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Horn of Gabriel

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Posts posted by Horn of Gabriel

  1. 1 hour ago, ztejas said:

    Kobe was a workout warrior to a fault. It's possible that Durant is, too. I haven't seen the same psychopathic behavior from KD, though. 

    This.  Kobe and Jordan are the only ones (maybe Tiger in golf) who cared about nothing, NOTHING except beating everyone else and being the alpha, and combined the God-given talent with the work ethic and drive to back it up.  Durant may have the first two but as long as he's jacking off on twitter he'll never get there.  Jordan and Kobe would never have been on twitter in their primes.  Too busy making up the next perceived slight to provide motivation to destroy.

  2. The 12-team setup creates a situation where there's no enticement for ND to join a conference, ever.  UNTIL the B1G and SEC start to become AFC/NFC and schedule each other nearly exclusively, then ND will find it hard to get enough top level games.  That might do it, or a revenue difference compelling enough that they need to join to stay competitive for coaches or paying players from TV money, which make no mistake will happen in the next 20 years.

  3. I had to do this for a project car recently.  There's no penalty fees, you do have to sign an affidavit that you didn't drive it, and that you haven't received any tickets for lack of registration.  The major PITA is that you can't do it online (or at least couldn't do it online when I did it for WilCo), you had to go into the Tax Assessor/Collector office and do it in person, which means burning a few hours sitting on your ass.  At least now mine does online appointments to cut down on the wait.

    You'll want to bring your title.  They may not need it but good to have it.

  4. 3 minutes ago, bullet said:

    Everybody in the P5 except 1 or 2 is making money now.  What you are saying would have been true a dozen years ago when the TV numbers were more like $7-$10 million.

    Below the P5 they are all losing boatloads.

    OK but even assuming that's true and yes as noted above there is plenty of "creative" accounting in many AD's to show breakeven or a loss every year...promotion/relegation only works if everyone agrees to do it.  It's pretty obvious why SMU, UTSA, or UH would sign up for that.  What motivation does Georgia, Texas, Ohio State or Bama have to sign up for a system where they could get relegated?  I can't think of any.

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  5. 16 minutes ago, Hurtlocker said:

    Man I'd love a promotion/relegation with like three levels of 24 (though it would most likely need to be 6 of 12, so everyone can play everyone else).   It would implode any notion of geography and travel would be horrendous, but it would be fun.  

    The only way you could do it is pool ALL conference media rights into one group.   Then what likely would happen is you break it back out to regions with a champion pool.

    • 1 - Champion's league of 12 with its own playoff at the end, bottom 3 drop back down.
    • 6  - Regional Tier one 12 team geographic leagues.   (NE, SE, MW, SW, NW, SoCal?)  Each bracket sends their champ and their are 6 wildcards in a year end tourney.   Top three teams in the tourney are promoted.  
    • You could also have relegation here too, but to smaller conferences.   So perhaps the MW relegates to the MAC, the SE to the Sunbelt, etc.

    The logistics to manage the rising and falling teams over the massive geography of the US would be daunting.   But you could do it.   

    It's fun to think about but also completely unworkable for college football.  Most athletic departments outside the top 20 are breakeven at best and many actually require subsidy from the university to be solvent.  Texas is far outside the norm here with the revenue we throw out of the AD.  Since football is the #1 revenue generator, if a more marginal school was relegated, their revenues would tank even further.  Imagine being an Iowa State or an Arizona St., or Purdue or Ole Miss and you string together a few bad years and relegate down one or two levels.  All of the sudden your conference schedule is what we know today as MAC, Sunbelt, and AAC teams at best.  Your TV revenues tank, your gate tanks, and now your whole AD is insolvent.  You have to cut a ton of headcount out of the AD and, probably, cut a bunch of other sports too.  Especially women's sports, and now you have a Title IX issue.  It's a death spiral.  In european soccer a rich owner plugs that gap and invests to move up.  In CFB, the "owens" are the donors, much more fickle.

    Also worth pointing out: in this system how far down would Texas have relegated from 2010-now?  2 levels?  3?  Interesting to think about

  6. WSJ: Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807b7b0a?mod=hp_lead_pos1

     

     

    Spoiler

    WASHINGTON—The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.

    The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office.

    The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic’s origin. The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided.

    The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.

    The Energy Department made its judgment with “low confidence,” according to people who have read the classified report.

    The FBI previously came to the conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak in 2021 with “moderate confidence” and still holds to this view.

    im-731641?width=700&height=466

    A nurse cared for a patient at a California intensive-care unit in May 2020 as Covid-19 continued to spread across the U.S.PHOTO: ALLISON ZAUCHA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

    The FBI employs a cadre of microbiologists, immunologists and other scientists and is supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center, which was established at Fort Detrick, Md., in 2004 to analyze anthrax and other possible biological threats.

