Moral Calculus

{Yes, as a matter of fact, I'm pretty happy with this one.

And it's infinitely re-usable, simply by swapping out whoever I put in the right panel.

You will see this material again. - A.}

The Shoe Fits. Bummer.

Tough Love

You go, Big Dog.
Like age, IQ is just a number, right?

Seems Michael hasn't learned his lesson yet, and took issue with the preceding post at the OP.

We replied.

Untroubled by any acquaintance with the facts publicly available, Michael asked for "sources".

So we obliged him. This particular cluebat may or may not have had some spikes pounded in the business end of it.

The host there may or may not tolerate seeing Michael educated so diligently (and we understand if that's the case), but since Mikey asked for this, we feel it dulce et decorum that his lesson be left on the chalkboard to remind him of the immortal words of Dean Wormer.

Round One

Michael

 2 hours ago

 Reply to  General Buck Turgerson

Don’t worry, General Aesop just posted two articles on this post for us.

The Poseidon doesn’t exist and nada, nada. Go read his military knowledge in full proud glory over there.

Is there anything Aesop’s not an expert on?

Well, we should be grateful HE’s keeping an eye on NC Renegade for us.

Need I add a sarc tag for the last sentence?

Green Hornet’s comment has it correct. Poseidon was created by Russia to keep America from getting nuke fever. Pity is that only works if your target audience is sane AND doesn’t think that AMERICA (Hooo Rahhh!!) is still THE SUPERPOWER of the world.

Odd how slinking out of Afghanistan and the FACT we’ve not won a war since WW2 simply rolls of their backs….

Between the idiots in District of Criminals, Think Tanks that say Ukraine is Winning and folks like Aesop, maybe the Russians are too rational to understand them.

Riposte

Aesop

 1 hour ago

 Reply to  Michael

Two articles, Buckwheat?
Common Core grad, or just need a new prescription?

I never said this doesn’t exist, I said it can’t be what it’s bullsh*t-splained to be.
So let’s look at the videotape, Captain Queeg:

As to the Poseidon, going strictly by that bastion of accuracy, Wikipedia, it’s
a) not a torpedo by any stretch of that term
b) not a “Doomsday bomb” on the order of Tsar Bomba
c) could carry a nuclear warhead in the 2 MT range (U.S. Titan missiles in the 1960s and 70s carried 10MT warheads, for comparison)
d) has an imaginary speed of 100kts (which would be about as tough to detect and track underwater as a Chinese New Year’s parade with fireworks
e) has no “tsunami creation” function nor intent.
We surface-tested a 15MT warhead in the Castle Bravo test (and had multiple other MT-range tests at Bikini Atoll), and no tsunami was created, anywhere, from any of them, period.

So “Radioactive tsunami-making torpedo” is three whoppers of total bullshit in just one line.

Speculation is that it uses a deep and very slow approach speed using satnav guidance (with no explanation of how they solved the physics problem of getting satellite signals down to 500 fathoms), only shifting to loud and stupid in terminal guidance mode, and that its warhead is deliberately dirtied up with cobalt. Which only works with surface detonation.
It’s main purpose with such a relatively modest warhead (nowhere near a “Doomsday” device would be as a very dirty conventional nuke, intended to contaminate the target area long-term and render it unusable, beyond the expected damage of a 2MT explosion.
So they’re intended to take out a port, particularly strategic naval bases like Norfolk, King’s Bay, Bangor, and Pearl Harbor.

Okay, great. Play that card.
20 minutes later, D-5 Trident IIs start popping and dropping like rain from half a dozen points at sea, and 95% of the Russian population is a distant memory for the next 100 years 30 minutes after that.
Followed in short order by the US, and then most of the Northern Hemisphere. Game Over.
Now Brazil and Australia get to fight for control of the world.
Who does that help?
What’s the point?

Some of us have been studying the details of nuclear war for decades, and when obvious vaporware bullshit of this magnitude pops up, it’s snort-worthy comedy.

