the thing that’s different is that social media has demonstrative harm.

Is that actually a difference?

Rock and roll causes harm: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8580930/

TV causes harm: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/too-much-tv-might-be-bad-for-your-brain

Video games cause harm: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2000/04/video-games

Pretty much everything kids do that their parents didn’t has been “proven” to cause harm. Radio, cinema, comic books, even newspapers were “proven” to harm young people.

Authoritarianism is a far bigger threat than any of these.

I didn’t see mayonnaise on either list?

A BMX bike without a rider will roll along happily. We called it “ghost riding” when I was a kid.

Jet fuel is basically kerosene, which was invented in 1846 and available from refineries long before diesel (1894) and gasoline (1892). Refineries were producing fuel that jets could burn long before jets existed. Most military aircraft can burn diesel or ordinary kerosene if jet fuel isnt available, they just need to be careful to avoid gelling, which can occur in the cold air at high altitude.

GPS is needed for a certain degree of precision in standoff weapons. Without it, they have to rely on laser or TV guidance, or dead reckoning. The ring laser gyros and accelerometers they use in their inertial guidance systems are far more accurate than the guidance systems used aboard V1 and V2 rockets, which were themselves surprisingly effective.

GPS is not required for navigation of manned aircraft: they can rely on terrestrial radio beacons or dead reckoning with their own inertial navigation systems.

I can’t think of a weapons system that actually requires Internet access.

I don’t think modern Rangers hold significant advantage over WWII rangers. I think they would actually be a detriment, as the WWII rangers were familiar with the technologies available in that time period. Those modern rangers do carry more radios than the entire invading force had during D-Day. But, any base you send will have plenty of radios to issue.

My first thought was Norfolk. They’ve got enough ASW assets to stop the U-boats that were decimating the convoys. Yeah, they won’t be able to rearm modern weapons or repair/replace certain damaged systems, but with the U-boats out of the way, the original fleet would have been much more successful. Even after the modern weapons are exhausted, the C3/ISR capabilities of the future fleet will greatly enhance the operations of the past.

My second thought is Wright Patterson AFB, home of the US Air Force museum. Designers get to tear apart aircraft that wouldn’t be built until after the war, but not so advanced that they exceed the past nation’s ability to produce. They get turbine engines 4 years early, and figure out all the transonic effects thet kept them from breaking the sound barrier. Turboprop-powered heavy bombers, flying higher and faster than anything the Axis can throw at them. Turboshaft powered submarines, destroyers, PT boats, helicopters, tanks

Third thought is to skip straight to the endgame and try to accelerate the Manhattan project. It might be a bit of a stretch to call it a “military base”, (and it’s not on the list above) but we could send them the Savannah River site. They get more plutonium than they know what to do with. With enough plutonium, they can afford to drop demonstration bombs in unpopulated areas of both the Asian and European theaters, possibly without needing to bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki. We can avoid the need to invade both Japan and Germany.

Any base we send would have modern computers and some programmers. The German Enigma code could be brute-forced in a matter of hours on a modern computer. That alone is going to shorten the war in Europe by months to years.

Caption: Taylor Swift, wearing a black turtleneck, holding her dinner.

The ACA is Obama’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. It is better than what we had before it. It is the best option we could enact at the time. It is fucking disgustingly terrible, and needs to die in a goddamn fire.

Is she going to eat that cat?

Don’t try sucking up to me now.

When it was time to decide whether to order DoorDash or go to the grocery store, you had enough fucks to get out the door. But when it comes time to put the cart back, you’re suddenly at bingo fucks and need to immediately RTB?

May all your shits be runny.

everyone that parks like a normal person hates it and you.

Is it really “everyone” who hates me, or is it “just you”?

Because I gotta tell ya, I’m OK with 'just you" hating me.

Delivered to this place awhile back:

Agreed. It is far safer to back into a parking spot than into traffic, especially if there is pedestrian, bicycle, or motorcycle traffic sharing the lanes.

The expiration date isn’t for the customer. It’s for the grocer. They should not be allowed to sell expired food.

They should be allowed and required to give away or offer for donation any food that is still edible after its expiration date.

By all means, eat all the expired food you want. I certainly do. Just don’t try to sell it to anyone and we’re golden.

Excuse me, I’d like to wake up now.

Best I can do is a happy guillotine:

Uploading is infringement. Downloading is not infringement. Nobody (in the US, at least) has ever been successfully prosecuted for downloading. It is never an infringement to view a work, even if that work was explicitly infringing. It is never an infringement to discuss a work you have observed, even if you observed an infringing copy.

If you ask an LLM about a copyrighted work, it does not regurgitate the work; it gives you a book report about the work. It does not create a copy; it creates a report, a summary. This is explicitly protected under fair use

Rightsholders aren’t going to win this one.

You don’t seem to understand that it costs more to shoot down a satellite than it costs to launch one. It costs a lot more… Like, A whole lot more.

Yup, the military with an operating budget ten times Starlink and an ability to put it’s own satellites up could do nothing…

10 times, eh? That’s the budget you’re willing to give your anti-satellite program? 10 times is not even “a lot” more, let alone “a whole lot”.

Each Starlink satellite costs about $300,000 to build and launch. That allows you $30 million per missile.

The ASM-135 program had a per-unit cost of $380 million (2024 dollars).

A budget 10 times as large isn’t going to cut it. You’re going to need a budget 127 times as large just to keep up.

Brazil spent $22 billion on its military last year. That would buy them 57 missiles. But, let’s assume they can get the cost down to just 10 times (they can’t) and say it costs $30 million to down a satellite. Their entire military budget gets them 733 missiles per year.

Again, Starlink can launch 60 in one launch. They have demonstrated an ability to launch over 1200 per year over a 5-year period. They are currently licensed for a constellation that will require production and launch of 2400 per year to sustain, and their next phase will require 8000 satellites per year.

Not even the US military has the capability of shooting down satellites at anything close to these rates.

Not even the US military has the capability of shooting down 200 satellites a month. You really have no idea what you are talking about.

Biden was above the ideal age when Obama was first elected in 2008. Yes, he is too old now.