seo-speedwagon

Who's "they" in this context?

> It should start by reversing the crisis in military recruitment—not by lowering standards, promising easy pay, or infusing the force with diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology but by unapologetically touting the virtues of an elite, colorblind, all-volunteer force and challenging young Americans to step up.

In an article full of lukewarm takes this one stands out above the rest. Why should anyone want to join up? The barracks are moldy, something like a quarter of armed service members are food insecure, staffing cuts mean 16+ hour shifts are not uncommon, the list goes on. 30-40 years of neoliberalism stripped away most of the social contract. Who wants to fight and die for a country that acts like it owes its citizens nothing? This isn’t some problem with wokeism or whatever bullshit, it’s a predictable and straightforward response of people to their material conditions.

This guy’s an economist, right? I get that it doesn’t mean he’s only allowed to have opinions about economics, but I feel like it would have added a lot more substance.

So the US is underprepared for a hypothetical war with China, and arguably is underprepared for the conflicts it’s currently in. Why is that? We spend vastly more than anyone else on defense, but just one of China’s shipyards is vastly more productive than our entire shipbuilding capacity. Why is that? It seems like we can’t spend our way out of the problems he brings up. Is there something about our political economy that isn’t working?

edit: spelling

Reminds me of 2020 when there was a spike in “it doesn’t smell at all!” negative reviews of scented candles

My guess: there’s 3 stars that are brighter, and the cat is shown with 3 legs, so it could be part of a constellation of 3 satellites. The swoop of the tail could indicate a molyina orbit. Generally the orbit and where these things are in the sky can, and are, tracked even by hobbyists so that’s not particularly juicy, imo

Not super surprising really. The US has been incredibly antagonistic towards China, and it feels like it keeps ramping up. At this point it would be irresponsible to not start weaning at least government assets off of US dependencies.

> And [Marco Rubio, R-FL] cited the algorithm used by TikTok to determine which content is served up to U.S. users as a key reason why Congress needs to act. "That algorithm in a moment of conflict or an ongoing basis can be altered in order to drive certain messages, to divide Americans, to destabilize our politics, to influence policymakers, to denigrate policymakers, to tear our country apart, and China clearly wants to achieve that."

It's pretty funny that we have sitting US Senators sabre rattling against one of our largest trading partners, accusing them of potentially being able to do to us what we have absolutely done to them.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-launched-cia-covert-i...

Doesn’t chip fabrication require enormous amounts of water? How’s that going to play out when India is expected to start facing serious water availability issues?

I think you’re responding to the wrong post? I said “America never wants partners, it wants deferential vassals.” The guy who said the US wants partners who aren’t corrupt is here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39731001

Are you seriously suggesting that whatever breakdown in diplomacy happened here was due to a principled stance against corruption & dictatorship? Because off the top of my head we’ve supported

- Sukarno

- Pinochet

- Mohamed bin Zayed

- Mohammed bin Salman

- Ferdinand Marcos

- Pol Pot

- Every South Korean military dictator pretty much

But this time, this time it was just too much for us to bear?

> "Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism," Abdramane said

> "Also, the government of Niger forcefully denounces the condescending attitude accompanied by the threat of retaliation from the head of the American delegation towards the Nigerien government and people," he added.

Pretty harsh. Wonder why they’re mad enough to essentially call a diplomatic delegation a bunch of pricks and bullies and kick them out..

> Abdramane said the status and presence of U.S. troops in Niger was illegal and violated constitutional and democratic rules because, according to the spokesperson, it was unilaterally imposed on the African nation in 2012.

> He said Niger was not aware of the number of U.S. civilian and military personnel on its soil or the amount of equipment deployed and, according to the agreement, the U.S. military had no obligation to respond to any request for help against militants.

Ah, ok. Standard stuff; America never wants partners, it wants deferential vassals.

It’s a neat trick, since Boeing claims they can’t find any record of the work and don’t know who did it.

So in the last ~48 hours a major whistleblower turns up dead and evidence ends up destroyed. Hell of a company.

You start out in 1972 by saying, "One China, One China." By 2016 you can't say "One China"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like “the close economic, political and security ties between Taiwan and the US” and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now that you're talking about permanent training missions, and all these things you're talking about are totally regional stability things and a byproduct of them is the PRC gets hurt worse than the KMT. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the Taiwan problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "these are the commitments we made" is much more abstract than even the training mission thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "One China"

Having trouble squaring these two statements

> At the time, Beijing condemned the actions of Taiwan’s coast guard and called for further investigation of the deaths. It also announced it would increase inspection patrols in the area. Taiwan’s government defended the incident, saying the Chinese crew had illegally entered Taiwanese waters, “refused to cooperate” with requests to board for inspection, and sped away. It said the CGA had the right to “enforce the law”.