At least when the Japanese hyperventilated about this, they came up with Godzilla, and made a buck.

The source article for this is stupidity marinated in rose fertilizer.
Make better choices.

To be fair, Michael's standard m.o. is not to answer any direct questions that are too hard for him (which is most of them), but instead to generally gainsay the original points, wave his arms, and ask new questions. Today was no exception.

Round Two

Michael

 26 minutes ago

 Reply to  Aesop

Aesop, kindly list the sources for your many assumptions and your CV of learning so much about Nuclear Weapons and apparently submarine actions.

Size of warhead, perhaps?

It’s been about 65 years since the Atol tests, maybe your information might be a bit off? Perhaps the shape of the undersea area is different? Example, deep sea vs Chesapeake Bay shallow? Distance of radioactive water movement of but a few dozen miles to important targets like Ah, DC?

AND for the record is there ANYTHING Aesop isn’t an expert about?

Asking for many.

 Set and Spike

Remember, when you're putting the tourniquet on, that you asked for this, Michael:

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, man! Was telling you the info I referenced on Poseidon was straight from the Wikipedia page too hard to grasp?

Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System - Wikipedia

Learn to use your mouse for something besides a cat toy.

And you figure the widely-footnoted and researched published data from the Bikini tests have transmogrified since they ended sixty years ago??

Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll - Wikipedia

Did the Nuke Fairy sneak in and leave bigger yields under someone's pillow in the last six decades?

Did the Underpants Gnome steal the craters left there??

It's not a question of the shape of the sea floor, it's basic physics: little bombs (and in oceanic and geologic terms, they're all little bombs) haven't the ability to create tsunamis.

FFS, the 2004 Sumatra Tsunami was a 9.2 earthquake that ripped the faultline 19 miles down below mean sea level, and ripped the faultline there for a distance of 810 miles. You figure the Russians have got a warhead that can do that? You could do stand-up comedy at CalTech with that joke!

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami - Wikipedia

Here, let's get you a booster chair at the elementary geologic physics classroom for the 20 seconds it'll take to clue you in:

" The amount of energy released by the Hiroshima nuclear bomb was about 1012 J, whereas one magnitude 8.9 earthquake released about 1018 J of seismic energy (Figure 9). This is a million times more energy (i.e. a factor of 106) than the Hiroshima bomb."

That would be 15 GIGATONS for Common Core grads, (15,000,000,000 tons: as 15 BILLION with a B), or a single warhead as powerful as 258 Tsar Bombas.

Sh'yeah, whistle up one of those, please.

Earthquakes: 4.3 Seismic energy | OpenLearn - Open University

How sad you couldn't have pulled off two more mouseclicks before you jumped all over your junk.

And for the record, is there anything you are an expert about, or do you just latch on to everything you know nothing about and just dig in blind and start spouting off until you run facefirst into a brick wall of ignorance, over and over?

Nothing I told was anything you couldn't have confirmed all by yourself without having your hand held like a toddler, and you could have saved yourself from having your diaper changed publicly, for only about the 200th time.

Learn to do basic research, and educate yourself, instead of letting your mouth run away with you when your data bank is in deficit. Seriously, please try it, if only for the novelty of that approach.

And yet again, stirring crap with me on someone else's blog, without offering anything but the contents of your spleen. Color me shocked.

Why not go all in, and start your own, just so everyone can know which pronouncements to take the 180° opposite of?

And because I'm a nice guy, and hate to be rude to someone else on their own blog by having to educate you, if NC R decides this is just too painful to watch, (or post) I completely understand, so I'm archiving this answer and posting it on my blog, to memorialize this long-overdue moment in your education.

We repeat for your edification, Mikey,

Make. Better. Choices.

It's not that we know everything.

It's that we know so much more than you, with half our brain tied behind our back, because we look things up first, and you make it childishly easy to demonstrate it beyond any rational dispute when you just shoot from the lip, and fire blanks.

