Alaska. Gorgeous state.

Evolution: I’m winning it.

When it’s a truly great question, there won’t be an answer. It’ll be at the fringes of knowledge of any expert.

I was at a panel with Joel Robinson once, and I asked how he’d compare getting started in public access stations vs doing YouTube today. He said it was a great question, but didn’t have much of an answer. He’s self-admittedly an old man who didn’t have to start from scatch on YouTube.

Edit: autocorrect corrected

Let’s face it: Calculus notation is a mess. We have three different ways to notate a derivative, and they all suck.

OK, so not your first time. I misread that.

I would recommend having someone around as a trip sitter for a first time.

Depends on how many states we’re talking about and their geographic distribution. 1M isn’t enough to hold the whole country. It probably can’t even hold New York City. It could probably hold New Hampshire.

Current US military doctrine suggests you need 1 soldier for every 3 people you’re trying to occupy. This is especially true when you have to assume every civilian is a potentially armed insurrectionist, and the US has a lot of guns in civilian hands. That said, fascists tend to throw out hard won wisdom like this, and tells the army they aren’t trying hard enough. For as much as they drone on about how they’re a bunch of tough guys, they are complete shit at actually fighting a war. Here’s a former US Army intelligence officer talking about the numbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyBIqRunQ5Y

Oh, and while the existing military might follow orders to take over states “in rebellion”, they’re going to be doing a lot of malicious compliance. The way they did Trump’s birthday parade proves it. They 100% phoned it in on purpose.

One of the side effects of Trump trying to move so fast is that he doesn’t have time to purge the military and refill it with loyalists. That would take over a decade. Stalin did that to disastrous effect; the Winter War was only a technical win with catastrophic losses, and the later German invasion was barely held back. Hitler didn’t really try to purge the Wehrmacht, with the Night of the Long Knives being mostly a purge of their own SS people.

Trump therefore has to rely on already loyal people with guns, which is mostly ICE, local sheriffs, and police. None of them are big enough to hold the whole country, either, or even a major state.

Instructions unclear, now sitting in basement.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766

“In the European region, heat stress is the leading cause of climate-related death in the region,” he said. “Temperature extremes such as those we’re experiencing at the moment are really exacerbating chronic conditions, including cardiovascular, respiratory and cerebro-vascular diseases, mental health and diabetes-related conditions. The extreme heat that we’re experiencing is a particular problem for elderly people, especially those living alone. It can also place an additional burden on pregnant women.”

…

On 22 July 2024, the daily global average temperature reached a new record high of 17.16°C, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. On 23 July, the preliminary value was 17.15°C. On 21 July, the temperature record was 17.09°C. All three days were warmer than the previous record of 17.08°C, set only last year on 6 July 2023.

This is a real and growing problem. Stop sticking your head in the sand.

Close. WWII America had to invest heavily in farms to feed soldiers who need 4,000 kcal diets to support marching around with heavy packs all day long in potentially cold weather. That investment drove up automation in the farm industry, particularly with corn and soybeans.

War ends, but the infrastructure is all still there. If farms weren’t heavily subsidized, they would collapse. There was real risk of fields going fallow on a mass level, resulting in too little food to feed the population. And then you have to keep subsidizing it, forever. Nobody has figured out a way out of that logic while maintaining a mostly capitalist production system.

Welcome to everywhere. 3.5" disks in German are called “dreieinhalb Zoll Disketten”, and in Dutch “drie punt vijf inch floppys”. Both of those translate roughly to “three and a half inch disks/floppies”. Everyone borrowed US computer terms and translated them directly.

No country uses the metric system exclusively. None. You will find exceptions if you look for them. This isn’t some kind of moral failing, it’s just practicality. Look at how car tires are sold for one example that’s nearly universal due to industry standards.

This is why for retro computers, I tend to prefer CompactFlash. IDE->CF adapters are cheap, and the cards are much higher quality. They effectively become an SSD that works on old stuff. (Just because I like retro computing stuff doesn’t mean I want the whole experience, like waiting for disk heads to move, or worse, tape drives to finish reading. I’m old enough that I remember dealing with it and I don’t need to deal with it again.)

Not a lot of call for them otherwise, though. SD cards have gotten increasingly good bandwidth, which means they’re good enough for a lot of higher end cameras. CF is getting squeezed out.

Much of Europe is getting hotter. AC is literally a life-saving technology on extremely hot days. No, it’s not mere “comfort”. Old people, in particular, are at high risk.

And it’s not like Europe is completely blameless when it comes to global warming, either.

I came.

Human anatomy took some strange turns in the Star Wars universe. There was cross breeding with the Killik back when everyone was slaves of the Rakatan Infinite Empire. Now human females have an ovipositor that rips right through thin plastic bags.

Seems like every time the hype is about to die, there’s a big announcement about a model breakthrough. The breakthrough usually isn’t as revolutionary as it first appears, but it’s enough to keep funding going.

There is so much more context behind that. The two are not at all comparable.

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.”

You’re completely ignoring what happens in the first paragraph of NATO Article 5. The Security Council only comes into play if they get off their ass. The Security Council rarely gets off its ass, because too many countries that hate each other have veto power. NATO will continue operations for the defense of its members regardless.

None of that is true of the Budapest Memorandum. They bring it up with the Security Council, and that’s it.

Are you going to keep digging this hole?

Nope, not at all comparable. The US does not puppet master the UN Security Council. It can bring the matter up, and it has. Russia has veto power on the same council. Nobody expects anything to come of that, but the requirements were met.

Not at all. You clearly haven’t read what’s actually in there.

Clinton didn’t think Congress would ratify strong guarantees. Ukraine itself wasn’t in a position to ask for much more, because it didn’t have the economy to afford to maintain nuclear weapons. The result is an agreement that aggression against Ukraine would be brought up with the UN security council, and that’s about it.

In providing military aid, the US has exceeded what was promised.

I did. The United States followed everything it says. It just doesn’t say to do very much.