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Cake day: August 9th, 2023

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  • Ehhh, not really. Conservatives have an odd relationship to the space program.

    They like the science things that give them flatscreen TVs, smartphones, and red dot sights on guns. They don’t like science things that tell them Noah’s flood never happened and global warming is real. The science they really, really like is the stuff they can use to beat other nations over the head and say America! Fuck Yeah!

    NASA does something that clearly shows America! Fuck Yeah! to the whole world. They need to stamp out the parts of NASA that say inconvenient things about global warming, but you can get humans to the ISS and robots to Mars without any of that.

    Ditching SpaceX contracts would leave the US without a manned space program. We’d have to go back to relying on Russia, and that’s not going to happen. SLS is an embarrassing budget buster. ULA is a joke. Bezos doesn’t have a rocket that can get people to the ISS (he might get around to it, someday). There’s a few up and comers out there in the rocket industry, but nobody is ready yet. Falcon 9 is it.

    Elon knows he’s safe on this one.


  • Putin supported Trump with that view. I think it’s wrong to view Trump as Putin’s puppet. Rather, Trump is an agent chaos, and Putin hoped to use that chaos to put Russia on a better footing.

    Problem is that Russia can’t do it. They’ve been running on the fumes of a dead superpower for over 30 years. They can’t build their own fighter jets, bombers, tanks, or boats bigger than a destroyer. Not at the scale they need for such a large mass of land. They’ve got oil and natural gas, but everyone is finding the exits on that.

    China will step right into the void left by the collapse of Pax Americana. Putin is just handing it to them and doesn’t realize it.






  • Yeah, and it’s fascinating to me. I grew up in a high control Christian group (Jehovah’s Witnesses), and their narrative is that the first century Christians were completely united in belief and purpose, and that they are the direct inheritors of that. A more careful reading of the gospels will show there were stark differences in belief among those writers. A quote from Jesus shows up in one that doesn’t in the other because each writer was trying to advance a certain viewpoint that wasn’t universally shared by Christians at the time.

    I find this way more interesting than one set of unified beliefs.


  • All good, it’s a pet peeve of mine. I’ve seen Ratheists try to say Nicea set biblical canon, and when I point out otherwise, they cite the WikiPedia article on Nicea at me. Which explicitly says the council did not set biblical canon. It’s not even like the atheist argument against Christianity hinges on when and where biblical canon was established; it’s fairly easy to make without it.


  • Or Putin dies of natural causes. Which isn’t too farfetched. Then the oligarchs find themselves a Deng Xiaoping-like figure who says “ok, all that was bad, let’s do something else”.

    Probably, Russia will have to face the facts that they can’t build their own fighter jets, bombers, tanks, or fighting ships larger than a destroyer anymore. Not on the scale they need. Even if you assume some of the designs they’re putting out are good (a big assumption), they can’t possibly build them at scale. China is sitting right over there with the factories for those things. Xi Jinping will be happy to take their check, but will make sure it clears first.


  • If we look at the common exhibitionist subtype of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) that most people think of when they hear the term narcissist, it is fairly easy to see that they use a simple three-part defense to create a façade of extreme self-confidence. I call this the “GOD defense.”

    G – Grandiosity: They act as if they are special and entitled to do or say whatever they want. Grandiose motto: “I am special.”

    O – Omnipotent: They make all sorts of unrealistic claims about how powerful and knowledgeable they are. Omnipotent motto: “I can do anything, and I know everything worth knowing,”

    D – Devaluing: They feel free to attack and devalue anyone who is not clearly above them in their status hierarchy. Devaluing motto: “You are worthless, defective garbage, and are here to serve me.”

    Yeah, you could just put “Example: Donald Trump” on all three.



  • It didn’t need to be far.

    Artillery range is around 70km. You need to get that close to the southern most road along the coast into Crimea, and a little more for padding some defense. Now you can turn that road and anything on it into rubble whenever you want.

    Ukraine got within a few km of doing that at some areas.

    The Kerch Strait Bridge could be hit whenever by a missile. Ukraine had already hit it by then.

    There’s a port at Sevestapol. It’s also been hit by Ukranian missiles before, and even if not, it’s not enough on its own.

    Airplanes expend lots of fuel for not much cargo. You’re not going to supply Crimea that way.

    There would be no logistical options left for Russia. Holding those couple of km more would starve it out. Only question is if Putin tries to hang on out of stubbornness.