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I meant especially civilian services as alternative. Every human should have the right to decide, if they want the moral implications associated with the military. The military also shouldn't become a substitute civil infrastructure blurring lines of function and funding. E.g. money for education should be spend on public education for everyone, not becoming a incentive for joining the military.

In Germany it's been like that: You objected military service, you had to do mandatory civilian service, e.g. aiding disabled people, for 9 months . I would prefer there to be a choice right from the beginning. So while mandatory to spend a certain amount of your life time for the collective, some agency remains.

Israel is bad example, because there objection is notoriously hard, yet more relevant than ever.

A draft would also likely enable/strengthen moral objection for soldiers. A professional army brings contractual obligations for any received benefits (e.g. education), which makes disobeying objectionable orders a question of dealing with existentially threatening consequences (e.g. debt). A draft would also mean the army would culturally approach population average, instead of selecting for a specific background. This strengthens the democratic foundation and surely would be somewhat effective against cultural polarization.

However, in today's society, I think it would be most important to have a draft for everyone, not just young man. Otherwise it would be social dynamite. See South Korea.

Personally, I would prefer a mandatory choice for everyone (no bone spurs) between social services (e.g. working in a hospital), ecological services (e.g. reforestation), technical services (e.g. firefighters) and military service. Everyone having to do one year for society. It would be a unifying shared experience if done right. People of different background would be exposed to each other, a reliable way to fight bias and prejudice.

No one knows what NATO even means, if the US of all countries attacks a member state. Eg. there is no legal procedure for the US to leave NATO. There isn't really a NATO without the US. Although many countries would be advised to stand by the general idea of collective defense to ensure protection against other big players, following through is anything but certain. Therefore article 5 obligations are not particularly straightforward in this case.

That's why merely the US rhetoric is damaging to the deterrence function of NATO (and global peace, nuclear disarmament for that matter). It's different for the EU, because the EU membership itself has collective defense obligations in case of attack. The EU got lucky France had an independent nuclear program, as we can't really count on the UK anymore, because they are not part of the EU anymore and also depend on the US technologically. That said, countries like Germany are expected to be able to gain nuclear capabilities quickly, if they have to.

> The attacker could use `chattr -i .bashrc` with the same privileges before editing your bashrc.

No. Setting flags requires root privileges, sudo was implied. At least on my system.

> Also you will want to do the same to .profile (because of LD_PRELOAD etc).

Yeah, that's what I meant with additional files sourced by the shell. I knew about .profile, but I am not sure that's all of it. I think different distros may be set up differently in this regard. Also I am pretty sure, you can define function overwrites/aliases and execute code in any file getting sourced, it's not just LD_PRELOAD attacks.

Does 'chattr +i .bashrc' reliably prevent this? Always seemed sensible to me. Then again, there are a few files getting sourced by the shell and I am not sure I could spontaneously name them all.

There would be tripwire forces located in Greenland. The US would likely be required to directly engage European troops. I would expect Europe to let the carrier know it got no chance before it even starts shit, in the above scenario. Like when the US under Biden surfaced a nuclear triad sub in the Baltic Sea to dampen Russia's nuclear threats against Europe, early in the Ukraine war.

Not sure Europe could afford to abstain from a military response after being actually attacked. It would look extremely weak, disrespectful to their attacked/fallen troops and puts their military deterrent in question globally. You can wreak the economy only once cutting ties with the US and it got more impact domestically with a costly war starting. To deescalate, US society's pain expectations must max out immediately, before the people, media and economy can adapt to a new normal/narrative. Look at Ukraine, a slow, reluctant response makes everything worse. If Europe/US had maxed out their support immediately, Russia would have like pulled out. Years of extreme pain must be the message, another costly war dragging on forever, something Americans understand and feel tired of.

And I presume Canada would also not be too pleased, potentially having to up the stakes for a war in their neighborhood. A war which may just as well have fallen onto their own soil. It would be wise for them to stand with Europe, if they want to keep their own independence.