If you're going to keep whining and instigating like a little bitch, don't be too shocked when you get bitch-slapped.

Bonus fun: Go to nukemap.

It's a site that lets you drop a nuke of any size anywhere on the planet, and gives you predictive radii of effects.

A 2.3MT Russian nuke surface-burst in Pearl harbor does enough damage to take the harbor (and anything or anyone there at the time) out of play, such that squirting a UUV like Poseidon there confers only one (brief) advantage over missiles or gravity bombs: relative surprise. Which tapers off rapidly once one of them pops.

And, as I noted, play the Russian hand with that card, and see how fast all life north of the equator is bouncing in the rubble, with a faint radioactive glow, once the charred remains are consumed by the fires.

The weapon merely ensures you can strike first, about half an hour before all life in your country ceases to exist for a century or more.

Brilliant!

Additional Info: Tohoju/Fukushima earthquake/tsunami (2011):

 The seismic moment (M₀), which represents a physical size for the event, was calculated by the USGS at 3.9×10²² joules, slightly less than the 2004 Indian Ocean quake.

For reference, and to help out the Short Bus crowd on this, that was an energy release equivalent to roughly 100 million* Tsar Bombas. That would be a chain of 26'-long Tsar Bombas from Tokyo to the Moon and back. To get this:

From one Poseidon weapon? Sh'yeah, pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

*(Please, check my math, and see if I dropped or added any zeroes here. I don't have a 24-place calculator, and will happily slide the decimals if I got this wrong.)

The most implausible part of the story: that anyone in any country, including Russia, would be criminally and risibly stupid enough to waste money on a weapon that guarantees if you ever use it, all life in the Northern Hemisphere will probably be dead within the hour afterwards.

Genius, right there.

The smarter move would have been to promise them you could create actual Godzilla, and train him to attack your enemy's cities and stomp on their cardboard buildings and step on their plastic model tanks. With no heroic scientist to swim a nuke into his lair and pop the pin.

That, they might have sold.

Strike Up The Band

h/t DiveMedic

DAIQ: Deceased @$$hole In Question age 10

 

Attention to orders:

Be it known herewith that we do award Elias Armstrong, aged 12 (forever!), with the FAFO Medal. Being deceased in his enterprise, and owing entirely to it, Subject-Named @$$hole also merits the attachment of the gold star device, denoting a posthumous ultimate award. 

To wit, on February 5th, 2023:

[Denver] Police received a report of an auto theft in the 8300 block of East Northfield Boulevard, according to police. 

The car's owner tracked the vehicle using an app and found it stopped in the area of West 12th Avenue and North Decatur Street.

"When the vehicle’s owner approached the car, he was involved in an exchange of gunfire with occupant(s) in the stolen vehicle," according to investigators. "A juvenile male then drove the stolen vehicle to the 2900 block of W. 10th Ave. where he was found by officers to be suffering from a gunshot wound."

To be blisteringly precise, when the vehicle's owner approached his stolen property, the vehicle's occupants, being the culpable thieves of such property, opened fire on him, which prompted him to return same with both elán and a smile, giving much better accuracy in return than he received initially.

The DAIQ was not found "suffering from a gunshot wound", so much as he was found to be expired from one. Huzzah! Suffering, at that point, was a metaphysical impossibility.

"Armstrong was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

It appears other occupants of the stolen vehicle "fled on foot from the 2900 block of W. 10th Ave. prior to officers’ arrival."

This being the textbook definition of Fucked Around, Found Out (with meritorious expiration in the process!), DAIQ more than qualifies as the latest recipient of the Trayvon Memorial Award, and automatic nomination to the Darwin Awards for further recognition, having thoughtfully and happily departed the gene pool without depositing within its confines any subsequent generation of even more wastes of skin and oxygen as himself and his ilk.

In recognition of which thoughtfulness, we offer a hearty 

O frabjous day! Callou! Callay!

