forgot_account

>>>If someone needs something they should have it.

What mechanism will exist to validate conflicting "needs" of different people in the not-so-distant future? Extreme example: we can't give everyone their own mansion with a beachfront view in order to prevent triggering them.

A fair point on the ease of corrupting private contractors. If anything that suggests the National government should provide security, and bank on the cultural pride/integrity/professionalism of the military to serve as a bullwark (for whatever that is worth). Secondary control measures to reduce corruption risk complicates things but still should explode the budget into the millions or anything.

Triple-strand concertina wire isn't that expensive, put that around the perimeter with a single entry control point. Two guards on shift, 4 hours on/8 hours off, twice per day = 4 bodies. Double that to cut the days worked down to 3-5 per week with some flex capacity, keep people well-rested and alert. A quick search indicates an Egyptian military sergeant earns roughly $220/month, so 8 guys @$250 month = $2000 in wages monthly, and a pretty small outlay for equipment (the concertina wire, some rifles, flashlights, comm gear- radios/cellphones, maybe a tablet to verify access rosters).....Even hooking up some perimeter sensors to a computer workstation and generator power wouldn't be more than a low 5-figure investment.

Basic physical security should not be an unreasonable cost burden when there is so much national economic and social interest in preserving Egyptian history.

Sterile and soulless? Even Sicario?

>>>It has nothing to do with terrorism, it is purely for military domination and imperialism

Nitpick: military domination is not an end-goal in and of itself. Arguably, it is (rightly or wrongly) the US government's primary methodology for enforcing continuance of the Petrodollar system and US global economic domination. Most of the military actions revolve around ensuring the security of Saudi Arabia, the key player in OPEC.

I've tried to find scholarly articles on what the US economy might look like without the Petrodollar. Maybe my Google Scholar-fu is weak, but there's not a lot of useful, detailed projections beyond "not good".

>>>This reads to me like saying "the best way to determine if god exists is to read the hebrew bible, the koran, and the book of mormon and take the average".

That's kinda what led Aleister Crowley to create Thelema. In a very broad sense, he learned about belief systems from around the world, especially focused on "Messiah" type characters and the similarities in their experiences/stories/methods of enlightment, and then built a system that was somewhat of a fusion of all methodologies, largely as an extension of Jewish mysticism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema

Part of the problem with sticking to recently-published books is the lag time involved. Consuming a variety of current news sources can not only lead you toward a "ground truth" for that particular case, but can also frame a better understanding of other evolving situations, and arm you with a better frame of reference to not only understand those as well, but shape your actions in yet a third actively-developing scenario.

>>>But what they don't tell you is their experience level, the context of how they came to believe Y, or really any supporting understanding of whether Y is an actual technical tradeoff that needs to be considered.

Yes, thankyou! I think about this every time I see "Systems are so powerful we can just throw RAM/CPU cycles at every problem, efficiency doesn't matter..." as if everyone on the planet is doing web apps, and there are no engineering/architectural situations that might drive certain languages or design principles. Such as this:

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/programmable/us/en/pdf...

I guess I'm just focused on a niche market...

My physical education teacher in High School was the spitting image of Trajan (this was late 90s). We were blown away the first time we saw a picture of Trajan in our texts. He used to call his Cadillac a "battlewagon" but after we showed him the picture he called it a "chariot" instead. Fun memories..

>>>I know the word and its meaning and my initial reaction was negative because I thought "this has very little metaphorical value for a physics engine." You think of kinesis, movement, reactions.... Rapier is - to me - just an inanimate object.

I looked at is as implying lightweight, nimble, and functional efficiency for small-scale uses, much like its namesake. I would assign much different metaphorical implications to something named "Zweihander" (Germanic two-handed sword) or an even more esoteric French polearm name such as "Bec de corbin" (a name probably only known to hoplophiles).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qJBGlChcXU?t=546

https://myarmoury.com/othr_aa_bec.html

TDS Sufferer: "Trump is a dictator!" [1]

Trump lets the States exercise their Constitutional authority[2]

TDS Sufferer: "Trump is a disappointingly-WEAK dictator!"[3]

It really is bizarre. As you say, there are things he's legitimately punting into the stands, such as his ham-fisted counter to the rise of China (great concept, abysmal execution).[4]

[1]https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-covid-19-coronavirus-di...

[2]https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/03/31/commentary/w...

[3]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/yet-anothe...

