Lord Ratner

There were a lot of posts in that thread, so before I pass judgment, was he exploiting his position, taking advantage of children, or otherwise engaging in some sort of predatory behavior? I'm not sure I'll ever understand the people who want to role play animals while having sex, but I can think of far more damaging kinks.

Huh, is almost like the attention-seeking type that are drawn to (YouTube) celebrity are also less stable than those who prefer a more normal existence.

They are free. Just has to be setup properly. I'm actually upgrading my servers this month, so I could host it easily. Won't be as bulletproof as a datacenter, but it'll be cheaper 🤣. And the certificates won't expire

Does whoever is running this site need help with certificates? I have no idea where it's being hosted or how, but this should be an automated process. This is a really low-traffic site, so I can host it pretty easily on my servers if needed. Lemme know.

Agree entirely, but it's unlikely to happen. They set us on a crash course then didn't procreate. It'll be nearly impossible to replace them with votes, since old people have nothing else to do but vote for more benefits. We just have to wait for them to die and hope the damage is contained.

Maybe you forgot your previous post? Here: And here: And now here: That's who I'm talking to, the person who said that. And those quotes indicate a very misguided belief that "equipment and munitions" are the primary factors in Ukraine's success. Yet you completely ignored "training and intelligence," which can be thought of as multipliers in this conflict. No, we can't easily take back our equipment and munitions, but if we take the Intel and support, you're now multiplying by zero, and the result will be obvious. So you either don't know what you're talking about, or you're trying to exclude the "secret" parts by completely mis-characterizing the entire ground reality, which seems like a pointless endeavor. I hope our support for Ukraine continues until the last Russian body is dragged back over their border. We have been given a tremendous opportunity to utterly decimate, the military and standing of one of the only credible geopolitical foes, and at an incredible discount. As long as the Ukrainians are willing to fight and die for their sovereignty, I see no problem with simultaneously fulfilling a major objective of ours. But that doesn't change Ukraine's reality, and there is no victory without our continued support. The United States military is not the training wheels, it's the whole f'n bike.

They decided to fight Russia instead of cave. There were only two branches from that point: lose, or get help from us. Now that they are on that path, until they decide to return to "lose," they are stuck doing what we say. They can find another source of support, but there aren't many options. It's not fair, but it's reality. I hope we continue to support them, but that support comes with an "*" I don't think you realize how much more we are doing than just sending pallets of weapons. It is not through Ukrainian cleverness that so many high ranking Russians keep getting blown up. When we sent them HIMARS, it came with the six month subscription to SiruisXM targeting.

Do you think we were at war with the Vietnamese during Vietnam? Or to a lesser extent, North Korea in the Korean war? We definitely fought their militaries, but if say there's a pretty good argument to be made that we were really fighting the Chinese and Soviets in those wars. They were definitely fuzzy. It's also notable that Hawaii was an overseas base attacked by the Japanese, not a state, so I wouldn't be surprised if the very-isolationist faction of the government was making the same type of arguments. I don't think people change as much as we wish they did. And I didn't think we solved the social impulse to war after WWII. But I do hope I'm wrong.

Agreed, I don't think they'd come to us. Nuclear is definitely a "new" dynamic.

Unless you're about 75 years old, I would say your confidence is not historically supported. But I do sincerely hope you're right

Not so sure anymore. I would have *never* thought the West would support Ukraine the way they have. Nor did I expect the Ukrainians to mount such a strong defense. And I know I'm not alone. Perhaps the human spirit is a bit more robust than the age of social media would have us believe. It is also entirely possible that 20 years of war in the Middle East has conditioned us to think about warfare in a certain, apathetic way. But that changes a lot when the target looks like you, both physically and culturally. At least that's what Ukraine seems to indicate.

We're not going to do anything proactively. That's just not how democracies work. If we haven't figured that out by now, then we are supremely ignorant. But it is fun to imagine the unholy shit storm that would befall China in a true war. You have to consider all of the assets in America that are loathe to be associated with any sort of military endeavor. But watching your people die changes things. Everybody in the public thinks China and Russia have an edge on cyber warfare, but can you even fathom what would happen with the full weight of silicon valley suddenly dedicated towards an electronic attack on our foes? What type of weapons could they develop? If the defense contractors dabbling in AI weaponry had even just the open source community, currently creating amazing software that identifies when your dog shits and whether or not it needs to take Imodium, what would that look like? The Chinese are one of the least innovative societies on earth, at least out of the developed nations. Nearly everything they have is stolen or copied, and the recent ban on chip technology proves their inability to build anything of substance on their own. The software being developed in the civilian sector has truly terrifying implications in a military conflict. There must be somewhere around a hundred or so Elon Musk-type innovators currently in the industry. What does it look like when the most dynamic innovators on Earth turn their attention towards slaughtering the Chinese?

I agree. Doesn't change the fact that Ukraine, despite whatever their desires may be, is subordinate to us in this war. There is no Ukraine victory without our weapons. I don't have to like it, but that's politics. Saying "it's their decision" implies they can do whatever they want. False. If their choice is to lose, then yeah I guess they can do whatever. But they can't win without us, which means their choices are limited to those they can get the US to agree to. Politics and power.

Honestly I'd be shocked if he had anything at all to do with it. More likely the cabinet running the show.

Did you miss the reporting where the White House has been pressuring Ukraine to open the possibility of negotiations? When your patron tells you to do something, you do it. And you do it with a smile.

Football fans don't switch teams when theirs loses, or gets caught cheating, or beats up their wives and girlfriends.

The problem is the same one that has plagued liberals for a long time. Creating a system sufficiently generous and sufficiently staffed to fulfill that goal, while simultaneously weeding out the small percentage who will bankrupt any such system through abuse, is not feasible. If liberals would accept sub-single digit percentages of deserving people falling through the cracks, we would already have these systems and they would be perfectly manageable from a financial aspect. However, the very same sentiment that makes liberals want such system leads them to reject any notion that the system would miss some eligible participants and there would be no recourse. Limiting principals and second-order effects, the eternal weaknesses of liberal policy.

I just installed this at home. When I get back from my trip I'll run a few. Also, you can add an artist or artistic style to the query and it will come out in that style

The metal is moving, so they're not that pissed. It's the same at AAL.

Yup. Like most government failures, those responsible scatter like roaches, then somehow return for the next crisis.

I kind of hope we choose both. We're just going to have to accept some level of inflation to accommodate our obscene amount of debt, but insolvency is going to be the only thing that implements the austerity required to dig out of this hole. Zero and negative interest rates for a decade didn't save Europe from their debt, and it won't save us.

Just watch, the microsecond after the election is over the Democrats are going to be suddenly and deeply concerned with the mental health of the president.

He did say it would be higher than the previous dot plot. Ironically, it's not going to be the Fed that takes us into phase two of the bear market. The tidal wave of earnings revisions is starting to hit. That'll be ugly.

Faip mafia The O club Hook them all High speed low drag

With the autopilot, no sweat. But flying a heavy ≠ flying a small plane designed for single pilot ops. We saw this often when the fighter guys would transfer to a guard KC-135. Just because the mission is a joke (and it is a very, very easy mission to execute), doesn't mean the plane was. Maybe the newer ones though? I've never flown the triple or the dreamliner. But a raw navaid approach in a 737 in actual weather would be a real ass kicker.