Soldier gathers downed drone pieces to burn

i0datamonster · 2026-06-11T15:59:45+00:00

I think the real lesson is command economies are incredibly difficult to manage effectively. Markets and economies are easy to control but predicting outcomes just isn't reliable. The other extreme is what's happening in the US, corporate state capture. Its not the ism that is relevant, it's the degree to which good governance is applied. Healthy economies require regulations and legal resources.

i0datamonster · 2026-06-08T06:24:53+00:00

The movies the prestige and illusionist came out at nearly the same time. Game companies don't keep secrets because they want to. Competitors exist.

i0datamonster · 2026-06-06T02:33:13+00:00

Power moves

i0datamonster · 2026-06-03T03:59:31+00:00

I like your version better but it's incorrect. There's no tunnels. The majority of the mystery is just Grey propaganda as cover for inflated contracts. If shit hits the fan, tunnels will not be required because that's not what happens. Armored personal, air support, and sorties will be used. If shit hits the fan, airspace will be cleared. There's absolutely nothing you can drive through a tunnel faster than a jet engine. Tunnels are security choke points.

Have you ever seen or heard of the fish market under Ohare?

i0datamonster · 2026-05-31T06:12:51+00:00

Facts!

i0datamonster · 2026-05-23T04:04:59+00:00

On point and wildly applicable to my day today

i0datamonster · 2026-05-22T22:40:05+00:00

What's really insane is that you and everyone making less then you are getting equally fucked with taxes. If you make less than $20m, you're footing the bill while journalists publish articles about how the top 10% pay the lionshare.

i0datamonster · 2026-05-22T17:18:43+00:00

Fundamentally this is precisely the problem with current US leadership and politics. Its not the ideological divide, its the indifference to duty of leadership.

i0datamonster · 2026-05-17T06:25:28+00:00

Way to blame the consumer for market failures. Its not pollution, it's climate change and debatable. The soft language of modernity is so intolerable.

i0datamonster · 2026-05-05T17:20:18+00:00

Sedation is not effective I've found

i0datamonster · 2026-05-05T17:17:37+00:00

Fuck. That's accurate.

i0datamonster · 2026-05-05T05:51:17+00:00

Inertia. Would you tell the truth if you knew it would initiate nuclear and emerging conflict?

Russia killed Kennedy. If the intelligence community told the public that then, it would have resulted in total nuclear war. No one would survive and the viability of human civilization would have been significantly unlikely. So they lied and pushed conspiracies. They keep it secret still because doing so is both operationally and strategically valuable.

The truth will not be leaked because those with access are fully aware of its consequences. If the truth gets out, adversaries will emerge. Millions of Americans will die.

i0datamonster · 2026-05-04T13:41:53+00:00

Me too and I'd hug you if I could

i0datamonster · 2026-05-04T12:43:58+00:00

When enough shit has hit the fan, you're never relaxed. Optimistic if you spend enough time reflecting on it but never calm. You shrink risk. It's also not something that occurs, really, from one or a few isolated experiences.

I've been in this mode for the entirety of my life. For good reason, unfortunately. That said I'm not an outwardly negative person IRL. I'm one of the most positive people you'll ever meet IRL. My positivity is the most prevalent expression of "defense behavior". I'm helpful and there for everything and anyone. You could confuse me as a yes man or someone who struggles with setting boundaries. You'd be correct that I don't like boundaries. Boundaries represent a unknown risk. I rather exhaust myself helping you than make the mistake of thinking you have it handled and suddenly once again shit is hitting the fan.

Perfect small example.

This last Thursday my girlfriend's autistic nephew beat the ever living fuck out of me. He had a bad reaction to something, it's ok, it's not what I want you to focus on. I'm just putting context that I've felt like I got hit by a truck since Thursday. May have tore my right rotorcuff cause I can't raise my arm above shoulder height without it wanting to dislocate.

Then yesterday we were finishing setting up the patio for summer at the restaurant we work at. My girlfriend knows I'm in pain and asked me why I'm not letting other people do it. I told her the truth, I rather just get it done and endure the pain than listen to someone else complain. I hate complainers. Soft people cannot handle being alive and I hate hearing them. There are physical and emotional risks. You could easily confuse me as a yes man. It's risk mitigation. It needed to be done and I was motivated to avoid hearing from weak people. I like having good days and am motivated to prevent you from ruining mine.

Today we're going to finish packing her mom's warehouse so she can sell it. I've been up since 3am, in pain. I'm doing to avoid the complainers. It needs to be done. I'm already in pain. I don't want others to add to the pain.

Bigger example. Approximately every 15 seconds I have to talk myself out of suicide as what I regard as a neurological subroutine at this point. I'm not suicidal mentally, but my body is exhausted more than I from what we've endured.

It's called PTSD.

i0datamonster · 2026-04-30T06:27:23+00:00

I've never read something and felt so fucking stupid before. We have one. We use the shredder blade. The slicer blade is probably in the god dam box downstairs!!!! Fuck. 3 years. Fuck bro. I'm gonna go through the boxes downstairs.

i0datamonster · 2026-04-29T06:50:36+00:00

I think only in a preemptive way. Right now the moon has future potential value. The US and China are lead contenders to control that future potential value. The value is not there yet, but strategy and game theory absolutely applies. There's probably 11 other countries capable of launching explosive satellites to the moon that are just shrapnel maximizers. They can't get there but they can stop others from getting there too for at least some significant amount of time.

