Isegoria: I have to assume that decision, to wear a German uniform in WW2 London, was arrived at in a pub — either on a dare or after losing a bet.
Albion: A relative of mine told me that in WW2, there were so many uniforms being worn in London by both UK and overseas forces that when one guy dressed himself in a German uniform and wandered around no-one took any notice.
Jim: The most subversive and dangerous terrorists in uniform are the “legitimate” ones.
Jim: To make any real change, the municipal corporation pretending to the government of New York City would need to be able to (a) competently and non-corruptly organize infrastructural development and (b) modify, or credibly threaten to unilaterally modify, real (land) titles. This is impossible in a land of lawyers, which is why the first Americans made it illegal to practice law in America.
Gaikokumaniakku: “Axe as an example of a military technology ignoramus. Axe is also blind to the realities of the war and thinks Ukraine can win.” It’s probably his terrible body spray. It kills brain cells.
Gaikokumaniakku: Mainstream culture has indeed erased spirituality, but many, many subcultures have been fighting for decades. To take a convenience sample: 1. The punk-rock culture jammers of the 1970s told people to be ashamed of consumerism and to kill their televisions. 2. The Christian Right was hanging on by its fingernails for years, but it has been getting stronger lately. 3. The “Loompanics libertarians” of the pre-WWW era latched onto hundreds of privacy-protecting anonymity...
TRX: Citizens: “We want more and better roads so we can go about our lawful affairs.” NYC: “Best we can do is tolls and mass transit.”
T. Beholder: Sounds reasonable. Now let me test understanding of the neo-Laputian procedures. Once this thing is in place and mostly debugged, mission creep will go on, until all references to “congestion” are stretched to breaking. Then it will be renamed, while the shearing business will continue to expand. Until it hits hard enough that even the professors and State Department types feel it. At which point gasps will be emitted as it will be found to have gone too far. Perhaps the matchboxes EV will...
Jim: Yes, drones are more accurately modeled as short-lived, vastly more capable mines than as fighters, bombers, artillery, or rifles. The next great innovations will be in weatherproofing, hibernation duration, and fully autonomous friend-or-foe target identification. The “stealth” characteristic of drones is in the nature of ambush: length of time spent waiting before activation, distance to target, and speed of drone. Observability in flight is not irrelevant but is relatively unimportant.
Roy in Nipomo: I have seen where the Russians have their fiber cable drones perch-and-wait for targets. They are not jammable, but their tether is finite in length and prone to snagging. Perch-and-wait gives them the best of both worlds (though a spotter drone above is useful).
T. Beholder: The strikes have raised the cost of Russian bomber sorties targeting Ukrainian cities, and depressed oil production in a country that utterly relies on energy exports for state revenue. What country has significant part of its oil production within 1,200 miles of there?
Bob Sykes: Andrei Martyanov regularly uses Axe as an example of a military technology ignoramus. Axe is also blind to the realities of the war and thinks Ukraine can win.
Robert Van Elsberg: I read all my input on this topic and felt like I largely owned the conversation. Boy, can I get long-winded! That said my current favorite mouse gun is the KelTec P32. It is nice to have something you can have with you at all times. At 72 I am no longer quite the shot I used to be, but the little KelTec will reliably hit what it needs to at close range. I think it is appropriate to say it has a useful role to play for “close-up and personal” encounters. I sure am glad...
Jim: It could be argued that stealth is the definitive example of security by obscurity. The question of today is simply: What does it mean when stealth scales down and breaks apart into many points of reference, as it does with small, high-performance, battery-powered drones?
T. Beholder: Warning “Ukraine faces today what [NATO] could face tomorrow,” Or, to look at it from another angle: Zelensky after almost 3 years of war attrition wound up in much the same situation where NATO already finds itself via… [write in]. explaining how the “tactical air-land operation” represented the first instance of an “uncrewed battle fought by one side” in the ongoing war. Did they have any other options by that time? Freddo says: From the little reporting I have seen that attack felt more...
T. Beholder: Yes, once there’s a rich enough environment, general principles of camouflage should apply to radio communication much the same way as to ghillie suits. If one can keep a relatively low profile, why stand out? “Not obvious” does not equal “not able to be detected”, however. Preventing detection is good, sure. But it’s fragile, like any security-by-obscurity. You may fool some people for some time. But the anomaly still exists, and once detected, the tracks can be identified and followed. Or...
T. Beholder: Ha. That’s a good one! - Explores a big sweeping vision of history through some individual person, event, social movement, or technology, with a title and marketing materials that attach truly unrealistic importance to said person, event, movement, or technology; [...] How the Color Mauve Built the Modern World or Why Ms. Pacman Was the True Leader of the Reaganite Order - History, in the sense of the assemblage of discrete bits of information that constitute a broad understanding about a...
Sasha: Not born as blank slates, but with lots of knowledge acquisition wetware. If child is given nihilism by default he will run with that like the gospel. Self righteous nihilists are the worst!
Erik Prince does a better job than Mencius Moldbug did at advocating for the East India Company model.