> Correction: Hegseth is a crusader. [...SNIP...] He might be an idiot alcoholic, but he very much knows what he is doing.

That sound like he knows what he wants to do, but that's not the same as knowing what he is doing.

Indeed.

One of the contracting things I turned down was someone who knew what they wanted to do was make Uber for aircraft.

I turned it down because they clearly didn't know enough about this goal to fill an elevator pitch, let alone a slide deck, and I think many of the current US Secretary of XYZ leaders are similarly unaware of how vast a chasm lay between what they wanted to do and a specific, measurable, realistic, and time-constrained plan to actually achieve anything.

English language ambiguity problem. "Knows what he is doing" has two potential meanings: it could mean competence, or it could mean clear intent. I think OP meant the latter.

> Nothing in this war has suggested carriers are obsolete.

What are ours doing during this war?

Adding 70+ strike and AEW aircraft apiece, individually more than most national air forces could muster.

Are you joking? Sending F-18s into the air.

No, just asking—I know they're staying out of the gulf, but I don't know how involved they are, and I figured someone here did.

They're the only thing involved pretty much. The gulf nations have not allowed the US to launch from their bases in the region. Maybe that will change as they keep getting attacked but as of now the carriers (and now the base on Cyprus) are where the planes are coming from. The strategic bombers, prior to Cyprus, were taking off from the US and flying all the way to Iran and back.

> The gulf nations have not allowed the US to launch from their bases in the region.

This is a categorically false assertion that they have been putting to assuage their local populations - which are heavily opposed to the war and the US support. Maybe not all of them, but some of them, like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are clearly hosting and allowing the US to prosecute the war from their soil. If they weren't, you wouldn't have had the AWACS aircraft getting turned to smithereens in Riyadh.

AWACS and tankers don’t fire missiles or drop bombs.

It’s perhaps a distinction without a difference but it’s the line that appears to have been currently drawn.

Doesn't matter. The internal messaging of the Gulf govts to their people initially was that "we're not hosting US forces, why is Iran attacking us??". Now that veneer is being peeled off.

> I watched it twice, which is pretty unheard of for me. I thought the book was fine but not a favourite.

I think it's interesting when a movie can be faithful, and yet hit differently. Conclave was like that for me—I enjoyed the book, but it came across as a political thriller with a Catholic twist. But the movie, by showing all of the uniforms, all of the architecture and art, came across far more significant than just a political thriller. A great cast helped with that, admittedly.

The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is in Amherst, MA and quite excellent.

> For a really good sinister conspiracy theory is counterintuitively cozy, what with the way it collapses the amorphous mass of real history, where cause and effect are as muddled as are heroes and villains, into a comforting clockwork mechanism of cogs in cogs. Small wonder that pseudo-history tends to thrive best when real life seems most vexed and confusing.

I really liked how this was written.

How was he ripping families apart?

Asking you to explain your position more thoroughly is making discourse impossible? Your dedication to communication is laudable.

> Out of everything in the adult industry, to me, OnlyFans is one of the most sane. That is encouraging independent performers to get payed directly by their fans, taking only a reasonable commission.

I kinda agree, but the prevalence of fake chatting soured me on the company as a bastion of sane sex work. Without it, it seems legit: fans pay for content, they get content. But add the layer of fans pay for chatting with the models, and get something else.

> What interests me is not the statistical rarity, but that 81% of elements are in one orbit — this means the reordering is highly coupled, not a bunch of small local swaps.

But what is the significance of the reordering being highly coupled?

The observation itself is the value — it tells you the King Wen sequence is not a bunch of small local adjustments, but a holistic rearrangement. But it cannot tell you why King Wen arranged it this way.

You didn't explain or prove there is a reason for it.

> Basically, if Trump does a thing, they are against it, independent of the thing.

Because on top of doing terrible things, the non-terrible things he does, he does incredibly badly.

> There is no principle, just reactionary hatred.

No, we’re all good little Bayesians around here.

> If Biden had launched this war, none of these people would have had a problem with it.

You’re really missing what’s going on here. The reason that people liked Biden is that he would not have launched this war.

> The reason that people liked Biden is that he would not have launched this war.

No, they liked him because he wasn’t Trump. And then they liked Trump more after having him.

I liked Biden because he's a genuinely good statesman, with decades of experience building bipartisan relationships (some admittedly bad, most good) both domestically and internationally. I didn't vote against Trump in 2020, I voted for Biden. And you can bet your sweet bippy that I'd do it again.