Well after the disasters of Klendathu the federation did conscript children.

The incompetence and desperation of the regime and military is so very well illustrated in this film with even complete fuckup like Rico getting promoted with his appointment of becoming Lt of the roughnecks despite being 21-22 fuckin years old (if that).

It looked like the Hitler youth when he gets his replacement for the assault into planet P. Their fricken children.

Although i hated the book. Its hands down the worst fucking book I've ever read (and I've read thousands of books, fuckin phone books even).

Its a great film in illustrating how everyone is expandable in a fascist regime, even their own children.

It just goes to show that the colour of your skin or even your culture doesn't prevent you from being a racist fucking moron.

I can't tell you how many people think they cannot be racist simply because they're not white before they tell me in the next breath how x race are the worst.

My theory is racism, prejudice is built into our brains neurological functions, especially lower level ones, and thus requires constant vigilance to prevent.

A million years ago humans who looked at a strippy bush and thought there was a tiger hiding in it and thus avoided it became prejudicial to strippy bushes irrespective of the evidence that the vast majority never had a tiger in them. But because of their cautiousness they survived and spread this on.

The same applied to strangers and other tribes. They looked at these other people, clocked their features and were instantly prejudicial. They avoided / murdered them based on this ever constant belief that it better to kill and be safe not to mention the powerful incentive that conditioned them further with being able to take their shit.

This created homogeneous populations based on tribal / national scale that have entrenched this prejudice, this belief that ethnicity and culture are the same, over the past 40,000 generations of human "evolution" (a great example of how evolution doesn't always lead to improvements).

The last two hundred years of war, mass exoduses and diasporas has dissolved the tenuous lines of what we defined as ethnicities. What is asian, black, and caucasians when every year millions of humans mix their genes with people across the world.

Whats an innuit mixed with a person from a slavic and African background?

Yes we have linguistic/cultural backgrounds. Those are important but membership is no longer govern by your genes. Adopted kids from asia into the US midwest alone shows how silly this. There are kids born from people of Filipino heritage in Israel demanding to be able join the IDF (be the first kid on their block to get a confirmed kill).

So whenever i see these articles of people from various cultures i can understand on one level how they can throw in with the fascists. They don't see themselves as Hispanics first but as MAGA because ultimately what the MAGA movement enables is this freedom to no longer hold back this inbuilt racist prejudice that lives deep inside our perception system.

To be able to hate and not hold yourself back, always having to check and correct yourself is liberating.

My father was a socialist, a bleeding heart liberal but get him behind the wheel of a car and the absolute hate for any asian female driver who came his way flowed like the dark side, like palpatine was sitting next to him encouraging the hate). But out of his car, in his work, it was the complete opposite.

Its like when he was driving that internal checksum was no longer operating as his higher level systems were busy on trucking right. Indeed when one highlighted his casual racism and hatred.

Its no surprise that most of these maga voters fall into to distinct buckets. Older people who are falling into the long decline of a neuro degenerative disease like senality, where they end up relying on low level functions (like an autopilot) whilst being at the mercy of peer group dynamics (which is how fascist mainstream media infects their brain) , especially hate filled ones, are so much more powerful) and younger people who have been kept in a information bubble, conditioned all their life to hate.

I don't use any shit owned by fbook

What did he say?

If I was Ukraine I would be doing a deal with Australia to to use the spaceport being set up under the second pillar of AUKUS, sharing with the Australians how to make launch vehicles (which are essentially what short range ballistic missiles are ie Tochka. Satalites coupled with the Australian nuemann drive would be a huge benefit for both countries, especially Ukraine who could deploy their own spaced based communication network.

In The Expanse Colonel Johnson, the butcher of Anderson station tells Holden that when he dies he wants to be put into the recyclers on Tycho station.

My city takes waste and turns it into high quality fertiliser (called fogo). I wish they'd take bodies as well. I would love to be turned into food......

Some of the pan handlers i knew were making $500 a day.

But its a fuckin hard life, especially now that no one carries change.

I'd rather "work" in an office to make me drug money

Come on, Space Quest V was not written for kids

The irony is i was a total slut for both data and sex

Its wild that Americans get 2 weeks annual leave which also doubles as their sick leave.

And you guys think this is just fine.

I always loved in Snowcrash the key antagonist drove around on a motorbike with a side car with a ex-soviet nuke wired to a heart beat monitor. Security companies spent their time not trying to stop him but trying to stop his numerous enemies from trying to kill him

Sure its going to be a bit of a fizzle when the tritium decays but still gonna make one hell of a hole in the road if someone dares to hit him.

Considering there is no porn on lemmy I'm surprised this is even allowed

shouldn't a few rounds from a mig 29 be able to bring a balloon down without any effort? Sounds like a skill issue.

So firstly at 5-7km you shoot a balloon it doesn't just deflate and drop. It'll keep floating (slowly returning to earth over days).

You've been vectored in by ground controllers. You have to spend a heap of time waiting for orders and directions. You can't even see it properly. Its mylar. The FLIR, if its working, isn't showing shit when it comes to mylar.

Secondly imagine you're doing 800kph in a mig-29. Your radar won't lock onto the balloon.

So you somehow line up and setup guns for the shot. Bam, your past it before you have time to even think.

So you line up for another pass. You slow your MIG down to 350kph. This time you have maybe 5-8 seconds before you're pass the target.

You have no idea if you've hit it. You've probably missed it.

A couple more passes and now you're running out of fuel and or ammo (tactical fighters usually have enough ammo for a 1-3 second total firing time) and have to return to base.

Plus all the running cost stuff the other posters have pointed out makes using tactical fighters to shoot down balloons a completely losing proposition.

When the Americans shot down those Chinese balloons it was a near miracle they were able to do it.

Of interesting to note is one of the core applications for the Soviet / Russian A-60 airborne was to shoot down American "weather" balloons.

Really fascinating video (that goes into trainspotting levels of detail) by Not a Pound for Air to Ground

https://youtu.be/tO2Jk5jjzdE