    U.S. officials declined to give details on the fresh intelligence and analysis that led the Energy Department to change its position. They added that while the Energy Department and the FBI each say an unintended lab leak is most likely, they arrived at those conclusions for different reasons.

    The updated document underscores how intelligence officials are still putting together the pieces on how Covid-19 emerged. More than one million Americans have died in the pandemic that began more than three years ago.

    The National Intelligence Council, which conducts long-term strategic analysis, and four agencies, which officials declined to identify, still assess with “low confidence” that the virus came about through natural transmission from an infected animal, according to the updated report.

    The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency that officials wouldn’t name remain undecided between the lab-leak and natural-transmission theories, the people who have read the classified report said.

    Despite the agencies’ differing analyses, the update reaffirmed an existing consensus between them that Covid-19 wasn’t the result of a Chinese biological-weapons program, the people who have read the classified report said.

    A senior U.S. intelligence official confirmed that the intelligence community had conducted the update, whose existence hasn’t previously been reported. This official added that it was done in light of new intelligence, further study of academic literature and consultation with experts outside government.

    The update, which is less than five pages, wasn’t requested by Congress. But lawmakers, particularly House and Senate Republicans, are pursuing their own investigations into the origins of the pandemic and are pressing the Biden administration and the intelligence community for more information.

     
    im-731644?width=700&height=466

    The updated report was completed by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office earlier this year.PHOTO: JOSE LUIS MAGANA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

    Officials didn’t say if an unclassified version of the update would be issued.

    U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan declined to confirm or deny the Journal’s reporting in an appearance Sunday on CNN. He said President Biden had repeatedly directed every part of the intelligence community to invest in trying to discern as much as possible about the origins of the pandemic. 

    “President Biden specifically requested that the national labs, which are part of the Energy Department, be brought into this assessment because he wants to put every tool at use to be able to figure out what happened here,” Mr. Sullivan said.

    There are a “variety of views in the intelligence community,” Mr. Sullivan added. “A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information.”

    Asked about the Energy Department’s assessment, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Ala.) said Sunday on NBC that Congress needed to hold extensive hearings concerning the origins of the pandemic, adding that China has sought to intimidate other countries from questioning whether the virus emerged naturally. “This is a country that has no problem coming out and lying to the world,” he said.

    The Covid-19 virus first circulated in Wuhan, China, no later than November 2019, according to the U.S. 2021 intelligence report. The pandemic’s origin has been the subject of vigorous, sometimes partisan debate among academics, intelligence experts and lawmakers.

    David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist who has argued for a dispassionate investigation into the pandemic’s beginnings, welcomed word of the updated findings.

    “Kudos to those who are willing to set aside their preconceptions and objectively re-examine what we know and don’t know about Covid origins,” said Dr. Relman, who has served on several federal scientific-advisory boards. “My plea is that we not accept an incomplete answer or give up because of political expediency.”

    An Energy Department spokesman declined to discuss details of its assessment but wrote in a statement that the agency “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed.”

    The FBI declined to comment.

    China, which has placed limits on investigations by the World Health Organization, has disputed that the virus could have leaked from one of its labs and has suggested it emerged outside China.

    The Chinese government didn’t respond to requests for comment about whether there has been any change in its views on the origins of Covid-19.

    Some scientists argue that the virus probably emerged naturally and leapt from an animal to a human, the same pathway for outbreaks of previously unknown pathogens.

    Intelligence analysts who have supported that view give weight to “the precedent of past novel infectious disease outbreaks having zoonotic origins,” the flourishing trade in a diverse set of animals that are susceptible to such infections, and their conclusion that Chinese officials didn’t have foreknowledge of the virus, the 2021 report said.

    Yet no confirmed animal source for Covid-19 has been identified. The lack of an animal source, and the fact that Wuhan is the center of China’s extensive coronavirus research, has led some scientists and U.S. officials to argue that a lab leak is the best explanation for the pandemic’s beginning.

    U.S. State Department cables written in 2018 and internal Chinese documents show that there were persistent concerns about China’s biosafety procedures, which have been cited by proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis.

    Wuhan is home to an array of laboratories, many of which were built or expanded as a result of China’s traumatic experience with the initial severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, epidemic beginning in 2002. They include campuses of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, which produces vaccines.

    im-731645?width=700&height=466

    The Energy Department revised its assessment of the origins of Covid-19, according to an updated U.S. intelligence report.PHOTO: ERIC LEE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

    An outbreak at a seafood market in Wuhan had initially been thought to be the source of the virus, but some scientists and Chinese public-health officials now see it as an example of community spread rather than the place where the first human infection occurred, the 2021 intelligence community report said.

