You dont need the F-35 just for the russian planes, you need it for the russian ground to air missiles and radars(and targets that those things might protect). While you can suppress enemy air defences with non stealthy aircraft, that is much riskier and much more limited in scope. Which is why Russia isnt using its massive airforce in a way that is expected(by western standards). Even Ukraine’s very limited anti-air capability has shut down the ukranian airspace to russian aircraft.

A stealth aircraft allows you to penetrate much deeper into enemy airspace and/or in a safer manner. It unlocks a completely different mission capability.

This is also useful against airplanes. Imagine if european planes have a radar with 120km range and a missile with 60km range. The equivalent russian planes have a 100km range radar and a 50km range missile. So while the european planes have the advantage, this advantage is anything mindblowing.

Now imagine a european stealth aircraft, with the same missile and radar but because it is stealth, it can only be detected within 20km of a russian aircraft. That means that the stealth plane can go in, shoot a missile and get out before the russian plane even detects it. The advantage is immense and allows the stealth aircraft to be orders of magnitude more effective.

There is a reason why everyone, including China, is spending billions to make stealth airplanes. The only reason people think stealth is irrelevant is because of russian propaganda, because Russia is too poor to produce stealth airplanes. The thing is, designing AND producing a stealth airplane is very expensive. There are a few european designs but those things wont be coming out for another 10+ years at the earliest(or in 20 years if we want to be realistic). In the meantime, Europe decided to use the f-35, which is a very capable and cheap aircraft(actually cheaper than rafale, etc).

It doesnt help that we have 2 different 6th generation airplane designs in Europe. It’s a clusterfuck. Maybe Trump will help Europe get its shit together.

Literally 1984

Partially but the big advantage of being in a big alliance, is sharing stuff. That is the most effective way of progressing.

Take microchips for example. Taiwan is making them, with european machines and the european machines use american technology. Taiwan is able to create cutting edge microchips because they are allied and dependent on their allies. Similarly, a lot of russian technology has its roots in the soviet era, when russians had access to scientists/technology from all over eastern Europe.

Apes together strong. Thats the strength of alliances. But if you have a bad faith ape, that ape can destroy the effort of all other apes. Thats the weakness of alliances. For strategically important things(jet planes), you might be willing to take an efficiency hit, by creating things independently for security reasons. Which is why the french have rafale.

But keep making cutting edge things in order to maintain and improve your defence industry capabilities is very expensive. Thats why Canada doesnt have a jet plane industry, even though they used to have a very capable fighter jet industry. Or you could be like Russia, where you can design new planes but dont have the money to produce them, so you are basically spending a lot of money, creating one off planes.

Because none of them have the capabilities of the F-35. And they are even more expensive than the F-35.

Ukraine can survive without american support. Russia has the GDP of Spain. The EU has the resources to help Ukraine, we just need

1. Political will
2. Ability to produce(or procure) stuff for Ukraine

For the last 100 years, everyone was dependent on each other, since we were all allied, it made less sense for every country to reinvent the wheel. Now the EU will need to create new production capabilities and that takes time and money. This will have a noticeable negative effect to the quality of life of europeans so the europeans will need to be willing to deal with that.

South Korea has a strong defence industry that can help cover the gap, especially if things are chill in SouthEast Asia.

If the EU can guarantee the safety of Greece(maybe with the creation of an EU army or through stronger defence treaties), Greece has a lot of military equipment that could potentially be sent to Ukraine, especially if Turkey is cool. Greece for example has more Leopard 2 tanks than any other country(including Germany).

I think if the EU sends troops to Ukraine, the EU will need to completely commit to that. The war in Ukraine is rough and very different than any other war, especially the wars western forces have fought in the last 50 years. So you cant half ass it and send a couple thousand soldiers to die there, you need to commit with proper air support, etc. This escalation needs to be managed carefully.

The EU needs to start pumping nukes and developing its missile program. Without the american nuclear shield, the EU needs its own. There is a reason that China is pumping nukes like crazy, because they are way behind the americans and russians. MAD is the only way to de-escalate and prevent a nuclear war.

Most of the aforementioned cost is these nukes/missile and building capabilities(stealth planes) programs. Helping Ukraine is cheap.

It is hard to find a date where nothing bad has ever happened. Most devs just write a random date, because who cares.

Yeah, the emperor part is the best part of the series and has nothing to do with the Foundation books. It is obvious that they wanted to make a series about that story, which is why it is the best part of the series.

The books are basically a collection of stories that take place over centuries/thousands of years. But in the series, you want familiar characters since you cant change characters every couple episodes, they did some insanely convoluted, inane things just so they can “connect” everything. It is like bad fanfiction.

The foundation was also not adaptable but they solved it by completely ignoring the books and writing their own stories. They kept some names and plot points but it is mostly using the IP name for marketing reasons and not as a base for the series.

Having a popular, standardized pc with fixed hardware and OS would enable game developers to aim that as minimum(or recommended) requirement and to optimize their games for that. And since it will be running linux, this means that gaming in linux would become even more mainstream and better supported too.

Humans “i dont rape because i respect other humans”. Meanwhile nature …

And in before “but i need to eat”, you dont need to eat animal products. You can have a healthy life with a vegan diet, arguably an even healthier life. And to go back to my original point, just because you need to cum, doesnt mean that you have the right to cause suffering and death to other sentient beings.

Just masturbate. Just go vegan.

The US government does not recognize the ICC. The UN has no power, at most it can sent a stern letter. What could happen is the EU maybe complaining or even sanctioning the US but considering that Germany literally passed an illegal immigration law yesterday(the conservatives with support from the nazis), my hopes are not high.