DAIQ's family members, having come to our attention for meritless, gratuitous, and prolonged BMWing (Bitching, Moaning, and Whining) over the loss of their littlest family fuck up, ought to be glad that the citizens of Denver do not issue Shoot On Sight warrants on the entire loud-mouthed clan of shitbags, with any such additional expungement of the gene pool thereabouts visited upon his relatives and their shyster mouthpieces being declared a public service deserving of further recognition and civic commendation, even if it erased their entire line(s) from further contributions to society.

We further commend the vehicle's owner, for both his civic contributions and marksmanship, and note that the mayor and police chief of Denver owe him a written commendation, and a token box of ammunition as recompense for the lifetime of criminal activity and legal gymnastic exhibitions from which he proactively spared both the citizens of Denver, and the courts and prison system of the state of Colorado.

One can but hope that the other participants are apprehended, as the death of their accomplice makes all of them eligible for capital murder charges in the entire incident. Notably, no one in the DAIQ's family appears to be forthcoming with the identities of those little bastards. Maybe they, too, will win their own FAFO Medals in their inevitable subsequent future exploits.

Dulce et decorum est.

Everyone loves a happy ending.

Rex Kramer, Dangerseeker, offered his timeless comment.

Mariupolic Victory = Pyrrhic²

 h/t WRSA

RTWT.

The full spectrum of likely outcomes in Ukraine, based on reality and facts on the ground, not naked fanboyism.

Nota bene  that in exactly none of the article does van Creveld suggest

"Outcome No. 6: Russia parades victoriously into Kyiv, having wiped out the Jewish Nazis (oxymoron alert) previously ruining the newest Russian slave state, and Putin is carried bodily on the shoulders of his ardent supporters in a glorious victory parade in Moscow, as Russia assumes its rightful place of power and influence, with all of Western Europe humbled and in thrall before their indomitable might, as the Globohomo rainbow forces of Joooooooooooos and decadent faggotry flee shrieking in anguish, while Vlad reinstates all that is good, right, and manly in world affairs." 

Because it's far more likely that flying monkeys will shoot out of yer ass, than that anything approaching that nonsense will ever happen. Both Russia and the West come off the worse for wear in this war in nearly every scenario he outlines; the main difference between the choices he presents is how shitty life is afterwards for Ukrainians. Which isn't surprising, given where the conflict is being waged.

But there's still no such thing as "winning" anywhere in the cards for the Moscow Maniac.

Which is why it's far likelier that Vladpoleon is going to end up the same way his idol did: dead of arsenic poisoning, and relegated to oblivion. After grinding his own forces into semi-helplessness.

Let Me Know When The Penny Drops

 

Cognitive Dissonance Head Explosion Imminent

 from the 'nets

Match Point

 h/t Vlad Tepes

Could somebody get a big icepack for Dr. Fauci to put on the giant red handprint on the side of his face from that roundhouse bitchslap from a Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine? And maybe a crowbar, to get his glasses un-imbedded from his cheek, after he pries his own head out of his ass?

Known Knowns

 

Not offering, just making the obvious observation.

You can tell these vaxxholes ain't been thinking this stuff through, or they wouldn't be pulling these hare-brained ideas out of their own underpants.

As if anyone smart enough to skip the vaxx is just going to sit in the corner and suck their thumb, while contemplating the error of their ways. 

That's the sort of jackassery that's going to leave a mark.

Employment vacancies in the state bureaucracy in 3, 2, ...

You Might Have Schizophrenic Retardation If...

One works, the other one doesn't, yet you're bassackwards on both.

Bonus points if you can't figure out how you keep getting more pandemic, less political power, nor why you're watching your freedom go up in flames.

The Power Of One

 

They won't get what they like, and they won't like what they get.

Guaran-damn-teed.

Gonna be a real cast-iron bitch when they find out that One has a l00000000ng string of zeros after it. Those calling the tune can rest assured they'll be paying the piper.