The US military leadership actually having to plan an all-out war with Europe, possibly Canada, may prompt some introspection and a chance for internal conflict. Rumor has it, behind the scenes, the US NATO generals already apologized to their European counterparts for Trump's remarks on Greenland. There is probably a non-zero chance, any attack order would cause a coup rather than a war with Europe. Domestic revolt will only happen, if such conflict is credibly the stupidest thing imaginable on every axis and when relevant actors are actually confronted with that reality.

> It’s unlikely NATO members will fight the US with bullets and bombs, but I guarantee they can still seriously hurt them.

I am not even sure the US would be able to completely dominate a conflict. While it obviously has the largest military, it's set up to depend on European military defensive and complementary roles in a large scale conflict. In particular US aggression supply and comms critically depend on Europe as ally. Not to mention nuclear defense and early warning infrastructure. Without Europe, there is a big, big ocean between the US and most everything.

For example in terms of military roles, the US lacks the stealthy submarines of European navies. Incidentally, it relies heavily on aircraft carriers for force projection. I think there is a chance European subs could wipe out US carriers and therefore significantly disable US attack abilities straight-away. There is evidence from prior combined exercises, where the US navy was pretty much owned by a single Swedish sub. They are really damn good. So, without deploying ships, what's the US gonna do? Bomb Greenland's tundra? Fly big, slow transporter planes there and hope the European subs won't use their AA missiles? The whole point of those subs is to be a massive pain to aggressive forces and the US assigned that role to Europe...

War against Europe means losing comms and nuclear defense/early warning infrastructure located there. The US would also immediately become vulnerable to Russia and China, and every conflict in the middle east too.

I think attacking Europe would be pretty idiotic from every perspective. Sadly, that doesn't mean much anymore.

No. It's an anvil dropped onto the mouse.

In this example, Signal itself and anyone associated with it, could not have any bank accounts at all. There wouldn't be any receiving end for donations. Being on the OFAC list means any bank connected through SWIFT wouldn't allow you as customer. Current funds would be immediately frozen, which by itself would probably cause fatal disruption. The OFAC list is an extreme measure, which is why the recent abuse is such a big deal.

As mentioned elsewhere, read up on the Rote Hilfe case to see how this kinda thing plays out right now. "Antifa Ost", four people beating up (NOT murdering) Neonazis were declared a designated global terror network by the Trump admin in 2025. Those four "global terrorist" were all already in custody, on trial in Germany at the time, hardly a threat. Rote Hilfe lost their bank account, because of weak association through legal defense support. Mind you, Rote Hilfe is a traditional German political institution being only cancelled once before: 1933. And the GLS bank who cancelled their account proactively fearing SWIFT exclusion, would be considered a socialist endeavor by US standards. That's the reach of OFAC.

So, to evade sanctions, Signal would need to maintain internationally ostracized money laundering networks on the scale of global terror financing, or North Korean operations. They are not some hidden service black market, where any hosting is sufficient. Paying AWS millions for large scale, low-latency CDN infrastructure with highly suspicious finances ain't gonna fly. I assume, due to statistic correlation, considering the necessary volumes moved, it's probably simply impossible to pull off.

And of course, Signal's income is in large parts coming from various nation's registered funds, which obviously wouldn't participate in highly illegal financing. Individual donations won't cut it (and also expose any donor to being flagged for terror financing, losing access to their own accounts). Not to mention, money laundering infrastructure isn't free, so only a fraction of donations would make it anyway...

The problem here is also Signal's centralized nature. If it was built for a decentralized, self-hostable backend, where only the code itself has to escape repression, it wouldn't be as vulnerable. However, as with other decentralized projects, we likely wouldn't talk about it as hypothetical heavy loss due to wide-spread adoption and foundation of common privacy.

Signal's whole mission is to enable e2ee at scale, for the average person. OFAC listing would be the end of Signal and any similar project.

So if those prior sentences or yours are not related, your argument is part wrong, part irrelevant/nonsensical. Good talk.

> It's based on three designated foreign terrorist organizations, notably the PKK.

In this context, "designated foreign terrorist organizations" is not an explanation, but a tautology. The matter at hand is how and why something got onto that list.

The antifa remark relates to the Rote Hilfe situation. In my opinion, it's an example of how populist rhetoric became a major overreach with real consequences prior to the incident at hand. Rote Hilfe had a very weak relation to "Antifa Ost" (hardly worth US attention). That's how they got cancelled: https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...

