The US kill-death ratio is also telling.

During the Global War on Terror less than ten thousand US citizens killed in the conflict but around a million Afghans and Iraqis directly killed along with around 4 million people across the region indirectedly killed. Even the Vietnam war was something like 40,000 US citizens killed in exchange for around 3 million killed on the Vietnamese side. Hell… the US kill-death ratio in the World War 2 Pacific theater, some of the most brutal fighting the US has engaged in, was only 70,000 US citizens killed in exchange for 2.5 million Japanese soliders and somewhere around 1 million Japanese civilians killed.

The US has amazing kill-death ratios across all its wars excluding its civil war when busy fighting among itself. It’s disgusting really. The US will lose a few thousand while killing millions on the other side. Even in total war engagements the US loses thousands while the other combatants lose many millions. Since 1775 the US has only lost around 650,000 even when including both the US civil war and World War 2.

People always make the mistake of assuming during colonial adventures the US is doing anything other than smashing everything up (immediately wiping out the opposing military) then sitting back and milking any insurgency for as long as it is profitable to maintain a low intensity conflict. The US has really only ever fought two conflicts on a total-war footing (Civil War, World War 2) but managed to have hundreds of colonial adventures and so-called police actions throughout its entire history. For most of its history the US has been fighting one or more military actions somewhere, starting with westward expansion across North American then the so-called banana-wars advancing US corporate interests across Latin America and various colonial or cold war adventures across the entirety of the eastern hemisphere.

The Washington Post is whatever its owner Jeff Bezos wants it to be.

but at what cost?!

I was going to say… does Ukraine think everyone has somehow forgotten that Russia is the nation that has had globe spanning satellite surveillance longer than anyone else? To make this claim about the US, Russia, China, Iran, or India is ridiculous.

I guess Ukraine forgot which nations maintain fully integrated domestic space launch capability and large military satellite constellations. Then again they aren’t one of those nations and it’s a capability exclusive to great powers. Ukraine isn’t even in the slightly larger group of nations that have bought a few commercial mapping satellites.

In California, Oregon, and Washington the state governments stripped cities of most of their powers related to zoning in regards to blocking conversions to mixed use residential. As long as there isn’t heavy industry right next door (aren’t crazy, no one wants Houston), mixed use residential zoning is hard for cities to deny.

Los Angeles has the problem (benzene, hydrocarbons, heavy metals) of all the oil wells, pipelines, refineries, crude oil storage, and other oil field infrastructure hidden behind facades all throughout the city. The city and county are an active oil field, something that should never have been approved when there is residential or light commercial literally 25ft away from camouflaged wells, pipelines, and crude oil storage tanks. Then again people over a century ago probably shouldn’t have looked at the natural tar pits and thought to themselves “this is a great place to build a city”.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/09/oil-wells-in-la-nearby-residents-grapple-with-health-problems.html

New residential arguably is unethical in this situation, especially if it’s lower income housing. Btw, this is the reason building new public schools has been almost impossible in Los Angeles and existing schools all have soil that if there were alternatives would mean shutting them down. Los Angeles and Houston are more alike than anyone likes to admit. Can’t do the type of super fund site remediation (clean up) at the scale actually needed because it would mean tearing the city down to the bedrock to replace all the soil.

Uhhhhmm… I think the prefer to be called “tech bros” or “founders”.

One senior Chinese finance official who speaks fluent English and is a regular fixture on the international conference circuit told POLITICO by email that he could no longer attend an upcoming event outside China and was unable to speak on the phone.

He joins dozens of senior finance officials who have been removed in recent months, often after being accused of corruption.

Hollyshit. This is quite literally the same response you get from any affluent person who is under investigation, regardless of nation. In the US it’s a trope at this point for people under active investigation when reached out to by media to respond that they cannot talk about it, especially over the phone and to journalists who are guaranteed to be keeping a record of the conversation. Media are filled with jackels and anyone with any sense of self preservation will refuse to talk with them, especially directly and not through legal counsel.

that he could no longer attend an upcoming event outside China

Yeah! No shit?! It’s called being flagged as a “flight risk” due to having the financial means and connections to leave the country where you have been accused of commiting a serious crime. It’s exactly the same in most countries, including the US. Hell, in the US they restrict your movement even within the national borders (can’t leave specific state) until your name has either been cleared or you are convicted.

