Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "RealLifeLore" channel.

  1. Capitalism is shortsighted and sociopathic. To it even one day off is one too many.
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  2. It's also arguably Serbian territory that Croatia is occupying, and is safeguarding while trying to hand it back.
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  3. Thank Trump for entrapping America to choosing either military isolationism or diplomatic disrepute. This is but a taste of what a “multipolar” world will be like should the US disengage further.
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  4. It comes from the name of the infrastructure program, not the function. Similarly separated Alaska and Puerto Rico also have Interstate routes.
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  5. This might only happen if housing stops being an investment vehicle, but that's political suicide considering how much Koreans have bought into real estate with what little extra funds their paychecks allowed. China is an even more extreme example of this, but there the effect is mitigated by better consumer buying power and a wider sense of respectable occupations, and it shows in their considerably higher birth rate that still averages over 1 per woman.
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  6.  @PanduPoluan  Right, if you check a proper globe you'd see that Indonesia would be about as wide as the continental United States, with Java alone being about as long east-west as California is north-south
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  7. Unfortunately that would have invited a full Soviet retaliation, especially with necessary strikes across the rivers into the PRC. Starting a fight with the Red Army was real threat and not only in Asia. This is why McArthur who spent his whole career fighting without enemy nukes and publicly advocated for its deployment had to be dismissed. The real mistake was abandoning the KMT in China years earlier instead of helping making sure the Communists stayed contained to Manchuria, even as blatantly corrupt and inept as the pre-Taiwan Nationalists were.
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  8. The real maniacs are their seniors, both bosses and elders. It's a very hierarchical society and those seniors demand so much that young Koreans literally have no time to care for themselves.
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  9. Military bases the hosting nation wants there. The Philippines still regrets having made the Americans leave considering how much of its own seas it's lost to China since then.
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  10.  @juliav.mcclelland2415  Slave transports were a lot smaller than the container ships we use today. Plus slaves can easily climb themselves onto rowed tenders ferrying between the beach and the tall ship anchored offshore.
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  11. Problem is it wasn't your land to build on to begin with.
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  12. Let’s hope Harris wins then. A competent diplomatic corps would at least stabilize the situation, as opposed to Trump’s abortive embarrassment that’s already burned that bridge.
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  13. The Soviets were collaborating with the Axis, until they were backstabbed by the Nazis. Even then their neutrality towards Japan meant they were able to fuel their forces even longer than would otherwise have been possible.
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  14. Religion and traditions compels a culture to "birth 'em all and let God sort it out". As their economies advance, it becomes increasingly obvious that such blind faith is more a hindrance to further development.
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  15. Cameras aren't the real issue. It's the buying power of a young Korean's paycheck for the amount of time spent with work.
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  16. Especially highly hierarchical Korea, where just being younger means getting socially dominated and having all your free time taken by the demands of your seniors.
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  17. But only if that housing isn't captured by corporations, who are effectively immortal. It has to be made illegal for non-human ownership before businesses buy them out before young couples can finally afford them.
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  18. The unit commanders and MPs try, but they can only lock down so much before you get revolts from the spouses and children trapped on base, the outside vendors whose business revolves around valuable dollars coming from that base, and the general embitterment that quickly leads to more severe crimes and shenanigans for being restricted from normal civilian life outside without suitable justification.
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  19. They got inspired by the same news of Korea's birth rate falling under 0.7
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  20. Sounds like Wyoming, where you’re either a billionaire immigrant or barely getting by.
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  21. Europe and Japan were quite flattened at the end of WW2, and they came back as top economies. It backfired on conservatives to accept reform of America's immigration laws to legalize "family reunion" for permanent residency, because they seriously underestimated how motivated people are to remain and rebuild on the rubble of their homes -- hence the largely Hispanic and Asian sponsorships instead of the Transatlantic ones they envisioned.
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  22. Not anywhere near its fullest potential though, Native Americans were still largely hunting, foraging, and raiding each other when the Europeans arrived.
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  23. It's sinking mostly because the government hasn't implemented piped water sourced from the mountains, forcing residents to get water from the aquifers beneath them. Tokyo had the same issue back in the 50s and 60s, solved by installing piped water and injecting the excess back into the ground.
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  24. ​Right, it's the connections to existing demand centers that's worth waiting for. Sadly people are quick to criticize projects like HART and CAHSR when they start in the cheapest (i.e. least populated) section to basically practice and refine before real operations begin in the following buildouts.
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  25. I thought I was going to Iraq in 2012, then got sent to Camp As-Sayliyah instead. It was a cozy assignment, but still got that combat pay (terrorist hideouts and Iranian SF were considered active threats). Summer got rough because it would bring occasionally down the equipment and our mission, but once it cooled off the "deployment" was damn near luxurious by Army standards (I've heard crazier stories from trips by AF and Navy Aviation).
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  26. That's basically what all guided bombs and missiles are, hence why everyone who can afford them makes and uses them.
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  27. Yeah Japan isn't as crime-free as we're led to believe. The high conviction rate comes from selectively prosecuting cases with easily found evidence or easily coerced confessions.
