What all these tweet-historians ignore is that the wickedness they’re criticizing is not unique to the USA, or even the Western world. Its also not a purely Imperialistic trait as it existed long before Roman Imperialism and it exists in the Eastern world as well.

China, India, the middle east… they all have histories filled with cruelty and evil acts that rival anything the USA has. In some ways, like when that Chinese army was trapped and had no food so the emperor offered his concubines as food and the soldiers gleefully obliged, are horrors American history lacks.

Remember; cruelty is a human trait, not an American one (or one isolated to one nation, people, culture or time period.)

The USA is just as bloody as its parent, the UK, and they’re both as bad as other nations with an Imperial past.

Or, you know, damn near every single empire or powerful ruler throughout all of human history. The Greek golden age was only possible thanks to slaves working the fields, Rome was similar in this regard.

Eastern nations weren’t any better, read up on ancient Chinese culture and all the fucked up shit they did.

Same goes for India, hell they’re still trying to end child marriage but still represent like 20-25% of all child marriages in the world.

People love to dog on America, and I’ll be happy to point out all the historical examples, but the truth is this is more a symptom of the human condition and less about a nation. Look at the other countries on earth and you’ll find plenty of evidence that evil isn’t isolated to one nation, people, culture or time period.

It’s universally a human thing.

Nothing about producing nuclear weapons, let alone miniaturized thermo-nuclear devices optimized to get the most efficient reaction during detonation is cheap. And the knowledge wasn’t necessarily lost, that is impossible to determine since we’re dealing with highly classified secrets regarding the construction of a nuclear weapon.

It’s possible that while making fogbank they merely got a contaminated batch of boron. Let’s say, for example, you find your grandma’s recipe for apple pie. But when your mother tastes it she says it’s a little off. You then eventually realize that you used apples that weren’t ripe yet, or that grandma used apples that were beginning to get soft. Thats not really the same as “lost knowledge” it’s more an experience gap.

Clickbait always makes these things sound like we’ve lost this information and now we’re screwed because it can never be relearned and no one knows anything oh no doom and gloom. Truth is lots of knowledge, through-out history, has been “lost” and then “rediscovered” primarily because this info becomes less valued/important and eventually someone needs it again so they rediscover it. Happened alot with mathematical theories and concepts, like calculus.

No one wants to lose knowledge but no one wants to pay to keep it alive the proper way (master/apprentice system that ensures these tricks of the trade are continually passed on) so we favor a system where specialized experts (scientists) are called in to solve these issues and rediscover the tricks of the trade using the scientific process. Either way you pay for the knowledge but we wanted to save money and shutter a bunch of cold-war era defense companies when the cold-war ended. The consequences of that are when you want to resume making nuclear weapons of the quality America demands you have to hire those scientists to figure out all the pesky details like fogbank.

A year after his explosive tenure at Doge, the SpaceX CEO is back in the Trump administration’s good graces

Elon is the one with power and Trump is conceding to this fact.

Thing is DOGE was successful at destroying many government agencies. That was always its intended goal, chaos.

Thats exactly what the Bay Area furries community said every time Elon Musk tried to join in back around 2008. True story.

Ketamine powers

There are no rules!

That isn’t great when it cuts both ways. I’ll stick with fixed pricing and enforceable tenant protection laws. Rules are there for a reason.

it’s not as tantalizing as what the AI giants are promising

I lost my job years ago to such con-men selling the idea of “outsource your IT to India, they’ll work for only $2 a day!!! Imagine the savings!!!”

And then their IT infrastructure went to shit. And any of us unemployed IT guys who called them out were labeled as racist for pointing out the people they fired us to outsource to were objectively unqualified.

Business owners need to wise up and realize every sales pitch they hear is probably a conman lying to get their money.

MBA’s will chase the lowest cost option regardless of how terrible it is. Like replacing skilled IT with people who will “work for $2 a day!!!” I lost my job hears ago to that pitch and I’ve talked to others who heard the identical claim “$2 a day I have to hire them.” Then it turned out most of these experts were totally unqualified to do the job. Wonder why 70% of websites are glitchy as fuck these days?

And the saracha company famously fucked themselves when the owner brought in a one of their relatives who was a newly minted MBA. These business genius fucked over the farmer the company has worked with since it was founded and ended up not being able to source the peppers they needed to produce their sauce. Remember the shortage a few years ago? Yeah that was cause the MBA dumbfuck burned the supplier that had helped them become a household name all in the sake of slightly more $$$

Cool. Glad I’m on an opinion forum and not a member of a legislative body that makes laws that apply to everyone.

I’m just saying, we let the church burn witches to test that theory out and they found out it was wrong and apologized. Why not let this pastor try out her theological theories and then evaluate the results before we rush into a hasty decision.

