Never forget

War with China or no, Trump and Bannon will severely test the stability of American institutions. Heck, they already have, and we’re in week 2.

Well, part of it is that our economy is completely tethered to Chinese manufacturing at this point. A shooting war would create deep dislocations and I expect we’d tumble immediately into a sharp recession, if not an actual depression. Of course, the Chinese would suffer just as much, if not more, economically. Also,…

That’s what I go with.

I own a Fiat 500 Abarth. NO one can agree on how to pronounce it. Is it ‘eh-BART’, ‘AH-bart’, ‘AY-barth’, ‘AH-barth’?

Inevitable. Thank you for this.

Yeah, the nuclear winter would pretty much finish what the bombs started. Even a limited exchange of say 100 small warheads (15Kt) would produce catastrophic cooling (2-3 degrees Fahrenheit) in the first year, and a 20 to 50 percent reduction in the ozone layer. Note, most of the climate damage isn’t from the…

So true. And it brings to mind Neil Gaiman’s quote that civilization is 24 hours and 2 meals away from barbarism.

Thank you. This piece was waaay too simplistic. Damage and burn risk are dictated by distance, warhead yield (not even discussed), topology and dumb luck, like happening to be standing behind a wall or building that shields you from the initial radiation/heat pulse.

The scene that always got me was the mother who keeps tidying up the bed room even as ICBMs are arcing into the sky in the background. The father is trying to pull her down to the basement shelter, but she franticly refuses until he has to carry her away. The devastation that she emotes in that scene really hit home.

+1 boxes full of Pepe

+1 precious bodily fluids

Atomic bombs. Strategic fire bombing. Mass extermination of Jews. Horrific medical experiments. Cruel treatment and torture of prisoners. War crimes were kind of in fashion between 1940 and 1945.

Which is exactly why Putin worked so hard to put Trump in power. Brexit + Trump spells the end of the great Western Alliance. Putin will be free to pick off targets one by one, using political/economic/social instability as a force multiplier in his efforts.

Having Russia as an ally is not a bad thing, I dont see why painting Russia with such a broad brush has been so common since the end of World War II when historically, WWI and WWII, they were vital allies.

Yeah. This seems like a nuanced take.

Truman was considered weak, but those who thought that severely underestimated him.

This. If you are in cruise flight and suddenly the engines are pulled back to idle (still running, but at minimal thrust), the silence of it will fill the cabin. Freaked out passengers would absolutely think the engines were shut down, when in fact they are still running.

One thing you can tell your parents is that regional jets are often relatively overpowered compared to larger aircraft. Which means if an engine goes out on takeoff, there’s plenty of thrust for the climb out. And because the engines are mounted to the fuselage, there’s a lot less induced yaw in the case of an…

This is on point. Russia is definitely playing a long game. And really, the terms of Russian success are much less ambitious than the West’s. We’d like to see a durable, liberal democracy in Russia that sets aside its territorial ambitions to become a credible partner on the global financial and political stage. All…