Yeah. You build undersea HVDC lines. HVDC was pioneered for undersea cables because it allows smaller cables with lower transmission loss (greater distance) than AC transmission. The other reason is that HVDC is the only realistic way to import/export power between regional AC transmission systems that are not synchronized.

Infact the majority of undersea transmission lines are HVDC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable#Direct_current_cables

I hope this means the Chinese plan to create a High Voltage DC transmission super-grid connecting across over a dozen time zones moves closer to reality. It’s a development project needed for the renewable transition but a major issue is everyone believes both South Korea and Japan will never meaningfully get on board.

Who is pocketing the price difference:

Junshi partnered with California-based Coherus BioSciences to bring the drug to the US, and it is expected to become available within the first quarter of next year.

Gotta love how the US regulatory regime is structured so middle men always get their taste. It’s like how the US doesn’t produce much in the way of active ingredients, instead US companies import them from China, India, and Poland then package them under their own brand name into pill, capsule, or injectable formulation. During this process the price somehow increases 1,000% to 10,000% over what they paid for the active ingredient.

I’ve personally enjoyed watching all the admin meetings for the project on their YouTube Channel because it really gives an understanding of the insane inefficiency of the US system of private property rights and public-private contracting.

I laughed reading this because it reminded me about how bad the US was at building anything in Iraq and Afghanistan. At one point US contractors charged almost 50 million dollars to build a single gas station and it never actually got completed. To be fair, US contractors are just as bad when hired to build infrastructure in the US.

Best printers out there. I’ve had the same b/w brother laser printer for well over a decade and it is still going strong. None of the bullshit associated with other brands of laser printers or inkjets. It can sit unused for over a year and will immediately print something no problem. Also gives me 7000 pages between ink toner replacements and only have to replace the drum every 3 or 4 tone replacement cycles.

Everyone always forgets that modern warships are mobile missile shield systems. They provide a few hundred miles of interceptor coverage. China has assets in the region and over the past week there are multiple groups staging missile or rocket attacks on everything from infrastructure to military bases in a half dozen countries.

China undoubtedly remembers how the US dropped five JDAM guided bombs through the roof of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.. Unlike decades ago, China has a modern navy and can position ships to prevent such US antics.

Lmao. Chinese officials proving to be experts at not taking the “denounce” bait.

As long as no one hits one of the two US carriers on station in the area there should be no worry about the US resorting to nukes. It’s something like an aircraft carrier getting sunk that would cause the kind of psychic damage required for US leadership to have an irrational knee jerk response involving nuclear weapons.

on a side note: does anyone else hate how because the people of the US are uniquely fkd in the head and have enough nuclear weapons to leave the earth lifeless, the rest of the world has to keep in mind what kinds of events might cause the US to have a complete collective freak out? In recent years I keep thinking about how throughout all of human history hegemonic empires would rise and fall but never before has the decline of an empire come with the very real danger that as they destabilize it could result in them killing everyone on earth rather than just themselves and their neighbors. It feels like being locked in a room with another individual who is experiencing deteriorating mental health and is in possession of a hand grenade no one can take away from them without risking setting it off.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator

For real. The majority of the price difference isn’t materials or workplace safety but privatized vs state enterprise. A sizeable chunk of the $5000 price difference is the cut that goes to the shareholders of General Dynamics. It’s the same reason the Chinese J20 costs so much less than the F35 and had dramatically less production issues.

Russia only had a privatized defense industry from the early 1990s until in 2007 they decided privatization of certain industries was a mistake. They undid the privatization of their aerospace, defense, high tech manufacturing, and key heavy industries. It’s taken almost a decade to repair the damage of privatization and rebuild capacity but we are now seeing the fruits of those efforts.

In Russia their 155mm artillery shells are currently manufactured by KBP Instrument Design Bureau, a wholey owned subsidiary of the Russia state owned Rostec holding corporation.

In the US all their 155mm artillery shells are manufactured at the US government owned Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, which is operated by the private sector defense contractor General Dynamics. That same facility used to be able to produce over a million 155mm field artillery shells per month back in the 1940s before modern factory automation and even today claims to have the ability to ramp back to that capacity (at a cost) with only a couple months notice. As part of the US propaganda blitz, BusinessInsider recently did a PR and tour video of the plant.

deleted by creator