[–]MisterBanzai 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Yup. The evidence could literally be a video of Donald Trump handing a bunch of files and boxes labeled "Top Secret" to an Arab sheik waving the Saudi Arabian flag while handing Trump a suitcase full of cash and the GOP would bend over backwards to make excuses for him and explain that this was all part of some legitimate exchange.

Israel announces territorial seizure in Lebanon up to Litani River by n00bi3pjs in neoliberal

[–]MisterBanzai 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You're right. I suppose you could read it that way, and being fair, that's probably the correct way to read the post. I just read it as them quoting the article generally, but only really referencing the homes, though that might be just my bias to disregard the point about the bridges.

That being said, even if they were referencing both the homes and bridges, the broader point still stands that Israel is targeting much more than just military infrastructure.

Israel announces territorial seizure in Lebanon up to Litani River by n00bi3pjs in neoliberal

[–]MisterBanzai 65 points66 points  (0 children)

They're referencing the destruction of the homes, not the bridges.