mawarannahr posted:

lmao what a grift
DoD suddenly abandons plan to replace Defense Travel System | Federal News Network

Megamissen posted:

who is this refering to?

Ardennes posted:

There is plenty of 90s thought in DS9 especially regarding the Klingons (i.e the Russkis), Erzi Dax has a whole speech about how they need to give up on their culture, become more like the Federation, or die out.

quote:

We are Klingons, Worf. We don't embrace other cultures, we conquer them!

Ardennes posted:

The US was friendly with the Russians from the late 1980s to the late 90s, they were still the Russians. Generally from that point the Klingons either get ignored or more negative bit portrayals (Worf is in Picard, but I don't think there is a single line about anything going on with them or their culture).

Cardassians are just generic Nazis, if anything Bajor is arguably more Israel (from a 90s Hollywood point of view). The Federation is America, it just is how American liberals view American power. There is a reason the vast majority of captains are American.

The Klingons "honorable warrior" thing is a old trope that shows up everywhere in Scifi, but the back and worth between the Klingons and the Federation pretty much goes from the original series though the movies and then TNG/DS9. If anything, it is the closest thing to a meta-narrative in Trek (until I guess Voyager to today where there is absolutely nothing going except one off space adventures).

skooma512 posted:

The Klingons changing in appearance and mannerisms from the 60s to the 90s and then I guess again in the 2010s is addressed in universe as some kind of plague.

Which is another point against trying to justify changes from real world production and costuming within the show's universe instead of just ignoring it and moving on. That's the reason Discovery klingons don't look like Worf, I forget if they carried it over to Strange New Worlds or even if there were klingons depicted in SNW at all.

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

Unrelated to this thread, but maybe some of you can help:

I read a story/journal article years ago about postwar japan, and a culture of pacification/childishness that was used to deal with/accept responsibility for imperial japan and its nuclear end. i don't remember much else about it, which country had that idea, etc.

does this ring a bell to anyone? A book/article/anything would be helpful

quote:

Murakami believes that the childishness of Japan's pop-culture is partly due to the traumas of World War II, including the atomic bomb and the...

Retromancer posted:

MGS just made me think about Metal Gear Solid and lol at the idea of a MIC designed genome soldier project.

BearsBearsBears posted:

The ice formed on these fuel lines is what caused the Challenger disaster.

quote:

It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management.

...

since the Shuttle is a manned vehicle "the probability of mission success is necessarily very close to 1.0."

quote:

In spite of these variations from case to case, officials behaved as if they understood it, giving apparently logical arguments to each other often depending on the "success" of previous flights. For example. in determining if flight 51-L was safe to fly in the face of ring erosion in flight 51-C, it was noted that the erosion depth was only one-third of the radius. It had been noted in an [F2] experiment cutting the ring that cutting it as deep as one radius was necessary before the ring failed. Instead of being very concerned that variations of poorly understood conditions might reasonably create a deeper erosion this time, it was asserted, there was "a safety factor of three." This is a strange use of the engineer's term ,"safety factor." If a bridge is built to withstand a certain load without the beams permanently deforming, cracking, or breaking, it may be designed for the materials used to actually stand up under three times the load. This "safety factor" is to allow for uncertain excesses of load, or unknown extra loads, or weaknesses in the material that might have unexpected flaws, etc. If now the expected load comes on to the new bridge and a crack appears in a beam, this is a failure of the design. There was no safety factor at all; even though the bridge did not actually collapse because the crack went only one-third of the way through the beam. The O-rings of the Solid Rocket Boosters were not designed to erode. Erosion was a clue that something was wrong. Erosion was not something from which safety can be inferred.

stephenthinkpad posted:

So it's just straight up foreign legions. Wait, do French foreign legion or British Gurkhas brigades give out citizenships?

PawParole posted:

https://twitter.com/HarmlessYardDog/status/1744054524111725054

America can’t make nuclear missiles anymore because they fired all the technicians to save money

DancingShade posted:

Stealing foreign reserves sounds much cooler when you imagine a James Bond style movie heist of a giant container ship secretly loaded with gold bars that sinks dramatically during the action packed climax over some ocean trench too deep for salvage.

When you realise it just means changing some excel spreadsheet cells it loses the dramatic impact.

BillsPhoenix posted:

Advertising, PR firms. Medicine and medical equipment. Net food exporter. Ship building, shipyard infrastructure, shipping logistical solutions. Commercial airplanes.

