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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 23rd, 2023

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  • From scratch it’s obviously not feasible, but having been a former Soviet state I’d imagine a good majority of the resources needed are floating around.

    The main challenges with nuclear weapons are 1. procurement of the fissile material, 2. yield efficiency, and 3. miniaturization. Once you have the first part done, as Ukraine very likely has the nuclear fuel processing facilities to do so, the second part is less important if you just want a bomb. Just look at the fact that they were so confident the Little Boy would work they didn’t even bother with a prototype, even if its yield ratio was quite low. It needed about 60kg of uranium for its 15kT yield, while Fat Man managed 21kT with only about 5kg of plutonium.

    So, it’s a tradeoff where if nuclear material is hard to come by and you need to get the bomb somewhere far away, making something really efficient is pretty important. However, if you have sufficient material and just want a decently big boom in the middle of a field, it’s quite literally something you could feasibly manage in a home workshop.

    The one other note on the importance of efficiency is in regards to fallout. Anything that isn’t used in the detonation is blasted every which-way, and isn’t really something you want as a normal military, since a nuclear wasteland isn’t strategically very useful. But, if you’re just trying to fuck up someone else’s day, then its less important and you can get into really “fun” stuff like dirty and cobalt bombs.



  • despite all our previous statements to the contrary and verifiable statistics counter to this narrative

    This was by far the most frustrating part of the RTO push at my old company. The unofficial motto I was always told was “Show me the data”, as it was basically impossible to push for any sort of decision without solid data to back it up, even if everyone in the group thought it was a good idea.

    When RTO was announced and the big all people town hall was held, multiple group heads stood up and asked the execs why they were doing this, and what data they had to back it up. Literally, and I quote from one of the execs, “Well, we don’t really have any, but we feel that people will be more productive, will be sharing more ideas and innovating when in the office.”

    Yes, the executive at a multi-billion dollar automotive company literally said with a straight face to thousands of engineers who’d been working almost entirely from home for the past 3 years “This decision is based on feels, not reality”. Even better was since there was already an initial non-mandatory RTO push, some absolute chads even interrupted them to pull up hard data showing they had been tracking productivity since the RTO push, and their group members were significantly less productive on days they were in-office. Not only that, but they also showed there literally wasn’t the office space to fit everyone. The exec just hand waved it away and said “I’m sure we have plenty of desks for everyone”.

    It’s absolutely infuriating seeing these people getting paid millions, if not billions, to suck so hard at basically everything.


  • As someone who’s extremely left leaning, it’s so goddamn infuriating, because there are so many pro-gun Dem leaning voters that wind up voting ® down the ticket, almost solely because the Democratic candidate went on an idiotic speech about AK-15s and their 30 caliber per second clipazines. It’s not like the anti-gun Dems they’re pandering to are going to vote Republican because the Democratic candidate said nothing about guns during their campaign.

    It’s literally one single issue that the Dems could just not say a word about. Literally, no work involved. No campaigning, canvassing, or fundraising. Just don’t bring it up, and it would massively improve their odds in some of the most critical swing states. But no, they just have to virtue signal to the areas that are basically ultramarine blue, and it fucks them over every goddamn time.



  • Yes, but imagine they’re as prolific as Starbucks and with 5x the amount of sugar as a normal soda. Everyone thinks the south is the sugary drink capital of the US, with Coca-Cola being in Georgia and sweet tea being the official drink south of the Mason-Dixon, but compared to the shit that comes out of those dirty soda shops in Utah, they’re like LaCroix and plain black tea by comparison.

    Since they can’t do “hot drinks”, my coworkers there would typically drink 2-3 Monsters or 20oz bottles of Mountain Dew in a typical workday. It was absolutely insane to see.


  • This was one of the really interesting plot elements in World War Z, where towards the end of the war where they couldn’t really afford to be wasting resources on prisons, they brought back corporal and public punishment. They’d put people in stockades to let the entire community know they were caught doing something like stealing their neighbor’s firewood, or publicly lashing executives who were war-profiteering, and only imprisoning the absolute worst offenders who were incapable of integrating back into society.

    For a silly zombie novel, it honestly has a phenomenal amount of prettt interesting social commentary, and is absolutely worth a listen to the unabridged audiobook.





  • Also remember that those trucks are both heavier and less aerodynamic than your Bel-Air. A well-equipped Tundra or Silverado is pretty close to the weight of your Bel-Air and Z3, combined.

    I guarantee that your 70s motor isn’t really all that eco-friendly. Once all the emissions stuff is warmed up, those trucks are honestly pretty “clean” in regards to tail pipe emissions compared to even a car 20 years ago. Remember that CO2 and water aren’t the only things emitted, and while they’re worse on the CO2 front, anything without a catalytic converter is going to emit some pretty nasty stuff in addition to all all the CO2.







  • In what state is 40MPH over not a minimum 4 point ticket? Even in incredibly lax Michigan, 10 over puts you at 2 points and 15+ is 4 points, and that’s only on limited access highways. It’s jurisdiction dependent, but you can usually add 2 points to each of those if it’s off the interstate. They’re also almost definitely going to hit you with a reckless driving charge, especially in a 25MPH zone.

    Burgerland can be pretty lax when it comes to speeding and reckless driving, and you might be able to work the fine/points down to that with a good lawyer and having zero prior infractions, but acting like a $200 fine and 2 points for doing 60 in a 20 is normal is just a flat out falsehood.