So the antifa moral panic is indeed very much relevant.

But decide for yourself, if "Antifa Ost" deserves US anti-terrorism attention to the extent of OFAC sanctions, or if it's maaaybe populist action... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_left-wing_extremism_tr...

Incidentally, funny how the NSU isn't on that list, hm?

This isn't comparable to the legality issues in particular countries, a comparatively minor threat for FOSS software projects. If the US declares your organization as terrorist, you'll lose banking access globally by leveraging the SWIFT system. The US influence has always been problematic, but this is now blatantly abused for MAGA populism.

All this means eg. Signal would not be able to escape jurisdictions, because no bank anywhere relevant will endanger their SWIFT access opposing the US. Sanctioned Signal would stop providing services for everyone, since they can't pay for servers, neither being able to receive donations, nor wire any money themselves. It's similar prior situations involving payment processors (e.g. in case of Wikileaks), but has totalitarian reach affecting almost all banking globally.

This is about finances. If the US declares you a terrorist organization, you cannot do any banking anymore, even outside the US, since most banks do not want to gamble on SWIFT access.

Since the US considers anything "antifa" as terrorism now, it already had most concerning distant effects last year. See GLS bank cancelling Rote Hilfe in Germany. 1933 was the last time Rote Hilfe was cancelled, btw. It's an antifa OG. Pretty good indicator about the status quo..

Anyway, look at e.g. GrapheneOS, which is already treated as probable cause by law enforcement. Encrypted messaging also super sus. Thing is, funding can't escape jurisdictions. Signal servers are not running on love and fellowship, but donations and public money. Opsec won't protect your software stack's foundation against US finance attacks.

Also these models are usually expensive. Cheap/low-end models don't have this option ever. Depending on the financial situation, the "just buy the alternative" may not be possible. Some people here need to touch grass, this campaign is probably not particularly concerned with their configured 2k+ dev machines.

IANAL, but consumers usually do have to finalize the installation, in particular activate the license online. From a legal perspective the technicality of a running kernel may not satisfy completion.

> you could redirect 100% of memory production to consumer chips without enormous upheaval

They would never do that. By then the market has changed and they would produce at the limit of expected demand, certainly not intentionally causing oversupply.

> but that's early enough to know this is 100% human trite bullshit

It's also lacking the toaster dash. Clear bio-signature of the unaffected hearts and minds.

Nice try, but it's generated slop all the way down, Mr. Feynman.

The tech specs aren't safe either. Last year the official Google Store had some laughable AI translations in the specs for their Pixel phones. Eg. "Rear video" was translated to "Rückansicht" ("Rear view"). That nonsensical translation for an audience of 80 million persisted for months. In 2025 blessed vibe-translation of formerly reputable sites really stood out to me.

Nobody gives a fuck about anything anymore.

That's what I suspected, but it's actually pretty weird to associate "rectum" as it's quite a dissimilar word, sharing nothing but a few letters. Like, "referendum" sounds like ass too? I mean weird, unless that's where your mind is anyway.

> I'm vaguely aware of the endurance running hypothesis. But a quick Google suggests that most humans had decent stone-age atlatls, bows & arrows, snares, and spears by ~50k years ago. That's >2k generations of selection where endurance running is not the highest-value skill for catching dinner.

Endurance running in hunting and scavenging does not conflict with the usage of hunting tools and weapons. I am not sure how you got to 50k years, since tools usage predates homo spec. and goes back a few million years, but 50k years is relatively little time on the evolutionary time scale anyway. As I said before, the important relevant innovation isn't tool usage, but sedentism/agriculture, which is far more recent. It's also important to keep in mind how few humans lived on Earth back then, arguing about generations. 10,000BC (emergence of agriculture) there where about 1-15 million humans on all Earth. 70,000BC there may have been a bottleneck event which may have reduced human population to as low as 1,000 individuals. This would have greatly reduced genetic diversity necessary for any rapid changes. There is little genetic variation in humans across the globe. For comparison, the Rarámuri descended from humans arriving in the Americas about 15,000-10,000BC. All very recent.

