Target identification, threat assessment, determining level of force necessary, simply being a human face rather than a machine. Drones are also vulnerable to electrical issues, signal issues, all sorts of things a human simply doesn’t need to worry about or are more easily remedied in a human.

Occupying land is not simply about killing the enemy, and multiple armies have learned this over the course of human history. Rarely are you concerned with SIMPLY taking the land - even if it’s agrarian capacities or whatever you’re worried about, having the employees still alive (largely) leads to better outcomes. Having a functioning economy in the occupied zone leads to less resistance. Facilitating the continuity of life within the occupied zone does too - and that doesn’t work if your “occupation force” is a bunch of robot dogs that mow down anyone for being in the street.

Drones cannot occupy a city. Drones cannot hold land. Even in the grim darkness of the 21st century, a drone is far more susceptible to outside factors eliminating its fighting capability than a human soldier standing in the same spot. At the end of the day, yes, a bulk of the fighting will be done by remote, but you’ll still need meatbags with guns to actually advance and take areas. There’s really no way to get around that unless we somehow develop autonomous robots that are able to make smart choices and strategize on the ground without human oversight, and I simply don’t see us managing any serious level of “AGI” from the current idea of machine learning, at all.

It also just has a lot of really cool factions to fight in general. I will always love the Clockwork.

Man I fucking forgot about Freedom Force. Hours lost in the first one just for character creation, I must’ve spent days fine tuning things.

I recommend Skate Bird.

Don’t forget college sports. If your parents are early Gen X or Boomers, college sports weren’t quite as big a deal - they weren’t quite as commercialized until the mid-80s, which started salaries for coaches and staff flying.

In many states, the highest paid public employee is a college football coach.

I dunno, with his incompetence, Waspinator might be a fun hang.

Just make sure he doesn’t get possessed again.

Nah, that just helps to normalize it and let people think it’s just harmless and fun.

It’s easier for the news and the government to deepfake things like “huge mobs of Mexican narcoterrorists just over the border” or “there’s a nuclear missile silo in Iran” or whatever with this.

This is called “goetta” here in Cincinnati. Usually you toss some spices in the mix, fry it up and serve it for breakfast. It’s delicious. I know Pennsylvania has a similar thing called “scrapple”.

Now, without the spices, yes, terrible.

The dude likely never commanded more than 1000 guys at a time before this, and he legitimately just doesn’t have the training or the temperament to be in the position of running the ENTIRE military. There’s a reason you make generals and admirals your SecDef: they actually have training in things like strategy, and have enough experience to know what actually wins a war.

Guys like Hegseth, who don’t really have experience in high command, think “muscle and grit and cool guys with guns” win wars. This makes him more popular with actual soldiers, but it doesn’t win you wars, and his insistence on culture war bullshit over actually doing things that work is rapidly losing him the soldier support too.

Different method of action, but yes. Turns out coating your entire GI tract in an impermeable film for a day or so is a bad idea.

Maintenance Phase did an episode on it a while ago, well worth a listen.

See, here’s the thing, we would’ve heard about it. Trump and all his ilk can’t keep their fucking mouths shut and would’ve been lording this shit over us. Someone would’ve said SOMETHING, because none of these people can keep a secret.

Many states also don’t (usually) require old plates to be turned in when designs change. My state’s gone through two design changes since I started driving in 2010 and I still have my original plates. I’ve seen people driving with plates from the 80s.

Not to mention the payload reqs on this. All the radiation shielding and heat management is gonna need a new Sea Dragon-sized rocket.

I’ve actually asked one of the software devs at my company about this. The answer is “typing is too slow” - the idea goes that you can dictate 2-3x faster than you can type, and since the current software market is focused on FASTER FASTER MORE SPEED MORE CODE NOW, and your performance is often only measured in how many lines of code you produce, the only way you can stay competitive is to dictate to your dozen AI agents, with you just auditing and debugging the output when needed.

This feels like them trying to “it’s just a joke” a topic into local public discourse.

I expect this to show up on that fascist Pioneer Woman’s website in about a month.

Well of course, first you invent the ansible.

Anthropic just knows it has political leverage, that’s it. Large parts of US infrastructure and business now rely on Claude models to even function the way they do with the staff they do, and you can leverage that dependence into political action and retaliation pretty easily in the name of “national security”.