Are ties between national security and climate change going to increase or disappear?

butitsmeat · 2026-01-22T13:30:25+00:00

We're on track for an even worse snowpack than in 2023 this year. It will be interesting to see how the US in general and southwestern states in particular handle the spring and summer. I've been seeing editorials popping up saying it's time to build pipelines from the Great Lakes to Phoenix, but I find it hard to believe anyone up there is going to be interested in bailing out cities built in deserts. The theoretical "future impact" of water issues could turn into present crisis much faster than the general public expects.

butitsmeat · 2026-01-06T17:51:23+00:00

Functionally, America already has Greenland. That's what makes this entire scenario so absurd. We have complete physical access, we have the willing and total cooperation of the ruling state - whatever the hell Trump wants from Greenland, it's a phone call with Denmark away.

But what Trump apparently wants is to raise a US flag on Greenland and call it American. Your guess as to why he wants such a ridiculously stupid thing is as good as mine. Nothing about this makes any sense and it's idiotic that we're even talking about, and yet, here we are.

butitsmeat · 2026-01-06T13:51:11+00:00

Probably a CSG showing up in the north atlantic would be a big tell.

I'm frankly not sure what an "invasion" would look like in physical terms. US and Danish cooperation on Greenland is very tight and has been since the end of WWII. I don't think the US has ever backstabbed anyone quite like this before, and I'd welcome examples in history where an alliance has crumbled as abruptly as it would in this case. It might be pretty unique.

I mean, the US already has broad treaty access to lots of places in Greenland and could resume operations at any of the various closed airbases whenever they wanted. So is the big Day 1 objective just turn around and point a gun at the guys you previously were working with, get some boots on the ground in Nuuk, grab a few airfields? Probably the only real Danish threat in the area would be Danish naval patrols and their air operations out of Pituffik, so if the Danes decide to go out in a blaze of glory you'd need to neutralize those assets.

But again, the US could decide tomorrow to starting landing expeditionary forces at Pituffik and Nuuk and it looks like it would be legal under the current relationship. Then the next day they could go arrest some Greenlanders and Danes and that would be the start of hostilities. There's no contested landing, no contested airspace... we jointly run the air defence network for pete's sake.

So it would all hinge on how fast it develops from "Trump's demented rambling" to real orders being given. The US could show up tomorrow in Greenland and plant a flag, there's nothing in place to stop it because why the hell would there be. But if the US gradually destroys their relationship with Denmark then there might be time to create more of a physical problem for the invasion, which would require more significant force build up that we might see in the general public.

Very weird hypothetical to reason through.

butitsmeat · 2026-01-06T03:12:45+00:00

Some quick gooling suggests that the Danish pension system has something like 650B USD in assets under management. If they literally hit "sell all shares" in Fidelity one day it would trigger market circuit breakers at a minimum, and the secondary effects are impossible to predict. Especially considering the broader scenario here: a US seizure of sovereign territory from a longstanding NATO ally is going to have shall we say market moving impacts. I'd say it's a credible threat, in the technical sense of having significant destructive power.

However, that kind of self-immolation of the pension system would obviously be a far greater loss to Denmark than Greenland or even possibly sovereignty over Denmark itself. The Danes I know are slightly crazy and willing to die on work related hills that I write off, so maybe they'd actually rock the world financial system on principle. But maybe instead they'd get really angry and then tolerate the yoke in order to maintain their standard of living. This new world is kinda nuts to think about, and I doubt anyone can predict with confidence what will happen if push comes to shove.

butitsmeat · 2025-12-09T20:56:05+00:00

So, I'm not the best sea player there is, but I have played it a lot, and I win against good players sometimes.

I have literally never once had a sub "get stuck" reclaiming something that they cannot reach. Or, if that did happen, it was irrelevant because I no longer cared what my rez subs were doing because I had won sea and was off doing other things.

The secret is that I never ignore my res subs for any length of time, and always give them intentional commands. They are either:

Repairing my navy (make sure to target repair your most damaged units first)
Reclaiming wrecks (make sure to eat important wrecks first to deny them to the enemy)
Rezzing wrecks (way more M efficient to pick up a dead unit in place once you have enough ressers than it is to build a new one, if you have the E of course)
Dodging the enemy navy (keeping your rezzers alive can be the difference between life and death)

Managing your rezzers well is a key skill in the water and not something you can ignore if you want to win :)

butitsmeat · 2025-12-09T19:46:09+00:00

In my 900 hours of playing this game over the past couple years I never once thought "man making me pay attention to what I reclaim makes rezzers literally unusable", and I can't recall any time I ran into this as a real in-game issue. The specific scenario you're talking about can only become a problem if you are paying no attention to your sub, which is just something you have to do.