No, corporate owns most of the stores property then leases that to franchise owners. If one wanted to liquidate some of the property they owned and downsize operations they’d have to kick out the franchise owners first.

They’re conducting on-going research into aircraft designs that can go supersonic without producing a sonic boom (the thing that made supersonic jets impractical for cross-country flights along with the insane about of fuel they burn) so I’d guess they need a reliable supersonic jet to test against.

NASA probably has lots of data on the SR71 so it makes sense to use that to test new concepts on.

And now they’re finding out the factory that provided the titanium or polycarbonate whatever got moved to Beijing in 2004.

Not really. The USA still leads the way in manufacturing high end aerospace stuff and machining titanium.

The reason the SR71 production line closed down was cause the government contract for them ended decades ago. Give the aerospace companies a new billion dollar contract and they’ll crank out as many SR71’s as you want. We do that with the 6th generation jets and they’ve done a pretty good job of fulfilling those orders.

China is leader of the consumer grade manufacturing sector, no question of that, and I would say they’re catching up. But the USA still has a sizable manufacturing base and whats left are niches like aerospace and medical.

As cool as they are this is the truth. Once spy satellites began transmitting digital images (the first few used film and dropped capsules back to earth to be developed) the SR71 began obsolete and too risky to fly.

Now we have satellites that are constantly observing the “hot spots” around the planet which is safer than having pilots fly across enemy airspace.

My guess is NASA is using these to test supersonic attributes since they have tons of data on the SR71 and NASA is currently developing supersonic planes that don’t create sonic booms.

Yes, we can build such stuff these days. There is no shortage of engineers in the USA, there is a shortage of employers willing to pay well.

There is no shortage of experienced machinist, in fact we have far more advanced manufacturing capabilities than we did in the 1950’s. We just have a smaller industrial footprint than we did in the 1950’s but there are plenty of companies that can machine titanium (in fact there are more machinist nowadays that know how to machine titanium because its more common than it was in the 1950’s.)

The shortage is in investors willing to invest in talented labor and the tooling to make the aircraft. The idea that we “lost” these skills is a general misunderstanding of how things work and reddit-tier click-bait “i’m smart” type headlines.

Yes, we can build a lunar lander even thought all the guys who built the original are dead. It would be a better lander than the originals. Yes, we can build rocket engines as good or better than the F1’s on the Saturn V. In fact SpaceX developed engine technology that far surpasses the F1’s for their boosters and just because they didn’t make 5 gigantic ones (opting for 33 smaller units) doesn’t mean they aren’t a better platform. The Saturn V couldn’t land it’s booster to be reused later on.

Yeah but what everyone forgets is that knowledge can be relearned if you do it right.

And the issue of Fogbank was eventually solved by having modern day scientist study the problem (it was something like contamination of boron being used to make the fogbank material.)

The SR71 could be manufactured today if we wanted to. It wasn’t built with some magical spells that are forever lost to history. There are more people alive now that know how to machine titanium than there were when they built them originally. Its just a matter of investment in the labor and tooling to make them again, which probably isn’t worth it which is why they’ll keep flying the remaining planes.

One of the worse internet “I’m smart” thoughts is that “we’ve lost the ability to make insert outdated item because all that talent is dead.” Ok, so retrain new talent like every generation has to do anyways and maybe next time don’t pinch pennies and shutdown the factory with all these gods of manufacturing, instead bring in apprentices and have them learn from these masters.

But what about the profit margins and the shareholders?!?!? PE firms can’t milk successful companies to death for $$$$ if they actually invest in talent.

Having different prices for different meals isn’t dynamic pricing. We have menu’s because some food is more expensive than others. 2 eggs and some hash browns costs less then a hamburger with full dressings, fries and a soft drink.

Dynamic pricing is a form of prejudice that relies on a few additional data points but at its heart is no different than “hey this guy is skin color and is wearing clothing type so he must be loaded I’m going to tack on another $4 to his order!”

Now if that example above seems fine with you, change out the skin color and clothing type to something stereotypically negative and then tell me it’s not prejudice for someone to base a business transaction on those attributes (which the Supreme Court has in the past ruled is illegal to do.)

I don’t like vendors who think they can take advantage of me for a few extra bucks because of what they see (isn’t that a form of prejudice?)

Same with haggles at flea markets or garage sales. If you don’t label your prices I’m immediately not interested. I’m a demographic that looks “put together” and thus “wealthy” when in reality I’m basically broke and would file for bankruptcy if it’d clear my debt.

So when I come across a haggler (usually an old guy or a foreigner from a country that has a culture of haggling) I tend to avoid them because I don’t enjoy that process. Thats why America came up with price tags and fixed pricing for stuff. Way less hassle. Only idiots really savor the process of haggling. It sucks.