They're obviously not making tanks and artillery shells, but its not like it's only financial services and management consulting.

BULBASAUR posted:

taking a bong hit so huge you instantly die and don't realize it

mawarannahr posted:

modernization of the zumwalt? it's practically brand new

USS Zumwalt


e: lol

quote:

The lead ship is named Zumwalt for Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and carries the hull number DDG-1000. Originally, 32 ships were planned, with $9.6 billion research and development costs spread across the class. As costs overran estimates, the number was reduced to 24, then to 7, and finally to 3. This significantly increased the cost per ship to $4.24 billion ($7.5 billion including R&D costs),[1][17][18][2] well exceeding the per-unit cost of a nuclear-powered Virginia-class submarine ($2.688 billion). In July 2008, the Navy requested that Congress stop procuring Zumwalts and revert to building more Arleigh Burke destroyers. This final cut in procurement led to a dramatic per-unit cost increase that eventually triggered a Nunn–McCurdy Amendment breach.[19] In April 2016, the total program cost was $22.5 billion.[2][20][21]

Votskomit posted:

Bell Riots were written after Roddenberry died.

Irrelevegardlessly though, if it holds true we should also expect Europe in "political anarchy", France to have trouble with neotrotskyites, and computers that work via stylus/touchpads.

skooma512 posted:

Strange New Worlds was actually super good. The finest Trek of the 21st century by far. I was sketched by the prequelness and worried it was just more TOS nostalgia bullshit but I was very impressed and I'm usually not impressed.

Jel Shaker posted:

are the skills pretty transferable between air and sub hunting roles on a boat, or is it basically going to require twice the crew / poo poo show

Pistol_Pete posted:

Yeah, there's zero apparent awareness of the fact that you can't do conscription in a society where the official ideology is that it's every man for himself and the state owes you nothing. There has to be some sort of shared aspiration to a cause beyond the individual and we've given up on that in the West.

Megamissen posted:

why did rum become the alcholic drink all the navies used?

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Mixed with fresh water and lemon, rum was considered healthy. It was not drunk straight until relatively late, so it’s not like sailors were drunk, I think the serving would be around 4-5% abv.

fits my needs posted:

https://x.com/ArmyTimes/status/1762258502817284552?s=20

poisonpill posted:

when are they going to stop saying "near peer" when describing armies with superior capabilities

Danann posted:

Table 4:


Tl;DR USA can just

1) Use submarines in Taiwan strait which the Chinese will have trouble countering
2) Fire long range missiles which the Chinese will have trouble countering
3) US vassals are spending more money!!!!
4) If measured by the stuff we find valuable and discounting everything else, the US and vassals are in the lead militarily.

Mr Hootington posted:

This is only the Northeast Reserve that was created in response to the Huricane Sandy disaster.

Hatebag posted:

lol do the sailors need a life boss and emotional support dogs because they're killing themselves, drinking too much, fighting, slacking off, or all of the above?

DancingShade posted:

I remember being in a pub the night before local lockdown and it was all everyone talked about. Never saw a general population so terrified. The Stand even came up. Then the whole thing was just a wet fart in the scheme of things.

Safe to say some lasting effects.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

stephenthinkpad posted:

I am coming around to the conclusion that the US doesn't like to copy a successful design and do incremental improvement on it because you can't patent and copyright protect your version and thus forever rent seek on it. Also making standardized compatible accessories can't make extra money from the proprietary accessories either. Obviously in military you can't copy protect a design, but you still carry over that rent seeking mindset from the business world. Some Secretary of Defenses are straight up businessmen.

Punished Turtle posted:

yeah it’s wild!

A second Truss has become a sub!

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1772472565585563921

Lol at this entirely predictable series of events in Australia.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Australian naval policy has never been good, which is bizarre for an island nation. Historically bad naval decision making lmao.

Nix Panicus posted:

How much human suffering is down to the basic inability to call someone in a position of authority a stupid fucker to their face?

BrotherJayne posted:

What about the eviction moratorium?

BearsBearsBears posted:

It's a bit tangential to this thread but the Canadian army has a a new logo. I'm not sure how much it cost to do this rebranding.

mila kunis posted:

https://twitter.com/general_ben/status/1786362618552222173

Cerebral Bore posted:

always remember that the us can only view other countries as vassals or enemies but never equals

CN CREW-VESSEL posted:

I am slowly becoming the joker because of this web module I have to do this week











But imagine it's a tank, and the big assignment is "war with Russia"

KomradeX posted:

Youd need an industrial base for that