My dad worked for Sperry Univac. For a while he was working on a ground-support trailer for the Sergeant surface-to-surface missile. He went in to work one Saturday for some kind of a major test. For some reason, he brought my mother and I along (maybe to give my mom a break). So this four-year-old (yours truly) goes into the trailer, and sees this bright red button...
It was not the launch button. It was the emergency shutdown button, which would have cost them an hour to bring the trailer back online. Someone stopped me before I actually pushed it, but still, this did not make me popular. What I remember from that day is actually the parking lot, because I spent far more time in the parking lot than in the trailer.
> The interesting thing is that Trump is now stuck in the war, just like Putin is in Ukraine.
Trump still has a small bit of time to take an off-ramp. US casualties have been in the single digits; there's not much national pride lost in walking away.
There may be lots of Trump's pride lost in pulling back, though, so yeah, he may be stuck in this war. The US is still better off than Russia, though, because we can get rid of Trump easier than they can get rid of Putin.
> So WHO is really doing the policy in the USA?
Events have their own momentum. Once you start the snowball rolling downhill, it's really hard to stop. Trump may not want to go to troops on the ground, but he's going to have to do that, or stop and pull back and eat his pride with Iran still unconquered (and angry). Since he will do almost anything rather than lose pride, he's trapped by the need to make this a win. In the same way, Iran is also trapped in the need to make this a win. (Not "need to win" - both sides need to make it appear to their people as a win, which is not quite the same thing.)
> US casualties have been in the single digits; there's not much national pride lost in walking away.
Fatalities are in double digits (13) though 6 are from a plane crash with no one claiming the Iranians caused it. Casualties are in the triple-digits, since it includes injured, not just killed.
But yes, the numbers are still small enough we can pull out without that influencing the decision (from a public opinion perspective) substantially.
Well, marines are usually delivered to a target area by ship. You can get the marines to the coast of the Persian Gulf by air or by car or whatever, but how do you get them to Kharg Island? It has to be either air or ship. And if it's going to be ship, you have to get the landing ship there. If it's not already in the Gulf, then it has to come through Hormuz.
Caltrain, from SF to SJ, is part of the California high speed rail system, and you can ride it right now. It's now electrified at 25KV, welded rail, concrete ties, and compatible with high speed rail. The Stadler trains are capable of 125MPH but are run slower because there are so many stations.
The initial segment in Central Valley has current date of 2032. It depends on if federal government restores funding or if California has to fund itself.
Phase 1 from SF to LA is estimated for 2035-2040. They might do end-to-end service before that with existing tracks and slower speeds, especially from Palmdale to LA. The SF and LA segments require tunneling to get over the mountains.
What's notable about the initial segment is that it parallels (and thus duplicates) an existing Amtrak service between Bakersfield and Merced. So the initial operating segment gives us zero new destinations by rail.
But, hey, you'll be able to go really fast between California's 6th and 80th largest cities!
Where we are now is nothing like where we were in 1979. Inflation was something like 14%. Interest rates hit 20%. Yeah, I know that the last few years were painful after 15 years of ZIRP, but it's not at all the same.
The majority of citizens may not be following all this closely, but they're not stupid. They can feel when they're becoming poorer, and they don't like it. They blame the president when it happens, even if they can't explain exactly why.
But what the Republicans might be able to do is spend like drunken sailors, and have the crisis happen when the Democrats are in power after 2028. People blame the current president, whether or not he had much of a chance to do anything about it.
From Schlock Mercenary: "Oh, I love aiming. It's my very favorite thing to do before firing."
AI use without checking its output (at least at the moment) is firing without aiming. Sure, you can fire really fast. But who cares if you don't hit what you need to? The point wasn't to just shoot bullets, the point was to hit your target!
I mean, you might make a case that enough of them hit the target that shooting fast is a net win, and accept the occasional friendly fire incident. That might possibly be true. Or it might not. I'm not sure that everyone trying to run fast has really done the calculation, though.
reply