I mean, they’re not forced to, it’s just a problem that requires tradeoffs. For example, France operates the CATOBAR-capable carrier Charles de Gaulle and specifically doesn’t fly F-35, choosing instead to fly the 4th gen Rafale for the express purpose of maintaining strategic autonomy.

Plus, unless you’re an island nation or doing expeditionary operations (i.e. the power projection game) you probably have little need for a carrier in the first place.

If you’ll only settle for a 5th gen jet that’s carrier capable, though, yeah you’re kinda out of luck. Su-57 is hardly even a 5th gen jet in the first place, and even if the Admiral Kuznetsov wasn’t continuously catching fire in dry dock, the jet still couldn’t launch from it for a variety of design reasons. Same story with China’s J-20. China IS developing J-35 for carrier operations, though, and the jet has launched from both STOBAR and CATOBAR carriers in tests from what I understand, but I don’t imagine they’ll export those for a VERY long time.

I mean, wasting our tax dollars has basically been the party’s platform for a while now, so no surprises there.

You would think, right? They actually originally planned to include CATOBAR capabilities in their new build carriers, but budget cuts due to the cost of it forced them to scrap the idea, and then the rest of the purchase decisions followed as a result.

The thing to remember is that the UK doesn’t have any CATOBAR capable carriers, so the only F-35 variant they can fly from their carriers is the VTOL capable one.

Holy shit it’s only been a year? I feel like I’ve aged a decade since then.

True. And there is nothing more dangerous to an autocrat than a competent military leader, especially as military victories tend to deliver public support as well. Either way, he’s got a fine line to walk, but if Xi’s time in power has taught us anything, it’s that he’s very good at walking that line.

This is the first I’m hearing of this, so take this with a grain of salt, but Im skeptical of the idea that the dismissal of ‘Xi loyalists’ indicates a weakening of Xi’s position. The thing to remember is that autocrats during peacetime are forced to pick people for top positions who won’t upset the balance of power; loyalty is the primary factor in selection, especially so in this case because the person who controls the military is by far the most dangerous from a coup perspective. Notably, this means that no requirement is made for competence at their given role. Putin faced the consequences of this exact problem in Ukraine, as several of his top brass (see: Shoigu and Gerasimov) were both deeply corrupt and deeply incompetent, and it led to massive issues in the initial invasion in 2022. This could instead be read as a preparation for war, with Xi learning from Putin’s mistakes and clearing out the loyal but not completely competent members of his military command apparatus.

Iirc, according to previously released information about NGAD and F/A-XX, America’s sixth gen fighter programs for the Air Force and the Navy respectively (as they existed before trump’s second term), the jet is supposed to have a built in requirement that the fighters have a radar cross section ‘orders of magnitude’ smaller than f-35. This is in conjunction with better, longer range sensors and munitions with sufficient reach to take advantage of this longer range sensor capability. The idea is to outrange enemy munitions and sensors, and failing that, to avoid detection in the worst case scenario through stealth tech. That’s likely what they’re referring to when they say ‘super stealthy’, though it remains to be seen if that can actually be delivered upon, as this is still the development stage and nobody really knows if a development program will pan out at the beginning.

“Third Way said it was concerned about Mamdani’s affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America and highlighted what they said were “extreme” policy proposals embraced by the DSA”

> looks at so called ‘extreme’ proposals

> “give everyone water, education, and healthcare.”

God I fucking hate centrists lol.

There were definitely red flags before, it’s just that people ignored them because he was better than Dr. Oz. There’s a good Some More News video that goes into it.

I think you misunderstand how the expansion of the universe works. While the universe is expanding, it does not do so at a uniform rate on a local scale, as that expansion can be countered by various forces, most notably gravity. It’s expected that while space will continue to expand, stars within galaxies and groups/clusters of galaxies will all remain bound to each other for as long as that gravitational effect persists. Within the Local group (of which the Milky Way is part), for example, there are at least 80 galaxies, and those will stay bound indefinitely (according to our current limited understanding). Galaxies outside of our supercluster are, however, already moving away from us faster than the speed of light, so exploration outside of a supercluster without FTL tech would be impossible.

As for the accessible resource issue, that’s a fair point, and one I hadn’t considered. I imagine we would be able to repurpose already collected and refined materials from our old civilizations as a way to somewhat offset that, but it would definitely be a major hurtle to get past, especially if radioactive dust is a hazard we need to deal with on an atmospheric level. I still think humanity would find a way, as our ingenuity shouldn’t be underestimated, but I don’t think it’s a guaranteed thing at all, and I acknowledge my only reason for believing that is just a gut feeling and a, frankly, selfish desire to believe we aren’t as vulnerable as we appear to be.

Nonetheless, a humanity that barely clings on isn’t much of a win in either case, so even that is a cold comfort.

I disagree that the lack of a hard answer to the Fermi Paradox necessarily indicates that any technologically advanced civilization must invariably end up destroying itself. There are a variety of potential explanations that could explain our apparent solitude, of which a technological great filter is but one. For example, our universe is quite young, both in terms of how long a universe lives before its heat death and in terms of how long a universe continues producing stars capable of sustaining life. With this in mind, it’s entirely possible that we are simply the first to achieve sentience in our galaxy (as intergalactic travel is an unlikely prospect), especially if there is some particularly difficult evolutionary hurdle that we have already passed. Alternatively, it may be that communication methods detectable by us (such as radio emissions) are methods used only by technologically primitive spacefaring species, and so it could be that there is only a short window of time during which a species is visible to observers outside the system. And those are just two of a myriad of potential solutions to the paradox.

Space is vast, and the fact that we haven’t found anyone else yet should not be taken as proof nobody is out there. That’s like scooping a cup of water out of the ocean and declaring there are no fish in the ocean on the basis of that cupful of water alone. Looking more toward earth, I also want to note that humanity is a tenacious bunch. We have survived ice ages and super volcano eruptions in our past, climate extremes that mimic what could be produced by nuclear war. Undoubtedly, many of the outlined scenarios would be unpleasant and lead to an unacceptable loss of both human and non human life, but I find it unlikely that humanity wouldn’t cling on. Even if 99.99% of humanity died, that still leaves 800,000 people alive, and I doubt it would take more than 1000 years before we were back on our feet.

I mean… there was and is plenty of swamp to drain, it’s just that Trump was never actually gonna do it. Legalized corruption is part of why we’re in this mess.

I’ll allow him dweeb and that’s it

As someone who lives in Utah, trust me, you don’t need any help to ID them. There’s a vibe that’s immediately apparent and impossible to miss once you know what you’re looking for lol

Chopin on the beat?!

NA Racists getting angry about pros from other regions ruining the local scene

I mean, there’s an infrastructure problem that’s worth considering. With low enough population density, it could become no longer feasible or worth it to maintain large-scale, country/globe spanning infrastructure projects such as power grids or undersea fiber optic networks. This infrastructure didn’t matter much a few thousand years ago, but it’s pretty critical now, so the same rules don’t necessarily apply.

I don’t know how likely I consider this outcome to actually be, as you’d need a very steep decline, but it’s at least worth keeping in mind.

Obviously. The point the person was making was to say that even if we buy into the bullshit narrative that this was consensual, it still doesn’t make sense. They didn’t use incorrect terms to skirt around it, they were making a specific point about their claims.

Ukraine’s constitution forbids an election during a state of emergency. This isn’t him overriding precedent, this is codified into law.