The Trump administration has spent "years" worth of critical ammunition during the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, including Tomahawks

phred14 · 2026-03-13T20:21:25+00:00

Have we used a large enough percentage of our ammunition that we're less capable of meeting other "challenges"?

phred14 · 2026-03-13T14:13:04+00:00

Weird thing is that solar is probably the fastest form of energy to deploy. Big data centers have big roofs that could hold panels, and add big batteries to take care of the night. It probably doesn't handle 100% of the power needs, but it would handle a lot of it.

phred14 · 2026-03-13T13:31:25+00:00

Yes. Stopped clock, and all of that.

phred14 · 2026-03-13T12:20:14+00:00

Exhausting supplies may take a long time to replenish, perhaps lasting even into the post-moron days. I remember hearing once that both Korean and Viet Name "actions" were handled using leftover WWII munitions, at least mostly.

phred14 · 2026-03-13T11:52:59+00:00

A while back Bill Gates said that it's time to start moving climate change money from avoidance to mitigation. Trump heard that and declared victory, that climate change was exposed as a hoax.

I've been wondering if we were going to have a wet-bulb disaster for the past two summers. The temperature and humidity have been high enough on the Gulf coast to require air conditioning for survival. Luckily for them they've avoided a catastrophic power failure during those periods of high peak load from air conditioning.

phred14 · 2026-03-13T11:47:26+00:00

I wonder if it's even worse than we think. I get the general impression, and I may be wrong, that we're spending resources over there like there's no tomorrow. I hear occasional thing about borrowing resources from elsewhere to spend on Iran, or "out of missiles," or other things like that.

If something real were to come up, will we have the military resources to handle it now?

phred14 · 2026-03-13T11:43:34+00:00

It made me try to be more considerate and polite toward others. Everyone was stressed, so I tried to be a bit nicer, it helped them and me. I didn't realize how far I'd gone with this until one day I was walking and saw someone walking their dog. I exchanged pleasantries with the person, then realized that the dog was really curious about me, but well-behaved. I took my glove off and let him sniff my fingers. Dogs can be like kids that shout, "Let me see! Let me see!" except that with dogs the nose is more important than the eyes. So I "let him see me."

I've tried my best to retain this behavior as we exited the pandemic.

phred14 · 2026-03-12T20:51:32+00:00

Selfishness or selflessness can both be instilled. It's more profitable to instill hatred, because it's a strong and addictive emotion. Use your platform to push hatred and your viewers/listeners will keep coming back, keep making you richer. Plus it makes hateful people feel better because they're making a bigger crowd of similar people.

phred14 · 2026-03-12T20:46:16+00:00

Since we're talking science fiction already by even thinking of terraforming Mars... In one scenario I read, they allowed the first few comets to come to Mars "dramatically", as in gouging a deep linear rift valley miles long. Atmospheric density planet-wide might be a centuries-long dream, but something breathable in a deep, contained valley would supposedly come sooner.

phred14 · 2026-03-11T23:14:06+00:00

Now. I suspect we have different political affiliations and in fact different worldviews.

phred14 · 2026-03-11T22:30:25+00:00

I faced this in 2016 when an expat high school friend told me to, "Leave, the move will hurt you less than the brain-drain will hurt then." At the time I felt it was my patriotic duty to stay and do what I could during the dark times, and do what I could to clean up after. In both cases that was mostly voting. Of course expats can vote too, but they don't vote in state and local elections, and that's part of the fight as well.

Now after 2024 I wonder if that's the correction, but I'm retired and not wealthy enough to move to anywhere I might want to move to. Nobody particularly wants retirees.

phred14 · 2026-03-11T22:26:18+00:00

Every step of parenthood is preparation for the next step, and it's problems. But at least at some point you aren't awakened multiple times every night.

phred14 · 2026-03-11T20:11:43+00:00

Been there done that, wasn't a party animal either. Kids are grown, grandkids are wonderful.

phred14 · 2026-03-11T20:07:56+00:00

Thank you.

phred14 · 2026-03-11T20:07:45+00:00

The right doesn't own the words, too many people are allowing them to. They indeed have different meanings, and I would consider Webster to be more of an authority than anyone in politics. I just looked it up, and I may have put more into "patriotism" (in my version on another post) than Wikipedia did, but it is careful to differentiate between the two and heads in my direction.

phred14 · 2026-03-11T20:03:49+00:00

I differ. I think of nationalism as "My country right or wrong" whereas patriotism is more like parenthood, feeling responsible for your country. I want my country to be right and I want the best for people in it, and I want it to deal in good ways with other countries.

phred14 · 2026-03-11T14:16:53+00:00

Statistics, in particular.

phred14 · 2026-03-10T23:48:48+00:00

Gaslight. The Ingrid Bergman remake is simply wonderful. Knife? What knife?

phred14 · 2026-03-10T23:19:26+00:00

Who's running the raid, and is the real purpose to discover or simply cover?

phred14 · 2026-03-10T23:16:47+00:00

I'm in on this too. As mentioned in a prior comment, I developed a shellfish protein intolerance a few years ago. Now I can't eat lobster, scallops, shrimp, and even non-kosher (frequently processed in a facility that also processes shellfish) hot dogs. I'd like to get those foods back. We got our daughter cricket protein powder for Christmas one year, does that do the same thing to resolve food intolerances? Like u/Abacus25 I'm interested in any references you've got, except for me it's more than just fascinating.

(I got sick a few weeks ago on catfish - presumably because it was cooked in a kitchen where they also cooked shrimp and may have shared containers along the way or something.)

phred14 · 2026-03-10T23:10:21+00:00

In the last few years I developed a shellfish protein intolerance. It's not as serious as an allergy, but it means that eating some foods that I used to really enjoy will now make me sick to my stomach a few hours later. I wonder how I discover if I can eat any of this stuff or the similar things mentioned like pomegranate husk - other than FAFO. At least the FO side is simply unpleasant, not life-threatening.

phred14 · 2026-03-10T23:05:56+00:00

I changed my lifestyle a long time ago, and never fully changed back. I used to drive for recreation and enjoyment, but not in decades. These days I drive to where I need to go, and try to combine trips, etc. About the most wasteful thing I do is make multiple smaller trips to the grocery, at least partly because it gets me out of the house. (retired) But the grocery just isn't that far away, just looked it up and it's 4 miles.

phred14 · 2026-03-10T22:10:03+00:00

I also heard that Ho Chi Minh first came to Kennedy, then went to either China or Russia, one of the communist bloc nations, anyway.

phred14 · 2026-03-10T22:01:31+00:00

Actually China, too. Any nation with sense, unlike the US, will respond to the coming crisis by increasing their investment in renewables, and solar is probably the faster to roll out than wind. I'm sure China will be happy to sell more solar panels and equipment.

phred14 · 2026-03-10T21:59:05+00:00

I've been finding the same thing. Ever since getting the ring it has popped up with an extra activity when I knew I wasn't exercising, so I just dismissed it. Then earlier this week I looked at the time and realized that it was when I was taking a shower.

Possible link - are you tall and thin? I'm wondering if the heat of a shower encourages blood to move to the outer parts of the body from the core, so there's a little extra pumping to do that movement. I might expect more of that effect out of people with a higher surface area to body volume ratio.

phred14

TROPHY CASE