hotspur

joined 4 years ago
[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Per the article the prototype was flow at around 20,000m and they’re specifically going up there for the efficiency reason. The design also has a “high lift-to-drag ratio” that is apparently helping out.

This one has some more detail, no way to confirm its veracity however. https://theasialive.com/chinas-yunxing-jet-completes-test-flight-eyes-supersonic-commercial-travel-by-2027/2024/10/29

It could all be marketing hype, but there are a couple other companies in US and UK working on similar projects.

[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 1 points 2 weeks ago

I don’t disagree per se, but the article says that the plane operates at 20,000 meters ceiling, Wikipedia says SR-71 had 26,000m operational ceiling, so this thing is high up, but not as high as the blackbird. Not sure how much of a difference that makes for the air and heat issues.

The company that makes this thing is making ballistic super sonic rockets for China, so I think the implication in the article is that this thing is basically a rocket with wings.

[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

like the other comment said, it's a fluid situation. It was bombed/shelled earlier, but was still operational. I think it's now been physically raided by troops, and majority of the staff has been forcibly expelled or arrested. per a news program I saw an hour ago, the hospital was turning away casualties from the overnight bombing that killed 100 people in one building, since they have no capacity to do anything at this point. I suspect the couple of staff still left are doing what they can for any patients they still have, though I know the kids that were on ventilators died when they shelled the hospital earlier, so who even knows. I unwisely watched this news program over lunch, and they had images of the children loaded into body bags 2-3 per bag, open. Those photos should be plastered all over billboards across America: this is where the bombs go.

[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 6 points 2 weeks ago

Is leaving one doctor like some vicious troll move? Or did they just miss him on his lunch break? (dark joke, because, what lunch, what break?) What is the 1 doc and 2.5 nurses left supposed to do with human wave of casualties that Israel creating with each high rise they level.

[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 6 points 1 month ago

yeah I think I follow. So basically Israel is just viewed as such a crucial and intrinsic part of US strategy/power projection/dominance in ME, that it's simply not even thinkable to conceive for most of the system to be in conflict with it, even when it continues to veer into deeper and deeper levels of genocide and impunity. And perhaps the bureaucratic and temporal nature of administrations and US officials (moving in and out of office, new staffs, etc) allows for the humiliation to be less damaging than it would to a more directly strongman/authoritarian system, like say Putin and Russian Federation?

[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 5 points 1 month ago

yes, that's correct. I don't mean to suggest there are actually pocket nukes in sweetgreens, and good US politicians are just "trying to save the world". I'm just trying to understand how they can allow Israel to humiliate them so much. I buy it that they might be willing to just take the PR L and look like dipshits in order to deflect the blame for the nastier stuff to the client state, but the uniformity and lockstepness of it, plus the very real loss of face it represents seems to run counter to what I understand to be typical neocon tendencies.

[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

look, if you read my post, you'd note that I accept this position in my first paragraph. And I'm not interested in taking blame off of America--I'm just curious about an aspect of the behavior that never quite makes full sense to me. Regardless, I note that you're a staunch support of option a.

[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago

Is this fairly unprecedented? What I mean is sure many leaders in last 20 years have threatened conflict and stuff, but like directly posting on social media that they’ll utterly destroy a country and murder civilians as punishment if they don’t get what they want?

I’m sure Bush said some stuff in the 9/11 GWOT years and Russia does its veiled threat thing here and there, Iran talks vaguely of destroying great satans once and a while but this is like a specific threat of annihilation to a civilian population.

Like usually the threats are couched in metaphors, I guess, and this is clearly non-metaphorical.

[–] hotspur@hexbear.net 5 points 4 months ago

Yeah this whole “give RFK secret service detail” made me wonder, are there just like cadres of reserve/on-call secret service protection details chillin in office cubicles ready to go out and take bullets for weirdos? I mean they must have some depth, but like wouldn’t it definitely mean some mild deduction to back for the existing details?