NCD is leaking again. Someone get the 100mph tape.

They aren’t the arbiter of what is and isn’t a war.

Yes, that is technically true. It is also completely legal. For reference it is also legal to shoot an enemy soldier in the back as they run away. It is legal to shoot an enemy soldier in any case except where they are clearly trying to surrender, including if they are just laying there unconscious.

The rules of war allow for far more than people realize. And Again, I’m not trying to let them off the hook. There’s real questions about this entire thing being a war crime and about their targeting of bombs.

I loved reading his definition of a war crime. It’s basically describing himself at this point, a person sick of mind who is powerful and rich with nuclear weapons. No reasonable leader gets on a social media platform and sends, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

No reasonable president threatens to destroy an entire civilization.

It takes a sickness of the mind to justify hitting civilian targets just because they indirectly benefit the military.

Unfortunately what is allowed in war is still pretty brutal. This was a warship and it would be a legitimate target from the moment the war started, without exception.

Let’s focus on the actual war crimes, like the Pentagon redefining “military target” to include destroying energy, food, and fresh water infrastructure because soldiers need to drink water too… Hitting those targets would still be a war crime, the Pentagon is not the arbiter of what is and isn’t a military target.

Oh Undoubtedly. I look forward to all the explanations as to why it’s Capitalism when we do it and Socialism when Venezuela does it.

They’re gonna nationalize our oil aren’t they? Required sale to the government at a set rate and then government will turn around and sell into the domestic and international markets to balance prices at our pumps.

It’s about the only option other than stop bombing Iran and that’s not happening.

Hold on I got a thing for that around here somewhere… I think is called a DD214 or something? Oh here’s a PT belt that’ll work.

Yup. The US Patent office isn’t very good at it’s job.

I got bad news for you. Gabe is human and barring a miracle in medical science; he will die. He’s 63, the tables on Age Cohort death aren’t kind after 60. (They’re brutal after 70) Only 1/3rd of men reach 80.

This is something we need to be thinking about now. It could easily take 5-10 years to get competitors working.

Monopolies distort markets even when they act in a pro-consumer manner. For example the credit card companies. A basic credit card is really cheap and easy for the average person to use. All of the fees are actually on the business side, which is why you see businesses that still run on cash only or charge a credit card fee. The credit card network operators, (AMEX, Disc, MC, VISA) are the only option for businesses that want to accept credit cards in the US. You don’t see a Debit card fee because it’s actually illegal for them to pass along the Debit card processing fee.

So while the average person with the line of credit is happy about this, the businesses are not. In a normal system you would pay for the service being provided. So the person with the card would be responsible for paying to have that access.

Steam does this by making their product (the storefront) free to the average person and charging the developers money to use it. While they also effectively own your games. In a system with plenty of storefronts it might be much more common to see downloadable installation files. That’s certainly one way in which they’ve distorted the market. That used to be very common. It doesn’t help that EA, GamePass, and some others who’ve tried to start storefronts have repeatedly tripped over their own feet. Epic seems to be doing it but they’re basically using Steam’s business model because there’s no other choice as long as Steam exerts it’s monopoly power.

It’s nearly to $7/gal here.

Yeah. The humor in the military back then and now is best described as “It’s not gay if you say no homo!” And yet somehow also very homophobic. (Less so now than when I was in the army) It wouldn’t be hard at all to find a private flirting as a joke.

I turned 18 in basic training. You can ship to basic while you’re 17. And then go to a unit. You are not deployable to a contingency zone (the widest definition of “place you could be injured by enemy fire”) until you’re 18.

Later on we got a private who actually made it all the way to the unit and had to wait until his 18th birthday to join us on deployment.

Ironically that’s a good recruiter. Anything that looks like fraternizing with potential recruits outside official activities is a huge no no.

If you’d have joined then you’d realize your mistake. They just assumed you already had the same sense of humor somehow.

The recruiter lied. We believe you. But they lied to you.

The thing about IFF systems is you have to use them for them to work…

So this is why they’re turning VA lawyers into part time prosecutors. Great.

The US military can’t even keep it’s operations properly secret because privates have to tell their AI girlfriend what they’re up to. You really think they could keep shoot downs secret? There’s 5,000 sailors on an Aircraft carrier. This isn’t the CIA.