    In May 2021, President Biden told the intelligence community to step up its efforts to investigate the origins of Covid-19 and directed that the review draw on work by the U.S.’s national laboratories and other agencies. Congress, he said, would be kept informed of that effort.

    The October 2021 report said that there was a consensus that Covid-19 wasn’t the result of a Chinese biological-weapons program. But it didn’t settle the debate over whether it resulted from a lab leak or came from an animal, saying that more information was needed from the Chinese authorities.

    The U.S. intelligence community is made up of 18 agencies, including offices at the Energy, State and Treasury departments. Eight of them participated in the Covid-origins review, along with the National Intelligence Council.

    Before that report, the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory prepared a study in May 2020 concluding that a lab-leak hypothesis was plausible and deserved further investigation.

    The debate over whether Covid-19 might have escaped from a laboratory has been fueled by U.S. intelligence that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care.

    A House Intelligence Committee report concluded last year that this disclosure didn’t strengthen either the lab-leak or the natural-origin theory as the researchers might have become sick with a seasonal flu. But some former U.S. officials say the sick researchers were involved in coronavirus research.

    Lawmakers have sought to find out more about why the FBI assesses a lab leak was likely. In an Aug. 1 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, requested that the FBI share the records of its investigation and asked if the bureau had briefed Mr. Biden on its findings.

    In a Nov. 18 letter, FBI Assistant Director Jill Tyson said the agency couldn’t share those details because of Justice Department policy on preserving “the integrity of ongoing investigations.” She referred the senator to Ms. Haines’s office for information on what briefings were arranged for the president.

    Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com

     

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  7. 45 minutes ago, bullet said:

    Thinking about it logically, and assuming Kliavcoff isn't a total idiot (not that its out of the realm of possibility), the commissioner publicly appearing at SMU's basketball game means things are close.

    UW and Oregon aren't getting into the Big 10 for the foreseeable future (not in the next 6 months)

    The Pac 10 really want to stay together even if it means SDSU as a member

    SDSU and SMU invitations are imminent

    They have the basics of a deal that is tolerable to the 10 members

    The deal is tolerable, but not what they want and so they are trying to see if there is any way to bump it up, hence all the rumbling the past week

    We'll see if UW and UO sign any meaningful GOR.  Doubtful.

  8. 2 hours ago, Frank Drebin said:

    I think a conference of 16  with 9 conference games -- so you can play 3 permanent rivals annually and then 6 others rotating -- is about as big as a conference can really be and still be a real conference.  That means for your non permanent rivals you still play them twice every four years. Otherwise you're basically two conferences when you get to 18 or 20.

    This stuff is silly.  There really should be a reset.  Like a conference realignment constitutional convention. And the first thing that should happen would be one conference for football and men's basketball and then regional conferences for everything else.  The amount of money spent on travel, and the time spent travel, makes no sense for the nonrevenue sports.

    Not really, as more and more good teams get pulled into the major 2 conferences, there's fewer reasons for non-conf games.  Go to 10 noncon, 3-4 permanent and 6-7 rotating.  Blah blah NFL-lite, etc

  9. On 2/13/2023 at 3:43 PM, Trojan Man said:

    Don't take anything SI says seriously, they're not even a shell of what they used to be.  They're just a SEO machine capitalizing on people who remember when SI was a legitimate sports news/journalism outlet.  Until a deal is signed any positive news coming out of the Pac 12 with regards to a media deal sounds like it comes from Baghdad Bob.  There are several major conflicting problems facing the conference.

    -ESPN wants the Pac 12's top games but they are lowballing the conference and they're done bidding against themselves for sports media rights

    -Amazon wants their top games and a 10-15 year GOR

    -Adding SDSU and SMU would add value for Amazon and detract value for ESPN (more inventory/Prime subs for Amazon, but for ESPN it's a higher price tag for teams they already own and aren't worth Pac 12 money)

    If they go for ESPN they are getting exposure for their best games/brands but they'll still end up with a lot of games banished to ESPN+ and the 10:30 PM ET drunks and gamblers audience, plus it's still less money and less exposure than they would get for jumping to the Big 12.  If they go Amazon they can probably get at least as much as the Big 12 but their exposure is fucked and they will have to sign a very long GOR, which Oregon and Washington have zero interest in doing since they are holding out hope for a B1G invite in the next round of realignment musical chairs.  They can't pursue what seems like their ideal outcome of selling their best games to ESPN while selling the rest to Amazon because Amazon wants Oregon/Washington, not just Oregon State/Washington State, and because Amazon and ESPN have different perspectives on Pac 12 expansion.

