• 0 Posts
  • 16 Comments
Joined 28 days ago
cake
Cake day: September 29th, 2025

help-circle

  • Golden Dome is a pipe dream . It simply not technologically feasible to protect the entire country from incoming missiles.

    You probably have to shoot down missiles during the boost phase, when the warheads are still attached. For SDI, the U.S. was dealing with Soviet liquid-fueled missiles that would boost, or burn, for about four minutes. Well, modern ones burn for less than three—that’s a whole minute that you no longer have. This is actually much worse than it sounds because you’re probably unable to shoot for the first minute or so. Even with modern detectors [that are] much better than [those] we had in the 1980s, you may not see the missile until it rises above the clouds. And once it does, your sensors, your computers, still have to say, “Aha! That is a missile!” And then you have to ensure that you’re not shooting down some ordinary space launch—so the system says, “I see a missile. May I shoot at it, please?” And someone or something has to give the go-ahead. So let’s just say you’ll have a good minute to shoot it down; this means your space-based interceptor has to be right there, ready to go, right? But by the time you’re getting permission to shoot, the satellite that was overhead to do that is now too far away, and so the next satellite has to be coming there. This scales up really, really fast.

    And that’s just one of many issues. I recommend reading the whole piece. It really shows what a joke this whole concept is.

    I suspect that this is really just another way for Trump to hand billions of dollars to his buddies. Just watch. When some company is given a contract for this it’ll be a brand new company that just happens to be owned by former republican operatives or politicians. Needless to say, the company will never be required to produce anything either. They’ll just pay out all those billions to consultants and other newly created companies owned by other GOP operatives.


  • Manjushri@piefed.socialtoScience Memes@mander.xyzBanana
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    4 days ago

    Do you mean the Gros Michel banana ? It went commercially extinct in the '60s due to a fungus. So, yeah, probably not coming back. Sadly, the Cavendish banana is also subject to the same fungus so may also get wiped out at some point in the future.

    But Race 4 (also known as TR4 or fusarium wilt), the new version of Panama disease that started affecting crops in the subtropics in the 1980s and wiping them out, has since moved to infect crops in the Vietnam, Laos, Pakistan, India, Mozambique, and Australia. In 2019, Colombia declared a national disaster when it was discovered there. As it inches closer to Latin America, the likelihood of losing the Cavendish increases.





  • But… what about demons/devils?

    That’s actually why orcs in D&D were an evil race in the first place. At its core, D&D is derived from Lord of the Rings. Orcs in Tolkien’s world were created from elves by an evil god/demigod to be his evil army. They had no choice to be good or evil in LotR so that property was inherited into D&D.

    I’m okay with this change. Orcs in D&D lore have a different origin than in LotR and I don’t see why they should always be evil. I consider this just one more reasonable change from the original game which had odd rules like dwarves can’t be wizards and only humans could be clerics.




  • Manjushri@piefed.socialto196@lemmy.blahaj.zonePirulecy
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    43
    ·
    9 days ago

    It’s runaway corporate greed. HBO Max, or whatever it’s called now, cut a bunch of it’s own shows. The reason is that if they let you stream them, they have to pay residuals .

    While HBO Max already paid for the production of these shows, it’s still on the hook for residuals, including so-called back-end payments to cast, crew and writers, based on long-term viewership metrics.

    By removing these films and shows, especially the ones HBO Max created rather than licensed, executives can cut expenses immediately. Warner Bros. Discovery has promised at least $3 billion in synergies stemming from the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, announced in May.

    The content eliminations in total will save “tens of millions of dollars,” according to two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the finances are private.