Unfortunately it is part of a much larger bad thing but sure.

Google absolutely takes from OSM, but never in a way that is directly tracable.

Also I worked for Google as contractor doing map edits, they treat their employees like shit and in the last couple of years they have gutted all of their mapping talent… so I wouldn’t necessarily trust Google Maps over OSM for long, Google Maps is a sinking ship.

The best thing that can be said for North Carolina is that at least it isn’t South Carolina.

Unfortunately, the shutting down of the Red Sea will only make the case for nations in the vicinity of russia buying russian oil more, which is one of the reason Trump’s daddy clearly wanted him to start the Iran War even though russia is ostensibly Iran’s ally and thus has ostensibly been “disadvantaged” by the Iran War.

…don’t pay attention to the fact that the one thing Ukraine desperately needs is ballistic missile interceptors and the US and Israel chose to start a war of aggression that everybody knew would consume almost the entire stock of air defense missiles in Europe and European allied nations in short time.

If there is a silver lining here for Ukraine it is that Ukraine is the best in the world at littoral maritime small unit incursion with unmanned vehicles and Ukraine is similarly by the same capability the best in the world at securing littoral environments from small unit unmanned incursions (at least in terms of skill and doctrine, maybe not in raw equipment capability) so Ukraine will and already is playing a crucial role in building the future picture of maritime security that facilitates global shipping being relatively reliable and safe.

To be honest, I think a lot of what is happening here is probably classified, but suffice to say the obvious question when you cannot sail a ship through a strait because of the capacity of troops, small gunboats and ground launched missiles to destroy surface targets is well… can we just sail through the strait 10 meters below the water? These are the kinds of questions I am sure many Ukrainians have already thought very hard about and acted on.

I think that the Ukraine War cannot end until the Palestinian Genocide and connected Iran War reach some kind of resolution or end trajectory as well, and hopefully the geopolitical change in leverage here is enough to make the regional actors doubt the wisdom of just falling in line with whatever plan the US and Israel has even if it means blowing up Turkey next… which might lead to the end of the Ukrainian War finally becoming possible but make no mistake in general this is a tenuous position for the entire earth in a way that isn’t good for Ukraine, it distracts nations from spending time supporting Ukraine.

The type of vehicle the US military became convinced was optimal for a fight against a near-peer foe.

The type of vehicle that the US realized was essential to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The type of vehicle the US military became convinced was optimal for a fight against a near-peer foe.

The type of vehicle that the Ukraine realized is essential for a fight against a near-peer foe.

rinse repeat

We have already tried this over and over again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M6_gun_motor_carriage

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_British_Army_in_North_Africa_1942_E12643.jpg

It works… until you need armor…

Also see the story of the M10 Booker which is one of the most recent proofs that light tanks are mostly a fantasy because armor sucks to carry but even still you need it otherwise you cannot fight…

Such a platform “sounded great on paper, but as the system progressed through the development process, it became something that, well, maybe we can only get it on a C-17,” he said. Then the requirements changed again “to, well, it doesn’t need to be airdroppable,” which “kind of negates” the original purpose of the platform.

“If it’s not airdroppable, how is it going to be going in alongside … the airdroppable forces themselves?” Haelig said. “So, requirements creep is obviously a problem.”

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2025/7/8/canceled-army-assault-vehicle-m10-booker-outgrew-its-worth

^ they wanted light and fast but found they had to keep slapping on more armor until they just had a mediocre, critically underarmored and pointless main battle tank.

tap hamburger on bottom left

A lock on a door is not usually purchased with the intent of keeping only one thing out.

I wouldn’t say that if you aren’t willing to be the driver of a truck that is a lynchpin piece of regional air defense networks that is completely unarmored. Air Defense is difficult, you essentially need a college education’s worth of training and education to do it well and not just shoot down random friendly aircraft… so do you really think it is cost effective to toss away the lives of your air defense operators so carelessly?

Spend the money on the damn armored trucks.

