merc

The Nazis based a lot of their racial laws on what was being done in the US, especially the south. Sure, the Allies included a diverse set of nations, but those nations were often incredibly racist too.

If Germany hadn't turned on the Russians it would have won the war. If they'd managed to get access to the French Navy after invading France, they probably would have won the war.

IMO the biggest deal here was the Royal Navy. The UK started the war still clinging on to an empire that included almost half the world. They protected that empire with the biggest navy in the world. That meant that once Germany went to war with Britain by invading Poland, Germany couldn't ship in anything via the Atlantic or via the Mediterranean. When they were allies with the Russians, that at least meant that they had access to everything Russia had in abundance, but when they did the ol' red beard thing, they were boxed in on 4 sides. Meanwhile, their enemies late in the war had become manufacturing powerhouses with access to vast amounts of natural resources.

The whole story of U-Boats in WWII is really a story of how outmatched the German navy was. Rather than going toe-to-toe with the Royal Navy, the Germans had to snipe some of the constant shipments of goods flowing into the UK from around the globe. Even at the peak of their military power, they had ceded control of the seas to the British. Their only real naval force were stealth craft that could ambush and then run away. Since the British and then the Allies controlled the seas, it allowed them to invade by sea, first Sicily and then D-Day in France.

So, without the Royal Navy, Germany would have had access to goods from around the world, and wouldn't have been vulnerable to an invasion by sea in the later stages of the war.

As for Russia, the bigger deal about getting within a few km of Moscow was that at the same time they were also getting very close to Baku. If they'd managed to control the Azerbaijani oil fields, it would have cut off oil supply to the USSR while gaining a huge oil supply for themselves.

What the Germans did in WWII was very impressive, especially considering that 15 years before the start of WWII the German economy was in such a state of collapse that inflation was running at 3 million percent per month. Prices for regular goods doubled every 2 days. Kids were playing with stacks of bills because those stacks were effectively worthless. Germany went from being the losers of WWI paying massive reparations that destroyed their economy, to being a force able to conquer virtually an entire continent. Unfortunately, that continent lacked critical natural resources and so eventually they lost because they couldn't keep up with the manufacturing powers of their enemies.

Liking them isn't enough, they should be a reliable source of factual information. They're not. They're incredibly biased and their bias is towards a world view that's absurd. Just because your filter bubble feels good doesn't mean it's not harmful to you.

Yes, but that means you're not a reputable source.

I'd say they're tight, not loose.

But is putting Robert Kennedy Jr. in charge of HHS the right way to fix them?

Hahahahaha, no.

I'm not sure the premise is even sound, that the CDC, FDA and NIH have "long needed drastic reform". But, if that were true, you'd want an expert in leadership and management to address the problem, not a fucking nutjob. To reform those agencies, you'd need someone who the bureaucracies would trust has the same goals they do. Sure, there would always be people who would not want any reform, but you would also have allies who agree something needs to change, and who would support the necessary changes. Nobody at those agencies is going to listen to a fucking nutjob. Instead, they'd do everything possible to sabotage everything he was trying.

"Back in 2017, RFK Jr. talked with then-President Trump about setting up a vaccine safety review commission"

The fucking nutjob is an antivaxxer. That would be like putting a flat-earther in charge of NASA.

The whole premise is stupid. An opinion piece in a rabidly libertarian rag declares that these agencies need reform, citing other opinion pieces articles from this same rabidly libertarian rag.

These agencies may need some tweaks, but Reason magazine isn't a reputable source for what changes are needed, and RFK junior is definitely not the person who should be in charge of anything. If he tries, at best he'll merely fail. At worst he'll do serious damage to these important agencies that will take years to undo.

Ronaldo's ego is incredible, and he's almost always looking out for himself in everything he does. But, you can't deny that he's one of the best ever players. And his charisma means he's a great choice for something like this where he has to perform and interact with all the "scientists". Someone like Messi could do the same kinds of moves, but he wouldn't be able to chat with the presenters and "scientists" between events in a natural way. (P.S. I love that they got someone named Ronald to be the ordinary guy who couldn't do anything useful, that was just funny.)

I also think Ronaldo genuinely cares about all the biomechanics and all that, as long as it's something that applies to him, and that he could use to make himself better. A lot of other players just play on instinct and don't want to have to think about it.

Hearing is definitely part of it, but I imagine it's only hearing the sound of the ball being kicked. After that it's going to be far too quiet to hear until it gets close, and he's obviously reacting long before that. Maybe hearing helps him adjust in the last tenth of a second, but he's not hearing the ball's entire flight.

As for the body mechanics of a pitch or a kick, it is amazing. Like, a proper powerful punch involves leg muscles, hip muscles, waist muscles, chest muscles, and only then do you start to get to the arms. For most of us, the best way to realize how coordinated everything has to be is to try to do something with your wrong arm/leg. Everything that flows naturally on your strong side is just completely wrong on your weak side.

What's amazing is our ability to calculate the path of something in the air.

There's a test they did with Cristiano Ronaldo where someone kicked a ball to him so he could head it. They shut off the lights before the ball was in the air and somehow from the body shape of the person kicking it, he was able to know how to make contact with it without being able to see it.

https://youtu.be/0k2ey_okQ4E?t=1255

They'd die with the slaves too.

