I’d you want immutability and things that just works, snaps are the exact opposite of what he needs. I’m gearing up to swap away from Ubuntu for the same reasons as him, and the snap ecosystem is utterly fucked and accelerating my timetable daily.

I’ve never seen something so damn broken, and it gets more so every update. It’s gotten to the point of where snap store will just straight up log me out of my session out of the blue when it finds an update so it can install it, losing all of my work.

You say that like a significant number of these Republican’s donors would not salivate over being able to fracture the US from world politics like that.

…Russia. I’m talking about Russia, if you’re unaware.

You’re welcome for the details.

So I see ‘they were ready to surrender’ a lot in this thread, and while that’s not… false, it’s not exactly what it sounds like. They were ready to come to the table, yes, absolutely, but the problem was that they wanted to dictate their surrender - they wanted to keep their military, they wanted their industry rebuilt, they wanted the current government to stay in power- it was less of a surrender or more of a cessation of hostilities. Japan was ‘ready to surrender’ in much the same way Russia was ‘ready to come to the peace table’ about a year ago.

This was geopolitically not realistic, for a number of reasons- for one, allowing that kind of conditional surrender with Germany is directly what lead to WW2 in the first place, and nobody had any intentions of repeating that mistake. There was concern, given the view on surrendering, that it wouldn’t actually be peace, or a surrender, merely a delaying tactic to build up forces and entrench. For another, Russia was bearing down on Japan, and the Allies wanted to limit Russia’s geopolitical influence by preventing another East/West Germany. While the extra troops would have undoubtedly help save American lives, it would have ended in significant Russian and Japanese deaths, as well significant geopolitical issues long-term (East/West Germany worked so well, after all :P )

Long story short, the Allies absolutely wanted an unconditional surrender, exactly the kind of thing the Emperor and the military refused to contemplate, even after a single bomb was dropped. The military still refused to consider it even after the second, so seeing the a-bomb in action once would likely, I feel, not have done much.

RE: hitting civilians in large numbers, my understanding is less that they were deliberately targeting civilians, and more that they were looking for military targets that were geographically located in a position that would enhance the bomb’s effects without considering civilians too much. You could argue in a very real way that they were deployed as terror weapons, or perhaps ‘shock and awe’ weapons if you want to be slightly less confrontational. Civilian casualties were, much like the entire rest of WW2, not much of a consideration- WW2 was considered a total war, and the Geneva Convention would not be signed for another 4 years, directly as a result of the atrocities of WW2. At the time, civilians were not considered something to inherently avoid unless you had some sort of political reason to do so (hence the leaflets). The most obvious example of this is the firebombings of Tokyo, which killed far, far more civilians in arguably far more painful ways, but there’s plenty of example in the European front from all sides as well. Again, they were making decisions with the knowledge and viewpoints of the time. Doesn’t excuse it, but trying to moralize decisions made in the past with current morals is always kind of a waste of time, in my opinion.

Regarding the third shot, there was, at the time, no bombs available when the uranium Little Boy bomb for Hiroshima was dropped, but they had prepped for another. They immediately turned towards trying to prepare another (Nagasaki’s plutonium-based Fat Man), and managed to rush it to completion in just a week, but keep in mind that these were highly dangerous, experimental one-off prototypes being produced- it’s why all of the planned subsequent bombs were of the fat man design, which was significantly safer, and America was completely out of uranium at that. It was only able to be rushed to completion so much because General Groves always planned to use two, and a lot of the logistics were already worked out and prepped beforehand. Before more plutonium bombs could be made, Woodrow Wilson called off the production. So yes, America was technically out of bombs, and completely out of uranium.

Arguably, America could have created more plutonium bombs, but was limited by the availability of plutonium (which is lengthy to turn into weapons grade), the speed at which they could be safely produced (and Fat Man was, frankly, very unsafely produced, it should have taken nearly 3 weeks to create), and America only had a small amount of weapons-grade plutonium stockpiled. So technically, both positions are correct- America only had two bombs, and they certainly could have made more, but they were limited by time and materials, and lack of willingness. They had, perhaps, one or two more fat mans they would be able to drop, with perhaps 3+ week production times for each (because no logistics were prepared for it), before it would have dropped to something like iirc 6 months per bomb due to lack of prepared plutonium.

