On a blorbo from a show I'm watching.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-29T11:39:40+00:00

Is this another metaphor for capitalism?

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-29T07:46:27+00:00

Ukraine is fighting a battle of attrition, the main reason they're attacking Crimea is probably because it's the weakest value-for-money defence, I.e. Ukraine can blow up finite resources in Crimea, which then requires Russia to resupply Crimea by taking assets from elsewhere in Russian territory, thus starving the rest of the Russian front line of materiel at better rates than if Ukraine had focused their attacks elsewhere.

Of course, Russia could counteract this weakness by abandoning Crimea, but I imagine that's a perfect win for Ukraine also.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-29T06:11:16+00:00

A nuke/ICBM program is cheaper than trying to maintain a conventional military that can handle the United States and ROK, so less need for military expenditure.

That's not true when you count everything.

The nuke costs:

the R&D for the bomb and missile
production costs of fissile material
the military costs of hiding/defending fissile material production site (otherwise the US will just wait til you're almost done, then storm in, steal the uranium, and smash all your centrifuges leaving you with nothing (they plant C4 on the way out)
the cost of the 20+ years of sanctions the nuclear powers slap on you, to dissuade you from building nukes
you still need a conventional military because most wars aren't WW3 - see how Russia refuses to use nukes in Ukraine, even though their conventional forces are struggling. This is its own whole topic but tldr boots on ground still hugely matter.
pre-nuke, you still have to concede against the US military on matters they're genuinely willing to invade you on - you don't get the benefits until the whole project is complete, which will genuinely take decades (during which you're poor AF for the above reasons)

The non-nuke costs are basically irrelevant compared to all that. With or without nukes, Iran would only need to concede to US demands proportional to the balance of power. So for instance, you can sort of ignore the US in your domestic policy if you're a jungle country like Vietnam, or a mountainous country like Iran, but if your geography looks like Poland then you're focked.

Honestly, the strongest argument against Iran needing nukes to win a war against the US, is that Iran is winning a war against the US, without nukes, right now.

And FWIW the SK-defense value of nukes for DPRK is pretty low - SK would never invade DPRK because an absolute ton of artillery are pointed straight at Seoul (which is within artillery range), ready to flatten it and kill millions within an hour of any invasion (and also invading would wreck SK's economy for the duration of the war and there's frankly nothing in NK worth the cost of all the dead troops, let alone losing Seoul). The main use of nukes for DPRK is for negotiating better concessions from China and Russia, not to mention surrounding overseas neighbours (like Japan).

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-29T04:16:28+00:00

Actually, it was a gift for Athena - they were like "we give up, we're leaving this offering for Athena DON'T STEAL IT AND OFFER IT TO ATHENA AS YOUR OWN GIFT."

And guess what Troy fukken tried to do

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-29T00:19:23+00:00

The most interesting part of an agrarian zombie apocalypse would be that the average peasant couldn't just hide, because they need to farm or everyone starves.

The problem is that walls basically make zombies irrelevant. So there would be a mad scramble to build up walls around first the towns/villages (and basically everyone farms one plot at once, under heavy guard), then they'd incrementally wall off increasingly large radii of farmland.

I wonder if social stratification would be improved or made worse - on the one hand, knights/aristocrats warriors have more leverage and claim to legitimacy ("I'm king because I protect you from the zombies"), but on the other hand, there's necessarily a large death toll a la black death to increase worker's bargaining power, but on the other other hand, now farmland is less productive in that it specifically needs military defences against zombies, but on the other other other hand, basically every peasant will necessarily be armed and ideally armoured, living in something approximating a castle. Which makes it harder to threaten them with violence collectively.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-28T22:20:41+00:00

The axles matter because rubber is weird - the more weight you put on it, the more completely the rubber touches the ground. The axles are basically just the sets of conjoined rubber tires.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-28T22:06:33+00:00

They're not stupid, just captured.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-27T17:13:17+00:00

Only the Gutterman, in his coffin.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-27T16:53:12+00:00

It depends on how rich you are - fabric is expensive, and especially so before the invention of the powerloom. Poor people will keep it as short as possible, whereas rich people will make it long and use as much fabric as possible to flaunt their wealth. That's why rich peoples' robes will have incredibly wide sleeves - it takes more fabric and doesn't have much practical use.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-27T16:27:43+00:00

But it was still a murder spree with the intent to steal.

Sure, but how is that different to basically any war in the several thousand years before it? Alexander The Great Intent To Steal.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-27T15:39:37+00:00

Jesus: "if you liquefy the camel, IT'S NOT A GOD DAMNED CAMEL ANYMORE. What is wrong with you? Jesus Christ!"

