Star Wars has been some kind of retro futuristic aesthetic ever since the first movie cemented the look and feel. They go thousands of years without any meaningful technological progress.

Yes, but that’s not what they were saying. Self-educated people might be just as smart as people with a formal education (possibly smarter even), but that does little good if you can’t get a job without the official credentials.

How long until we see some Hollywood-style accounting for these mineral revenues?

Nah, do retaliate. Because the only thing the morons over here understand is “uh oh, line go down”.

True, but air defense is also critical. If Russia gets total air supremacy that changes a lot.

Defense Minister Ruslan Umerov said 96% of all drones fielded by the Ukrainian military are domestically manufactured. Syrsky said during 2024, Ukrainian drone producers delivered more than 1.3 million robot aircraft to the armed forces. About 85% of all Russian casualties and vehicle kills on the battlefield are scored by Ukrainian drones, Malyuk said.

Very interesting to see the statistics. I always assumed drones were doing the most damage but it’s nice to have a number confirm this.

Is that a HIMARS in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Well yeah, an emergency like a war gives him power to do all kinds of authoritarian things.

I’m not entirely sure if geographical proximity is even relevant any more in a world where spaceflight exists.

China is going to sit on the sidelines and swoop in suddenly to “win” the war, just like the US did in both World Wars previously. Being the only country not rebuilding is an attractive position to be in when vying for economic dominance.

I have worked with many Russians in the past, they are fantastic engineers. The people are wonderful. But it’s very obvious why there is Russophobia considering they are the ones actively trying to capture land from other sovereign nations.

If you thought that was a sincere suggestion, I didn’t /s nearly hard enough.

The US only does things selfishly, so yeah. Though Russia really doesn’t have it better.

Just tell the US they can have any resources they can liberate from Russia. We’d have tanks at Moscow in hours.

They could reorganize as “NOT-U” under all the same terms but without the US.

You can be vocal about it and still vote for the lesser evil in order to reduce harm and save lives.

I’m okay with funding from constituents, with strict caps on amounts. That way people who have lots of public support get more funding, but a wealthy person can’t outspend someone else.

No funding from corporations, and no anonymous funding.

Foreign political funding should be banned everywhere by default. It makes no sense to let foreign interests muck about in your domestic policy.

Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not correct my typing unless I accept the suggestion. Do not automatically check the “send me spam” checkbox.

Software is better when it only does the thing a human requests of it, and no more.

Cursed artifacts that compel a person to buy/acquire them are among my favorite horror tropes.