So yes, one could argue there could have been more bombs after the first two, but it was generally considered by the American military and also the President that two was the ‘magic number,’ so there wasn’t any setup for them, so they would not have been cranked out anywhere near as fast. Nobody believed that one bomb would trigger a surrender (because of, again, the cultural viewpoints on surrendering) as well the implicit belief that it would be a one-off prototype that could not be repeated.

If two did not, and it was widely considered it would, nobody believed 3 would be any more likely to trigger a surrender than two did, and might even convince them to fight harder. In addition, due to the effects of radiation, America would have limited to how they could use the bombs one the land invasion started- with Russia from the north, America from the south-east, and most of central Japan firebombed, there’s not a lot of good targets without hitting allies.

He’s not theorizing, he’s summarizing decades of historians’ research. We know, for example, with the benefit of hindsight, that your idea would not have worked- it would have lead only to countless deaths via nuke, and then a long, slow slog through the meat grinder for troops and civilians.

How do we know this? Because we have Japanese communications from the time- and they basically sum up to something along the lines of “They don’t have the balls to use the bomb against people again.” with a side dash of “they don’t have more bombs to throw at people.”

Exploding the first one over water, the second one over a city on people, and then NOT dropping a third one because we didn’t have anymore would have proved them right, and without a surrender it would have lead to millions of dead Americans and Japanese. They made so many purple hearts preparing for that invasion in 1945 that we still haven’t gone through the backlog, 80 years later.

Now think about it without the benefit of hindsight. You know that culturally, they refuse to surrender. You know they see massive losses as completely acceptable, civilian, military, and suicide bombers. You know they want to try and grind the US down, make them give up because of the sheer number of troops dead. You know they’re trying desperately to negotiate a favorable surrender where they can save face, maintain their ‘experiments’, and maintain their military, which is exactly the sort of thing that lead to WW2 in the first place. Finally you know you only have two bombs. Use them wrong, and the deaths, crippling, and wounding of millions of your own country’s soldiers is directly on your head. Use them right, and you might get some surrenders.

Frankly speaking, dropping the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost didn’t end the war. The second bomb was what finally changed the mind of the emperor, because he bought the bluff that if we had two we would throw at people, we had more. Even then, there was instantly a coup to try and halt the surrender process- and they thought this guy was literally an incarnation/speaker/appointed of god. That’s how much the military hated the idea of surrendering.

And finally, do keep in mind- every time the US bombed a Japanese city, they dropped leaflets warning the civilians to get out. By all accounts, they were actually highly effective.

To make it clear, dropping the bombs was a horrible thing. That it killed so many civilians who wouldn’t- or more likely couldn’t - get out in time, even if warned, is horrific. Leaflets are good and all, but that doesn’t meanyou have anywhere to go, or the infrastructure, and beyond that, the Emporer was executing anyone who tried to leave bombing areas. (Seriously, possession of a leaflet was grounds for immediate execution.) But the alternatives to dropping the bombs were judged, at the time, to be worse. And I believe that their decision to do so were understandable with the knowledge they had, the options they had, and the consequences to their own troops if they didn’t.

To be entirely fair, what civil discourse can you have around “We want to make bloodsport of murdering these people.” vs “Maybe just let people have basic rights.”

I don’t think you are appreciating just how completely absurdly broken an unshackled FPS bot is. A chess bot will beat you. An FPS bot will not even allow you to play.

I’m not even kidding, an FPS bot will literally kill you from across the entire map, through a wall, with a perfect headshot, long before it would even be possible for you to know where the bot even is.

An unshackled FPS bot knows where you are at all times, how you’re moving, and can execute tick-perfect headshots the very second it can kill you, and it will never miss, even on full auto. It will fire a shot that goes through three sub-pixel-wide gaps and through a wall to instantly kill you, because it can calculate every single angle to get that kill faster than the server can even do a game update.

Humans may not stand a chance against a chess bot, but at least they can play a match against one. Against an FPS bot, you don’t even get to play the match, you just lose.

This is actually pretty funny- bots are INTENTIONALLY dumbed down in FPSs, because they would be unstoppable, unkillable gods otherwise. An unshackled FPS bot would make a chess bot look like a rank amateur in how hard it would dominate the top tier of professionals compared to the chess bot.

No? That’s literally how banks work. You store your money there, and they protect it, manage it, etc. But this isn’t harry potter, there isn’t some underground vault with your name on it, they just take all your money and stick it in a giant pool they use to invest and make themselves money.

‘Your’ money is actually just them tracking what you actually have, and if you ask for some of it, they have the equivalent of petty cash they pay it out with. You cannot pull out massive amounts of your own money all at once without warning on the spot, because they simply will not have it available.

