• 3 Posts
  • 142 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • $1M a shot seems like a lot until you look at what goes into each one, how much development costs, and the environment it is designed for. You don’t need corruption to make these expensive. Also, the are based on 30 year old technology. Rather than being cheaper than new, they tend to be more expensive due to requiring miniature mechanisms which were cutting edge in 199x. And there are no other uses for them in their hardened configuration so you don’t get economy of scale of something like a commercial ship or board. Plus there’s a lot of paperwork and you can’t sell a single piece unless the government approves it. This is so far from a consumer item there isn’t even a way to compare costs.

    FWIW, corruption would cost roughly the same price but you’d receive a missile with shoddy components and forged paperwork. Just look at Russia’s army to see the difference in munition reliability.








  • stealing * information* Nobody was harmed; nobody was deprived of life, limb, security, or physical property or currency. Knowledge was transferred without authorization, meaning that only the potential reduction of future profits for a corporation is at stake. It’s a breach of contract - about the least impactful thing that a human can do to non-human. This kind of crime should never result in prison, or else it should be applied to every knowledge worker, ceo, or vc who remembers any part of any business they’ve every been involved with in the past (which it never is).



  • typical GOP / chucklefuck misogyny Yes, but sooooo much more. They don’t just hate her for being a woman, they hate her for being a successful woman who overtly mocks them (not the deplorables comment - it’s the way she outmaneuvered them and pointed out their genuine policy errors in the past 2.5 decades of her political life). If she had been male they would hate her with the fire of a thousand suns. That she is a woman just makes them go apoplectic on top.

    TBH, she’s much closer to my (moderate) political ideology than those (here on Lemmy) who favor a far more liberal leader and I agree she would have made a good president.











  • the US becoming a major oil and gas exporter

    This is a common misconception - we’re already the oil producing gorilla. Oil, both unrefined and refined, have been the top exports of the US for years now - well over a decade. We are the largest global producer of oil - by a huge margin - and have been for years. In 2022 we were almost 19% of the global supply - producing 50% more than each #2 Saudi Arabia and #3 Russia, and more than the next 4 countries combined.

    The conservatives in the US like to say that we have to drill in an attempt to become energy independent, but we send much of our product to higher paying markets outside of our own border. Our only imbalance is in the mix of refinery capability and domestic supply type (light/heavy/sweet).