Anybody else a bit weirded out by the fact that some 1/4 of the article is spent talking about fringe religious beliefs rather than the actual awesome history of the site?
Iirc the USA did investigate making them during the cold war but concluded that the (very real) benefits - such as the ability to recall a missile after launching - weren’t worth cooking US citizens and allies with radiation from an unshielded nuclear reactor flying at mach 3 just above the surface; they planned to fly as low as 150m!
Their initial plans basically were to build a nuclear-ramjet “missile” that could fly for several days straight carrying dozens of nuclear warheads, autonomously dropping them on “enemies”. The big problem was that it’d have to fly over the USA and/or western Europe in order to reach the USSR.
A Chinese corporation openly tested those spy balloons over my country a decade ago (allegedly just for monitoring livestock), why is it so unbelievable that they’d use a more polished version on their biggest geopolitical rival?
Yeah and? I don’t want to live in an oppressive shithole, doesn’t matter to me if they became oppressive because they were copying China, the USA, Nigeria, the UK or whatever - they’d still be oppressive!
I honestly didn’t think that saying “I don’t like authoritarian capitalism” would be such a controversial statement…
I’ve legitimately got no idea how they can fix their countries (or if they can even be fixed) as I’m more focused on my own country. I do not want my country to copy either the USA or China, and I resent the close relationship my government maintains with both of those oppressive states.
The USA pressured our government into performing illegal searches/arrests to favour their corporations, and the CCP has repeatedly been caught infiltrating our parliament. Those big authoritarian countries just bully smaller states to get what they want, and we need to stop pretending that it’s morally justified and normal. It’s not okay.
Treating minorities better than the USA isn’t exactly a high bar.
My country also treats minorities better than the USA, it’s easy to get into uni, celebrates diversity, has an alright social welfare system and socialised healthcare, does the occasional infrastructure project etc.
Thanks for teaching me that I’m actually living in a socialist paradise rather than a poor, neoliberal capitalist, physically isolated island where private corporations are free to wreck the environment for profit!
Actually I’m not from the Americas (though one of my ancestors did decide to leave Florida in the 1830s or 40s cos he had very dark coloured skin).
And I disagree that there’s a need to “pick a side” - both “sides” will stomp on smaller countries no matter what because that’s what authoritarian imperialistic powers do.
Archaeologists in Turkey Have Unearthed Human and Animal Sculptures That Are the Earliest Examples of Prehistoric Art | Artnet News (news.artnet.com)
Human and animal sculptures that could date to 9,600 B.C.E were found in Turkey at sites some believe have ties to biblical accounts....
Russia has tested a nuclear-powered missile and could revoke a global atomic test ban, Putin says (apnews.com)
cross-posted from: lemmus.org/post/1022137...
Anti-China Rhetoric Is Off the Charts in Western Media (thediplomat.com)
China dev fined 3 yrs’ salary for VPN use (www.tradingview.com)