How… How do you think it works in other democracies when they cut military funding? Because that’s a thing that happens. A lot.

Did I miss the part where Canada had a civil war every time our government cut funding to the CAF? I’m pretty sure that’s something I would have noticed.

I wonder if this will finally be the point where Americans decide that their military has enough money?

Probably not.

And I have no idea which specific joke you’re referring to because so many of them would qualify.

https://boltflight.com/f-35-shootdown-controversy-iran-claims-historic-kill-of-israeli-stealth-jets-amid-rising-regional-tensions/

Iranian state media, quoting military sources, reported that two F-35I Adirs were intercepted and downed by Iranian air defense units during or immediately after their bombing run on targets near Natanz and other strategic installations. One of the pilots, described as a female aviator, was allegedly captured after ejecting over Iranian territory. Iranian Press TV wasted no time in proclaiming this as a global first: “Iran has earned the distinction of being the first country in the world to successfully shoot down fifth-generation fighter jets belonging to the Zionist regime.”

Hmm, looks like you’re right. That specific image wasn’t actually circulated by an official Iranian source.

I’ll admit I missed that, because it was so consistent with all of the other messaging coming out of Iran. The image circulated at a time where - with zero evidence to the effect, and a lot of evidence to the contrary - Iran was claiming to have shot down something like four or five Isreal F-35’s. As far as any independent observers can tell the actual number was zero. Then there’s the current conflict where Iran took videos of a wrecked F-15 and claimed it was an F-35, among other obvious lies.

I’ll freely grant you that specific case; we all get caught out sometimes. But you’re the one trying to argue that Iran, a nation with a long history of proven blatant falsehoods in their official messaging, are some kind of paragons of truth. That doesn’t mean that the US doesn’t also lie like crazy. A lot of nations do. It just means you’re in idiot if you go buying into this teenage morality idea that “US bad = Iran good.” They’re an autocratic regime that lies reflexively… Just like the Trump administration. Anything they say has to be treated with a baseline level of suspicion, and it’s absurd to argue otherwise.

If you’re enjoying The Stanley Parable, you’ll probably like Do Not Press The Button To Destroy The Multiverse.

Some of the best comedy writing in any video game series, ever.

They once posted a photo of a “crashed F-35” that was so obviously AI generated that there were people the size of garden gnomes walking around the cockpit area.

I get what you’re trying to go for here, yes, a lot of what we know about Iran is filtered through Western propaganda, but it’s also true that they lie, and badly, all the time. America being bad didn’t make the Iranian regime good.

Yeah, that’s it exactly. It doesn’t really feel genuine or meaningful, even though I’m sure a lot of people do mean it earnestly. It just sort of feels like a checklist.

That’s honestly worse than I thought.

If you’re confused then this is a great object lesson in how to read statistics. Consider how many people actually own a home still in New Zealand. It’s not going to be a lot. Realistically, I think 1 in 10,000 would be a high estimate. That is to say, about 0.01% of the population. I’ve not had any luck finding actual numbers on that despite my best efforts, but I think it’s a fair assumption given the amount of specialised equipment involved in home distilling (much more so than home brewing), as well as the space needed to set it up and the time required for the for process. It’s not exactly set it and and forget it. In comparison, the percentage of people who live in a home who have a stove is going to be fairly close to 100%.

Already you can see the issue right? If 0.01% of a population are causing 0.14% of all home fires… That’s insanely bad.

But it gets worse. That study covers a 20 year period, but home distilling was only legal for the last 10 years of that period. Which means a couple of things. Firstly the number of home distillers would likely have been even lower for most of the period covered by the study. Home distilling would only really have taken off as a hobby over those last ten years, and for much of that time equipment would likely have been hard to come by; that’s not the sort of thing where import / manufacturing and distribution are going to be easy to just set up overnight. Secondly, home distilling as a cause of fire was likely under-reported for those first ten years as people would have a strong incentive to hide the cause of the incident. By far the single biggest category of equipment listed in the study is “Not recorded” accounting for more than all the other categories combined. Obviously, there’s going to be a distribution of all the other equipment types throughout that “Not recorded” block, but it’s not all unlikely that the “Not recorded” stats for illegal home stills would be at least slightly higher than for most other equipment.

