Yeah, I won’t say it’s impossible or anything. I just think there’s other reasonable explanations too.

Personally I just avoid mentioning China when I’m over there. lol It’s easier to keep everything civil if you avoid naming names, and China is a particularly sore spot for them. You also can’t forget that free speech is not a foundational part of their ideology like it is ours. They’re more about seizing the means of production than the free contesting of ideas.

It does feel a little like walking on eggshells.

I kinda doubt it. Let’s not forget this is a global community, and Marxism-Leninism has different levels of support in different parts of the world.

If this was a state-funded project, I think the development would have gone a lot more swiftly, and the leads would be even more puritanical in pushing their beliefs. As it is, I’ve argued pretty extensively from a liberal perspective on .ml before, even personally with dessalines, and while they don’t exactly love me over there, I’m careful to respect their rules and they haven’t banned me.

I think they really are just idealistic supporters of communism, mostly from places where that’s a little more common.

When the Generative Agents system was evaluated for how “believably human” the agents acted, researchers found the AI versions scored higher than actual human actors.

That’s a neat finding. I feel like there’s a lot to unpack there around how our expectations are formed.

Vampires…? Uh, garlic. lol

What flavor of apocalypse matters a lot. If it’s zombies, ammo becomes critical. If it’s nuclear, ammo is less important and water filtration probably becomes critical. If it’s a gigantic asteroid that blots out the sun, water is easy to find but food is critical.

For an unknown apocalypse, I think I’ll go with gasoline. Not critical in and of itself, but helps a lot more generally with a lot of stuff, being able to power a generator and move camp more easily.

It actually has a hopeful ending, fyi, despite being about such difficult subject material. It’s not all gloom, though, it is a very well-made movie, overall. Liam Neeson is fantastic in it too.

Schindler’s List was shown in one of our history classes, I probably never would have watched it otherwise due to being black and white and me thinking I wouldn’t like that.

I can’t say that I enjoyed it, it’s not a particularly “enjoyable” film. It was moving though, and talking in class about what humans are capable of was interesting.

I cannot specifically remember any of the others we watched, but I remember that I liked movie days because you tended not to get homework. They certainly weren’t nearly as memorable though.

The line I’ve seen the most is that god uses even sinful unbelievers to accomplish his goals.

It’s in the same vein as gamma ray bursts. Could possibly cause problems, but space is so big, so heavily occupied by empty space, that the odds of ever encountering one vs just more empty space is almost infinity:1.

I mean, our planet is billions of years old and hasn’t encountered a single one yet, based on the fact it’s still comfortably in orbit around the sun.

Asteroids are far, far more concerning. Encountered a bunch of those already.

Prior to the recent decade, peer on peer warfare was considered pretty unlikely overall, where COIN was the big thing everyone was worried about.

Here in the US anyway. I’m not sure what priorities the British have and how much budget they have to throw at them.

More that “obsolete” doesn’t mean useless. It just means its unable to adequately fulfill all the roles in all of the potential situations that the British may want for their arty. It can still perform a lot though.

Plenty of obsolete things can still be very useful.

A whowouldwin community.

Battleboarding communities draw a lot of engagement and help retain new users among the younger demographics.

In a world where trolling was done as a recreational activity, this was a good strategy. This is not that world anymore, though, this is a world where right wing fight clubs are popping up in dozens of countries. Trolls are no longer recreational, they’re trying to slowly and gradually change the world in their image.

You’ve never needed everyone for something, that’s unrealistic. A village doesn’t require the exact same behavior from all people to function smoothly, and any such bottleneck would create weaknesses anyway. You just need that to be the prevailing culture.

Guacamole.

Avocado, a metric fuckton of cilantro, diced roma tomato, diced white onion, a modest amount of minced tomatillo (“secret ingredient” #1), a lot of lime juice, a hefty amount of garlic run through a microplane, salt and a pinch of cumin (“secret ingredient” #2).

Not kidding on the metric fuckton part, this almost (but not quite, I am exaggerating) comes together less like a traditional guac and more like a cilantro salad dressed in mashed avocado. It slays though, I make huge batches and seldom see it unfinished.

Actual ratio by mass of the finished product … it’s maybe 60% avocado? With the rest being all the other ingredients put together.

Na na naaah nah, na na naaah nah, hey hey heyy, goood-byyeee…

No clue why, was just in my head this morning for some unknowable reason. I did not hear the song at all over the past couple days that I can remember.

I’m not sure the cauldron strategy is as viable as it was in the past. This isn’t the Red Army of Stalin’s day, this army retreats en masse when you shatter its lines, as we saw in the Kharkiv offensive a couple years ago.

Do their missiles and big drones have inertial guidance? If not, more jamming systems could work really well.

The big challenge is the multiple entrenched lines of Russian defense. Minefields covered by artillery and drones are difficult to penetrate, especially when you have to pierce several in a row.

It’s good to see more tanks going, having more materiel is better than having less materiel. But I’d also like to see more pledges of aircraft. The jets have been doing good, important work, and we do have more that we can give.

Ultimately the war is never going to be won by some huge Ukrainian ground push to Moscow or something though. It’ll be won by slowly grinding the Russian war economy down, somewhat similar to how Germany was defeated in WW1. Turns out these full-scale war things are horrendously resource-intensive, and nobody gets infinite resources… I think the Russian wealth fund is down to less than half its liquid assets, if I remember right?

Frankly, if the goal of the administrations was to be helpful to Russia’s offensive, then halting shipments while muddying the waters with inconsistent messaging would be an excellent way to accomplish that.

Stop the shipments, but lie about it and say that you will ship more in the future. Then just never actually do that. This keeps them hoping for shipments that will never actually arrive.

edit: Another possibility here is that the Def Sec Hegseth does not want to help Ukraine, but Trump himself does not actually care one way or another, and thus could be convinced to overrule his Def Sec.

Tough to say.

She’s got this really in-character vibe here. I wonder if Cate actually is just staying in-character between all the cuts as part of her acting method, or if that suit is just too uncomfortable to be able to relax in.