Gust

I used to work in an office that had rules about how many of different types of personnel could be on the same airplane at the same time. With engineers on the team for instance, it was a massive pain scheduling flights anywhere because we were never allowed to have more than two of us on the same flight. We were allowed to have infinite LT’s on any flight though, and somebody added an addendum to that chart indicating they were also allowed to run with scissors. I wouldn’t admit to being a LT online either lol

The FAA wants to recruit children as ATC because most people who have been alive for longer have seen how quickly the FAA will fuck them over and try to get them to work for free while striking is illegal. I wouldn’t even consider working ATC before like $150k/yr based on all the “work without pay during the shutdown” fuckery I’ve seen from the FAA during my lifetime

I’ve been on the fediverse for a good while now. I understand that it’s a bunch of small user owned servers rather than a few monolithic corporate owned servers, but beyond that I have no idea how this place runs. I don’t even know what to call it; I think I’ve made a fool of myself before by referring to piefed as a website. I am glad other people understand it/work on it, trying to learn networking or consumer software stuff myself makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a melon baller

I mean, the woman was MTG. More accurately, woman who believes in Jewish space lasers that control the weather makes common sense statement! Bombshell news!

Quantum computing is trying to be ai, in the sense that it does have niche scientific uses it excels at but tech bro types want it to be the next general computer so they can make their empire on it. The only use case I’ve seen it excel at so far is generating precisely tailored probability distributions, which end up mostly being useful for simulating different models for quantum field theory. Even then I’ve only seen that in looped fiber implementations, which imo are a stretch on the definition of quantum computer.

Russian tanks have excellent ergonomics, provided you happen to be a Chimpanzee. If you don’t have really short legs, really long arms, and absurd upper body strength to operate the various manually cranked parts though, you’re gonna have a bad time in a Russian tank.

First two paragraphs, sure. I wasnt disagreeing with your conclusions, just pointing out that your analysis was flawed. I share your opinion that Europe is unlikely to be credibly militarily threatened by the US, CN, RU, or even CN+RU. I do think china is significantly closer to being a credible threat than your analysis indicates. Historically, how many expansionist empires have decided they had enough territory on their own?

As far as disagreeing with SIPRI figures… they have been the global academic authority on defense economics for almost 60 years. You are welcome to disagree with them based on vibes but there’s really no more to discuss if you don’t have a reputable source of evidence to back your opinion.

This last paragraph is entirely vibes based on my end, so don’t give it more credit than the opinion of some rando on the fediverse. I don’t know that I’d count on Ukraine to be ride or die with Europe in the future. The rest of Europe certainly has not acted in a way to engender that level of mutual defense with Ukraine in the past 12 years. Maybe the Baltic states have, but the larger European economies have spent 12 years appeasing their gas station dictator rather than fully supporting Ukraine. They are saints beyond what the EU deserves if they do fully commit to the EU defensive bloc in the future.

Your analysis ignores the concept of purchasing power parity (ppp). I linked a SIPRI faq page below, #12 explains the concept of ppp as it relates to military spending pretty well. The second link I provided shows 2024 global military spend figures that account for ppp.

TLDR: your analysis underestimates European military spend compared to the US but vastly overestimates European military spend compared to Russia or China.

https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex/frequently-asked-questions#PPP

https://militaryppp.com/blog/

They say you pay your auxiliaries in patriotism. That and two pennies will buy them a beer.

Meow for 90 minutes straight? This person knows nothing of the fediverse