The objective is not to win. Winning against America’s imperial might is impossible.

The objective is to make them bleed as much as possible. To make victory as phyrric and as painful for them as possible. And when going up against the most expensive war plane in human history, this means choosing the aircraft that can get as technologically close as possible with as many units as possible on a per-dollar-spent basis.

We can make them bleed much more with 420 fully-functional Gripens than we can with 88 partially-functional F-35s that can be remotely shut down against our will.

We can already figure much of that out from the technological specifications of the F-35. Simply looking at the capabilities can give us strong clues on how to neuter or at least limit the inherent F-35 advantages from a tech standpoint.

The rest of that comes down to how the pilot behaves, and what tactics they have been trained in. And this is where differences in training, corps attitudes, and even pilot personalities can dramatically affect performance.

And while I fully agree with you in regards to pilot training, our problem is that a Canadian fighter pilot is likely to behave (tactic chain, decision trees, emotional responses, etc.) considerably differently than an American fighter pilot. As such, while we need to train our pilots in Gripen jets against F-35 jets in combat-like scenarios, we need to do so against American pilots, not Canadian ones.

And that’s the tough part - how do we get the American administration to willingly play along with activities that are obviously meant to train our pilots to fight theirs, and gain a consistent toehold against pilots in F-35s even if it means losing a few Gripens for every one of their F-35s. It needs to be done with a great deal of subtlety and subterfuge.

Canada needs to put the Gripen factory on an accelerated track, cancel the entire F-35 order, and move ahead with an immediate purchase of min. 50 Gripens using the F-35 funds to cover the gap and train up pilots until Gripens start rolling out of the factory.

Canada’s complete F-35 promise will cost the country $28,000,000,000 ($28B) with billions more needed to bring them up to full operational efficiency, and yet the Gripen costs only $65,000,000 ($65M) per aircraft, allowing us to buy 430 fully-functional Gripen jets instead of 88 partially functional F-35 jets.

Remember: tech superiority does not win battles. Sheer numbers do. WWII demonstrated this overwhelmingly on many different fronts, with many different technologies.

As just one example, the Germans had Tiger tanks that could face off against 6-8 Shermans at a time and win with barely a scratch on their hull, but when 10, 20, or even more came roaring over the hilltop for every Tiger that was fielded, their tech superiority ended being absolutely useless. They got overrun and overwhelmed with sheer numbers.

The F35 can be rendered equally as useless with enough Gripens in the air.

And the Gripens don’t come with a remote kill switch like the F-35 does.

Why… why would hard drives be going up in price?? AI does not use spinning platters of rust, like, at all.

For many places, it’s operational inertia. If you’ve had a hosting account at the same place since 1998, you’re bound to still have username/password access to services like FTP even though other (and better) options exist.

And then there is the issue of sole control. Many greybeards like myself still run traditional username/password auth on services because,

1. We have whitelisted our IP address, and if dynamic, keep that whitelist updated
2. That outside of said whitelisting, the service is a quasi-honeypot meant to protect the machine as a whole. Any connection made from outside the address space of my ISP, by anyone else, is by default considered malicious, and is banned instantly as a precaution. They don’t even get the opportunity to attempt a login; merely connecting to said service is sufficient evidence of hostile intent.

So while my setup is not ideal, it is ideal for myself. if I had anyone else as co-admin, or even clients, things would get stupidly complicated very quickly. But since it’s just me…

REPRESENT.

Even in Canada I grew up with non-American time, thanks to German parents, and knew of AM/PM only via analog clocks and use outside of the home. I remember confusing the heck out of an elementary school teacher by giving an afternoon/evening time in proper units. She had to do the math (calculators still being hella rare in those days) to convert out of PM in order to see if I was correct or not.

An IBM Selectric??

Now, something cheaper and clearly not as reliable, I can understand. But these machines were quite bulletproof, easily on-par with Olympia or Hermes in terms of build quality and usability. They were meant to take a pounding on the daily and keep on ticking. About the only way these things broke down is either via benign neglect or intentional malice.

And they were also built like tanks, with heavy steel and iron… there would be a non-trivial chance of injury or even death via ricochet or shrapnel where an IBM Selectric is concerned. That makes me think this was staged… you don’t want to close-fire on a Selectric without body armour and face/neck protection.

The problem that far too many people always miss is that appeasing a bully or a predator only ever encourages more of that behaviour. It never discourages that behaviour.

Fighting the US force gun vs. gun is just silly

Yes, and? Force vs force is stupid. No military could win in a toe-to-toe conflict with America.

But running a guerrilla insurgency without weapons? That’s even worse than stupid. You might as well explicitly line up to be shot.

Now, the efficient method is to pick up the tools and supplies that they drop. But you gotta make them drop shit in the first place, and then you’re limited to what they drop.

My 86-yo father is in the opening innings of dementia, and even he is successfully reading the writing on the wall. And this, despite a 5th grade education and a lifetime of blue collar work.

He’s currently trying to financially coerce my nephew to move back out of Alberta, as in his mind the agriculture and oil sands of that province will be one of Trump’s first objectives. I really can’t disagree with that analysis.