This is the problem with people’s obsession with light armor, yes lightly armored vehicles are essential and highly useful, but every new generation of people looking at war inevitably say “ah, this next war we won’t need armor we need to make everything as lightly armored as possible!” and then that strategy fails spectacularly until people create more heavily armored versions and the cycle repeats…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMMV_HX_range_of_tactical_trucks

HX trucks are fitted with MAN/RMMV’s modular military-specific cab, this tracing back to the Category 1 trucks that entered service in 1976. The evolution of this cab used for HX models is 290 mm deeper than preceding designs, and has more than 600 litres of gross stowage space in the rear. The interior of the walk-through cab is primarily steel or washable plastic/vinyl. Two types of modular detachable hard-top roof are available, a standard flat roof or a version with extended height for the optional air-conditioning equipment, plus an NBC filtration system for the over-pressured IAC cab option if required.[4][9] The reinforced roof can take the weight of two soldiers and the recoil forces of a 12.7 mm heavy machine gun in a ring-mount. A riot protection kit is available for the cab.[7]

To meet increasing demands for crew protection on deployed operations the HX range was designed from the outset with protection options in mind. Appliqué protection kits, for which vehicles are prepared to accept at the production stage, were developed for the cab. Known as the Modular Armour Cabin (MAC), these kits offer protection according to STANAG 4569. Weight of these kits is about 1,500 kg and the hard-top remains removable for air-transport if required.[9] A swap-cab armouring solution known as the Integrated Armour Cabin (IAC) is also available. The IAC was originally developed in conjunction with Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) for the SX range of trucks, this is suited to models with twin front axles only. A Rheinmetall-developed IAC option is available, this is suitable for all HX range trucks, depending on front axle rating and protection levels.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMMV_HX_range_of_tactical_trucks

If you want the most general, all around applicable picture of what air defense looks like with this kind of platform at the slightly smaller scale of Hiluxes, JLTVs are as good representation of this category as any, and JLTVs are essentially MRAP hiluxes, which is what you need when absolutely everything in the air and ground is hunting you… with mines as well as everything else that comes to mind when you consider that.

…also… you can also put these on the back of Hiluxes too, I believe that is already being done in Ukraine it is just highly dangerous for the crew to operate that way.

TL;DR you can use a Hilux instead of an armored truck to move money between banks too!

Air Defense

NOAA, look on bottom left.

We think the end of the world is something that arrives all at once, but it is a series of progressively louder collapses of the way of things around us until we realize it has already arrived here and only just now its bow wake has caught up to stir us into an awareness of its presence.

I wish we wrote obituaries for ecosystems, we sorely need them.

Fascists are so bad at art and media literacy that they often end up making the best satire possible of themselves entirely by accident and with a straight face.

This isn’t a defense of them, more a condemnation of the system we have atrophied into… but wouldn’t it be illegal for a publicaly traded company to invest a bunch of capital into a new system that didn’t squeeze more profits out of people and depress employee costs further?

Thank you for linking this!

Ok, here you go, here is your homework!

The con of neoliberalism is now widely understood across the political spectrum. It is harder and harder to hide its predatory nature, including its demands for huge public subsidies (Amazon, for example, recently sought and received multibillion-dollar tax breaks from New York and Virginia to set up distribution centers in those states). This has forced the ruling elites to make alliances with right-wing demagogues who use the crude tactics of racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, bigotry and misogyny to channel the public’s growing rage and frustration away from the elites and toward the vulnerable. These demagogues accelerate the pillage by the global elites while at the same time promising to protect working men and women. Donald Trump’s administration, for example, has abolished numerous regulations, from greenhouse gas emissions to net neutrality, and slashed taxes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations, wiping out an estimated $1.5 trillion in government revenue over the next decade, while embracing authoritarian language and forms of control.

…

Neoliberal rhetoric, with its emphasis on individual freedoms, can effectively “split off libertarianism, identity politics, multiculturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power.”

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/neoliberalisms-dark-path-to-fascism

Do me a favor and try educating yourself about the history of fascism before you confidently assert incorrect things about it.

Fascism is what happens when the working class existentially gives up on leftist movements being able to help them because neoliberalism and/or status quo managers wholy and completely failed to provide them a decent life.

I am not saying the culture of AAA studios isn’t toxic as hell, but the size difference does create the potential for stability a smaller studio just physically cannot have even if its culture is far better.

Hell yeah thank you!

Video games are more than part of our culture, they extend into areas far beyond just entertainment.

Games are a way of understanding dynamic, hopelessly interdependent systems whether in an attempt to predict how dynamic situations with multiple actors with differing objectives will turn out or better understand history as a living dynamic thing that happened to occur one way (see Cole Werhle’s board game Pax Pamir 2e or John Company as perfect examples of this).

The evolution of good game design and the general progress of most games getting better UI systems over time as designers figure out how to best represent complex situations and choices to players is also FAR more important than just a nice consequence of iterative design, it is the groundwork for good architecture in the software realm in terms of how software is experienced by humans.