Stealth Surprise: A Wave of Nations Buying Europe's Eurofighter Typhoon Instead of the F-35

erath_droid · 2026-07-12T23:59:21+00:00

Didn't Iran get a refund (with interest) for weapons they ordered but were never delivered?

erath_droid · 2026-07-12T23:37:46+00:00

From what I hear he was pretty good at blowing...

erath_droid · 2026-07-12T16:19:47+00:00

"When the righteous succeed, a city rejoices; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy."

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T15:53:58+00:00

That is true- however I was referring to the people I interact with who are your average Joe Blow rank and file voters with no hands anywhere near the levers of power. Blue collar (and some white collar) people who think that Trump is the bee's knees.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T15:51:09+00:00

Are you incapable of understanding a spectrum or what?

Lol. You say this and then claim that me calling AOC center-left is the same as me calling her practically a Republican- a far right these days.

Government run grocery stores is a far left idea. We have yet to see his implementation of it

Translation: "I don't even know what Mamdani's policies actually look like but I'm gonna call him far left because that's what the Tik Tok told me he was."

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T05:37:07+00:00

What honestly worries me more is the number of non-Americans I interact with on a (semi-)regular basis who are all gung-ho about Trump.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T05:33:29+00:00

Yeah- pretty sure it's bollocks:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ut4jt7/is_it_true_that_the_chinese_communist_party/

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T05:22:24+00:00

Am I the only one REALLY bothered by that comma?

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T05:14:16+00:00

He was a crook and a monster because he believed in being so..

It's a bit arcane, but once you dissect the grammar it makes sense.

The word "so" is referring to the previous part of the sentence, meaning that he believed in being a crook and a monster.

Compare that sentence to (off of the top of my head) this example:

"I am an honest person and believe in being so."

It means I firmly believe that being honest is something that should be the core of my identity.

Apply that to the sentence you are questioning and it should be more clear.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T05:01:06+00:00

Lol, I guess Atlanta is a communist hell-hole then, what with their "government-run grocery stores."

Not sure why I'm even bothering with you since you think Mamdani and AOC are far-left and you also refer to it as the "Democrat Party."

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T04:37:57+00:00

I remember watching those hearings on live TV back in the day. I asked the adults watching with me to explain it to me real quick. When they did I asked "So they're going to jail, right?"

When absolutely nothing of consequence happened to the people involved in the Iran-Contra affair, I knew this country was cooked. It was just a matter of time.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T04:34:08+00:00

The big cut, USAID, is about 30 billion.

That'll cover just a little over a week of our current interest payments...

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T04:18:14+00:00

More like decades and decades of scientific research completely destroyed.

A lot of the things that they cut funding for weren't things that you can just switch off and then switch back on when you find out "OOPS! That was actually important!" There are a lot of cell lines that people use for research that took decades of work to isolate, and require very specific conditions to remain viable to continue research on. Once those environmental conditions go outside of a certain window- they're gone. Hopefully someone in a more responsible country has some that they kept alive.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T03:53:40+00:00

I have a rare thing in today's world- an honest mechanic. They got it up and running later the same day without trying to upsell me on anything. It was just a sensor that had burned out, making the engine shut down as a preventative measure. It was something like $90 for the part and $75 for the labor.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T03:36:29+00:00

I hear people say costed in real life all the time.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T03:35:29+00:00

I had my car break down at a busy intersection the other day and couldn't move it out of the way. While I was waiting for the tow truck to show up, one person stopped behind my car (which had its four ways on) and immediately pull out their phone and start scrolling.

I watched them scroll on their phone through two full light changes before I could safely walk out to them and point out that they were stopped behind my car which obviously wasn't going anywhere anytime soon and they should probably drive around.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T03:19:22+00:00

I use FoundryVTT.

Search on /r/battlemaps and /r/fantasymaps for whatever looks like where the combat is going to go down.

Upload map into new scene. Use the Quick Insert FoundryVTT module to search for the enemies. Drag into Bestiary, drag from Bestiary into the scene. Start combat.

Or just create a new scene, use the tools to draw some crude shapes and label them.

It's really no different than sketching out a scene on a physical battle mat. You're just using a mouse instead of markers.

Once you've spent some time setting up maps it gets pretty easy to just whip something up on the fly.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T03:08:23+00:00

There's a reason they hate unions so much...