Then there’s a second factor to consider; frequency of use. People often cook on a stove at least once a day. In comparison I very much doubt the average home distiller is running their still every single day. It’s a time consuming process that requires a fair amount of attention. Generally you’re going to make a batch and then consume that batch until you eventually need to make another. If we were to normalize not only for frequency of ownership but also frequency of use, it’s not hard to arrive at a fair estimate that home stills are causing fires at a rate of several hundred times that of, say, the average gas stove, based on the numbers in that study. Obviously I’m being pretty loose here, but I’m just trying to illustrate the general point. I’m not claiming to be presenting hard data here, I’d have to really sit down with the raw numbers and run a proper normalization, as well as get some stats not accounted for in that study, but yeah, overall, I’m feeling very good about my “orders of magnitude” estimate if the numbers you’re presenting are accurate.

(Also, it probably goes without saying that getting your statistics on how dangerous making moonshine is from a webpage entitled “Making Moonshine is Safer Than You Think” maybe isn’t the best idea. I’m fairly sure pedophiles also have strong opinions about the relative safety of taking candy from people in unmarked vans.)

My great uncle Joe survived the entirety of WW2 despite being thrown into some of the worst fighting imaginable. This proves that war is completely safe for everyone involved.

And if it could be as safe as a propane grill I would have no objections. But those things are orders of magnitude apart in terms of relative safety levels.

It’s the “being safe enough” part that’s the problem. How do you regulate that? Do you really believe that the average American is capable of operating something as dangerous as a still in a completely safe manner?

If we were talking about homebrewing, yeah, absolutely, that shit is awesome and there is no good argument against. Home distilling is basically building a bomb and hoping that it doesn’t go off before you get wrecked enough on moonshine to notice it happening.

Yeah, I’m also in that group and the acronym is just unwieldy to the point of being ridiculous. I’m also not clear on the rationale behind packing together missing and murdered indigenous women with the entire queer community. I mean, obviously all marginalized people need to stand together - none of us are free until all of us are free - but in that case why aren’t they also including every other form of marginalized person in their super-acronym? It seems utterly arbitrary.

Personally, I love the label “queer” because it identifies me as part of a group that includes anyone who doesn’t fit the norms of gender and sexuality, without trying to divide us all up into largely needless subcategories. Alphabet soups are well intentioned, but don’t really seem all that helpful.

Russia isn’t even close to total militarization. Not yet. Their economy is becoming highly militarized, and you’re right that that’s how they’ve been surviving the sanctions, but their focus is still on keeping the more affluent Russians in the cities supplied with fast food, electronics and gas. They’re trying to make life seem normal despite the strain of the war. Being able to dispense with those niceties would open up a lot more room for applying their industrial capacity.

supported by NFT’s

Wow, I wonder why they’re having a hard time paying their staff?

I dunno… What worries me is that Putin’s ability to escalate is constrained right now, because Ukraine is seen more as military adventurism, not a fight for survival. If he could engineer a war with NATO - especially NATO minus the US - that would justify far reaching conscription, total militarization of the economy, etc, etc. He probably won’t win, but if he’s fearful enough of losing power it might seem like an attractive option.

I’m not considering this a likely scenario, just one that’s plausible enough that we need to plan for it.

Awesome, thank you!

Their charging tech is insane. Like, 90% battery in the time it takes to use the bathroom kind of stuff. They’re also pushing hard into sodium battery tech that doesn’t catch fire, so their EVs are gonna be some of the safest in the world.

I would need serious reassurances about the safety (privacy) of their onboard software if I was going to buy one, but their tech is bloody brilliant.

Nvidia Shield. It’s the GOAT, and it always has been.