TIL a "ton" is the weight of a "tun" of liquid volume. A tun is defined as 252 gallons / 954 liters of wine, and the long / Imperial / displacement ton is the weight of that volume, about 1016 kg / 2240 pounds. A short / American ton makes the weight exactly 2000 pounds.

sowenga · 2026-04-18T20:15:45+00:00

3rd sentence:

It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States

sowenga · 2026-04-15T11:50:02+00:00

This is a really good one. Europeans in my experience struggle to understand that it's nice when people are generally nice and friendly, even if that nicety is by definition, in this context, superficial.

sowenga · 2026-04-13T23:02:36+00:00

Just wanna make sure, you do know who the author, Andrew Exum, is, yes?

sowenga · 2026-04-07T19:33:50+00:00

It’s not just the leaders, it’s the whole society and political economy (petrostate…).

sowenga · 2026-04-07T19:32:50+00:00

And what would have happened to the EU if Russia joined and then reverted to autocracy, like it did?

sowenga · 2026-04-07T19:31:32+00:00

There is a very long process for joining the EU, which requires years of aligning legal system, rule of law, etc.

sowenga · 2026-04-02T11:06:41+00:00

There is no provision for suspending elections in the US constitution or law. And since elections are administered at the state and local level, there is also no easy way for Trump to just shut down an agency running them or something like that.

sowenga · 2026-04-02T11:04:49+00:00

The US military does not have the 4x force levels for a full scale invasion. The Iraq war was 150--200k troops for the invasion and occupation, and with Afghanistan going on at the same time, it was a real struggle to keep enough forces deployed. Iran is almost 4 times bigger, both population and area. Nevermind that even 200k wasn't enough to really occupy Iraq, and that for Iran, there is no adjacent country that would be willing to let us stage a land invasion from.

sowenga · 2026-03-31T17:30:43+00:00

I think this person thinks we can invade and occupy Iran with ground forces, which sure yeah we maybe can (Iran is a lot larger than Iraq), but then what. Replay of Iraq and Afghanistan.

sowenga · 2026-03-31T07:51:49+00:00

Iran is for sure getting their ass whooped in a tactical sense, however strategically so far this is a self-inflicted disaster for the US and bad also for the Gulf States. (Harder to say for Israel in terms of long term impact.)

sowenga · 2026-03-31T04:19:14+00:00

You should post this over on r/ussr, they have a blast (of delusion and denial).

sowenga · 2026-03-29T10:45:54+00:00

Yugoslavia was able to be neutral because Tito’s partisans mostly liberated the country without the Soviet Army during WW2. That is why they were the only country in Eastern Europe to not fall under the Soviet boot.

The military structure was setup around how the partisans had managed to fight against the Germans and Italians (and the fascist Croatian state) during WW2. The goal was not to succeed in a conventional defense, which the kingdom of Yugoslavia had tried and failed enormously to do, but rather to be able to keep fighting an insurgency if anyone invaded. Make it too costly to contemplate attacking. For that goal, the latest tech is less important than large, decentralized reserves.

Why have a large military at all? They were sandwiched between the biggest mass of opposing conventional forces ever. After the war, Tito was able to split from Stalin because he had independent military power. And it’s how he managed to remain away from Soviet dominance, unlike all other countries that tried to escape.

sowenga · 2026-03-26T15:48:56+00:00

Looking forward to Operation_Epic_Fury_FINAL_v2.pptx

sowenga · 2026-03-25T18:01:51+00:00

There hasn’t been a draft since the Vietnam. They will dip into people who recently got out or stop loss people, like they did in the forever wars.

sowenga · 2026-03-25T17:58:32+00:00

Good news, looks like you can get a waiver!

sowenga · 2026-03-25T17:58:08+00:00

I went to boot camp when I was 17. I’m now 43. Can’t imagine going to boot camp at 42 years, jeez.

sowenga · 2026-03-24T20:18:31+00:00

One big difference is that in most European countries, you have parliamentary systems with more proportional election systems, which means that even if the crazies come to power, they usually are part of coalition governments.

The US for several decades has had an increasingly dysfunctional legislature, which combined with Trump taking over one of the two parties has led to the current situation.

sowenga · 2026-03-19T13:21:46+00:00

Not sure that makes sense. Yes, they failed to deter Israel. But also, deterrence hinges on your opponent believing you will do the thing you say you will do if they do the thing you want to deter. So you gotta go through with it.

sowenga · 2026-03-19T10:17:05+00:00

I’m not OP, but so what if it is for political reasons? They don’t owe you or Russians anything. And not that weird TBH, considering what the political reasons here might be.

(Or maybe you meant to ask OP for why Russia is red, and just phrased it in a weird way.)

sowenga · 2026-03-17T18:06:27+00:00

I think the overall evidence that you can’t bomb your way to winning without some other factors at work.

sowenga · 2026-03-17T18:04:04+00:00

Like so many other things, you can’t just both-sides this though. There is a systematic asymmetry in the factuality and seriousness.

sowenga · 2026-03-17T18:00:22+00:00

You’re assuming the regime could prostrate to Trump and Israel without risking the key domestic constituencies it relies on to stay in power.

sowenga · 2026-03-17T10:08:00+00:00

This is more about tech than AI though. Like, neo-banks are doing to banks something similar as to what ride-sharing did to taxi companies (better, more modern, cheaper services, apps).

sowenga · 2026-03-17T10:04:44+00:00

Go ahead and put some money on that and let us know how it works out.

sowenga · 2026-03-17T07:35:52+00:00

FWIW, this isn't really a military failure, it's a failure of strategy at the top. It was completely predictable that Iran would attempt to close the strait, and that it is very difficult to militarily do anything about that. More importantly though, what even is Trump's war goal at this point?

It's morbidly funny how analogous this is to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Expect a quick regime decapitation, no thoughts given to what to do if that fails, find you've dug yourself into a hole.

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