[4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhMAt3BluAU

I'm a black American and I've been pulled over twice here in Japan (in the past 5 years) for what I concluded was basically "Driving While Black". I still think "Abolish/defund the police" are terrible slogans and equally terrible policy positions to take. But I continue to live in Japan because I know that the police here aren't inclined to put a bullet in my ass either. I like the Japanese "koban" model for deploying police forces. I also recognize that the overall baseline level of violence, and the proliferation of firearms, presents a vastly different force protection situation for urban American police than it does for their Japanese counterparts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dban

There's a ton of problems I have law enforcement in the US, and the bulk of it boils down to terrible screening of personnel and inappropriate training. Fixing both of those issues will require more funding, not less. Better psychological screening (to eliminate sociopaths), higher pay (to retain quality personnel, and be able to rotate people off the streets more frequently), longer training and with different curriculum (stop learning tactics from Israeli counter-insurgency personnel), etc...

>>>but can we make our own SDR LTE handset as well?

Maybe if you put one these in a kinda-large handheld: https://tinysdr.org/

https://limemicro.com/products/boards/limesdr-mini/

https://xtrx.io/about/

I see the applications/overlap with driving down the costs/size of multi-mode precision-guided munitions: guided missiles and drones that use a mix of laser, radar, and infrared sensing for all-weather accuracy. I'm not really a hardware guy but I'd love to prototype something Spike-sized with COTS sensors, then try to setup a factory in a developing nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAVAIR_Spike

I'm starting to wonder if there will be a growing market for car shops to do what I've done to my Supra:

Pull out the entire wire harness and replace it with an aftermarket Power Distribution Module system, ECU, and CAN-BUS controller. Remove all this monitoring and connectivity crap, but keep the best parts of a modern Japanese car: the bulletproof mechanical components. It's expensive and time-consuming, but also saves some weight.

>>>One person dying is objectively worse than one person going bankrupt, this is ethics 101.

The argument of the anti-lockdown crowd (at least as I understand it) is that the second- and third-order effects are just rich people going bankrupt, but middle- and lower-class people being forced into dire economic straights up to and including starvation, or a drastically reduced ability to afford esssential life-saving healthcare for other non-COVID conditions.

I didn't bring family with me, I'm building one here. Re: neighbor acceptance, it's hit or miss but mostly hit. In my last apartment, my next-door neighbor was an older guy who spoke no English but always wanted to shoot the shit about my project cars. I think he used to be a bosozoku (young Japanese biker gangs) back in the day. My Japanese is pretty poor but I can express myself on certain subjects, especially cars. There's a guy at one of my favorite junkyards who keeps inviting me to go drifting with him and I barely understand his Japanese; he has a very heavy local accent. There was also a young guy who worked at my local Family Mart convenience store who was a metalhead (he was wearing a band T-shirt one day), so we would occasionally talk about bands. Him: "Do you know....Fleshgod?" "Fleshgod Apocalypse? mochiron sa (Eng: of course!) I saw them live in Osaka!" "Ahh, sugoii (cool) ! They are....very good! I like." \m/ >_< \m/

You'll always be "the gaijin" but most people are friendly. I had some good experiences in Thailand as well, having just the right physical features to kinda blend in as long as I didn't open my mouth. But that's a longer story...

>>>I'm curious to know -- for people who seek residency in Japan, do they typically do it with the plan to stay forever?

I do. It's a "sweet spot" place to live. No threat of violence from law enforcement, significantly reduced threat of violence from the general population, extremely high standard of living, and the country is well-positioned as a base of operations for travel or business across most of Asia. Also, despite some high expenses compared to America, it's a great place to own a sports car if that is a major hobby (and it is for me). Many of the happiest people I know are Western expats in Japan who are small-business owners. It's important to disconnect from the "Japanese corporate wage slave" or "English teacher" life experiences. I'll never back to the US if I can avoid it.

Another good example is the Battle of Cape Matapan where British battleships obliterated Italian cruisers at 3500m, at night, in a few minutes.

One of my favorite YT naval historians, Drachinifel, constantly derides the Japanese 25mm AA gun, which was based on a French design. One of his longer podcasts (in the Drydock series) has a segment explaining the technical details of why.

"Facebook Moderator Boasts Deleting Users For MAGA Hat" https://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/facebook-moderat...

I'd probably start with Shenzhen I/O: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen_I/O

It's on Steam.

>>>I don't see violence. Show me the violence.

How about shooting commercial-grade incendiaries at an occupied structure and causing injuries? https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/us/portland-riots-july-4/inde...

"The fireworks injured several officers when they exploded on or near them, the statement said."

Or the 6 officers injured Friday night: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/26/portla...