Varyk @ Varyk @sh.itjust.works

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45

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5,048

Joined

2 yr. ago

you can figure out how to avoid the situation and fight back.

blue

regardless of any amount of resources given to Ukraine, The length of time Russia has been militarily unable to successfully campaign against one of the weakest European countries was astonishing and extremely enlightening as to the state of their military readiness.

before Russia exposed itself, this sort of matchup very much seemed like if the US decided to invade Colombia, made very little progress for 3 years, and then lost territory to Colombia(imagining they bordered Colombia).

Russia losing to Ukraine would have seemed absurd until all of the weaknesses and false pretenses of Russian military power were exposed.

now it turns out Europe had a paper tiger for 40 years that world leaders were wrongly extolling the military virtues and dangers of.

it's not to say that Russia is harmless, because they're willing to sacrifice millions of soldiers, but they simply do not pose the legacy world-power conquering danger that everybody assumed they did for over a generation.

and to belabor the point, they are failing against a single, relatively and especially at the time, unprepared and militarily weak country the Russia had literally signed a treaty not to invade.

video? fine.

20 minutes video?

who are you kidding?

Europe is already ramping up spending, and several countries have had it explicitly clear that they will be taking up the burden trump is running away from.

it's nice for then that Russia has more bodies, but it hasn't helped them so far in any capacity that has been bandied about for the past three years.

i was making this same point three years ago, that on paper everyone was terrified of the Russian military until Russia showed themselves militarily incapable of planning for or executing a campaign against a happy smaller country with badly inferior numbers and equipment.

same point 2 years ago, then 1, same conclusion today.

the however many years it takes Russia to "win"(by this point they've lost no matter what in practical terms), the EU will be fully ready to defend itself.

the 1 week it was supposed to take Russia to conquer ukraine has turned into what, 160 weeks and counting?

without making significant progress?

in those three years, multiple EU powers have already changed their policies and now spend record numbers on defense and military equipment production, specifically to deal with Russia if they ever become a threat to the larger European continent.

Russia has used up 20% of their active military personnel and a lot of their equipment fighting one of the weakest European countries to barely a stalemate, even losing sovereign ground to Ukraine.

so it doesn't really matter how long ukraine can resist Russia; Russia far overplayed its hand and doesn't seem to have much of a chance of "conquering" any further by letting everyone know how weak Russia is militarily and giving everyone else years to prepare for any more bullshit Russia tries to pull

great bill, great work

I've done a beer fast for several days before, pretty good stuff.

good call, thanks for the rundown

oh got it, yea, they don't share any user input.

what search engine did you land on?

Why? they've released regular updates this entire time with obvious documented progress.

it's that first thing you said.

"China is catching up, but still behind in defense and aerospace technology"

this is a fiction, according to US defense officials, but if we pretended it was true, it doesn't change the original point, that the US is falling behind in most technological fields.

you'll notice that I didn't mention aerospace in my original top of the dome list.

it looks like you're agreeing with all my other points though, so I don't have much else to say except that the important American fiction to dispel is this:

"other countries are catching up steadily overall and are ahead in some areas, especially China."

10 years ago? you could argue that other countries were playing catch up in most technological fields.

now?

The US is behind in nearly every technological field and especially now is uninterested in catching up to the rest of the world.

The US population cannot afford to live and is critically undereducated, and are about to have four more years of withheld R&D funding and catastrophic isolationist policy.

That's the reality on the ground now.

any "we're not doing so bad" mentality simply is not correct anymore, and it's important to recognize the reason behind and the rate at which the US is failing to advance in critical fields.

You're not going to be able to swerve back onto the road by pretending the guardrails you're grinding against aren't there.

you first claimed that the US is still leading in most technological fields.

this is false, as I pointed out in my previous comment.

your new tack is the US "is still doing very good, though"

this is also incorrect, largely a belief based on past achievements and cultural stories.

"aerospace":

a private company innovated aerospace technology despite the US government's reluctance to invest in aerospace technology.

China has been investing in space, and are planning to build space stations and moon bases, and have been having regular launches.

"defense": We are not ahead of the game anymore. US dod officials have been very clearly saying for Over a decade that the US might already be behind China in key areas of defense, AI weapons systems among those, despite spending 4 to 10 times as much on their defense budget.

"All the biggest and leading companies in that area are still based in the US."

biggest? okay.

leading? in what world is Microsoft a leading technological innovator?

they cannot even compete with a free operating system despite decades of a head start and hundreds of billions more capital.

Apple? they haven't been innovative in 15 years, depend on slave labor, and their newest phones aren't even playing catch up with East Asian phones anymore, hardware or software.

