ligma balls

Whatever actual or perceived grievances a person may have (even though merely being born in Europe already constitutes winning the global class lottery) - that only ever causes vulnurability. That person then turning to actively undermining democratic systems and the international community is something that only happens if some con artist uses that vulnurability to convince the person that it constitutes a solution to their problems.

I mean I 100% agree. I’m not justifying them in their perceived grievance, rather, I’m offering a mechanism in “how things come to pass”. My assessment is that if you can make the grievances minor/ absurd, you remove any leverage for the conman.

The investment in a social democracy/ social safety it ultimately what is safeguarding Europe, because it precludes the motivations/ grievances which create surface area for misinformation to operate on. Its not that it isn’t possible, it just has a much more difficult time taking hold.

The UK is a great example of this, where they seem religiously committed to austerity as the approach for addressing most issues; this gave rise to grievance politics because, well, austerity does hurt people; grievance politics gives misinformation something to operate on (its the continents fault); brexxit happens; life gets worse; misinformation gains an even further foothold because now its premise has been validated, and there is even more grievance to operate on.

Grievance is the scar tissue which misinformation operates upon. Misinformation is the bacteria which spread and cause death, but without the wound of grievance, there is nothing to do. Creates strong mechanisms for grievances to be addressed (engaged democratic processes; responsive governance).

Its the midwest pragmatism that sells it.

I just do what he says because it sounds so practical.

A magnetron, some sheet metal and an idiot dumb enough to turn on something I wire together, and bam, you’ve got a tool for knocking drones out of the air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6XdcWToy2c

Look at what the little militias aka the police are using on us.

Its enough to make one want to start hording microwaves.

New Technology connections video drops:

I’m going to go buy a kill-a-watt.

Well I’m happy to be done with this exchange

I mean, it’s had value for others certainly, to spark thinking on the relationship between how we think about power and the role that has in how we choose to which technology to develop and how.

It also puts you on display as a vapid and worthless void, fully absent of a thought worthy of responding to, so we all benefit from knowing more in that regard.

I can now see that you are too dense to have a conversation on this matter. In the future, please, just be an obtuse buffoon earlier so I don’t have to waste my time putting together respectful, thoughtful responses for an idiot like yourself.

Idk, but he seems to be doing pretty well at it. He outplayed Trump, masterfully, who looks dumber by the day with his whole “you don’t have the cards” trap he thought he laid with that press conference.

Awful lot of cards in this mans hand.

Them not being capable of thermal runaway is the big game changer imo. They explode, but don’t catch fire in doing so.

The arguments I’m making are fundamentally about the philosophy that underpins the assumptions that the decisions you’ve outlined above, are the right decisions to be making or even the right framework for making decisions.

Core to what I’ve been saying is that how we think about power; how we think about force: how we think about these things and the assumptions we make sets the stage for how we’ll think about technology, development, how to fight a modern war, or what a modern war would even look like.

This scene from Dr. Strangelove demonstrates the ideology clearly:

We wouldn’t want a doomsday gap would we? Look at the big board!!

Although satire, this movie highlights the basic mentality both the US and Soviet union had, which established both the soft power aspects of diplomacy, as well as the conclusions each country made around what military technologies to develop, how to develop them, and what the future of war and projection of force would look like. What we think about the world dictates how we behave in it.

Just try to see within what you are saying, the ideological assumptions you are implicitly making about war fighting, about the use of power, about projection of power, about soft versus hard power. You are treating them as immutable inevitabilities when they aren’t.

Take the scene even further; the Russian diplomat:

In the end we could not keep up with the expense of the arms race, the space race and the peace race, and at the same time our people grumbled for more nylons, and washing machines.

The current Russian federation is a perfect example of how a country (the Soviet Union) had one attitude towards war fighting, soft power, hard power, use of force, projection of power and pivoted to a completely different mentality with regards to how to do all of the above (The Russian Federation). And now, they’ve effectively beaten their age old enemy without even having to launch a missile. They’ve rendered the F35 inert, because they changed their philosophy of power, and were able to effectively capture the US government by proxy through imbeciles, nationalism, and stupid red hats.

Its also greatly telling how in the Dr. Strangelove scene, the Dr. quotes the “BLAND” corporation, which is a play of the RAND corporation; a consultant firm which has effectively dictated how the US government will develop itself militarily into the future for nigh on 60 years. My point is that the manner in which the US have developed itself militarily wasn’t selected for based on its effectiveness: its been demonstrated since Vietnam to be highly ineffective. Its only Hollywood blockbusters that keep any charade of the US military being able to accomplish its goals up. The manner in which the US military developed itself was selected for in a manner which would optimize profits for the Defense contractor industry.