> Look at parts of the immune system which are needed to fight high-mortality diseases. The classic is ...

I am not sure what you are getting at. Do you suggest eradication of malaria and consequently the frequency normalization due to loss of selective advantage for exclusively heterozygous carriers of a fatal genetic disease is a good example of adaptive timescales? I mean yeah, obviously evolution can happen faster with huge selective pressure. Selective breeding is evidence of that. But that's very different than the suggested degeneration due to mere irrelevance, unless you make the case running adaptations are disadvantageous to modern humans. I mean, failing to push world records is hardly evidence that we, as a species, suck at endurance running. If anything, we suck at not running.

> Humans have been concocting excuses to proclaim their own ancestry and blood "superior" for well over 7 millennia

So? Humans suck? They didn't use biologisms and I was talking about the pseudoscientific idea of human evolutionary degeneration specifically.

> humanity may desperately need soon, like another 10 °C of heat tolerance.

Well, good luck. Timing-wise, I wouldn't count on evolution there :D

> biological realities of human bodies which either (1) Were not carefully designed for this kind of duty cycle, or (2) Have accumulated quite a few deleterious mutations in the generations since that design

Is this speculation on your side, or do you have a source for this "biological reality"?

(1) The "endurance running hypothesis" suggests we may be exactly made for this. However, what's certainly unaccounted for is pushing limits by sidestepping physical and mental safeguards. Just fueling a run with highly available carbs is a situation "nature" couldn't possibly account for, since even most plants we eat today didn't even exist, much less highly caloric gels. Mindset is another dysregulated thing. Grave difference between hunting prey and records. You have to disregard feelings like exhaustion or lack of motivation to chase records. Not to mention, for most of history humans had way more leisure time to rest. Hunting was their job, not the hobby on top of demanding job. It was also a collective endeavor not a competitive one. So, the way it's done is certainly a perversion, but the ballpark of physical load may be within specification.

(2) I think the relevant time frame is too short to expect any pronounced evolutionary effect from civilizational slack. Endurance running may be a defining feature of our species and sedentism is a very, very recent development in evolutionary timescales. I believe, lactase persistence is a rare outlier of rapid adaptations within that time frame. And that's really a consequential but minuscule genetic change, compared to systemic degeneration of our evolutionary legacy.

On a side-note, I want to add, your understanding of "biological realities" regarding (2) has some history and is somewhat in line with prior thinking that ended in social darwinism and eugenics AFAIK.

> Might anyone know if indigenous groups such as the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rar%C3%A1muri - where extreme distance running seems part of their traditional culture - have been studied in this regard?

I have a hard time believing you made this connection, without knowing about the book Born to Run and the endurance running hypothesis, but anyway, I believe that's where the anthropological discourse is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis

I believe this project is primarily funded by functional autism and a sharp mind, enabled by a socially supportive environment.

It's mostly one dude who really went into the depths of it, considered a lot of details and managed to deliver a resolute implementation and presentation. Judging by the Ayn Rand quote, I believe he may ideologically fall onto the regarded side of the anarchist spectrum and may be less motivated by humanitarian aspects, as you may otherwise expect for "crisis resistant" technology. The rest of the small community seems to be made of similar libertarian type individuals, which may be one of the reasons why it doesn't gain more support). Regardless, in terms of economics, I believe the author actually decided not to play, so you may ask yourself, if you may have asked a leading question. I believe the actual answer concerning motivation is this: For the fun, the challenge and the beauty of it. It's a PoC/reference of an idea, rather than the answer to an immediate or anticipated need.

The ecosystem as a whole is a most lovely project to dive into, lot's of nuances to explore. Ideological differences aside, I am positively at awe, what the author accomplished there. Here is a spoiler, something stuck with me: A single RNode is enough to bootstrap the entire Reticulum network stack. It's web-hosting the firmware, software and documentation, everything you need, and every RNode can become a wifi access point for ad-hoc distribution. Beautiful, thoughtful feature you may merely accidentally stumble into, as it's just an understated side-note. The "it's just one guy" critique hits differently, when you see the extent of what that "one guy" actually accomplished.

I know what you are getting at, but I think that's an unfair characterization after all.

