I don’t feel well educated in modern military actions- are you saying that civilian gun owners in America would contribute meaningfully to the national defense (maybe because of things like civil resistance in other modern conflicts?), or am I misunderstanding? Do you have any suggestions for how I could start to broach the topic? It’s so broad and fast-moving that it’s hard to know where to start.
Yes absolutely they would and insurgencies are not the same thing as two nations fighting each other. America has twice as many gun owners as there are people in Afghanistan, a large chunk of them have combat experience.
The thing that makes the large quantity of American gun owners potentially useful in that sort of scenario is not that they possess guns. That matters a little, but usually most of the equipment a resistance uses is captured and/or supplied by allies. The thing that would be useful is these individuals' skills with firearms. It's theoretically kind of an alternate route to a similar (but lower) background proficiency level that some countries achieve with mandatory military service.
Note however that America is not only not unique in having that background proficiency -- but unlike mandatory military service, this approach has not really been tested. It's far from a certain proposition either way.
Exactly the type of gunnut I'm talking about. You lot couldn't handle being asked to wear a COVID mask, you wouldn't be able to handle actual war against a state armed with ya assault rifle and tinned food
I think you misunderstand me. I have never owned a gun, fired one exactly once more than 20 years ago (Boy Scouts), and advocate for more gun control (not less). I would be totally useless in any realistic fight. The argument has some merit though, in that it is as yet unclear how much it would matter.
I don't think that unclear merit outweighs the very clear and data-driven drawbacks. I just prefer to engage subjects like this in a charitable manner.
The hardware still matters because it lets you execute suspected collaborators and force the occupiers to incur cost hardening their logistics train (i.e. insurgency 101 type stuff) without waiting for the bureaucrats in whatever foreign country wants to fund your insurgency to prepare your arms shipments.
If you're in a situation where the thing you're doing can be meaningfully called an "execution", a firearm is a convenience, not a necessity. There are also plenty of effective attacks on logistics trains that don't involve firearms, though I will grant that they are at least sometimes a force multiplier there. Hence "that matters a little".
What makes you think the us army would unite against them? Sure a few nut militials would be suppressed, but if gun owners in mass are raising up that means a large controversy that the military will be aware of. The us military is not full of 'yes men' who will follow orders that blindly on home turf, a lot of them will follow.
> What makes you think the us army would unite against them?
I'd turn that around and ask, "What makes you think the people would accept the gun nuts rebellion?"
Many would be celebrating in the streets if the military showed up with tanks and started blasting. Furthermore, there's enough people in the military from far, far outside whatever state is being threatened to care that much about the locals.
Again, you are assuming a small rebellion - of course those will be put down. Texas has enough gun owners to put down a small rebellion without the military (they would let the military/police do it). However if things got so far that the majority of gun owners were willing to go to war that implies the US is at least very divided and the military is going to at least partially be on the side of the rebellion.
At a certain point, quotes (like any other part of language) get a new meaning, sometimes the opposite of what they originally stood for. Like any popular saying, whatever they were in reference to is forgotten and they stand and are interpreted on their own.
It doesn’t matter what the quote used to invoke if no one using it is thinking of the invocation.
A nice attribute of discussion is the opportunity to see references and quotes through the eyes of other people, perhaps especially if the interpretation is novel.
The "You're not x. You're y." format reads as AI generated to me. I know that seeing AI syntax behind every corner is a problem that is only going to get worse and that I need to shift my mindset; nevertheless, it tinged how I reacted to the entire article.
BigCorps could do a lot of things under a new regime, but they are already doing shitty things. I'd rather deal with the current problems and then see if/what kind of new issues crop up, and then course-correct then.
GRRM is already beating them at that game by publishing a new book in the series every couple decades. That might become a common tactic in such a copyright environment
I've been waiting for solutions that integrate into the artistic process instead of replacing it. Right now a lot of the focus is on generating a complete image, but if I was in photoshop (or another editor) and could use AI tooling to create layers and other modifications that fit into a workflow, that would help with consistency and productivity.
I haven't seen the latest from adobe over the last three months, but last I saw the firefly engine was still focused on "magically" creating complete elements.
I agree that screenshots of text that are cut off from essential context are enough to make me pull my hair out, it creates so much extra work— but the modern feature of automatic text recognition in screenshots and images that allows for copy and paste has been incredible. Along with indexing that allows it to be searched, regular screenshots have become one of the most robust and future proof ways for me to preserve context from my workspace. When I look back into archived screenshots it helps me to recapture all kinds of things that I wouldn’t have thought to explicitly record.
Perverse incentives is right. Like having a fiercely loyal Superfan. Maybe it sheds some light on behavior among celebrities, actually. It makes sense that we want validation, and that sometimes hearing grounded feedback is bitter medicine - but if we're allowed to choose the option that always endorses our actions then we're on a divisive path.
Yep this seems like it makes a lot of sense— and adding on, picking a measurement means that all of them can be the same (consistency, as you said)- having variation in the same row would look bad from a distance
I've been looking for good examples of handbooks and staff materials that do the job well, this one seems a little heavy on the philosophy - I can see why it's been discussed as more of a recruitment tool. Anyone who has favorite examples of handbooks to link, I'd love to check them out.
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