There are very few people in history that are that pivotal individually. Had Franz Ferdinand not been shot, something else would have sparked WW1. Had Hitler not existed, then someone else would have emerged.
Maybe Churchill was more of a pivot than most, had the UK gone for Hastings after Chamberlain then perhaps the UK would have sued for peace, allowing Germany to fully concentrate on Russia, but it's still a stretch to have Germany ultimately prevailing over Stalin.
Had the US not won independence in 1776 (which is unlikely to be the sole cause of a single person), it would have been gained anyway, just like the other new world colonies from Canada to Brazil.
The conditions that exist are far bigger than one man
Well right, people lobby not to change anything because they have giant companies that make them money. They need all those people in jobs to help them deny claims, identify fraud, waste, etc.
If Intuit and other tax preparers can protect their tax preparation rents at the expense of all income earners, then it is not difficult to believe that the medical industry is also able to protect its own rents.
I just came across Hardwired from 1986, it's a cyberpunk dystopian future with lots of action. I loved it, some of it is very prescient, but with lots of 80s influence to an imagined future.
Interesting chain of descent: Walter Jon Williams wrote Hardwired, and R Talsorian Games based their tabletop RPG, Cyberpunk 2020, on it. That's the source material used for the computer RPG, Cyberpunk 2073.
Meanwhile, WJW followed up with Voice of the Whirlwind, which seems to be set about a century later, and drops enough references in Aristoi to place it as the third book in the same universe, quite possibly a thousand years later.
I recommend all three (and almost everything that WJW has written).
> Starlink is apparently 65% of all active satellites, it would be very expensive to emulate that without super efficient launching capabilities.
But does a military really need that many to get the necessary capability? Would a smaller constellation be sufficient, especially without competing civilian users?
>But does a military really need that many to get the necessary capability?
No. The German army wants a constellation of initially 40, and later just over 100 satellites. They do not want or need to replicate the massive Starlink numbers.
The numbers just don't add up there. With just 40-100 satellites they need to be GEO, and this means crappy transfers, big lags (200-300 absolute minimum, more 500ms), and most importantly - big, power hungry antennas.
It's a PR project to calm people down, not a real solution.
You’re being targeted, presumably based on your traffic profile. Unless you’re talking about ads actually on Facebook, in which case your problem is that you’re using Facebook.
At the time of the bombing that school was not on Open Street Map, instead the military base (where the school was installed!) had been added a bit more than 5 years ago. Obviously international law requires targets to be thoroughly verified, which obviously didn't happen.
I am not blaming OSM for what happened, but just to avoid having a great FOSS project being used for unverified targetting: perhaps we should have stronger requests for verification for military domains around the world. OSM could contact the governments and ask if any non-military entities reside in that base. If the government refuses to confirm or deny, or just pretend there is no school, then OSM can bring this response up at a later date.
Would expect nothing less of the current administration than to use Open Street Map in their killing campaign (maybe Apple Maps should have been cross-checked)
Hey, I typically avoid the use of proprietary maps, but I am very interested in how Apple Maps knew there was a school before the bombing.
I am also interested in seeing verifiable proof that Apple Maps displayed a school there before the attack occured, and I certainly agree all available maps should have been checked, including past satellite imagery, which surely would have betrayed the presence of large amounts of children (from shadow lengths). As I said before, what happened there was inexcusable.
What is known is that Israel and USA divided the targets according to respective materiel proximity, which MUST mean that a common list of targets would have been maintained and then divided by proximity / weapon range. This means that in theory Israel could have selected the target, just like USA may have selected certain more northern targets, and then misplaced trust could have enabled blindly bombing a target selected by the other nation state.
In other words I certainly see it as a possibility that Israel intentionally shared this target pretending not to know about the girls school. They certainly can be suspected of having a motive: revenge for the killings of their children on the music festival. The genocide in Gaza apparently doesn't sufficiently quench their thirst for revenge, especially since everyone knows Hamas is effectively Iran-in-Gaza. From the perspective of Israel it's also an excellent way to ensure sustained conflict between Iran and the USA, and thus force the USA to continue contributing firepower in this escalation.
IF the above were the case, in my opinion the best move for the USA is to acknowledge as quickly as possible that while they bombed the target location, that this target selection was by Israel.
I'm not surprised they would consider it, but it seems hilariously stupid. Even as cynical as I am about politics in this country this will never fly with most of Trump's supporters.
This isn't targeting immigrants or Democrats though, unless they try to only draft Democrats it's going to be them, their sons, their brothers and husbands getting told they have to go die.
Trump has mastered the bully pulpit and his steadfast popularity with his base to threaten any Republican who gets out of line by endorsing a primary challenger. This has been effective in replacing anyone who challenges him, and scaring the rest into line.
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