It’s why depressions and ‘bank runs’ are a thing- the actual amount of cash a bank has on available is ALWAYS lower than the total number of assets they have earmarked from people, because it’s all tied up in investments. If those investments go belly up, or everyone all tries to pull money out at the same, the bank has a major problem.

“Freezing” someone’s assets just means that the bank isn’t allowed to let someone pull money out, or transfer that money, not that the cash/investments/etc are pulled back and stuck in a vault somewhere- the BANK still has that money it’s larger money pool, because it was always there from the first moment they got it.

makes sense, but will never happen because the people holding those seized russian billions will never give it away. Why would they, when they’ve currently got it all invested and making themselves money?

You literally jumped straight to ‘death to the jews’ and ‘well, both sides.’ You don’t get to complain about people ‘proving your point’ that ‘we can’t have a conversation about this.’ You weren’t having a conversation, you were erecting a strawman.

There’s four sides. HAMAS, Israel’s government, the average Palestinian, and the average Israeli.

I think you may also want to consider a breather. I’m not attacking you, I’m not accusing you of nefarious intentions, and I’m not casting judgements.

I’m pointing out that, regardless of if you’re advocating it or not, you are inadvertently supporting the idea that voter apathy is acceptable. You’re not doing it outright, and that’s not what you’re trying to do, I get that. You’re trying to neutrally state that regardless of what happens, it takes more than one presidential change to cause geopolitical changes on the scale Australia is threatening.

Now, I actually disagree with that point that in general, I feel we’ve seen our allies distance themselves or even break off with us in Trump’s first (and hopefully only) presidency, but that’s not actually what we’re discussing here anyway and I don’t think either of us really care to dig into the weeds there, because it involves a scenario I think both of us hope won’t happen.

My point is more that, as someone who cannot read minds, I can’t tell if that language is coming in as a complete coincidental accident, it’s something you accidentally picked up from GOP propaganda pointed directly at your demographic (which is most likely imo), or you’re intentionally spreading it (highly unlikely, given your post history). But regardless of what you’re intending to say, what you’re actually saying gives a feeling of ‘calm down, it’s not a big deal, trump winning isn’t a huge catastrophe to democracy, it’ll be fine, any damage he can cause will be limited.’

And that happens to directly be a piece of GOP propaganda to encourage non-GOP voters not to vote, because voter suppression and low voter turnout helps the GOP.

Again, I’m not saying you’re doing it intentionally, or even registering it. I’m not saying it’s some nefarious plan, and I’m not blaming you. I’m pointing out that there is unconscious bias in what you’re saying. Admittedly I was first trying to point out that bias to anyone reading, which probably looked combative to you, so my bad for that.

It’s not what you said, it’s what you implied with what you said.

And yes, you do not lean GOP. But the entire point of that apathy is specifically to target non-GOP voters to keep them from voting- so it would be entirely expected to see that sort of accidental encouragement of apathy from a non-GOP poster, and all the more important to call it out because unlike someone who votes R, you would see the importance of shaking off that false apathy and voting.

A standard GOP play is on display here, readers: the classic “Oh it’s not that bad, nothing will really change, if you don’t vote it’ll be just fine.”

Things have already changed. Our institutions are not just under strain, in some ways they’ve already fallen. Our supreme Court is thoroughly compromised. The house is under control by a vocal, crazy minority that just managed to wrest control of speaker of the house who is third in line to the president.

We came incredibly close to a coup stealing an entire branch of the US government, and the second and third are already under minority zealot control.

Vote. The US government is not so resilient that you can just ignore it. In fact, that is directly the plan and goal of the minority party trying to steal permanent control of the government- to trick you into apathy, that it doesn’t matter who is in charge because nothing will change

Their past actions prove otherwise. Don’t allow yourself to be mislead. Vote. And don’t ignore people like the person above me trying to siren call others into a position of comfortable apathy. Call them out on their bullshit. Be polite, it may be inadvertant- perhaps they’ve not been affected. Or maybe they’re trying to talk about something else and are simply accidentally implying that things will just end up fine, like the poster above me. But in the end, regardless of the motivations, it is bullshit all the same. History is littered with the ghosts of once grand countries, and nobody thought they would fall either.

So am I missing something? 2.7oz seems hilariously tiny?

Which is why these people don’t use sms or standard calling. They use something like Signal.

Oh look, it’s the Russian shill account.