I don't want to shit-talk Ratspeak, but the foregone description of community and momentum seems far fetched. Additionally, the vibe is pretty off compared to Reticulum. Nothing here points to "successor" IMO.

I am not a native speaker, but I can't figure out what you are getting at. I have a hard time imagining you meant this:

> The reticulum is the second chamber in the four-chamber alimentary canal of a ruminant mammal.

I guess, on the internet nobody knows you're a ruminant mammal...

What's exactly the criticism you got? What do you miss?

Does it? It's seemingly one person on Github and the "community" is otherwise on Discord and Telegram, which is pretty sus.

That's crazy. Herpes can't be cured, so the implication of those ads can only be to "hide" the infection. Additionally, those antivirals aren't effective at preventing outbreaks unless you take them every day, which would be insane unless you are an unfortunate soul who is prone to constant outbreaks.

Looking at global population stats, you can clearly see where germ theory and vaccines entered human civilization.

All this "natural something" and antivax movement certainly is the other direction. Maybe it's subconscious population control, maybe informational warfare... maybe people just got a little detached from reality by not dying all the time, as you suggested.

Lol, you are both right:

- It's not commonly transmitted sexually

- It can definitely be transmitted sexually

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_C#Sexual_intercourse

> HPV 2 and Herpes are rather common

Seems like both HSV-1 and HSV-2 seroprevalences are actually rather low in the Netherlands.

As for STI testing: Serological testing is pretty meaningless regarding infection risk and direct viral detection is only done on visible lesions for differential diagnostics AFAIK. You can shed the virus without lesions, HSV-1 can be contracted without direct mucosa contact, and while HSV-1 is associated with oral herpes and HSV-2 with genital herpes, both types can cause lesions anywhere on the body. Sure someone without positive antibody status very likely can't transmit it, but that's a very small minority of people of relevant age.

I believe talking to Americans about "herpes" can be misleading, as it's weirdly stigmatized over there and people seemingly conflate visible "cold sores", genital herpes and antibody status.

Incidentally, genital herpes and HSV-2 in general is more common in the US, which may be a direct outcome of this cultural dynamic. Due to lower incidences of early oral HSV-1 infections, compared to most western Europe, Americans are more likely to get infected with genital herpes of either type, but in particular HSV-2, too. Prior oral HSV-1 infections are somewhat protective.

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

I think, if you scale it up a bit and adjust the weight for increased friction losses, you may be able to do it considering available materials, but the required knowledge would be anachronistic. I mean, they could also have built compound bows and repeating, lever operated crossbows, but weren't smart enough.

For the string you could use a chain, or just a thicker rope. A presume a bow string has similar requirements and was available tech. For the frame, spindel/shaft and string, I don't see a problem as they appear to be scalable, not restricted by dimensions/weight much. Wood, natural fibers and steel would do. In theory, medieval people in "The East" had readily access (as in no advanced processing required etc.) to everything needed to make highly elastic rubber (for the original supersonic trebuchet), but it would be an anachronistic material AFAIK. You may conceive a variant using maybe an array of bows for quick release energy storage.

Wood is plenty strong (in relation to weight), but the arm may critically depend on modern materials, as both supersonic trebuchets use specifically advanced materials there (structured titanium and carbon fiber composites IIRC). For a heavier arm, you would probably need a prolonged acceleration phase, which would be doable (for Stanton's trebuchet), but I am not sure the forces wouldn't tear lower strength:weight materials apart, or if a more voluminous arm may be able to overcome the drag. I could see the fat compressed part of the arm being aerodynamically shaped wood (like a wooden propeller; although "aerodynamic" anything may be considered anachronistic), and the thin tensioned part made from a thin band of steel/bow string.

I think, another potential show stopper may be bearings. Not sure you could have the rotational speeds of the arm without precision (ball) bearings and modern lubricants. 2342 RPM would probably the fastest spinning thing at the time. (I wanna see a washing machine gone trebuchet-y, now.)

But really, it would be just a curiosity in medieval times too. What's the point of supersonic speeds in a device you can hardly aim precisely? You could deliver the same or more energy by throwing a heavier projectile at slower speeds, without excessive aerodynamic losses.