Timeless Wisdom From Guido

 

"In a sluggish economy, never, ever fuck with another man's livelihood."

"Now, if you're smart, like I hope you are, 

you're not gonna make me come back here..."

Word.

If you've never seen Risky Business, I highly recommend it.

And while Tom Cruise's Joel is the Hero in this tale, it's important to note that in the end, he lost everything he thought he'd gained to the Villain, Guido the Killer Pimp, played masterfully to a junkyard dog "t" by Joe Pantoliano. Joel was lucky to walk away with almost the status quo ante, sadder but oh so wiser.

Guido's words, above, and that ultimate lesson, thunders down through the ages from unlikely font of wisdom, then-rookie director/writer Paul Brickman.

That wisdom should never, ever be lightly disregarded.

For all kinds of reasons.

Matching Bookends

Warning: Level Three Beverage Alert. Swallow all liquids before reading. Not responsible for ruined keyboards.

One.

Two.

Dear Entitled Whiny Crybabies from any generation:

Crapping their diapers and crying about it is what babies do. It's how you know they're babies.

Adults do their business quietly, wipe themselves off, pull up their big boy pants, and get on with life. It's how you know they're grown-ups.

Note for Common Core grads:

The only thing all Boomers have in common is all being born from 1945-1965. That's IT.

Still butthurt?

Bonus: Three. Daily Pundit piles on.

The offending anti-Boomer bilge represent either people so bereft of a life they must throw lit dynamite in the outhouse, just to watch the shit fly; or those most accurately diagnosed by Goose in Top Gun:

They obviously are not to be taken seriously in either event.

2020: the Year Of The L-Shaped Recovery

It is said that the measure of a man's intelligence is related to how much he agrees with you.

By that standard, John Wilder is brilliant in his latest post.

In it, he looks at the recent prognostication by Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, that the economy is going to come surging right back.

Unfortunately, Scott is wronger than two boys fornicating.

And as noted above in comments at the OP, Adams is, indeed, smoking industrial quantities of hopeium.
I share his wish that things would be otherwise, but people can't buy groceries with wishful thinking.

As we told you back at the beginning of the month, the oil business isn't going to bounce back. Probably not for near a decade.
The auto manufacturing business - and 400 ancillary industries - aren't going to bounce back.
Airline travel drop-off is going to kill some major carriers.
Tourism, hotels, and everything related won't be back for a year.
Hollywood is looking at the south end of a northbound worst-movie-summer-in-recorded-history since Thomas Edison invented the motion picture. TV production is on the longest hiatus since the last writer's strike. People in the biz are losing their houses.
Concerts? Gone.
Trade shows? Gone.
Sportsball? On life support.
Farmers? Lucky to stay off of food stamps this year.
Restaurants? This year will probably be the most closures and bankruptcies since 1929.
Retail? Aloha. Malls are going to be the new ghost towns.

And all those employees? The ones not working anytime soon?
They'll be the exact ones NOT buying all of the above goods and services.

This isn't going to be a V-shaped recovery.
It isn't going to be a U-shaped recovery.

Welcome to 2020: The Year Of the L-shaped Recovery™.
(Anybody can use that one, but *I* said it first.)

And before this year is out, we'll be happy if we could just get back to the Obozo economy.
Getting back to the Trump economy from 2019 will likely be something that takes years and years.
If ever.

Ask Weimar, Zimbabwe, or Venezuela: you can't inflate your way to prosperity.
It fails every time it's tried.

Buckle in, kids. if you've got a paying job to go back to, count your blessings.
And if not, start scrambling.
Like Tom-Brady-looking-at-a-wall-of-blitzing-linebackers scrambling.

Because if you don't you're going to be sacked, and become roadkill.
Just part of the collateral damage from Kung Flu.
And if you aren't careful, you'll find out that massive unemployment brings Famine, which brings Plague, which brings Death. And the unrest from that brings War. Which doubles down on the first three.

No points for noting that all four of those riders come visiting on Four Horses.