Nuke

rumor is that it was so successful they quickly classified all the data. but thats not really evidence of the thing existing or working.

see project marauder. rings of plasma have sufficient self containment characteristics that it can hold its form while being accelerated to hypersonic velocities. no real physical impact other than rapid surface heating and emp effects.

sometimes i wonder if the icbm is becoming obsolete as a first strike option. the primary advantage of icbms was to surpass the limitations of long range strategic bombers available at the time. but now we have stealth, midair refueling, hypersonic, and drone tech. we also have submarines that can park off the cost of a target and unload with little warning and mere seconds of reaction time. russia's nuclear drone torpedoes are definitely out of the box thinking. spec ops deployments are also an option. a first strike is never going to happen in the way we expect it to happen.

id say hyperbole is the bigger issue. someone who is merely skeptical about the safety of vaccines or has questions about specific vaccines is just flat out labeled an anti-vaxxer and any hard questions they had are conveniently brushed under the rug. failing to agree 100% with the present consensus on the soft sciences is enough to label one anti-science. science cannot function without people questioning the existing hypotheses that people erroneously call theories. even the theories are not set in stone, the best science is done when old widely accepted theories are overturned and replaced with better theories. science is a process for finding truth, it is not the gatekeeper of truth. im not even going to touch on xenophopbia because idk how to broach that one without entering into politics. in each of the examples you provided these are simply labels one side use to drive a narrative and are at best very imprecise or at worst completely unfounded accusations. now granted there are anti-science, anti-vax, blatantly racist types out there, and in the minority, but it is wrong to paint wide swathes of the population with that brush simply because they disagree with you.

that's why i quit with my aa. i quickly realized that assignments given to pass the course had nothing to do with what i would be expected to do in the real world. collage really is just a filter that lets the compliant ones through and prevents free thinkers from prospering. i feel like the sieve has tightened a lot in the last 2 decades since i graduated. it seemed like they wanted you to align with one of a few common ways of thinking, they didn't care where you ended up so long as you ended up in a place accepted by a big enough subset of the populous. but now they want you to align with a specific way of thinking and anyone who deviates is wrong, and anyone outside the institution is not credible. so now you end up with students faking their way through, giving the profs what they want to get their degree and exiting the institution with no useful life skills or worldview. are these institutions intended to educate you or to break you?

i think it all comes down to whats cheaper to build? warheads or interceptors? given that warheads can share launch vehicles i think its less. but warheads are not cheap either. of course what happens ultimately is that interceptors are placed to protect centers of government and other high value locations, with the rest of the population centers being considered acceptable losses (and also prime targets). a nuclear war will be a contest to cripple the other side's economy to a point where being a nuclear power is no longer a sustainable option. i dont think nucelar war is the world-ender it was in the early '80s, but its still going to suck for everyone involved and several that arent (and when those invade to retaliate for being irradiated, the heads go too).

we unfortunately have to deal with a lot of bureaucrats and the nearest kinkos is in another state. no two of the various government bureaucracies mom depends on for survival seem to use the same system to submit applications. some have a portal, others have a phone app, others still do things the old fashioned way, one recently required us to fill out a fallible pdf, print it out, sign it, scan it back in and email it to them. i wasnt going to waste all that paper, so i just printed out the signature sheet and edited it in with gimp.

trying to level up gunhead in the forever winter is really hard. being a robot, he is the only character who cant use medkits. he has the highest base health but no way to re-generate during a run. only thing that works is combat avoidant runs to the evac point, and then camping anything that comes by. meanwhile old man hit level 21 just recovering gunhead's stuff. the 20mm anti tank gun is awesome. also i think i gave lordoss lung cancer, though im not sure if lordoss has lungs. this is why we are cat people. mom always likes to leave loaves of bread and pot holders on the burners. i finally got her to remove her dolls and dollhouses from the counter space but she replaced them with a really nifty convection oven. i still want for counter space. now if i can convince her that pills go in the medicine cabinet and not next to the coffee. she always uses the walker/wheelchair excuse, but she is just being lazy.