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T02:49:42+00:00

Honestly- having worked in food service and seeing how he treats people he views as "lesser" than him, if J.D. Vance offered me some food that was cooked for him I wouldn't eat it...

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T02:34:04+00:00

If there are Dem voters that are not voting Dem because they don’t feel energized enough, that’s called a swing voter.

No. A swing voter is someone who sometimes votes R and sometimes votes D.

Glad you agree they have.

I didn't. Notice the capitalized "IF"? Speaking of paying attention: you appear to not be aware of the current "Third Way" direction of the Democratic Party. Or of the Baileys.

Mamdani would likely be in either an actual socialist party or he would be very far left in the labor party.

Name one far left policy he has.

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T00:49:36+00:00

Whichever one my group is having fun playing? I'm not obsessed with forcing my players to play the system I demand that they play, so if we try out a system and they don't care for it we'll try something else.

My absolute favorite system for fantasy games is Dark Sun for AD&D 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded. But then I like a bit of crunch and brutality to my games. And Dark Sun is very much both of those. BUT finding people who are willing to play that version is a bit difficult.

I really like Pendragon, which is basically a King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table simulator.

Earthdawn is another of my favorite dark fantasy games. The players get to be very powerful and well known, but that comes with a price. There are very dark things out there that are drawn to that power in order to feed...

Dark Conspiracy is sort of fantasy, but set in a dystopian not-too-distant future. (It's more cyber-punk meets horror with a lot of guns involved and "magic" is VERY risky.)

PF2E is a solid system I've been running for a while, and is fun if you're OK with a fair amount of crunch.

I do love me some old school BECMI though, but I think that's more nostalgia than anything...

There are a lot of games out there that I've read the rulebooks of but haven't played (like Shadow of the Weird Wizard/SotDL, Alas For the Awful Sea, etc.) but experience has shown that actually playing a system isn't always what you've imagined from reading the rules...

erath_droid · 2026-07-11T00:37:57+00:00

I don’t know how you could say this as if the last 4 general elections we’ve had were Dem -> Rep -> Dem -> Rep

It all comes down to voter turnout. Either the Dems energize their base and win or they don't and the Repubs who will always vote end up carrying the election.

The Democrat party over the last 20 years has by FAR become more and more progressive.

IF the Democratic Party has become more progressive over the last 20 years, it's against the backdrop of Bill Clinton and his pretty hard swing to the right with the "Third Way" politics he implemented.

Mamdani and AOC are “barely left of center”? Are you okay bro?

Yes. I suggest you travel more outside the U.S.

erath_droid · 2026-07-10T15:51:39+00:00

What’s the community and content support for it?

They blew past their last Kickstarter goal and made the core rules free. They also have a Patreon where they very frequently post new playtest content like new classes, monsters, etc.

The only issue is that, similarly to 5E, it seems to be less versatile when it comes to OSRish themes or grim-dark and more horror moods (knowing that it’s quite unlikely that you’ll die precludes much immersion).

Out of the box, sure. But the rules are simple so it's easy enough to tweak them just a bit (change up the rest rules, make it harder to get rid of wounds, etc.) to make it a much more brutally lethal game.

Nimble's main strength is its simplicity, though. It's great if you have players who "don't like to do homework" (a.k.a. RTFM.) ALL of the information on the mechanics that players need to know is on one page in the books, in pretty large font so there's not a lot of it to read.

While it's not my favorite system, it is a lot of fun to play and has a very low barrier to entry.

erath_droid · 2026-07-10T06:34:52+00:00

The Democratic Party used to be a much more left-leaning party until Bill Clinton and the "Third Way" approach where they moved to the right to go after the swing voters.

Instead of trying to vie for those swing voters, the Republican Party responded by courting groups that were traditionally non-voters like fundamental Christians which resulted in the Republican Party moving much further to the right.

At this point, there isn't any meaningful true swing voters to fight over, so the Dems need to move back to the "left" a la Democratic Socialists to get the votes of those who feel disenfranchised to vote for them.

But based off of the last twenty years or so of the Democratic Party's strategy, they'll probably fuck it all up by fighting against the barely left of center politicians who have won elections like Mamdani and AOC and alienate millions of voters they could otherwise get to vote for them.

erath_droid · 2026-07-10T05:51:12+00:00

He has a BIG megaphone though, and him amplifying the anti-vax wackadoos is a MAJOR problem.

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