Hell, his side of the family came within a hair’s breadth of ending up in a Nazi concentration camp, so he’s always had a dim view of authoritarianism. About the only way he’s ever leaned in that direction is when politicians followed through with everything they said they were going to do. Such as Pierre Trudeau – he hated the guy with a passion, but deeply respected how he always did pretty much exactly what he said he was going to do. No lies, no bait-and-switch, just an exceedingly honest (albeit arrogant) politician.

For those who are good at smuggling, also consider the non-Canadian (non-gibbled) variant of the FN P90:

• This is a bullpup semi automatic that works exceptionally well in the urban environment.
• The short barrel variety can be equally as mobile inside of structures as a sawed-off shotgun, if not more so. Plus, far less telegraphing of your presence (muzzle precession) as you go around corners compared to non-bullpup long guns.
• Each of its 3 magazines can hold 50 rounds, and two magazines can be stored inside the shoulder stock.
• The brass is ejected straight downwards, and the grip is totally ambidextrous, which means it can be handed off between righties and lefties with zero mods needed. No hot brass to the face simply because the prior user was differently-handed.
• The UN ammo that is standard for it has limited range, which means it is less likely to have secondary down range casualties, yet still comes in a wide variety of slug types including body-armour-piercing.

If you want to see this weapon in use, pick up any season of Stargate SG1.

Downside is that the ammo isn’t cheap. In fact, it’s stupidly expensive. But the P90 is also used by many U.S. divisions such as the Secret Service, so the ammo can be “acquired”.

WHERE ARE THOSE “DON’T TREAD ON ME” CONSERVATIVES WITH THEIR GUNS??

Which is why we call them conservatives instead of progressives. Everything they do is in the name of fighting material improvements in favour of benefitting their Parasite-Class donors.

Once a civilisation overshoots its biophysical limits, as ours did over 50 years ago

We did it back in the 1920s, when humanity exceeded 2 billion. That is our carrying capacity, assuming a near-zero impact on the planetary ecology (beyond which we enter into overshoot), and with a totally vegan diet.

It drops to about 500 million with a western-style diet involving meat. So technically it’s possible to pin it even earlier, at around the year 1650. But I like to be unreasonably optimistic sometimes, so the 1920s it is.

…The fuck?

Is Tim Sweeney legitimately outing himself as a pedophile? Does the Parasite Class really feel so comfortable and immune from consequences that they can openly advocate for pedophilia?

Okay, maybe I’ve been reading too many historical accounts as of late, but the title by itself sounded like a military action meant to round up the Cree in order to violently/forcibly intern/confine them back onto their reservation.

Yes, I’ve read the article. It’s the phrasing of the TITLE that gave me such pause the moment I first saw it.

Instead, last year, a bombshell research paper authored by several Canadian neurologists and neuroscientists concluded that there was in fact no mystery disease, and that the patients had all likely suffered from previously known neurological, medical, or psychiatric conditions. The New Brunswick cluster was, one of the paper’s authors told the BBC, a “house of cards”.

500+ patients, all in one highly geographically-constrained area, makes this conclusion as suspicious as a fleet of black Ford Excursions, all filled with men in black suits, saying “nothing is going on here, carry on.”

TL;DR: BULLSHIT.

I wish Canada had a politically-independent research arm that could look into any possible subject, free of interference and with the authority of a national police force, only staffed with highly-accredited experts from every field. They would have a mandate to follow political and economic corruption and harms to the environment and peoples of Canada without censure or blowback, with the only requirement being full transparency and accountability. And with payroll bonuses being drawn from fines and other financial judgements such that they are as incentivized as possible to go after the biggest fish, first.

Now granted, the existence of this agency could very well mean the end of many political careers, as well as that of most any conservative political party. But that would be one of the small but important ways we reinforce democracy for the people, instead of letting the Parasite Class call all the shots.

Edit: just realized that most conservatives would violently push back against any open and fully transparent fact-finding organization that was a crown-funded research arm. Because it’s fact-finding, so therefore it’s intolerable.

Except when you realize that both parties - aside from a few specific Democrats - are totally right of centre.

Like, the Democrats are moderate but solid right-wing neoliberalists, and the Republicans are off-the-deep-end alt-right fascists. So there isn’t a “centrist” position because there is no-one left of centre to balance things out; there is no in-between position that is actually at the centre of the political spectrum.

Even AOC and Bernie would be considered centrists anywhere else in the world. So any use of the word “Centrism” within the bounds of American politics really means “strong right-wing”.

And when almost everyone is right of centre, they really can be grouped together as being equally evil and hostile to the common man.

Now, if you were to look at any first-world country with an actually-functional democracy, you would be correct, because these countries actually have socialist parties that advocate for the masses, and seek to advance the needs of the common citizen. But I digress…

75 years ago there were such few restaurants that margins were decent and owners could pay their staff well. A mid-range restaurant could have chefs and even servers earn decent wages.

Now there are 100× more restaurants per capita than there were back then, and margins are razor-thin and staff are being paid peanuts.