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  28. I remember the first Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon game like 20 years ago depicted an Ethiopian invasion of Eritrea 💀
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  29. I remember a Chinese think tank article published earlier this year that outlined a strategy to distract the West with simultaneous conflicts in Europe (Ukraine), the Middle East (Israel), and the western Pacific (most likely Korea) before they can pull off an invasion of Taiwan. The PLA have taken advantage of this before, taking Hainan and Tibet during the Korean War, and gaining ground in the Himalayas against India during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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  30. The geography can also explain why Mexico accepted losing half its north to the US, as the central government had very little appreciable influence there compared to the Americans and separatist movements was already a major issue (not only Texas but the entire region) when the US finally invaded.
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  31. There's this whole field called "geopolitics", with entire organizations dedicated to analyzing and advising about the intersections of physical location and power projection.
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  32. What it doesn't need are retirees who consume resources much like younger workers without contributing nearly as much back.
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  33.  @NKKhoo_马来西亚人 That’s because America’s comparative advantage is in _innovation_; those “lazy” workers being the same kind who design and give you the photomasks from which the chips are etched through. Actual manufacturing is the least value-added, most price-sensitive, and most substitutable stage of production compared to R&D in the beginning and Sales & Services at the end, hence why the US and other developed economies stay rich despite offshoring its factories. America is only plussing up its chip fabs to keep some production capabilities at least for vital equipment, not to replace every IC in every IOT POS.
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  34. I've been saying that since like Vice City came out. Hawaii is the ideal place for a GTA game: remote islands, varied urban and natural scenery, lots of places to speed and hide, plenty of visitors, underlying local community tensions, considerable government presence, and still America ★★★☆☆☆
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  35. Like any politician or executive, what he says are signals not to be ignored. Countering what he says he wants could require actions of deterrence or redirection.
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  36. Without expensive projects to pump that water inland to the biggest consumers (Central Valley farms), all you'd end up with are well watered coastal Californians complaining about why nut prices are so high.
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  37. ​ @Max_Jacoby China's neighbors thought again, and regret not keeping the Americans around because they trusted Beijing.
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  38. Bigger problem is the agriculture lobby, who use like 4x the water of all the state's urban dwellers combined (including wasteful lawns and such). Farms sucking up of all that water allows them to accelerate yields at unsustainable rates, despite such crops themselves being often drought tolerant. Desalinization wouldn't really ease agriculture's demand without being complemented with an enormously expensive reverse-river aqueduct network, along with solutions on what to do with all that hypersaline brine desal plants would produce.
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  39. Philippines would likely join in so that it can take back its western seas. South Korea is more iffy since they need to keep watch for a surprise from the North.
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  40. Generally, though newer naval nuclear propulsion minimizes the amount of noisemaking pumps, instead having natural convection create the movement of coolant. But yeah there isn’t much need for months of stores for long deployments underwater. Although NK’s smaller boats will eventually face pressure with its limited stowage and resupply lines getting choked off over time.
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  41. More people mean more opportunities, especially if your farmhand job got automated away by a tractor. There's a reason populations continue to urbanize at the earliest opportunity.
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  42. Many of them are also empty fields especially in Africa. They're just included because of periodic training exercises with the locals.
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  43.  @captlanc China doesn’t think so though. Throughout the dynasties China governs on the assumption that ancestry compels allegiance, and even today this nation-state concept with hard soverign boundaries is considered a foreign barbarism that they shouldn’t follow. We see this in the PRC government’s persistent invasiveness into overseas Chinese community groups. So while Chinese descent doesn’t necessarily mean agreement with the modern Chinese state, just identifying as Chinese does open them up to influence if not coercion by its ruling Party.
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  44.  @mr.nemesis6442  That's why I mentioned diplomatic disrepute: not withdrawing as previously agreed reduces trust in us during future negotiations with everyone else including our allies who also planned around demobilization, while making us seem even more of a colonizer. Ironically the fiasco of Afghanistan (along with Pakistan who also removed US control of bases there) underscores the need for American forces in all our other bases worldwide, giving clear warning about how prepared and motivated their own militaries need to be before asking us to leave.
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  45. Thing is the overall human population is still rising, driven by societies who haven't yet realized how expensive it is to become productive and valuable in a capitalist environment.
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  46. It's cold when you're acclimatized to temps over 30, which it may have been even that same afternoon. I remember doing a year in the Gulf and coming back shivering in the high-10s.
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  47. The energy comes from its younger people. An aging society is a deflationary one, which economically is a destructive downward spiral.
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  48. One not so easily solved is chemical pollution, caused by its massive industrial runoff and urban development of former farmland. Mainland China relies on imports for inexpensive untainted food, and that remains the PRC's biggest weakness even if it does secure all the energy it needs.
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  49. If Beijing waits too long though, they lose too much of their youth and economic strength to sustain a war for Taiwan -- including fighting the subsequent years of insurgency -- while also maintaining positive control over Xinjiang, Tibet, and other increasingly restive areas. There's a reason Beijing has been becoming more openly belligerent nowadays.
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  50. They saw the same news of Korea's still-tanking birth rate falling below 0.7
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