You would have to have an incredible grindset to become a decent engineer without actually enjoying any of it. You could become a shitty one just by passing tests, I guess. (And probably many people do)

And before that, the worry was Malthusian overpopulation. (Which would be a much bigger problem if it had happened)

That would make more sense. I imagine it would also be good just to wear down their teeth if there’s nothing else available.

That makes sense. I guess what I was thinking is a strategic use of a small, tactical-ish nuke, probably framed as tactical. Basically, cross the red line but as minimally as possible, in order to put NATO on the spot.

In a way that was Russia’s strategy before the full-scale invasion, and it was working flawlessly. Since then NATO has become much more determined and active, but also more unstable.

Ukraine could absolutely be fighting a dirtier war than it is.

Doing war crimes is bad strategy. It’s not free, it doesn’t effect enemy military operations and, as we’ve seen in with Russia’s actions in Ukraine, is effective propaganda for the enemy. If the Russian government can provoke Ukraine into it, it’s absolutely in their interest to do so.

Ukraine is fighting total war about optimally. Or at least, I don’t have any notes for them.

Because they clearly didn’t use them at points where there were more concentrated Ukrainian defences that might at least at a simple tactical level, have an argument for their use if you turned off your brain and soul and thought like a Russian does, for a minute.

Because actual Russians care about far more than just winning. There’s also degrees of loss, and MAD is a very significant one. I don’t know to what degree they’re worried about preserving the value of Ukraine as territory at this point, but if they do that would be another consideration, you’re right.

Again, it was a very “technically increases chance of victory” kind of answer.

They’re not going to use nukes of any kind.

Yep, probably not.

Yeah, sand definitely is much harder than teeth (which in a normal vertebrate are based on apatite, at a Mohs hardness of 5). If it’s abrasion, that explains a bit, although it’s going to be much slower than an actual cutting action. A quick search indicates cement is at Mohs 5-7, so you theoretically could chew through an unusually soft sample.

You could also go with metal or stone, like an actual vault, but we both thought of tupperware. Go figure.

Honestly, when your whole organisation is hardened criminals <10% grift is pretty impressive.

No way. Really? That can’t be much softer than their teeth.

TBH I’m unclear on the exact specifics of how you use tactical nukes, but it’s something different that would end the geopolitical stalemate. If they get lucky, and after whatever Trump-NATO drama clears the West is willing to abandon Ukraine, it’s a victory. That doesn’t seem like the most likely outcome, but there’s more chance than none.

It doesn’t seem like Ukraine is “pulling it’s punches” in any real way right now, so from the Russian side making them angrier doesn’t matter. (Hey, you wanted no platitudes)

China would be pissed. Unless they invade it’s a different problem for later, though. Basically, the question was narrowly defined to be about chance of victory, so it gets a bit of a narrow-minded answer. If you’re asking what the best option for Russia’s general welfare is, it’s to make a big show of renouncing expansionism, say sorry and going home. If you’re asking what’s best for Putin, at this point it might be exactly what he’s doing.

Ukraine has been on the brink of collapsing several times and only heroic efforts on their part and the persistence of their allies have staved off the worst.

Aside from the very first months, do you have a citation for that? The roughest time for them since I can think of was when they couldn’t get shells, and even then it didn’t really translate into much movement of the front lines (since that’s the main metric of short-term success or failure that’s public).

It’s a full scale war and conditions have been terrible, of course, but there’s a difference between suffering and actually losing.

My sense is that Putin is hoping that another crisis will open up in the future, and that it will finally bring about Ukraine’s surrender.

Yup. The general vibe is that even a tiny chance of an opening and a few more months to live is worth more than whatever conceding would bring Putin.

High-end ammunition (interceptors mostly, I don’t think Ukraine ever depended on that stuff for strikes) my well run into a bottleneck. Ukraine is aiming to trade some off of Middle Eastern countries in exchange for a much larger supply of interceptor drones, which they can apparently spare, but who knows how well that will work or if it will last.

Supplies of cheap ammunition haven’t really been touched by the war with Iran.

Initially, their theory was “many Ukrainians will welcome us, and we’ll be able to rush their capital before they can do anything”. TBF they got close on the second point. Then it revolved around outlasting the West’s attention span.

Now it publicly seems to be “well, maybe if we blow up their power grid one more time”, or “we couldn’t possibly lose to Ukraine”. Internally, Putin knows shit hits the fan as soon as the war stops short of victory, or seems like it’s about to stop, so it continues. You can also see systems being moved to Moscow and St.Petersburg in open source intel, which is preparation for a possible civil war.

The spirit of this question might be more “how would you win”, though. It’s tricky, by all accounts Russia is running out of manpower and seems afraid to conscript more aggressively. Their foreign reserves will run out eventually too (although they’re deeper than I had realised). Most conventional tactics or strategies that are scalable are being tried and not working. I guess they could try bombing some new things.

That leaves escalating to tactical nuclear weapons, and hoping Europe doesn’t respond by directly fighting Russia. Of course, potentially ending the world might be too heavy a cost if you’re not just a Lemming running a hypothetical.

Shit, I wrote that wrong. Trying to do too many things at once.

Ah. I’m surprised there’s any calories in that for a non-ruminant.

Bro, get some Tupperware or something. Sure you’re still unimaginably rich, but there’s a principle to it!

Wow, I’ve never had this problem. The tricky one is Australia vs. NZ.

I mean, every dialect is just a bastardised version of an older dialect, including your own.

What got eaten by rats? Were those rats living on pure cocaine somehow?

The name might well have come from the community, since the whole app store model is as old as the modern smartphone, and downloading a different way is new, while possible, was always for power users.

If there had been a more normal software ecosystem from the get-go that would have been nice. Actual regulation to enforce device freedom would also be good.

So I know the root cause of what happened to western Rome is still debated, but what about Byzantium? What theories are there for why they started to have these problems after a few more centuries of prosperity?