Not really sure where you’re getting that assertion from.

By total number of Michelin stars the US isn’t even top five. By Michelin stars per capita it doesn’t even break top twenty.

And even if you don’t buy into Michelin’s hype, the William Reed world best for 2025 is in Peru. In fact, not one American restaurant made their top ten last year.

There’s obviously no objective measure of best when it comes to food, but those are two of the most widely accepted gold standards.

The US has plenty of great restaurants, and plenty of great food, but saying they’re the best in the world seems like a bit of a stretch.

Yeah, this is exactly why this is so surprising to me. The US Military is, by the standards of NATO forces, not generally considered especially competent. Sorry, just the way it is. The general opinion of American training and professionalism is very low. But the one thing everyone agrees they absolutely rock is logistics. As a machine for delivering materiel to warzones the US Military has always been terrifyingly competent. That’s kind of the secret sauce that solves all the other problems; you don’t need to be well trained when you can afford to be inefficient.

When the US Military can’t do logistics right, a lot of things have gone very, very wrong.

Out of curiosity, do you feel the same about the men and women who fought the Nazis in WW2?

I’m honestly no longer convinced that some California tech company couldn’t sell the US military on a wirelessly connected grenade.

Is it an objectively stupid idea? Yes, absolutely. But then so is using Claude to run your strategic planning and they’re doing that, so I guess everything is on the fucking table now.

Yeah, it’s genuinely amazing how badly OP has managed to destroy a fun premise by just being unbelievably toxic.

Succession: Just call the first two Nightmare Mode and Hard Mode. That way you don’t have two Normal Modes.

Otaku has essentially become a loan-word in English. It’s somewhat derogatory and generally used to refer to people who are really into anime and manga.

You’re uh… Way off. Good try though.

Putting aside specific etymology, what it means in common parlance is basically “nerd” with a heavy implication of “really into anime and manga.”

Buddy, I’m just going by what actual soldiers tell me.

I’m beginning to think it’s legally required that every time someone posts on here about pancake mix, a European has to post a crepe recipe as if that’s the same thing.

European friends, we love you, but crepes aren’t pancakes. It’s not the same thing, I’m sorry, it’s just not.

Yeah, I’m gonna agree with the other comments here; I like the idea of this challenge a lot, but the rules are so poorly explained that I can’t begin to guess at what you’re actually looking for. Your post said this is “hard mode” which lead me to assume absolutely minimal other ingredients - presumably nothing perishable - but now you’re saying we’ve got the full Iron Chef kitchen to play with? That’s very confusing.

The idea is cool. I really hope you’ll update the post with some more info, and that you’ll do more of these. For my two cents, I think it’s a more interesting challenge if we’re working with some kind of restriction like only non-perishables plus milk, eggs and butter (maybe some basic cheeses?). I like the “Fuck, this is all you have in the kitchen, the stores are closed and you’re trying to impress your crush with a fancy meal” kind of challenge mode. But that’s just me. It’s your party. Just, y’know, actually tell us what the dress code is.

I see this genre of post going around a lot, and it just reeks of learned helplessness.

Yeah, I get it, sometimes you’re stuck in a situation where, for whatever, the alternatives aren’t viable or practical. You feel trapped. We all do. But why is the first instinct to gripe at the cool free software for not being quite what you wanted instead of getting mad at the rapidly enshittifying megacorps that put you into this trap you’re in to begin with?

I think an absolutely great use for an old server at a youth center would be whatever the kids decide to use it for. Seriously, put it to a vote. There are lots of fun options, like a Minecraft server, one of the various Discord alternatives, a private wiki, or whatever else you find on the Awesome Selfhosted List . Just let it be their choice.

And, more importantly, set it up with them. Let anyone who wants to be involved in the process join in. If you’re kind of a newbie to Linux yourself, that’s even better; let them see you fuck up. Let them help you search for answers when you run into problems. Make it into a collaborative project.

Now, as for the actual hardware you have there… Man, that thing is ancient. If it’s what you’ve got it’s what you’ve got. As I’ve already indicated I think the process is worth more than the result here. That said, if you look around you can almost certainly find a refurbished old corporate PC for a hundred bucks or so that will be more powerful. Liquidation auctions are especially good for that kind of thing.

That would either be insubordination, dereliction of duty, or going AWOL, depending on the exact context. All of those can buy you a court martial and potentially some time in military prison, as well as fines and other punishments.

You’ve probably heard at some point about people volunteering for deployments, which is a thing that happens, but only on a “Volunteers get first dibs” basis. If they don’t have the numbers they start tasking people and you absolutely do not get to say no. That’s why you swear an oath. It’s not a regular job, they own your ass. During actual conflicts like this they even get to keep people on after their contracts are up, if it’s required for “operational tempo.”

Oh, actually, here’s an additional fun fact (provided by one of the serving military members I showed your previous comments to, after they were done laughing their asses off); when you’re overseas on an operation you travel on a military passport, which is kept locked up by the orderlies, and even if you got it back somehow you’d need travel orders to use it. Airports will literally refuse to board you on the plane if you don’t have paperwork saying you’re not AWOL. It’s not only illegal for these guys to go home, it’s also basically impossible.

I’m genuinely shocked at how weak and incompetent the US Military has looked throughout this entire operation. Iraq and Afghanistan were shit shows, but the US was always able to handle the essentials of logistics and so on. The machine worked, it was just clumsy and hard to steer.

Somewhere in the gap between Afghanistan and Iran, that machine has been left without even basic maintenance.

You do realize that’s not actually an option right? Like, you can’t just quit the military. You can request your release, but they’re not gonna grant it until your ship gets cycled off of the operation and returns to a friendly port, and that’s assuming they grant it at all. They absolutely do not have to, and during an active military operation they’re extremely unlikely to.

Failing to feed your troops is one of the fastest ways possible to tank morale. Mail from home comes every few weeks. You eat three times a day.

Yeah, the moment you start thinking that it’s only acceptable for people to be gay as long as they express themselves in ways you approve of is the moment you start thinking like a fascist.

At that point you’re no different than the racist with the black friend who is “one of the good ones.”

The solution to the problem the previous poster is describing is that we need simply need more representation. There need to be enough queer people in media that no one character or couple has to serve the role of being a proxy for all queer people and relationships. Give me fruity gays and bitchy queens, and give me boring normal gay people who live in their white picket fence houses and drive trucks. Give me Loid from Warframe and give me Bill from The Last of Us. Celebrate the wonderful spectrum of humanity. Let it all exist instead of fighting over which parts are worthy.

That’s because at this point it simply doesn’t matter what Iran or the US say. Remember, the strait is a very small part of a journey that takes weeks or months. No one is going to set sail on the vague hope that by the time they arrive at the active warzone everything will be peachy. Traffic won’t actually resume until there is a serious, credible peace agreement and even then it’s going to take more than a month to see those numbers climb back up.

There are no quick fixes here.

Wait… This sounds… Good?

That can’t be right, this is 2026, we cannot possibly be watching a tech company do an actual good thing.

They didn’t even shove AI in there. This has gotta be fake, right?