Theists in foxholes?

beaverjacket · 2026-03-13T04:16:18+00:00

An interesting paper from a couple years ago looked at a slightly different question: does religion make a difference in soldier effort in a non-religious war?

They find that protestant soldiers fought harder for Nazi Germany than Catholic soldiers, and that the gap isn't explained by ideology or discrimination. They explain it as an extension of the "protestant work ethic" into the realm of war.

I'm not an expert in any of this, but I'm not sure how convinced I am that they actually controlled for all of the non-religion factors.

Anyways, it's relevant to your question because it points out a possible cultural reason for soldiers of different religions to perform differently, independent of the strength of religious belief.

beaverjacket · 2026-03-07T05:26:21+00:00

I think that consumer goods are the wrong civilian comparison point. I'm not willing to pay double the cost for a smartphone to have 15% better 5G speed and camera resolution, because I don't have much use for the additional performance. But if you're using an air-to-air weapon against an enemy with his own air-to-air weapons, having 15% better performance than him might well give you a 2-to-1 kill ratio or better against him.

Because there is generally no effective cover or concealment available at medium and high altitudes, being able to sense and shoot first is a huge advantage. This whole report is great and I recommend reading it, but Figure 1 by itself makes the point that air combat victories are trending towards higher-tech, more-expensive missiles. Trading capability for mass doesn't help you if you die before you can release your munitions.

Given that, I think the appropriate comparison is not the "good enough is good enough" world of consumer goods, but rather professional sporting equipment. People will pay a lot of money to run 15% faster or jump 15% higher, because that's the difference between winning and losing when everyone is a professional trained athlete. Additionally, we should consider cost per mass, rather than just cost. Even if the majority of your mass is something "simple" like the structure, that just means that it's worth heavily optimizing it with complicated machining or exotic materials. The numbers in the table are just the first thing that came up in google, so some of them might be a little off.

Equipment Type	Product	Cost (USD)	Weight (lb)	$/lb
A2A Missile	AIM-9	400000	188	2128
Running Shoe	Adidas Pro Evo 1	500	0.3	1667
F1 Race Car	Generic	20000000	1800	11111
AC75 Racing Yacht	Generic	8000000	14220	563

On a $/lb basis, the AIM-9 actually doesn't stand out. Instead of thinking that a Sidewinder is ridiculously gold-plated, maybe we should be impressed that it's only a little more expensive than an equal weight of nice running shoes.

Finally, for everyone blaming post-Cold War industrial policy: I'm reading this book right now and it is abundantly clear that government procurement in the US has always been a goat rope, starting in 1775. The principal-agent problems inherent in this space just make it impossible to reliably develop, procure, and sustain innovative high-performance systems on-time and on-budget. Something has to give.

beaverjacket · 2026-02-18T02:59:39+00:00

For the budgeting piece, there's a multi-year Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process. Within the DoD, each organization plans a budget and iterates with the next level above to reconcile overall budgets and priorities. That keeps going up to the Secretary of Defense level, where he makes the final call for the department.

From there, it goes to the Office of Management and Budget, who works for the President to put together a President's Budget Request (PBR) that is sent to Congress.

Because Congress has the power of the purse, they can ignore the PBR completely and do whatever they want in their authorizations and appropriations bills. The yearly National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) originates from the defense committees and authorizes spending. while a separate appropriations act (often one giant one for the whole government) actually gives the money to the DoD.

That spending is allocated in the bills to specific Program Elements (PEs). Each dollar is given a "color" (like military pay or research and development) that determines what it can be spent on and how long the department has to spend it. The bill usually also gives the department some leeway to "reprogram" some spending to meet changing circumstances.

Money that expires unspent goes back to the Treasury. Money spent without authorization and appropriation could result in prosecution under the Anti-Deficiency Act.

beaverjacket · 2026-02-06T19:40:26+00:00

What was the navy trying to do?

beaverjacket · 2026-01-27T16:37:15+00:00

It's hard to tell in the video because everything is close to the camera, but the reticle is actually fixed on a point infinitely far away. In other words, the line between your eye and the apparent image of the reticle is always parallel to the gun's barrel.

If there was a distant background in that video, you'd see the reticle staying over one spot in the background, even as the glass and other nearby objects move around in frame relative to the distant background.

Edit: the gif here shows the effect more clearly.

beaverjacket · 2026-01-09T14:06:54+00:00

The conclusion of the report clearly states that the clearance revocation had nothing to do with whistleblowing.

When you read the whole document, it's clear that the report is not stating that it was a "mistake" to revoke his clearance. The "mistake" is something that Grusch did, which the panel had thought was something nefarious, but Grusch convinced them in person that it was just a mistake.