> Taiwan’s Maritime and Port Bureau urged Taiwanese vessels to refuse future requests by Chinese coast guards to board for inspection, and instead to immediately notify the CGA.

Oops I meant to say “congress” instead of “senate”. Aside from that I stand by what I wrote. I’m skeptical of bullshit saber rattling, especially when it’s obfuscated by “it’s classified, you’ll just have to trust me”. I don’t, and he’s a sitting US Representative. Put up or shut up.

He should just read out whatever he’s talking about on the senate floor. Given the apparently grave severity, if he doesn’t I’ll be forced to conclude he’s a coward and lacks the courage of his convictions.

It’s sinister, maybe even illegal, when Taylor Swift endorses Joe Biden for president.

It’s commendable and patriotic when Kid Rock endorses Donald Trump for president.

Hmmmm this reminds me of something.

> Grappling with what to do about the bears, the Graftonites also wrestled with the arguments of certain libertarians who questioned whether they should do anything at all—especially since several of the town residents had taken to feeding the bears, more or less just because they could. One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet “Doughnut Lady,” revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else’s lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn’t her problem. The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom. Some people just “don’t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,” Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem.

https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-int...

If a blockade is an act of war, does that mean Israel declared war on Gaza in 2007?

Guns and what they fire really haven’t changed since the First World War, not fundamentally at least. There’s incremental improvements in design and materials and manufacturing process but it’s a fundamentally mature technology. This gives them relatively low profit margins which makes them unappealing for privatized defense companies with shareholders to please.

Now the classic way to charge the government more money for the same old gun is to say there’s other benefits like nebulous “performance” and “efficiency” improvements. This also has the added benefit when your deliveries “show promise” but display at best marginal improvements, you can sell carry-on contracts, sometimes for a decade or longer!

So to bring this all back around, the author is correct that it won’t work. Enterprising defense contractors may one day attempt to replace factories to roll and stamp and mass-produce bulk firepower with bespoke 3D printable, multifunctional, agile, just-in-time shell production solutions. But if they do it’ll produce a lot more shareholder value than actual product.

I don’t understand? The problem isn’t that 155mm shells are inferior tech or not fit for purpose; it’s the US let it’s capacity to manufacture them wither.

I don’t think it’s a “problem” either; I think it’s good the the US is incapable of producing some of the most basic 100-year-old tech that forms our war machine.

I think the interesting parts are everything around how it got there. How decades of focusing on expensive wonder tech and unchecked MIC grift has led to the US to this state where it fundamentally can't deliver materiel it needs. The contradictions of 30+ years of end-of-history neoliberal economics vs. the fact that someone needs to run a big potentially unprofitable factory and keep large excess inventory of if the US expects to respond to long-duration conflicts like this. Whether or not the US ends up like the western colonial empires of old sooner rather than later.

So from that standpoint 155mm shell production is an excellent window into larger trends

> The US has asked China to use its ties with Iran to try and rein in the Houthis, but on Thursday, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said Washington had seen “no visible evidence” Beijing was doing so.

How do they think this works, that Iran is bigger than Yemen, so Yemen takes orders from it, and China is bigger than Iran so Iran takes orders from it? This asking to talk to the manager shtick is very telling about the US’s own views on its allies

If the door was removed (which the NTSB report and the whistleblower post linked elsewhere around here say must have happened) there should be documentation for, at minimum, the removal and reattachment. If the door was not removed but was opened and closed, there should be documentation for both of those actions instead.

I don't know if this should be considered "adding more process" because it has been standard process for a very long time. All work done on an airplane is authorized, by someone, and after completion is recorded, by someone. Discrepancies and deviations from this standard operating procedure are a big deal.

Good. I hope the union doesn’t sell out its members like they did a decade ago.

Weird article. It makes a very dubious claim about pro athletes and has 0 backup of that claim. Which is incredible (in the literal sense of the word) because even most amateurs and weekend warriors, in my experience, know that sleep is super important (even if they can’t actually get as much as they know they “should”)

Clickbait headline. The article itself is full of insinuation but doesn’t have any substantive evidence to suggest Ansar Allah is planning to attack undersea cables.

> so damn if you do, damn if you don't

Damn, sounds tough being a settler-colonist. Maybe if they stopped doing that people wouldn’t be so mad at them??

This genocide

30 Palestinian bodies discovered in Gaza school, handcuffed and blindfolded

https://aje.io/i37ezs?update=2667108

Bodies of women and children shot point-blank at Shadia Abu Ghazala school

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/12/26/classroom-mass...

Israelis from “all sides of the political spectrum” blocking aid into the strip, for days now

https://x.com/Louis_Allday/status/1751961386924560528?s=20

Israel literally digging up Palestinian (and only Palestinian) graves. Note that graves establish important historical provenance proving Palestinian history on the land. Destroying such artifacts is common in genocides and ethnic cleansing

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-indicates-i...