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Because I know most of them were never taught that history. In the US each state sets its own education policies. Some states have good standards for teaching history and civics while others are terrible and have been for a long time. My partner was in a Zoom book club with a group of women...

The answer there is to integrate the drone into the tank rather than make a humanoid to drive the tank. Without a human crew a self autonomous tank could be much smaller and carry the same punch. Just as drones are much smaller than manned aircraft. Putting a human in a plane requires a lot...

I won't post it here because it was also political, but I saw an interview with Frank Bruni the other day. He's currently teaching at Duke University. The host had recently taught a seminar at USC. Both reported that the bulk of students at both universities are just trying to get through...

I agree. It's also possible that the representative of Hamas was just saying that so Hamas looks like the reasonable party. They have become very good at PR.

Humanoid drones will probably consume a lot more energy than the quadcopters in use on the frontline now. It's almost like comparing the energy consumption of a laptop to an EV car. Carrying a large enough battery to keep going long enough might be difficult. Also charging them near the...

As bad as Hamas is, they have a lot of competition for the worst group of humans in history. There have been some pretty despicable groups through history. I don't think Hamas should be allowed to have any power in any future government, but if they are willing to lay down arms and accept a...

I thought it was going to post the entire thread, but only one follow up past was included. This is the relevant one The data used for the map was concentrations of one Y chromosome haplotype type across Europe. These maps can be used to track migrations of populations over time. The "I" Y...

I suggested to my partner that there may have been a US military rep "holding on" to the missiles in Ukraine and as soon as they heard the bill was signed they handed them over to the Ukrainians in the field. The US has done several authorizations totally about $41 billion. Each time money...

Biden is a master at getting what he wants from Congress. Last year Biden laid out a $104 billion aid package for Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, as well as refugees, He got $95 billion of it and he was willing to compromise on the border bill to get it, but in the end the border bill died along the...

This reminds me of the US Civil War. A lot of European observers showed up to watch the war unfold. They took their lessons home and developed new tech based on what they learned. A lot of that tech was introduced to European battlefields in the First World War. The Spanish Civil War was a...

I know Greece and Turkey have a long history and are constantly worried about war with one another, but realistically I don't think it's likely. At least not in the near term. Turkey has enough problems with Syria and ISIS and Greece doesn't seem interested or really capable of starting...

No POTUS has ever talked about a dictator like Trump did. Many of the extreme right in the US are also Evangelical Christians who have a thing about Israel and supporting it. But going into that is a major tangent. There are different ATACMS. The first ATACMS was a cluster munition that has...

The far right wing of the party is extremely isolationist. The defense oriented Republicans are still in favor of supporting the US's allies, but they have been beaten down by the far right. There are quite a few who are not running for re-election because it's become too stressful dealing...

How the Ukrainians got a hold of the Russians latest drone jamming tech Ukrainian Troops Staged A Daring Three-Night Raid To Steal A Russian Tank Fitted With A New Drone-Jammer Someone geeking out on Russian tank storage numbers This is a recent picture of the condition of a bunch of T-72s in...

For a little light relief. A press release from game maker Activision

I'm not sure what exactly changed Johnson's mind. It happened after an intelligence briefing that really rattled him. My partner saw something today that the CIA chief briefed the Gang of 8 in Congress (the party leaders in both houses and the top two people from each house's intelligence...

Ukraine had a lot of S-200s left over from the Soviet era that were pretty much out of service at the beginning of the war. I wonder if they have updated them in some way (possibly with western help). I've seen stories of them being used a fair bit lately. Over the biggest hump! Hopefully...

I do sometimes look at what's trending on Twitter just to see what people are talking about, but when I want actual news, I seek out the source rather than let it be pushed to me. The only value in getting the news that's trending on social media is to educate yourself on what other people...

Jake Broe has a YouTube channel and is a military vet. He has done a fair bit of reporting on Ukraine and done some interesting interviews. I have seen a few of his videos. His content is fairly good quality. I don't think that any more Senators will turn against Ukraine aid. Unlike the...

MIke Johnson gave a news conference today where he did a 180 on Ukraine. He mentioned that there was a recent intel briefing he got that convinced him that we need to get aid to Ukraine. I don't know what it was, but I saw a snippet of the news conference and he seemed shaken. He mentioned...

Anyone who knows how Washington works has said that any reasonable Ukraine bill that made it to the floor of the House would pass easily. There were rumors that Johnson was going to put a bill up that had amendments that the Democrats couldn't accept just to kill the bill and claim the...

My partner came across something about why the Russians are not restoring the T-72s. Apparently there are some brass and copper parts in the T-72 that are unique and long out of production. All the T-72s had those parts stripped by profiteers and sold on the scrap metal market. So the...

In WWII there were light, medium, and heavy tanks. Light tanks proved to be highly vulnerable and of limited value from fairly early in the war and they moved to limited roles such as recon (where speed was an advantage) or supporting light troops like air mobile. After the war advancements in...

Unless Russians are going to fly those Su-35s, it's going to take a while to train Iranians to fly them. There are a lot of differences between a 1970s vintage American fighter and a more modern Russian one. Observations of coms chatter from the attack launched over the weekend, it became...