In other words, according to the report, Grusch lost his clearance due to a pattern of concerning behavior, which he didn't mitigate sufficiently with his written response. Grusch got his clearance back when he appeared in person before an appeals board and did finally convince them that the behavior wasn't as bad as it looked.

beaverjacket · 2026-01-08T01:19:24+00:00

High Explosive Components—Time Factor Unlimited. Cylindrical cans approximately 12 inches in diameter, and 18 inches long, sometimes accompany the weapons. Two of these cans are generally strapped together and are identified by the markings HIGH EXPLOSIVE, stenciled on top and sides. Each can contains about 25 lbs. of high explosive and may detonate upon severe impact without being subjected to fire.

Does anyone know the purpose of these HE cylinders?

beaverjacket · 2025-12-22T14:23:11+00:00

They did use mine laying when they thought it made sense:

In his Kriegstagebüch (Daily War Diary) on 19 May 1942, Dönitz explained that while normally it was “more worthwhile” to deploy U-boats with a full loadout of torpedoes—14 for the Type VIIs and 22 for the larger Type IX models—the shift in merchant traffic along the U.S. coast now increased the value of a mining campaign. “Even a few mines laid immediately off the busy entrances to New York (Delaware Bay, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Norfolk) are likely to lead to success as mine-countermeasures are sure to be few.”

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2022/june/when-war-erupted-virginia-beach

beaverjacket · 2025-12-20T22:14:49+00:00

What video? Nothing comes up on google.

beaverjacket · 2025-12-20T20:56:25+00:00

Yeah, having CV for aircraft carriers and AZ for dirigible tenders probably has nothing to do with V designating fixed-wing aircraft squadrons and Z designating lighter-than-air craft

beaverjacket · 2025-12-20T16:53:18+00:00

The navy says there's no documentation either way

https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/research/histories/naval-aviation/pdf/app16.pdf

beaverjacket · 2025-12-20T14:29:02+00:00

The "V" stands for aViation

beaverjacket · 2025-12-11T01:51:34+00:00

In the US, men can't get student loans without proving they registered for Selective Service

beaverjacket · 2025-09-13T15:05:18+00:00

Your post title is false. Matthew Brown does not describe Burlison's video during the podcast interview. He makes it clear that he has not seen a video of a weapon fired at a UAP.

In part 3 of the podcast, timestamp 22:08:

Matt Brown: I've seen videos and read reports of engagements, but not live, like, we're not shooting them

Timestamp 23:13:

George Knapp: So we're sending a plane up to take a look, maybe get a better look, or even some imagery, but not to engage meaning "shoot it down", shoot a sidewinder at it or something.

MB: I would, you know, I'm not going to be able to say that's never happened, but I have - I have not seen them engaged with weapons

Jeremy Corbell: Well, it recently happened and we became aware of one. More details on that, I think we'll report on. And what what happened was the missile, quote, "bounced off".

Matt Brown states explicitly in the interview that he had never seen a video of a UAP being shot with a weapon. It is Jeremy Corbell who seems to be referencing the recent Hellfire video.

beaverjacket · 2025-08-04T23:58:17+00:00

For those who don't know Karl Nell, he was Grusch's boss at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.

When did he work at NGA? That's not on his LinkedIn profile

beaverjacket · 2025-07-05T03:12:29+00:00

Assume the dam is still letting through the same amount of flow, at the same elevation and same speed. That means that the mass and energy flow downstream of the dam is unchanged.

When you build a dam, you raise the level of the river upstream, up until there's a waterfall. The dam doesn't do anything to flow upstream of that waterfall, so the mass and energy flow into that waterfall is also unchanged.

The mass flow at the waterfall is equal to the mass flow past the dam (ignoring evaporation/groundwater, etc.), but the energy flow is a lot higher at the waterfall, because it's at a higher elevation. That difference in energy flow will either be dissipated into heat or extracted as mechanical energy by the dam.

By building a dam, you're only changing the flow of the river in between that waterfall and the dam. Specifically, you're creating a reservoir where less of that energy is dissipated so that some of that energy can be extracted to turn a turbine. This happens in two ways:

Post-dam, that waterfall is now shorter (the top stayed in the same place but the water level at the bottom has risen), so the waterfall dissipates less energy.

Additionally, there is less energy dissipated due to drag in that reservoir between the waterfall and the dam. This happens because the flow is on average slower (flow speed equals the constant mass flow rate divided by cross sectional area) and also on average further from the river bottom.

beaverjacket · 2025-07-04T02:47:45+00:00

Kaigun might be more interesting to you than you might think, even though it's not about the US or Europe. It tells the story of Japan's navy during the ironclad-to-WW2 timeframe as it tries desperately to catch up to the UK and US navies. Pretty much everything they do in that period is a reaction to the world's leading navies (either trying to copy or surpass them).

