Okay I snorted out loud at that one. That WOULD be a surprise!

Hold onto your socks, because here we gooooo…

probably longer than the life of the car.

It’s not beyond imagining that the “life” of an EV could soon be measured in decades. Vehicles made with all aluminum uni-body construction won’t rust away and without a combustion engine and it’s required transmission all that’s left is the wheel assemblies, interior parts and electronics.

So not only “what is the life of the car” but also who cares if the battery pack costs $5,000 (or more) to replace when you can expect the vehicle as a whole to last another 20, 30, or even 40 years?

Auto manufacturers go out of their minds with worry when considering a future where people aren’t buying replacement vehicles every few years.

Intel’s 5 series GPUs are meant for the low-middle to middle range of the market. They are targeted at 1440p (and under) gaming and the B580 with 12G of VRAM will almost certainly perform perfectly fine.

If you are more concerned about performance but are on a budget then wait for the eventual 7 series ARC GPU or grab a 4060ti.

Trump has been saying he was going to block this deal since early in his campaign. The Biden Administration was / is going to block it as well. The United Steelworkers Union has publicly said that it wants it blocked.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/02/business/trump-block-us-nippon-steel-hnk-intl/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

So WTF is all of this hubbub about? What’s happening here is absolutely no surprise at all.

here’s no way the US would fail to gain air superiority.

We achieve Air Superiority and then use that to build a McDonalds and a Starbucks on every street corner. It’s a perfect plan!

You forget who those Armed American Civilians virtually ALL voted for.

Don’t believe the hype, there’s plenty of Armed American Civilians who didn’t vote for that guy. They are not the real majority they are just noisy.

What is Bubba going to do with his Ford and his AR when a fuckin’ tank rolls down the middle of 23rd Avenue?

Where is the fuel coming from to keep that tank rolling and how is it getting there?

How about when a drone hits his buddy with three fingers and all the pipe bombs?

Where does that drone operator live? Where are the parts for that drone coming from, how are they getting there, and who is assembling them?

The US Military runs on logistics and those logistics chains are entirely dependent on civilians playing along. This is why true Civil Wars are Nation Breakers.

I honestly fear that our military will do something like this.

Your fear is overblown. The US Military would get chewed up and spit out by Armed American Civilians. We outnumber them by at least 50 to 1 and there would be nowhere for them to retreat too in between engagements. Their logistics would be entirely cutoff and they wouldn’t even be able to go home because their neighbors (at least some of them) would be waiting.

They could try but realistically it would be over (in most places) in like two weeks.

Depends on the reason. If’s a clear and justifiable one then I’ll try and help, otherwise I’ll do what the authorities are requesting.

If it’s NOT a clear or justifiable reason then I may have to give my old friend Thomas Jefferson a call.

I had to check this, and it seems you are right?

I don’t really blame anyone for not knowing. It wasn’t discussed much in mainstream media.

When war was a reality, a lot of countries stepped up help a lot, but it took a while to arrive…

Sadly true. Like many Americans if I’d had my way our response would have been faster and more direct. We have an outsized military for a reason and If I’d been the American President I’d have used that Big Stick to beat every Russian in your country to death. In two weeks Putin would have ceased trying and this would have been over and done with.

You stop a bully by punching them in the face so hard they forget their name and that’s exactly what America should have done. You just needed 14 days of our Air Power and sadly we weren’t willing to lend it to you.

Yeah, I kind of confused the two. The problem is mostly in the ball bearings but the races they go in also require tight tolerances and metal hardness that 2nd rate manufacturers can’t really match.

The obvious workaround is to not use outlook for personal email, but still, WTF.

You kind of have too when working with an email client that can present a unified view of email from multiple accounts. That doesn’t mean the IT folks can read the email attached to your person accounts though, neither can they delete it. All they can do is force Outlook to deconfigure itself and / or wipe your phone.

It’s the second part that’s the bigger problem. Wiping my phone could kill my personal 2FA apps, like Aegis, if I didn’t have them backed up.

I don’t understand why so many gun owners want to leave their firearms lying around unsecured. I could maybe see my way into the argument of a locked vehicle but an unlocked one? JFC, may as well just leave your piece with whoever is standing there when you get out and hope they’re still there when you get back!

Console vaults are better than nothing, and I have one, but it’s still dicey leaving a firearm unattended in a vehicle and IMHO it shouldn’t be done unless there’s no other option.

Only a matter of time before a dmz-style border fence goes up and guards are posted facing inward.

The land border is over 3,000 miles long. There’s no possibility of a “DMZ-Style Border Fence” being built. Ever.

Anyone with two feet and a brain can walk across the US / Canadian land border. It’s over 3,000 miles long and less than a 1/4th of it is guarded. If you throw in the water border it’s over 5,500 miles!

No one is guarding all of that. It’s not possible.

Eh, they point to Canada. Securing that border is an impossible task but according to official Border Patrol data the Canadian border in that area is a growing problem as a result of Canada’s changes to their e-Visa system.

Ukraine got nothing from USA half of 2023 and start of 2024.

Again…huh?

The US did a “final drawdown” in December of 2023 sending military aid worth about 250 Million dollars.

There was 100 Million the month before, in November of 2023.

As near as I can tell the longest run was January of 2024 into April of 2024 which is only 4 months. Still too long but that’s way different than 8 months.

I think you are misremembering the political theater around approving more for 2024 and interpreting it to mean we didn’t send anything in the back half of 2023.

Of course Ukraine is getting help now, but they managed to fight back in the start of the war, even before any help had arrived.

I don’t mean to downplay Ukraine’s fighting spirit but they had a shit ton of help even before the war started! Trump, fuck that guy, had loaded them up with Small Arms and Javelin Missiles (stuff that Obama had refused to send) before the war kicked off. The US, the UK, and Canada, had also spent more than two years re-training the Ukrainian Armed Forces so that it wouldn’t be a repeat of 2014.

Then between 2014 and 2019 the United States alone spent nearly 2 Billion dollars assisting Ukraine. Even before the war started the U.S. was 90% of Ukraine’s foreign military assistance!

Ukraine has fought and bled to keep their country and there’s no question that many brave Patriots over there have given everything they could, all glory to them. However this idea that Ukraine was going it alone the first while isn’t true at all and its very disrespectful to its Allies and Partners to make that claim.