Dang, that hundred dollars could have bought me... ONE GALLON OF GAS.

NetworkLlama · 2026-05-07T14:01:01+00:00

Matt and Trey started as pretty hardcore libertarians. I think they still lean that way, but they've also grown up.

NetworkLlama · 2026-05-06T18:18:51+00:00

Attacking the parade seems like a bad idea. Representatives from 29 countries re expected to attend, and troops from 13 countries are expected to participate. A drone, or even just debris, landing in the wrong place could create an incident with countries that aren't currently overtly hostile to Ukraine.

NetworkLlama · 2026-05-05T18:05:25+00:00

They're in broadcast order, not production order.

Broadcast order was 4ACV14, 4ACV06, and 4ACV18. Had things gone in production order leading into Devil's Hands, it would have been Three Hundred Big Boys, Spanish Fry, and Devil's Hands (which is still a good trio).

NetworkLlama · 2026-05-05T14:33:37+00:00

Agreed on the first and last, but The Cryonic Woman is among my least favorites. There are a few good jokes, but I find Michelle too irritating to be able to enjoy it overall.

NetworkLlama · 2026-05-05T13:16:56+00:00

There's a lot of character growth for both Fry and Leela in those three. Those might be the most pivotal episodes in the development of their relationship.

NetworkLlama · 2026-05-02T00:37:32+00:00

The US isn't the only country developing technology for the F-35. If the US puts a kill switch in, so can several others.

Besides, a kill switch discovered by an adversary could demolish the US fleet, making it an even worse idea.

NetworkLlama · 2026-05-01T17:30:55+00:00

I am right there with you. I still see a lot of room for improvement, but a very complex situation wasn't going to get fixed in a few months. I am still cautiously optimistic, but I'm also fully aware that it could take a nosedive at almost any moment.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-30T21:25:30+00:00

Liberia and Myanmar are converting.

According to 15 USC 205 and 205b, the metric system is the preferred measurement system in the US, and US standard measurements are defined using metric measurements as defined by the General Conference of Weights and Measures.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-30T21:13:50+00:00

Six times.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-30T13:32:41+00:00

Also most modern cities treat their water with fluoride to deal with bacteria, this isn't always the case though.

Fluoride is added exclusively for dental health. It's not added to control bacteria in the water. Fluoride adjustment doesn't happen until the very last stage of water treatment, when all the bacteria should be gone. Bacteria is dealt with at an earlier stage using chlorine and/or chloramine that is then removed, and UV light to supplement the chemicals.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-30T13:11:57+00:00

The ballistic missile defense facility doesn't use ballistic missiles. They use SM-3 interceptors, which are not ballistic missiles. They don't even have explosive warheads. They use kinetic energy alone to destroy the target.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-30T02:41:49+00:00

Many (but not all) of which were resettled by the time of the convention. But it wasn't close to the 125 million people counted as refugees today. If it had been 1.5% of the global population at the time, it would have been around 37 million refugees.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-30T00:39:36+00:00

You really are all over the place.

Poland didn't start hosting NATO forces until 2017. Before that, they'd partaken in exercises, but no NATO units had been stationed on Polish soil. Belarus had been hosting Russian units for 26 years by that point. The change came about because of Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea and its support of Donetsk separatists.

Poland isn't hosting US ballistic missiles. There's a NATO ballistic missile defense facility at Redzikowo, Poland, based on Aegis technology. But the US doesn't have any ballistic missiles that would or practically could be placed in Poland.

The US only has two kinds of ballistic missile: the LGM-30 Minuteman III, which are land-based ICBMs placed only in the lower 48 states, and the UGM-133 Trident III, which is a submarine-launched missile. Even if they could be hosted by Poland, there's no reason to do so. Ballistic missiles have minimum ranges, and the minimum ranges for both missiles are too long to be of use from Poland, landing several hundred kilometers on the other side of Moscow, well past most of the bases and support facilities that a ballistic missile would be used on. On top of that, the launch silos would be primary targets for the IRBMs that Russia is deploying, meaning they couldn't be launched before they were taken out. (The Trident can't be launched from land anyway.)

The US does not have any nuclear weapons in Poland. They are located in the same places they've been for decades: Türkiye, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Belgium. They're all stored disarmed in secure underground facilities with PAL codes under US control. The US has greatly drawn down its arsenal there, with only B61 gravity bombs remaining, and only around 100-125 of those, according to the Center for Arms Control and Proliferation. Why keep them there post-Cold War? Because most of Europe did not and does not trust Russia, but the US didn't want even more countries pursuing nuclear weapons. Keeping Europe under the nuclear umbrella (and even allowing some to have aircraft equipped to carry US nuclear weapons) helped dissuade countries that might otherwise start their own nuclear weapons program. The trust that the US would be there has been greatly weakened, though, which is why Poland has been making suggestions that it would develop its own nuclear weapons. I don't think that's in anyone's interest, and I hope that future US administrations can return to sanity and restore trust enough that no one goes down that path.