The F35 is an incredible piece of technology. Like I said before, I’ve never experienced anything as loud. But it misses the moment in terms of what war fighting will look like in the future of now. Its not next gen fighter jets winning or losing in Ukraine (or that won in Afghanistan, or Iraq).

I think there is more to structure level battery support that you might consider which highlights why appliances with batteries could catch on faster.

I don’t need a permit to get an ac that has it’s own battery pack. The overhead and total investment (let’s say 500 for a basic AC and 1k for one with batteries) is far far lower.

You aren’t wrong at all with your current critisism. I’m just at saying that I think the benefits to end users are sufficiently high and the barriers low enough well see wide scale adoption of in appliance batteries fairly soon l.

A couple things, and to be clear I’m really narrowly focused on appliances/ immobile applications. I don’t think these heavier batteries are quite yet ready for things like phones, drones, scooters, EV’s.

I think specifically this battery technology addresses your issues directly.

Firstly, there are actual reasons why current battery technologies are not allowed to be used in specific indoor applications, and that is thermal runaway (effectively your third criticism). Generally, LiPO’s are not legally allowed for use in permanently installed indoor environments. The reason why is thermal runaway.

Here is a video of an idiot puncturing a lipo cell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzBFCufUDq0

Here is a video of an idiot puncturing a sodium cell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ya_ls1zkA

Spot the difference? Its the fire. The only reason we don’t currently have LiPO’s acting as stores of power for current technology is that you DO NOT WANT lithium fires to happen indoors. A sodium battery will explode (see idiot A). But it will not catch fire and will not create a thermal runaway situation.

Secondarily, appliances are already heavy. Adding weight for something like a battery isn’t an issue because you don’t need to move the thing very often. The amount of additional design complexity is small, and something we’ve basically already solved in so many ways. We don’t need the portability we would need for a vehicle or cell phone.

Thirdly, I think the complexity is trivial. Complexity hasn’t stopped producers from adding what amounts to a small computer to everything from a refrigerator to a tea kettle where literally a simple switch would do.

I don’t think you need to wait any years. This is happening right now.

I think I’m being well enough specific. I’ll give you two examples of mistakes that highlight the philosophical issue.

A Teledyne hornet costs 200k. A very very capable fpv drone with night vision can be manufactured with off the shelf parts for 2k. You can probably put a Temu version together for 1k.

It’s not that the Teledyne isn’t better. It’s that it’s not 100x better. It may only be 15-30% better. Even if it’s 100% more capable (twice the vision, twice the range, half the acoustic profile), I can still buy 50 fpvs for every one Teledyne.

But I can outfit every unit with a 2k night vision drone. I can’t outfit every unit with a Teledyne. And fundamentally, it’s the same parts and plastic going into each.

Another example will be the f35.

Part of American exceptionalism has been the ability to sell a vision of “this is what the future holds, so you’ve got to do it this way”. The entire “next gen fighter” development project is predicated on the notion that the people asking you to pay for it’s development know what they’re doing and are right about their predictions in the future.

And the F35 is amazing. It’s one of the loudest machines I’ve ever heard. It can do ridiculous things in the air and to watch one take off is both frightening and awe inspiring in a terrible way.

And maybe this is me getting a bit over my handle bars, but if Kiev had the option of one f35 or a fleet of f16s, which do they choose?

The f16s are going to be easier to repair, easier to train for, more reliable, and probably in the range of 80-90% as capable as the f35.

But the extra billions, they go to that extra 20-30 % capability.

70% capable costs 10x 50% capable. 80% costs 10x that. 90% 10x that. 95% 10x that. 97.5, 10x that, 98.75, 10x that. Maybe 90-95% as capable is plenty.

There are diminishing returns from a focus on the “highest of the high” technology. An F35 or Teledyne are more capable than their off the shelf counterparts. But not 100x as capable. Often only a few percentage more capable.

My argument was that philosophy lost those wars. The the philosophy of war fighting we applied in those conflicts is the culmination of 60+ years of cold war, “super powers” Mckinsey consultant thinking.

And the thinking was wrong. Or maybe it was right for a while, but it’s wrong now. Super power technology may or may not be the way to win a super power v superpower war, but it doesn’t really help you in a guerrilla, insurgent conflict.

In metaphor, it’s depth versus width. We went incredibly deep on our tech stack. We should have gone wider. The technology that is showing itself is that which can be made cheaper, faster, and is less dependent on specialists. The US tech stack is the opposite of all of that, because it was selected for by the military industrial complex not for it’s war fighting capabilities, but to enrich and entrench existing manufactures.

Yet we love devices that keep their power with them.

Curious.

I don’t agree with induction roads. Its simply not necessary and makes roads far more complicated to build and maintain.

just batteries is plenty.