Human rights is more of an optics(or an excuse) issue, rather than something that governments care about.

First, what the fuck, but second, how ready is NATO to turn on supposedly one of their own?

Turkey has been threatening to invade Greece since forever. Thats why both countries joined NATO together, at the same time(in 1952). And while there is some confidence regarding article 5, you cant have your country existence depend on “hope”. Thats why recently Greece signed a separate defence agreement with France.

And generally Greece is one of the few NATO countries that consistently spends more than the required NATO 2%. It generally tries to maintain a 1:3 ratio when it comes to Turkey military spending which might not be enough to beat Turkey 1:1 but it is enough to make Turkey think twice about doing anything weird. The issue is that Turkey is 8x bigger and not that poor anymore(while Greece is smaller and poorer than in the past).

I keep getting told that the “magic Article 5 argument isn’t a guarantee of support. There are no requirements to go to war for an ally, just pre-emptive permission to join in. It’s still voluntary, and few are so stupid as to stand against the [Empire!] USA!” (Brackets mine).

All agreements between nations are “voluntary”. You cant force a country to do anything, they are a sovereign state, ie they can do whatever they want. The article 5 has very strongly written language and it is one of the most “mandated” agreements you can have. But ultimately, it is about trust and belief in it.

Thats why Russia’s plan is to erode the belief in article 5 though hybrid warfare(and trump, if you think trump is compromised). Let’s say Russia goes and occupies 500sq meters of a baltic state. Would the US send 10 aircraft carriers and declare war on Russia? Maybe they will and then Russia would go “oups, my bad, didnt notice the map line”. Or maybe they wont. But even the discussion over whether NATO allies would strongly react to such a development, would corrode belief in article 5.

Each EU country should send 11 soldiers to Greenland. We can call them the EU 300 and they can use the “come and take them” motto. They will function as a tripwire, in case of an american invasion and it would show the EU commitment to the defense of the union.

Did people think that this would be the case? The gap between the 4080 and the 4090 is huge. Basically all non xx90 cards are heavily lobotomized.

The 5080 will be half the card the 5090 is and the 5090 is 30% faster than the 4090. I expect the 5080 to land in the middle between 4080 and the 4090, maybe 25% faster than the 4080.

That was the first time the Spartans lost. But the battle that was crucial and brought the end, was this one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leuctra

In order to combat the phalanx’s famous right-hand drift, Greek commanders traditionally placed their most experienced, highly regarded and, generally, deadliest troops on the right wing, as this was the place of honor. By contrast, the shakiest and/or least influential troops were often placed on the left wing.

In a major break with tradition, Epaminondas massed his cavalry and a fifty-deep column of Theban infantry on his left wing,[2] and sent forward this body against the Spartan right.

Basically the Thebans deliberately deployed their strongest forces against the spartan strongest forces. This was probably not only for tactical reasons but for morale reasons. They wanted to show to the rest of their greek allies, that they are willing to face spartans face to face, instead of sending some other random(and weaker) greek phalanx against them.

It is important to note that the only reason Sparta became the biggest player in Greece, was that Athens(the popular kid, ie the US) had managed to piss off and screw over everyone else in Greece. Everyone still hated Sparta but they hated Athens even more. So they allied with Sparta in order to destroy Athens.

Meanwhile Persia saw the opportunity to stir shit up and supported Sparta. Athens was after all the reason/excuse that Persia invaded Greece(twice, both failed). Because Athens had decided to help its colonies revolt in Anatolia, which were under persian control at that time.

Thats a basenji.

1. The msrp is good, maybe too good, we just need to wait and see the actual prices and availability.

2. I dont care about frame generation but it might be a decent last resort for when the gpus are old. Having a small latency, some visual fuckery and a “playable” game is preferable over not being able to play the game.

3. The biggest advantage of dlss 4.0 is their new ray reconstruction(transformer model) that will improve image quality but this feature is coming out on older gpus too.

4. We need to wait for benchmarks. Any card can be good or bad, it just depends on its price and performance. If the 5070 is 20% faster than a 4070super but also costs 20% more, then it isnt really that relevant, is it? I expect we will see something like that.

Because one of them happened “recently” and the other happened thousands of years ago. Also the romans were so good/good at converting people, that most of those nations consider themselves as the continuation of the roman empire.

People living under the Eastern Roman Empire(aka Byzantine Empire) and then under the Ottoman Empire, kept on living without any significant improvement to their lives. The ottomans just kept things going as they were, for the most part.

The ottomans converted people too, thats how there are millions of muslims/self-identifying turks in the area nowadays. 90% of them are native people who converted to muslim/turkish identity. The turks were originally steppe people, yet almost noone in Turkey has “asian eyes”.

The greeks did it too. Anatolia(Turkey) was full of “non greeks”, people like Hittites. They were converted to persians and then greeks and then roman, then greek and then turkish. I dont think there are many hittite independence supporters nowadays, it is a dead identity.

Greeks themselves abandoned the greek identity and became “christians” and “romans”, because greek started meaning “pagan” and they were not pagans. Eventually the greek identity rose into prominence again, especially as the Eastern Roman Empire started becoming more greek and less roman(or empire). Even nowadays, “romios”(roman) means greek, in modern greek. Though the latin romans are called “romaios”, which is different.

History is written and interpreted by the winners and current status quo. Most modern countries were defined by the rise of national identity a few centuries ago. So their current identity is defined by opposing whoever governed them at that time.

Literally 1984.

Actually there are greek numerals, which are basically the greek letters(with some weird additions)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals

So you can go up to any number you want.