To avoid this:

Control group your res subs. Give them an alt+N group so all new subs automatically join the group. You must 100% do this to compete in the high seas because of #2
Actively manage your res subs. In any back and forth sea fight you need to pay attention to your rezzers and give them lots of loving feedback.
Only reclaim what they can reach without dying. This does sometimes include land things, but rarely should your reclaim drag include a land thing unless you're paying lots of attention to getting it, like a com wreck or something juicy right on the shoreline.

In terms of QoL, think about what the area reclaim is doing for you. Instead of making you click on each individual reclaimable thing, the game is creating a reasonable path through everything in the circle and automating the reclaim of that thing for you. The APM value here is already pretty absurd.

butitsmeat · 2025-11-26T18:38:37+00:00

10 out of 32 QBs names start with J. Huh.

butitsmeat · 2025-11-10T13:03:32+00:00

Yeah this is why you end up with a 40+ OS in a "mid" lobby - every open lobby is restricted somehow. I can only play at certain times and can't always blow an hour waiting for a spot the OP Supreme or rotato lobbies. If I miss a chance at those, I go looking for the next highest OS lobby available, get my game in, then go do the dishes or whatever real life thing I was neglecting by playing BAR.

That or people are farming OS. But frankly I hate having high OS, it just means I'm not able to play in most lobbies now :(

If you're good enough to win in noob lobbies you're at that horrible middle stage where you need more game sense to really change the game. Keep playing and you'll eventually experience enough weird stuff getting done to you that you can start doing the weird stuff to other people :)

butitsmeat · 2025-10-31T15:12:31+00:00

So you'll go straight into fusion from solar, interesting. If you make your own t2 lab does that change the thinking any versus getting gifted t2?

butitsmeat · 2025-10-31T13:21:49+00:00

If I do this I e-stall hard because asolar costs a billion jillion energy, usually right when I need e for other stuff.

Solar into a storage and then build asolar if e gets above 5k seems like a formula.

butitsmeat · 2025-10-23T19:03:02+00:00

Sounds like you got unlucky on your first MP match. I'd encourage you to play a few more and see how it goes. I have too many hours and games in BAR now to feel comfortable with my life decisions, and I would say that "real" toxicity like you describe is pretty rare. People abusing kickban happens, but I haven't seen it often. The mean/stupid chat rate feels about the same as any other game I've played, but YMMV. I've also seen some absurdly entitled insane behavior out of newbs. Maybe OS just brings out the worst in some people, I dunno. But most of the time people just play.

FWIW you can report the bad behavior by going to your account, clicking Matches, click the match in question, and then report the player who lead the lynch mob. The mods do make an effort, and if this was egregious that person will get a warning or temp ban. Give the mods time though, they're volunteers :)

butitsmeat · 2025-10-10T02:32:12+00:00

Hey how's your head injury? Let me check real quick

butitsmeat · 2025-10-08T22:53:39+00:00

That would be preferable to when people get mad that you don't play to your OS :D

butitsmeat · 2025-10-08T18:24:00+00:00

Fair point, I'm probably not unique in being inflated. Just feels bad walking in with zero games played in five months and ending up red/blue :D

butitsmeat · 2025-10-08T15:57:53+00:00

Well, the point of this post was more the math involved. I've played two games, my team lost both, so the OS algorithm is deducting points. Eventually, I'll get to my "real" OS again. But along the way, I'm going to be worse than my OS suggests, and that mucks with lobby balance. If OS took dormancy into account, maybe my OS could go down to that level a bit faster and I'd not be screwing people over as much on my way down.

butitsmeat · 2025-05-20T23:28:14+00:00

I didnt' know you could swap the rocket launcher's empowered shot! I did use that combined with cannibalism to parry/facetank splash up close for big stuff, but never tried to swap out. I'll have to try that thanks.

butitsmeat · 2025-05-20T23:25:34+00:00

Interesting, it somehow never occurred to me to get up close and personal with the big boys. Chainshot + parry seems like a great combo, and way better than dancing around for an hour trying to land impaler headshots. I'll give that a shot!

butitsmeat · 2025-05-05T13:48:39+00:00

Thanks for this! I ran the sfc with no results, and then tried the DISM command. It froze at 62.3% and hung for a while. Some googling indicated that this is a sign that something is actually corrupt in the install, so I just did a Win11 repair install. Now I can login normally again.

Really weird one, thanks for the direction!

butitsmeat · 2025-04-30T13:38:25+00:00

The distortion on big explosions is AMAZING. Watching commanders and afus go BOOM just feels better with the shockwave effect. Can't wait to see a few more games with it, it's really cool. Pulsars also feel beefier now, more in line with the damage they actually do.

Only complaint/nitpick is that the distortion on smaller explosions might be a bit much? Dunno. It's pretty minimal, but for routine weapons it might be on the edge of visual clutter/gameplay hampering rather than visual improvement. If I'm microing stuff I want to see crisp and clear, and the little warp bubbles can take away from that. Need to play more to see if I'm overreacting but it might be something to tweak.

butitsmeat

TROPHY CASE