I'll only believe it when it lands on Biden's desk. Johnson has been trying to play Lucy and the football with Ukraine aid ever since he became Speaker. For those not familiar with the American comic strip Football gag

It has come out that he received campaign contributions from Russians Konstantin Nikolaev—the Putin ally behind Mike Johnson campaign donation

It also showed that some Arab states would side with Israel against Iran if Iran was the aggressor. Jordan had a valid reason to contribute since I believe their air space was violated. Saudi Arabia had no reason to participate except to send a message.

I would not call the guys who do the All In podcast a reliable source. David Sacks frequently repeats Kremlin talking points. The inflation rate in the US is generally fairly low and the economy is recovering well. Consumer confidence is a lagging indicator. The prime rate is higher than...

Biden, the Democrats, and even most Republicans want to help Ukraine. Biden has asked for $60 billion for Ukraine. The current Speaker of the House wants Biden to lose and is doing everything he can to decrease Biden's chances of winning. The best thing Ukraine can do is to hold off on...

The US does not have clean hands. The US has caused a number of the world's problems, or contributed quite a bit to them. The regime in Iran came about because the US and UK interfered in Iranian politics in the 1950s. Not all of the world's problems came about because of the US. The...

Worst case would be early January when the next Congress is seated. There are a number of Republicans who feel strongly about funding Ukraine. We're right around the deadline now for a special election to replace any Congress people who quit. A resignation of a handful of Republicans after...

Strange New Worlds scratches the itch for the fans of TOS that hasn't been addressed by any of the spinoffs. I'm a smorgasbord ST fan, I have liked elements of all the series, though Enterprise was pretty bad the first two seasons. Like many early Gen X and late Boomers I grew up watching the...

Oi! If Ukraine was trying to end the war by conquering Russia, yes, it would be impossible. But they very much have what it takes to get their borders back. I wonder which Russian oligarch is giving him campaign contributions? His math is very bad here. He's basically arguing that the US...

The Germans did attack the US in late 1941 and early 1942. Within a day or two of Pearl Harbor the Germans declared war on the United States so the u-boats which were on the way into US coastal waters could operate "legally". The US was sending a lot of oil to Britain. The tankers would load...

The PDA is very limited and is global. Biden only has that money to last the rest of the fiscal year and has to cover all military contingencies around the world. Spending it all now could leave a country like Taiwan or South Korea open if their enemies decide to attack. One of the things the...

I saw an article a few months ago and think I posted it here. Russia's infrastructure is disintegrating. The people who maintain it got sent to Ukraine to fight.

There is the saying "keep your friends close and your enemies closer", but there is a point where this becomes counterproductive... China won't provide outright arms support for Russia, but they can deny they know what ingredients are being used for. "We were just providing rail cars of the...

I figured that. I have made much bigger mistakes in my time online.

Ukraine has gone into mass production of drones. I saw something about it about a year ago, maybe a little less. Production is probably spinning up now. During the Soviet era a lot of military production was done in Ukraine and the country of Ukraine maintained a lot of that production when...

It takes a lot to make my partner laugh. She thought this was hilarious.

The Kerch Bridge is very well defended. The Russians put up floating barriers around the bridge to deter naval drones and there is a lot of air defense. The Ukrainians have been developing tactics used on Crimea to make attacks using different technologies (mostly drones and S-200s) to push...

North Americans are obsessed with large vehicles. Pickups got enormous because of a loophole in the fuel mileage laws that allowed vehicles over a certain size to be exempt. Pickups got larger to meet that standard so they didn't have to meet the standards for smaller vehicles. When the...

I saw an interview with him given by Tim Miller a few weeks ago. He's definitely anti-Trump, but he is incredibly critical of Biden for some reason. Miller was having to defend Biden in the interview and Miller is tepid about him. One thing Biden got right in foreign affairs that Gates...

I haven't seen the MCU's, but this is an educated guess. The MCU has what is essentially a hard drive storage on it. It's not a spinning disk, but is an SSD technology. I expect that the early versions of the MCU had this storage soldered onto the MCU motherboard and removing it would run the...

I always thought it was the Russians. Not that we can do anything about it. The device used for the Havana Syndrome is probably a repurposed magnatron from a microwave oven with a focusing device. Someone in the US made one many years ago (before the Havana Syndrome was a thing). I think it...

There's a carrot for Israel to agree to a two state solution. Biden is probably the best deal maker president the US has had since Lyndon Johnson.

If the US hadn't gotten distracted with Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11 and had committed the forces to Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda leadership would have been rounded up by the end of 2001. When I was watching the events on 9/11 unfold, I was wondering to myself how the US was going to...

The article won't load for some reason. The Russian economy is on a sugar high right now. Moscow is pouring money into the defense economy to build as much as they can for the war. They were also giving lavish sign up bonuses early in the war, though I'm not sure they are still doing that...

The best way to stop authoritarians is before they get too much power. Once they get established, it's tough to get rid of them. Anyone who tried to opposed Hamas in Gaza ended up dead. Just as what happened in Germany.

Never underestimate the enemy. The blitz they have been doing on social media in the west indicates there is a long term plan to undermine support for Israel. Again, don't underestimate the enemy. The last election was in 2006. About half the population of Gaza weren't born or weren't old...