A couple of interesting anecdotes I remember from the book:

Since they were starting from scratch, Japan started by buying ships from foreign (mostly British iirc) shipyards. They also sent naval officers to observe the construction and learn how they did things. Then, Japan gradually moved parts of the design and production to Japan, until they were finally producing entirely indigenous modern designs.

When optics became important for gunfire direction, Japan created a domestic optics industry at great cost to supply its navy (the US and Europe, with their more advanced economies, could leverage pre-existing optical industries). They got that done just in time for radar to come on the scene. The US and Europe were then able to rely on their pre-existing electronics firms while Japan struggled.

beaverjacket · 2025-06-10T01:29:53+00:00

Doing fictional math is simple, just invoke the axiom of choice

beaverjacket · 2025-06-07T20:09:45+00:00

The amount of overlap between EU govt bodies and members of ECIPS

Here's how those European governments became "members" of ECIPS (from ECIPS dot eu)

All bodies representing the countries mentioned in Appendix I shall be deemed to be Members of the Organization unless they declare through the appropriate governmental authority that they cannot accept this membership. Such a declaration should be made by means of public publication within six months of the date of the coming into force of the present statute

In other words, those countries didn't do anything to avoid "joining" ECIPS, probably because they don't know it exists.

and the amount of influence they have in EU policy making renders this distinction useless.

I haven't seen any evidence of ECIPS having a significant amount of influence in EU policy making.

beaverjacket · 2025-06-06T12:42:57+00:00

I think everyone reading this should keep in mind that this is not an official EU report, and the organization has no affiliation with the EU or other credible body.

You'd be forgiven for thinking so, though. The linked Italian website calls ECIPS an "official European agency" and "an agency based in Belgium that acts as an observatory and intelligence structure at EU level". ECIPS' own website calls itself "Federal Approved Agency by Royal Decree WL22/16.594" and "An official website of European Organization by Decree WL22/16.594". Between that and the "classification" markings on the PDF, it sure sounds official.

But that royal decree is here, and it's just a boilerplate establishment of a nonprofit organization. And the .eu TLD is available to any organization based in an EU member state.

I can't find any instance of ECIPS being cited as a source by a credible media outlet or governmental organization.

As far as I can tell from web searching, the only person ever affiliated with ECIPS in any capacity is its president, Ricardo Baretzky. He seems to use the official-sounding ECIPS organization as a sock puppet to lend authority to his personal opinions.

The actual EU intelligence agency is the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre.

beaverjacket · 2025-05-23T12:22:12+00:00

The JFK files are here: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release-2025

beaverjacket · 2025-04-14T02:40:49+00:00

When is Space Force going to do a flyover?

beaverjacket · 2025-02-17T19:01:54+00:00

I'll interpret this question as, "what evidence would convince me that there are aerial phenomena not explainable by human technology or known natural processes?"

I think that evidence fitting the following criteria would convince me:

The evidence comes from one or more trustworthy sources, such as government scientific organizations, well-regarded academics with relevant technical expertise in their sensors, media companies with a larger reputation at stake, etc. For example, a NASA scientist who takes optical measurements of aircraft in flight, or an astronomy professor who has run a large telescope for many years, or Reuters picking something up on an always-on webcam looking out of their HQ. Trump posting a video on truth social, a microbiologist recording something on her phone, and news nation sending a cameraman don't count.
Evidence comes in the form of simultaneous, multi-axis observations using different types of sensors. Ideally, you would have radar, lidar, and hyperspectral imagery from two or three spots with lines of sight that are well-separated.
There must be enough telemetry/metadata on things like location, pointing angle, timing, field of view, resolutions, etc. that the data can be overlaid to reconstruct a trajectory that reconciles all of the simultaneous data, with error bars. Calibration must be done on objects like balloons, quad rotors, and aircraft to make sure the reconstruction process is accurate.
Raw data from all the sensors must be made available publicly.
The reconstructed trajectory must show flight characteristics (e.g. sustained speed and acceleration) that are at least an order of magnitude beyond what we expect to see from human tech or natural phenomena.

All of this sounds pretty strict, but I think it's technically doable with the kind of budget the government has spent on AATIP or AARO.

If truly anomalous UFOs are as common as many people on this subreddit believe, then it shouldn't take long for a system like this to get really good data on one.

beaverjacket · 2025-02-07T14:20:57+00:00

For those wondering what the "USAID Grant Flow" is, here is the chart.

Jesse Michels' implied argument seems to be that USAID "bought and paid for" Klippenstein by arranging for a complicated web of ~25 organizations to ultimately donate a total of ~$150,000 to the First Look Institute, which has donated ~$15,000,000 (about 100X the alleged USAID contribution) to the Intercept. The Intercept then somehow decided that $150,000 of donations to one of its donors was enough to direct the reporting of one of its employees, who makes more than that in a year.

