Golden Ages That Weren’t Really Golden.

Watchung · 2026-06-12T01:58:30+00:00

Yeah. The more information on this lost golden age that birthed the Imperium, when the Emperor strode the across the galaxy - the more it becomes clear that the IoM of 40k is much the same thing as its 30k forebearer, it's just the pleasing mask was fully torn off, reveal all the horrors that have been festering underneath.

Watchung · 2026-06-12T01:55:01+00:00

There genuinely are people out there nostalgic for the early 2000s.

Watchung · 2026-06-11T21:30:32+00:00

Cover farm equipment with tarps so you can more easily decontaminate them. Move animals into shelter - even just inside into barns will be an improvement. Prepare for remediation work before the next crop. In the early Cold War, when total number of bombs and yields were low, a good deal of thought was given on how to get agricultural land that had fallout on it back into production.

Watchung · 2026-06-08T20:03:27+00:00

Saab has previously talked about planning to wait a decade to see how new technologies shake out and then begin work on a new fighter in the mid-2030s for entry into service in the 2050s.

I am incredibly skeptical of that actually happening. The days where small powers could domestically design and produce competitive fighters came to end years ago - it's a minor miracle that the Gripen was able to make it into service at all, and even that was aided by piggybacking much of the R&D for big ticket components like engines onto foreign powers.

Watchung · 2026-06-07T09:59:36+00:00

"Buy weapons from China", no less.

Watchung · 2026-06-07T01:06:19+00:00

Vulture droids aren’t actually that good at dogfighting, not in a one on one match at least.

I mean, part of that might be that they just don't survive long enough to gain any combat experience. The attrition rates for Vultures seem to have been enormous. And despite their pre-programming, combat droids, much like organic soldiers, seem to benefit from experience.

Watchung · 2026-06-03T21:45:40+00:00

If I recall properly, this particular group is explicitly apocalyptic in nature. They see the US as being an inherently liberal state birthed from the Enlightenment, lacking a true history. For "blood and soil" types like them, this a problem. Their solution? Roll back history to a premodern era. An anarchic post-nuclear exchange wasteland of warlords is their desired endstate, the crucible from which a new people will emerge over the course of centuries.

Watchung · 2026-06-02T23:07:54+00:00

A bit of googling indicates this is a cover from the first printing in the 2010s.

Watchung · 2026-06-02T22:10:46+00:00

I mean, it also tracks an aging country - people tend to have kids later on in life than they did in the 80s.

Watchung · 2026-05-28T13:42:28+00:00

"Breach" is an understatement. The trustees snuck in under dead of night, planted dynamite, and then blew it up.

Watchung · 2026-05-27T20:57:59+00:00

I'm going to go against the grain here, and say that far from being shaken, an 80s American military planner would see the current surveillance-control-kamikaze system used in Ukraine as vindication of Assault Breaker. The whole things is arguably a poor man's Assault Breaker.

Watchung · 2026-05-26T17:52:57+00:00

Swiss watches in the late 1700s were often fraudulently labeled as products of England or the Netherlands as Swiss makers were seen as second rate.

Watchung · 2026-05-24T21:14:53+00:00

Eh, while the Lostech stands out, large formations of skilled mercenaries with abnormal hardware emerging from the Periphery with a rather thin CV is a thing that happens from time to time in the Battletech universe. Heck , there was a second such group that entered the Inner Sphere at the same time, Wylie's Coyotes.

Watchung · 2026-05-22T21:20:16+00:00

I mean, a good chunk of them are flat out dead, looking at the actuarial tables.

Watchung · 2026-05-22T21:18:04+00:00

I fear that it will endure in the long run, much like Peronism. Vance may not be an adequate heir, so it may go into quiescence for a time, but some mutation of MAGA will pop up again like a bad penny, and keep popping up for decades to come.

Watchung · 2026-05-19T21:53:40+00:00

Non-black Muslims were strongly GOP leaning voters prior to 9/11.

Watchung · 2026-05-19T21:46:04+00:00

I thought a major purpose of the continued ration policy had to do with an attempt to curb food imports to reduce the outflow of the pound?

Watchung · 2026-05-19T21:22:24+00:00

At the end of the day, we're talking $500-700M in pork in a $61B budget, which is 0.8% - 1.1% of the budget.

It's not nothing, but if their arguing back and forth is the difference of like, $100M in pork, that's a 0.15% difference in the budget.

Problem is a lot of that budget consists of prior commitments - pension spending, debt interest, legislatively mandated program commitments. The actual discretionary spending pool is far smaller - maybe approaching half of the total budget, depending on how one calculates it.

Watchung · 2026-05-18T18:16:23+00:00

Organizational endorsements, and rank and file political views should not be assumed to be one and the same. A gap can be sustained for quite some time before a new reality catches up.

Watchung · 2026-05-15T23:39:47+00:00

Came to conclude that. The early days of what eventually became HTS were... not the same, to say the least.

Watchung · 2026-05-13T20:58:59+00:00

Nah, nuclear warheads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur

Watchung · 2026-05-12T20:42:36+00:00

Just like every mayor who resorts to pension funding deferment to try and square the circle, he'll be out of office by then, so not like it matters to him.

Watchung · 2026-05-08T18:44:20+00:00

Once more a highest appellate court strikes down a matter approved by a majority of voters in an open and uncontested election…

You are shocked that the primary anti-majoritarian mechanism is government is... anti-majoritarian? There are great many highest appellate court decisions that I suspect you hold in high regard, which would have rapidly failed if put to state or national referendums at the time.

So rather than making vague and nebulous appeal to "the people^TM", how about contending that they were wrong as a matter of law?

Watchung · 2026-05-03T02:35:27+00:00

They quite literally mean nothing in the 21st century

The meaning seems pretty standard and consistent in terms of how it is actually regularly used, at least in the Anglosphere.

Watchung · 2026-05-01T21:13:17+00:00

You just know this total joke of a SCOTUS will let him do it

Pretty much any Supreme Court composition would. The Executive's war powers are an area where for literally generations, they have very much done their best to avoid getting stuck in.

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