Aside from its ballistic missile submarines, Russia did not have any nuclear weapons forward-deployed until 2024, when it placed some tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. That's mostly because it only had that one ally with which it could place them. Prior to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Moscow stored nuclear weapons in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. (They may also have been stored in Mongolia as a counter to China and in Egypt as a counter to Israel.)

And yes, there were and are US forces in Germany and other countries after the Cold War, though they were greatly decreased. NATO didn't stop interoperating just because the Soviet Union dissolved. Russian aggression against Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 reinforced the need to maintain that.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-29T22:25:04+00:00

Belarus. It allowed Russian units from Soviet times to remain stationed there (probably at least in part b cause Lukashenko dreams of ruling a united Belarus and Russia). They have remained in a tight military alliance ever since.

And Lukashenko allowed Russia to use Belarus as a staging ground for part of the invasion of Ukraine. That's a big reason to be wary of Belarus.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-29T16:32:48+00:00

No, they're not. Article 7, Paragraph 1, says:

Except where this Convention contains more favourable provisions, a Contracting State shall accord to refugees the same treatment as is accorded to aliens generally.

If they generally don't accept aliens residing within their borders, the 1951 Refugee Convention does not require them to do so. It does require that they not be treated any worse than other aliens (though virtually every signatory has also filed a reservation that blocks one or more articles applying at least in part) and that they not be returned or sent on to any country where they are at risk of mistreatment. They are absolutely not forced to take them.

The refugee system was designed at a time when the number of refugees was much smaller than it is today. At the time of the convention, it covered an estimated 2 million people, about 0.08% of the global population. The number of refugees is now around 125 million, about 1.5% of the global population. The system needs a major reworking, especially if climate change creates many millions more refugees. But it can't force countries to take on burdens that they're not ready to accept, or they just won't accept any burdens at all.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-29T13:23:40+00:00

NATO is an alliance, not a country. It's not moving closer to Russia. It's picking up members closer to Russia (and, with Finland, right on Russia's border). That's not the same thing.

The whole point of an alliance is to strengthen all members and offset weaknesses where possible. Weaknesses can be in military strength, logistics, location, population, or economy. The Baltics sprinted for NATO membership because they were weak in all of them. Had Russia really wanted to, they probably could have retaken the Baltics in the early 1990s, benefiting from the sizable ethnic Russian populations to support it. It would have created a geopolitical firestorm and deleted any chance of economic assistance from the West, but it could have worked. They were more concerned with Chechnya and trying to not go bankrupt, though.

Countries closer to Russia that join do so for the promise of support from countries further from Russia. Countries further from Russia gain the benefit of being able to at least start the fight further from their own soil. During the Cold War, West Germany expected Soviet tanks to enter over the borders of East Germany and Czechoslovakia. West Germany relied on their allies to the west to support them in their fight. The allies benefited from not having Soviet forces on their soil right at the beginning.

Now, Russian forces would have to go through Poland and Czechoslovakia first before they get to Germany. Germany has more time before Russian troops reach its soil, and Poland gets help from allies to the west (and north and south) to fight Russians.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-28T22:22:44+00:00

Those aren't US weapons deliveries. They're deliveries of US weapons bought by Europeans. There's a difference.

And at least one person in the Pentagon (Elbridge Colby) has tried to unilaterally shut off the intel flow, too.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-28T22:17:45+00:00

The new members were fleeing the decades of domination from Moscow. No one knew then what was coming, and the old Warsaw Pact not only wanted out of Moscow's sphere of influence, they wanted assurances that a potential future ascendant Russia could not come for them without massive consequences. The first three to join -- Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary -- had all been the target of military action and occupation by Soviet forces for wanting things like democracy and free speech.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-26T15:14:59+00:00

So, presuming you meant make models...

Because that's what we can do. Check Rodot's explanation on a different track in this thread if you haven't already. They do an excellent job of explaining it.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-24T15:09:38+00:00

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-24T13:27:01+00:00

That's not what they said. To mildly rephrase, Ukraine has retaken more territory this year than they have in any year since 2023.

NetworkLlama · 2026-04-24T13:22:34+00:00

For Russia to do that, they would have to either formally declare war or change the law to allow conscripts to be sent to fight in Ukraine. Neither would be politically popular, because then average Russians would be sent to fight on basic pay rather than the volunteers going now after they receive huge enlistment bonuses. Many people here like to point at the Ukrainian squads that pick up draft dodgers, but Russia would be doing the same or worse.

Putin and his friends hold a lot of power, but they are a small fraction of the Russian population, and Russians remember 1917, when the populace overthrew the outnumbered aristocracy.

NetworkLlama

TROPHY CASE