With what I’ve heard about the train infrastructure in the US, that doesn’t surprise me. Personally, I only ever use a car if I’m travelling into the mountains or transporting a lot of luggage. I never drive if I’m travelling between cities with little luggage, if only because it’s much less of a hassle to just hop on a train and get where I’m going.

Exactly this. People too often compare price and time of “train ride” vs. “flight”, which the flight often wins. You need to compare the full travel, and train travel has a lot less overhead, which means a train travelling 100-200 km/h usually wins on stretches below 500 km.

It’s crazy to see how the other soldiers that aren’t being targeted are just walking calmly by, waiting for their turn.

Might have had a gun that he dropped when getting off the bike. Then again, it would make most sense to have it on a strap, so it looks like he might actually not have had any gun at all. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“Managed” in the sense that crimes could only really be resolved if you had witnesses, and “managed” in the sense that it was far more common for people to be wrongly convicted. Photo and video evidence are pretty crucial to having modern crime resolution rates.

Oh, absolutely. The best option is of course to have enough of everything. However, the past 20 years we’ve seen a bunch of western militaries phase out a bunch of their older, simpler equipment in favour of a few high-tech systems.

I think my point is that it may be a mistake to discard large volumes of older systems and replace them with a few new systems. If/when a war happens, we’re going to need large volumes of simpler gear as well as the few specialised and modern systems we’ve developed the past 20 years.

I do believe most western armies have gone a bit too far into “a few advanced” over “many simple”.

If I’m going to war I would prefer to have 200 Leopard 2A4 with me over having 20 Leopard 2A8. Same goes for aircraft: I would rather have 100 F16 than 10 F35. If only because a realistic war has a long front, and those few pieces of advanced equipment can’t be everywhere at once.

We shouldn’t forget that during WWII, the allies typically had the technologically inferior armour, but won out because it was easier to build and maintain, and they had more of it.

This looks like a turning point in European defence production. When civilian manufacturers begin directly contributing to the defence industry we may be on the verge of massive increases in military production.

What drove western production to obscene highs during WWII was exactly this shift.

I wish they didn’t, but they most likely do.

The statistics from the past 1-1.5 years has shown that russia has done a decent job at protecting the most experienced/specialised soldiers, while using fresh, unspecialised troops for the meat waves.

Thanks! I knew it was some famous quote from some famous guy!

While I obviously would like to hope that there’s a bunch more down there, I have a hard time seeing a situation where it would be preferable to alert your enemy to their presence rather than detonate them all at once.

I rather think he’s alluding to the possibility that there are more to make russians spend more resources looking or alluding to that this can/will happen again.

While this is an amazing operation, and has definitely permanently crippled the russian strategic air force, it’s probably not a turning point.

Russia needs 1-2 of these planes operational to deliver its strike packages (at least the ones we’ve seen until now). That likely means 4-6 planes total to account for down-time.

This war will end when russia runs out of heavy equipment (we’re getting closer every day), burns through its forces even faster than now (has been accelerating the past years due to shortages of armour), sees further drops in recruitment (it is dropping due to massive casualty rates), and unarmored russians on the frontline without heavy weapons begin to break and flee under Ukrainian assaults.

Ukraine is working very hard to preserve its forces and materiel, while russia is burning through both at an amazingly unsustainable rate. European military production is increasing by the day, so sooner or later the scales will tip in Ukraines favour, and when they do, the russians won’t have much to fight back with.

Still waiting for a Taurus missile or something to knock down some pillars so we can see a whole span in the strait.

Until then, let’s hope this damage takes a long time to repair, and that they do the thing where they say it’s “repaired” but then a truck goes into the water a week later.

I’m all for pointing out everything currently and historically wrong with any country, but you’re doing the “intellectually dishonest” thing. The question wasn’t whether you could point out a shitload of bad stuff, but whether you could see any good.

The British empire did a shitload of terrible stuff, that doesn’t mean leading the way in global industrialisation and bringing hundreds of millions out of starvation was one of them.

Germany has done terrible shit, but starting the predecessor to the EU and thereby heavily contributing to the most peaceful and prosperous eighty years western Europe has ever seen is usually seen as a good thing.

The US has done terrible shit, as you point out. Being a catalyst and inspiration for the global spread of democracy is usually seen as a positive. Being a core actor in the formation of the UN, helping build a post-WWII rule-based world order is usually also seen as a positive. US aid contributing hundreds of millions of people getting access to education, vaccines, medicine, and catastrophe-release is normally seen in a positive light.

Just read I the Norwegian news that two air bases in Murmansk (near the Norwegian border) were hit. If anything, this kind of strike hammers home how our support for Ukraine directly makes us safer as well.

These are planes that likely would have been used against Norway in the event of a war. Support for Ukraine is directly helping destroy equipment that otherwise could be used to attack us. We just need more people to understand this so we can get popular support for increasing our support a hundredfold.

Some other comment mentiones how it makes Frodo more influential and intimidating as they approach Mordor, allowing him to control Gollum with just his presence and voice. This isn’t very well portrayed in the movies. There is also mention of how a bunch of Orcs are scared off at the sight of Sam’s shadow when he is carrying the ring, as it appears to them as the shadow of a powerful elf lord.

As with other magic in Tolkiens universe, it is very diffuse. It grants the user great power, but the details of how it does so are very hard to pin down. We only get subtle hints.

They’re not in a situation that they don’t know better.

I would like to draw your attention to this truckload of stupid shit teenagers have done despite knowing better. Let’s not underestimate the capacity of the developing mind in making bad decisions despite having all information necessary to evaluate exactly how bad the decisions are.

The “router” would need to be fairly close to the operator in order to maintain a connection though, and if you keep it under observation you would be able to catch the operators when they’re packing to move.

Advanced technology is, to the uninitiated, indistinguishable from magic.

Some famous quote or something, can’t remember where I read it.

I seem to remember that a blizzard is also attributed to Saruman at one point. What I love though is that it’s not Saruman waving his arms and chanting some formula to cause the blizzard, but rather a situation where a blizzard was already possible and Saruman kind of “nudging” nature to ensure the blizzard hits in the right place and is especially violent. In a sense, it feels like the blizzard happens just because Saruman wants it to happen.

I also seem to remember that it’s also implied that the ride of the Rohirim to Helms Deep should have been near impossible, but because Gandalf was with them they had the speed and stamina to make it. He doesn’t explicitly do anything, but kind of “wills” them to be faster.