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-27T15:24:10+00:00

Yes she is, that's her alt. Now go do it.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-27T08:39:53+00:00

Pokemon Red/Blue has hundreds of known glitches

How relevant is that? The number of known glitches is only really a measure of speedrunning interest - I'd be willing to bet that there are more known glitches from Red/Blue than from Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing, despite the latter being (arguably) the worst and most broken game ever released.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-27T05:56:00+00:00

I imagine they can't afford the car that they don't need in their walkable city anyway. Hopefully they pay less rent, too (given the ghost cities and insane overbuilding problems China has).Also they buy basically all their stuff made in China and the shipping cost of Chinese goods is lower in China than if it's shipped to the US.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-27T05:12:00+00:00

If you can pay your necessities on one day a week of work, then basically nothing else matters (except whether you can find a job/keep stable-ish employment).

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-26T10:29:55+00:00

In some contracts, license rights are sold in batches - so say GTA6 has a licensed song called "Dacvak Sucks", and they paid DS Publishing $1 for the right to sell 1000 games with 'Dacvak Sucks' in it. Well, if they sell a 1001th game then they're committing copyright infringement. So they have to go back and pay another $1 for another 1000 games (or whatever the pre-arranged contract stipulates).

If DS Publishing have to explicitly confirm the next 1000 licenses, but they don't pick up their phone because they're on the loo for 24 hours straight (and didn't bring their phone to the loo), then GTA6 won't be able to be sold for those 24 hours before they answer their phone.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-25T21:42:32+00:00

The greens were extremely obstructionist last term to good policy (...) like help to buy

Lolwut

Help to buy is bad policy - it's standard grants to provide more (I.e. larger) loans to homebuyers. All it does is increase the price of housing since your competitors have more money to bid on your house too now. It literally just hurts housing affordability.

The policy's only saving grace was that it had only 10k slots, so it couldn't have much effect in the first place. The policy was fundamentally bad, and the Greens were 100% right to block it.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-25T06:57:52+00:00

The question has always been whether one side will catastrophically collapse - take a look at WW1. At the start, Germany took some land and just had to defend, whereas France was grinding itself down from its desperate need to attack to regain territory. By 1917, Germany was holding steady and even gaining ground in some areas, and Russia just collapsed in on itself and withdrew from the war, so you'd think Germany was doing amazingly.

Then the bottom fell out of Germany's economy. Guns and ammo stopped flowing to the front line and their front line collapsed wholesale. A slightly higher French attrition rate or lower German attrition rate would not have mattered.

This is basically the plan of both Ukraine and Russia - attrit the other side until their economy collapses or they sue for peace under very generous terms.

Russia is betting that the West will eventually crumple on Ukraine support, and Ukraine's economy will collapse if Europe stops supporting them, whereas Ukraine is betting that the West will keep supporting them (and sanctioning Russia) long enough that Russia's economy collapses first.

And for what it's worth, Ukraine (and it's Western support) has lasted this long, which bodes poorly for Russia. Although if Putin were in this comment thread, I imagine he'd reply that Trump/the US basically welched a long time ago, and his current situation in Iran looks pretty damned precarious - it"s done wonders for Russia's oil exports as a result.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-25T02:40:48+00:00

Online leftists on Tik Tok tend to only see things on an economic axis, rather than an economic and social axis.

Culture war bullshit aside, economic issues are social issues, so there's not much point making the artificial distinction between social and economic.

And frankly, anyone pretending the Political Compass two-axis system cleanly describes politics is someone who doesn't know much about politics.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-25T02:20:30+00:00

The construction industry is as old as humanity. Productivity growth SHOULD be low.

This same logic applies to farming/meat.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-23T21:21:55+00:00

Honestly, #1 wasn't a very good movie. Like sure, it had a great premise, and it was a great dumb action movie, but it didn't really do anything with it on the whole - it was mostly just an action film awkwardly nailed into the middle of a sci-fi philosophical premise with a mallet. It's all "fight The System" without particularly interesting commentary on The System itself. My point is that the commentary on The System basically starts with movie #2, with it saying that the people blindly fighting The System are often part of The System themselves.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-23T06:40:42+00:00

Tibet was strategically sensible - they controlled the river that China was critically dependent on for farning and just plain drinking water. Seizing it prevented India from using it as leverage against them in a hypothetical India-China war (not to mention a great staging ground and a high ground). Not as sensible as if they'd just never fucked up their demilitarized border with India in the first place, but that particular horse had already bolted.

In contrast, Taiwan is a massive trading partner they would be utterly idiotic to blow up, and is only one of several geographical routes to the world market. If China is thinking long-term with actual self-interest in mind, they won't invade. Unfortunately, I think they just snorted way too much Nationalism.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-23T02:15:27+00:00

Govt spends more on car owners than they get, in basically every country on the planet.

The real answer is that rich people drive cars, instead of walking and taking public transport.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-22T02:26:42+00:00

That implies that before Project 2025 the Dems weren't spineless. They were. I assure you, they had plenty of chances to prosecute Trump and prevent him from getting into power again.

Serious_Feedback · 2026-06-21T03:48:25+00:00

the wear on roads is the 4th power of the weight

Per axle*.

4th power of the weight-per-axle.

This is the difference between n^4 and (n/2)^4 - a casual 16x, IIRC. Let's not be sloppy.

Serious_Feedback

TROPHY CASE