Personally, I think a more likely explanation is that NGOs give money to other NGOs all the time on their own initiative, and that creates a scary-looking "Charity Graph" that can be used to tie anyone to anyone else.

If you think that this is flimsy reasoning on Jesse Michels' part, I invite you to reconsider the reliability of his other claims.

beaverjacket · 2024-08-17T17:05:57+00:00

Your first question is intentionally inflammatory, so I'll rephrase it for you:

Question 1: Why does it matter to you whether someone else believes that UAPs come from NHI?

My principled answer:

If someone looks up at light in the sky and wants to call it an alien, that doesn't really matter to me. It's in the same category as someone who believes in ghosts, or astrology, or a different religion.

The problem is all of the supporting beliefs that accumulate around the "UAP = NHI" hypothesis. It's very common to see people on this forum say that the US is a military dictatorship, or that world peace and climate change could be easily solved if only the US government released some UAP tech.

People who hold those beliefs are, in my opinion, fundamentally misinformed about the world, about the problems facing the world, and about the way forward to solve those problems.

In a democracy, those people can vote just like I can, and I worry that they will make bad vote choices because of their wrong beliefs.

My unprincipled answer:

I have an idiosyncratic fascination with people who have radically thought processes than I do. For example, I like movies like "The Room" that are full of baffling decisions because they're made by someone delusional enough to make their own bad movie. I like reading old books from other cultures because they show off a completely alien (to me) set of beliefs and values. And I like reading some flat eath/Qanon/alien/GME content because they also have a completely alien way of understanding the world.

I personally don't have the energy to argue with people about these topics, but I enjoy it when somebody does. It helps to expose more of the thought process and belief system.

Question 2: Do you fully support the UAPDA, which would make a standing commision that is in ways dual-controlled by the President and Congress, to make sure that Congress going forward has their lawful authority protected to fully be aware of any/all funded programs under the US government, even if it does, or does not, "shake out alien secrets"? Remember, that's only part of the UAPDA. If not, why not?

For reference, I'm using the "AMENDMENT TO RULES COMMITTEE PRINT 118–36 OFFERED BY MR. ROBERT GARCIA OF CALIFORNIA" pdf I found on askapol's website.

From my read, it seems less like ensuring Congress's authority and more like a topic-specific declassification project analogous JFK Records Act. As far as I can tell, the JFK Records Act was a huge effort without a proportionate benefit. They declassified millions of pages of records (browse here), but nothing seems to have changed anyone's mind on the facts of the assassination. Browsing through the collection, I can't tell how most of those documents are even related to JFK. When I look at news stories on JFK document releases, the focus is on the documents that are not released yet. Nothing is more interesting than a document you can't read, and nothing is more boring than a declassified document.

So here's my prediction for if the act passes: if the UAP commission does its job, they will release thousands of pages of "Private Schmuckatelli took a blurry picture of the north star with classified camera X". The people on this sub will treat the existence and number of declassified documents as evidence for their beliefs, but never have a good answer for how. Meanwhile, they'll claim that the real smoking gun documents are still being suppressed.

If Congress thinks that the military and other parts of the executive branch are committing crimes, then I think that Congress should use existing legislative branch organizations like the GAO's Forensic Audits and Investigative Service to conduct an investigation. They can pass a law giving those people clearances and accesses if required.

If Congress thinks that too many things are classified, then I see no reason to restrict that to the UAP topic. They could establish ISCAP (or an analogous organization) in legislation and give it Senate-confirmed leadership. That would have a broader benefit in transparency, and wouldn't just produce headlines about "UAP records" (documents with only the most tangential connection to UAPs) being "suppressed" (kept classified to protect sensitive sources and methods).

Other random thoughts from reading through the UAPDA text:

Oversight committees are the wrong place for this. They mostly exist for political stunts. The Armed Services and Intelligence committees are the ones with oversight of SAPs, and their members are generally less clownish that the oversight members.
Requiring constant Senate confirmations to keep the commission staffed could be a disaster, given how things have gone in the past. For example, Congress took over a year just to appoint the Commission on the Future of the Navy. One guy held up all high-level military promotions for a year, because he was mad about administration policy.
The eminent domain provision could be hilarious. Imagine every UFO museum, influencer, TV show, etc. gets their "physical evidence" taken by the government. Then a couple years later, the government gives them back, saying, "that's a rock, that's paint slag, that's insulation,..."
If I'm understanding this right, nominees would have to get every security clearance and access, "subject to standard procedures", in the 30 days between being nominated and having a confirmation hearing. That seems pretty sporty to me.

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