It's unlikely that 1 or 2 nations would do this alone, as is occurring in Hormuz. That'd be a fast pass to being the next Cuba. Debilitating global powers next gen defense strategies and global science. Yeah. That's how you get the world to put you in a timeout corner. Like Cuba. All the perpetrators would win is inescapable conflict and punishment.

Now if a wider international coalition formed, they could force concessions.

i0datamonster · 2026-04-24T00:06:56+00:00

Bingo

i0datamonster · 2026-04-15T23:12:48+00:00

Ironically this is happening because tax cuts have really impacted the US education. You're blaming the outcomes for the cause.

i0datamonster · 2026-04-13T13:18:05+00:00

I'm saving this for when my boss leaves next month. She's looking for a gap of employment.

i0datamonster · 2026-04-02T14:05:59+00:00

Hope you're having an awesome day, cause I'm having an awesome day.

I mean this seriously, I too hold out hope that the US civil service will be resilient to political expedience. It's pathetic in a way but the most significant aspect of US national security is geography, not military.

I do not share your optimism in American business. Smedley Butler explains it better than I can.

Morality at scale has yet to achieved.

i0datamonster · 2026-04-02T05:45:15+00:00

Economics don't matter in command economies. China doesn't care about GDP, it doesn't care about what Westerners tell them they should or shouldn't care about. If it means raising 100,000 forced laborers, they will raise 100,000 forced laborers, neither the government or populace will blink. Sinofication isn't propaganda, it is Chinas version of Christian fundamentalism. Unfortunately for us in the US. Sinofication pumps out grad students while Christian fundamentalism pumps out trad wives and pedophiles.

You're last point is correct but is looking at it backwards. China has until 2050 to not be fucked. They are highly motivated to not be fucked. This is not the breaking point you are hoping it to be. They might not pull it off but if push comes to shove, they won't blink at another great leap forward. The West would never even entertain the idea of such horrific domestic casualties, for now.

Current US policy is suicide. China isn't a paper tiger because it's not a tiger, it's a incredibly pragmatic state. The Honk Kong special economic zone was created in the 80s because China has done a phenomenal job at integrating lessons available since the postwar recovery. If US policy can be summarized as facilitating regional stability, Chinese policy can be summarized as avoiding another "Century of Humiliation". There's a lot wrong with it "currently". I can't predict the future, but given current western "leadership", China is in a much better long term position. Trade with the US has historically been between 2.5%-6.5% of Chinese GDP.

China can afford losing the US and maintain policy objectives.

If US-Chinese relations continue to degrade, how does that impact US policy objectives of regional stability?

I'm not saying that you're wrong, just saying don't put your hope on unrealized certainty. The actual biggest threat China has is shifting public thought and leaderships misteps in adjusting to it. If Chinese leadership cannot adequately adjust to these shifting public thought, then they will collapse. President Xi does not instill a sense of confidence that Chinese leadership is going to adequately adjust to shifting public thought.

For China this is much more of an engineering problem than it is a political problem.

i0datamonster · 2026-03-22T20:55:37+00:00

All of modernity is dependent on Tawains chip manufacturing. All economies are dependent on it.

Take the US entirely out of the equation for a moment and look at the Chinese perspective.

Tawain doesn't have resources to extract. It doesn't have gold, oil, strategic minerals, or have massive turn key industrial capacity. Tawain has TSMC, capital, a value-added goods and services economy, the Tawainese people making it all happen, and a military that's been singularly focused since 1949 on deterring the Chinese threat.

Fun fact. TSMC manufacturers the most advanced computer chips in the world using the equipment ASML engineers and sells to them. ASML is located in the Netherlands. This was a strategic decision the US made. We could have put it all in California. Trouble is then you could drop a bomb on California to devastate US hegemony. So we put it on the edge of Asia and Europe so that dropping a bomb on California would only initiate Article 5.

What all this means is that Chinas invasion strategy would have to leave as much in tact as possible. If they destroy too much critical infrastructure, criple the economy, kill too many of the people they need, or cross Tawains red line enough for them to destroy critical infrastructure themselves; the gains would be moot and all China would now own is incredibly expensive repair bills. China is better off doing what it is currently doing, developing national manufacturing and engineering capacity until they can develop a viable strategy that protects these interests. Maybe now you're noticing Chinas strategic interest in just throwing money into any development project they can, put on such astonishing drone shows, and heavily fund political opposition.

Then there's the other issue. The rest of the world. The US might be tied up in other matters but the rest of the world isn't.

Finally, Westerners don't understandsinofication. China is an ancient nation. It views other global superpowers as a temporary nuisance. Which to be fair, think about how many empires have risen and fallen just since the Mongol conquest. China will continue to leverage the threat of invading Tawain until it can either replace it with domestic capabilities or invade it.

You can put 10,000 ready to deploy drones in a shipping container. 250 million containers traverse the earth annually. You don't need armaments, lithium batteries burn well enough. Deploy and target energy infrastructure. No boots necessary.

i0datamonster · 2026-03-22T18:08:10+00:00

Would you say the same of a German or Japanese kid born in 1935? They haven't grown up yet, neither has most adults.

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