"You're also missing biotechnology..."

I wasn't listing literally every field the US was failing in, I was refuting your false notion that the US was still leading in most technological fields.

"The possibly most disruptive technology AI is also firmly in the hands of the USA."

not according to AI researchers, AI CEOs, computer scientists, and the US DOD.

and again, any prowess US companies had in AI was due to the mass exploitation of workers abroad.

"The amount of money spent on R&D is still huge in the USA"

it sure isn't now, grants and federal funding have been cut by more than half since dumps took office.

"it attracts top minds from across the globe."

this was true 20 years ago, as most of you are above assumptions were.

they are not true today.

The US is not leading in most, if any, technological fields, it's not leading in manufacturing, it's not leading in most sciences, and it has one of the most awful education systems in the world, not to mention the living affordability crisis going on.

If people can't afford groceries or a simple apartment to live in, let alone education, none of which they can afford in the US anymore, and have not been able to for the last generation, innovation falls by the wayside.

as it has been for a long time.

and now, US "dominance" will continue to freefall for at least the next 4 years.

you can't do science without funding and support, and dumps has taken that funding away, and importantly does not believe in science or the benefits of research and development.

The US population has not been invested in, and your industries are suffering for that.

meanwhile, other countries are investing record amounts and setting technological records in innovative technologies like solar that the US has no hope of catching up to in the near future.

I want to note that this is a good thing, this sort of disillusionment.

The US is not leading in fields that you recognize as critical.

it's important to recognize how The US fell behind in these fields and what the US can do to catch up to other countries, or more hopefully, work with other countries to progress together, which may be their only practical choice anyway.

The US does not have a dominant position in:

microchips.

batteries.

solar.

material science.

fusion.

energy.

computer science.

automotive.

displays.

The list goes on.

If you still think the USA is leading in tech, you are sorely misinformed about the state of the technological world(to be fair, it Is startling how rapidly the US has fallen out of grace in many of these technological fields).

The US is either barely clinging to previous legacies of prowess in tech fields to match other countries or falling behind rapidly, and without innovative latitude, federal grants or funding for research, they're falling behind even further.

the US does not have the technological edge it once did; scientists, officials from the department of defense, everybody in the know agrees and have been making public statements about how quickly the US is falling behind in critical scientific and technological fields.

you didn't cite any statistics to me, but I can drop some knowledge on you.

State level politics has been affected nationwide, civil rights have been affected nationwide down to the personal level.

The executive branch eliminating the other two branches of government is in no way hyperbole.

Trump just signed an executive order declaring that he has the final say on legal matters, overriding any judicial power.

he has also claimed the right to unilaterally disperse or withhold funds, overriding any legislative power.

One branch of the US government (The executive) has taken over the other two branches(The judicial and legislative).

Trump is a convicted felon and a rapist.

none of this is hyperbole.

security is guaranteed by the police? not in the US.

US police rape and murder civilians and children in the US regularly.

US Police can legally abuse, lie to and manipulate civilians without consequence, and enjoy judicial legal immunity for their actions(known as qualified immunity).

The US has a mass shooting every 16 hours.

women in the US literally don't have control over their own bodies and are denied access to hospitals and healthcare.

The US has by far the highest prison population in the world, run by for-profit corporations who benefit from imprisoning you and your neighbors.

these are not localized problems in DC, the entire US is unstable, exploitative and abusive towards its citizens.

Is guatemal more functional than the US' recent attempted violent coup and literal ongoing executive coup of the government?

Yes. Guatemala is more functional than the US government run by a felon rapist who is literally violating the US Constitution, has frozen or defunded critical government operations and is actively erasing the function of its legislative and judicial branches via executive orders.

safe?

last time I was in the states, somebody shot someone else in the head over a parking spot outside the burger place I was eating lunch at.

I'm pretty happy

Guatemala.

Good food, good people, good mountains, laid-back fun culture.

incidentally, I am from the states but have chosen not to live in the US for the past decade for reasons that have now become obvious to everyone.

I'm not too worried if the US collapses, there are 200 other countries to live in.

it doesn't seem like it will collapse entirely, maybe, since that wouldn't benefit the rich people in charge of it? good luck.

I just click the bicycles or whatever and then it takes me to the article, it doesn't loop on my android, Linhx, Windows devices using edge, firefox or chrome.

if you're having that kind of trouble, i'm really not sure where it would be from.

has anyone asked what Luigi thinks about this?

half the time they just give you the article, but half the time they do captcha.

if you complete the captcha, it always provide you with a full article, though.