every printer is broken. especially our color laser printer. it gets weird gradiation on the black channel. i suspect a bad cartridge. these are not cheap. it would cost $200 to replace all of them. the machine has not even printed 1000 pages yet. yet now we have come to the conclusion that a new printer would be cheaper than new cartridges. ewaste++; i mean we could waste $50 on just the black cartridge, but that's kind of a gamble.

i hope they install it in a location that doesn't get scraped by the chopsticks on landing.

i knew a vietnam vet who claimed they used it for cook fires. high explosives are really stable and usually require a high energy even to initiate, like a blasting cap (these probibly wont be installed until its on the pad).

if elon really was a tyrant, that would have been the first thing he cut, the fact that he didn't shows restraint. restraint is good.

im a fair bit further south in se alaska, more of a rainforest climate than arctic. its still somewhat harsh with freezing rain which is a bane to anyone who works outside in the early winter or late spring, when you not only have cold temperatures but have to deal with being wet most of the time. rain gear is a must. in the arctic there is nothing, no trees, only source of food is caribou, fish and various marine mammals. down here ground beef is like $6 (though i did recently buy a dozen eggs for $10), milk is about $8 a gallon. worst prices are in the arctic or in western alaska. around anchorage there is farmland, though thanks to regulation any local livestock has to be shipped down south for inspection (there are no local usda inspectors), and then shipped back here, at which point its no cheaper than import meat. in se we mostly get it shipped up from the western costal states.

this may come as a surprise to some but i had no real introduction into gun/hunting culture until i moved to to my present location some 15 years ago and my sister's husband at the time took me hunting a few times. i successfully bagged a deer a duck and several grouse. so it came as a bit of a shock how respectable that way of life is. up till that point i didn't own any firearms (and still dont mind you), and hunting is a lot of work that i dont think i can do anymore. prior to this i had mostly lived in cities and grew tired of the way they suck the life out of you. doing things as nature intended feels very natural. i expected to see a bunch of sociopaths taking bites out of still beating hearts. there was none of that, lots of stuff to learn, about nature, about gun safety, about how to maintain healthy game populations, and to respect nature. many life lessons were learned that i wish id learned growing up. you can argue whether or not hunting is a sport, i just know what it says on my hunting license. predation is never fair. it could be me or a wolf. a bullet is a lot better than having a wolf pack gnaw and your legs until you drop and then go for the jugular at their leisure (or more likely taking chunks out while its still alive before the alpha demands exclusive rights to the carcass). the deer dont exactly have fangs, so the wolves aren't playing fair either. this is the natural order of nature, we may have significantly better tools than the wolves do. urban consumers of meat simply put this responsibility onto others, animals grow in confinement, loaded with all kinds of antibiotics, often in not so good conditions and then are essentially shipped to a murder mill. you will never find healthier meat than wild game. you have some control over the process and you need not make the animals suffer any longer than necessary (intentionally cruel hunters may exist, but ive never met any). one or two successful hunts a year is more than enough to feed a family for a year. a moose covers your extended family as well. this has nothing to do with the mental health issues that cause gun violence. if anything it gives a person a modicum of agency in a world that wants to decide everything for you. sure beats getting caught between employers who dont want to hire mentally unstable people and the bureaucratic hellscape of public assistance services that say they will help and then dont all while wasting time with applications and endless denial letters. then the prospect of becoming homeless on top of all that. but its easier to take away guns from innocent people in the hopes of keeping an unstable person from having access than it is to solve or lessen those people's problems.

everyone has their own propaganda and that propaganda is usually hyperbole that says if we dont do x america is doomed. this comes from all sides that have a side. its always the same except x changes. i cant help but notice how ham dramatic the weather report is. or how people on opposing sides can claim victory over the same political interaction (im pointing at youtube pundits here). we know the psychology of being bombarded with constant doom and gloom messaging, and go figure you see it everywhere. if america does fall its a self fulfilling prophecy and it would deserve to do so for failing to notice in time. what happens to the world is that some other country claims alpha predator status, and they take our place. as we fall into a position of less relevance. the people in all continue their lives until the next churn. the best thing we can do to stop that from happening is to use our eyes and ears more than our screens and speakers and take notice when we start acting like the despots and tyrants were supposed to despise rather than envy.