The Earth is the only place where humans can live. A tiny number of humans can just barely live in orbit really near the earth as long as people on the earth keep spending millions to regularly send up supplies.

Problems that would have to be solved before humans could live somewhere else:

• Growing food
• Getting water
• Producing oxygen and getting rid of CO2
• Surviving radiation
• Surviving in a different gravity
• Repairing anything
• Manufacturing anything

Growing food is the obvious one. Even on Earth at 1G with ideal sunlight and low radiation, there has never been a successful closed biosphere. Surely you'd have to perfect closed biospheres on Earth before trying anything outside of earth, and then hope nothing goes wrong. When something goes wrong with the biosphere experiments on Earth they just open the door (or more often cheat and pretend it's still working while sneaking in food / oxygen from outside). And, even if you could get a closed biosphere to work, it would be the blandest vegan diet imaginable. To have any variety in your diet you'd need a massive, complex biosphere.

Water, oxygen and CO2 it's the same problem. Sure, we have an idea of how to recycle them in theory. But, in practice it's much more difficult. On the ISS they recycle about 80% of the water. Seems pretty good, but that means they still need deliveries of 6000 to 9000L of water per year, and that water is used for oxygen. On Earth, you can't lose water. The worst that can happen is that it escapes into the atmosphere where the atmosphere and gravity trap it, and it eventually returns to the ground in the form of rain. On Saturn or Jupiter water released into the atmosphere wouldn't escape into space -- but humans couldn't live on Saturn or Jupiter. Everywhere else the atmosphere is to thin or too hot, or the gravity is too weak to prevent water from escaping. So, even if you could get orders of magnitude more efficient at recycling water, and almost never have leaks, eventually you'd need a resupply.

Radiation is another huge one. The earth is protected by its magnetic field and thick atmosphere. Astronauts in the ISS are still mostly protected by that field because they're orbiting close enough, but they lose the protection of the atmosphere. 1 week on the ISS is like 1 year of background radiation on Earth. And, that's your best case. Go anywhere else and you will be cooked by radiation. The astronauts who did a quick 1 week jaunt to the moon were probably OK, but for actually living elsewhere you'd need a lot more protection. Maybe you could do that if you lived underground, but say goodbye to the idea of living in a dome or something.

Then there's gravity. Humans evolved to live in 1G. Astronauts who spend even just a few months in zero G often have permanent problems as a result. And, that's fully grown adults whose bodies were formed in 1G environments. Who knows what would happen in childbirth, or to a baby's development in anything other than 1G.

Finally, repairing and manufacturing. The modern world is very specialized, and often repair parts are made in a factory on the other side of the world. Electronics fail, and they'd fail a lot more in space where they'd be exposed to radiation. You could probably make a small facility in space that could repair basic electronics, but if a computer chip failed, there's no way you could make a semiconductor fab on another planet. Even on Earth it's a thing so specialized that it's only done in a handful of countries. 3d printing is cool and all, but it is extremely limited. Even the finest setting on the most advanced machine is very coarse compared to what can be done in specialized factories. You're also very limited in the kind of "filament" you use. Even if you use a metal filament, you can't make something much more complex than a wrench, and that wrench wouldn't even be like a good wrench which is made from heat-treated steel. So, you couldn't really live a modern life on another planet, but you also couldn't live a 17th century life where windmills were the most advanced devices around, because you wouldn't have wind, or flowing water, or trees to built things with, or anything else.

If humans really wanted to be a multiplanetary species, and were willing to spend absurd sums of money over decades to support a base on another planet while it got up to speed, then eventually, it might be more-or-less sustainable, as long as it had the ability to capture asteroids and so-on. Even then, life there would probably suck compared to life on Earth. Even compared to an earth ravaged by wars, climate change, etc.

We have the Nazi bar owned by the Nazi who proudly put the Nazi flag outside and kicks anybody out who insults Nazis, but where a lot of non-Nazis still hang out because it was the busiest, best place before the Nazis took over: Twitter.

We have the soulless corporate bar run by a guy who installed cameras everywhere in the bar, in every booth, every bathroom stall, where every 5 minutes the music is interrupted by an ad, and where the exit door shut has been welded shut: Threads.

We have bar started by the guy who initially owned the Nazi bar, but who has since been kicked out, that has recently accepted a major funding round from TESCREAL fascists, but where the vibe, so far, is pretty chill, where they promise that eventually you'll be able to wander to nearby bars that all share the same menu, but where that promise is always some vague time in the future: Bluesky.

We have the series of no-name pubs that don't show up on any maps, some run out of people's houses, some even run from studio apartments, some run out of mental institutions, where you can leave any time you want and take your friends with you, where it's a bit of a free-for-all, and if you want a round of drinks you have to chase down the busy publican and ask what's available, and where you might be asked for help pouring drinks: Mastodon.

It's great to see that years after the Nazis took over, some people are finally choosing to stop going to the Nazi bar. It makes you wonder why they stayed so long though. But, I'm not as impressed with where they're choosing to go instead.