    This is interesting; source on the Amazon 15-year GOR request?

  10. 14 hours ago, Nicole44 said:

    Kinda nightmarish at this point. But I digress…back to the topic at hand: since we now know that the balloon wasn’t benign in the sense that it was just a hapless hopeless weather study that got victimized by the US jet stream…why did they want to sabotage the meeting with Blinken? I mean…if it was company owned (state owned) or civilian (still state controlled) it was sanctioned by China and we know now it’s from their government/military…so what was the fucking point of all this? Now every time we detect a balloon we and other countries will probably blow it up…

    Couple of possibilities, in my ranked order of likelihood:

    1. They thought this would be like their prior balloon overflights and not be regarded as a big deal, but the media picked up on it and it blew up in their face
    2. The left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing because China is so big and bureaucratic, and while they underestimated the shitstorm, they weren't intentionally trying to fuck up the summit it was just a side-effect
    3. ...
    4. ...
    5. There's a shadowy cabal within the Chinese government that wants to sabotage any sort of bilateral relationship with the US and planned a balloon overflight of our airspace timed to Blinken's visit to disrupt it
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  11. 1 hour ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

    Twelve months ago the consensus was that it would take five years to wean Europe off of Russian natty gas. I'm not saying we can flip a switch, but when the incentives are right things can move along much quicker than we think. 

    I'll admit I've been pleasantly surprised with the EU, especially Germany over the past year.  However, let's also be realistic - we've been lucky.  First, they've had a mild winter which reduced their gas consumption.  Second, because LNG is a commodity we've been able to backfill Russian supplies to some extent and that ability is growing as the EU builds new LNG import facilities for US gas.  Third, the Ukraine war is in the EU's backyard.  None of those conditions exist for a faraway war between China and Taiwan/US.  I think it's much more likely that Germany and the EU spearheads a strongly worded letter to China saying "No, really, stop!" and maybe some weak sanctions that they later back off on when they feel the pinch.  Especially if they're already feeling a pinch from rising energy costs due to the Russian sanctions.

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  12. 15 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

    If he goes for Taiwan, his economy is destroyed by the US/Japan/South Korea, and to a lesser extent by India, Vietnam, etc.  The US alone could destroy their economy, but Japan and South Korea will be right there with us, as will most of the EU.  India, Vietnam, etc. will be wooing Western/Korean/Japanese companies that will be banned from operating inside of China.

    There is nobody like the US to fill the gap if we exit China’s economy   Nobody.   And when American countries are forced to pull out of China, that won’t be affecting just exports to the US, but worldwide.   People are going to get their iPhones and iPads and laptops and desktops and gaming consoles from somebody and it’ll be India (which is actually ramping up iPhone production and increasing their offerings) or Vietnam or any number of smaller nations happy to take it on with the help of the US, Japan, South Korea, etc. 

    Maybe in the long term.  In the short term they are precariously close to being able to take the island and then figure they're too big to fail and will deal w/ the repercussions down the road.  The world depends on Chinese manufacturing and supply chains way more than Russia; it was realatively easy to remove Russia from the global economy but it will do as major damage to the US if we shut down all trade with China also.  Go through your house and see how much shit is made in China.  It's everywhere and changing those supply chains to India or reshoring them to the US is a decade-long thing, not a flip the switch.  In the meantime, voters are going to punish the party in power when they see a 40%+ price increase on daily goods to account for that re-shoring, as well as shortages.

    Also don't count on the EU for shit.  They'll buckle.

    Quote

    And China’s one-child policy, coupled with their tradition of the child taking care of the parents, has put them on a collision course with population issues that could be worse than Russia’s.  A war that collapses their economy will make that much worse.

    Agree, again, long term.  China has a window for about 7-10 years now before they hit the rough patch there, and they have some homeport military advantages, AND the US population isn't bought into the need for the war.  That could be enough to nudge Xi into action.

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  13. 5 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

    China is China’s biggest barrier to taking Taiwan.   They don’t have the infrastructure or training for large-scale amphibious assaults, and aren’t even close to it.  Cruise ships are shitty transports in contested waters with lots of top-tier anti-shipping missiles and torpedoes.  100 miles of open water is tough to do with slow-moving ships full of soldiers headed for small beaches.

    But let’s talk about preventing it in the first place.

    US, European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are China’s biggest trading partners.

    The US and EU alone take in over a trillion dollars (US) in Chinese exports.  The next 3-4 are worth half a trillion combined.

    China attacks Taiwan, we apply sanctions and stop American, Japanese, South Korean, and European countries from trading with them.  China’s economy collapses.  Hundreds and hundreds of millions of Chinese are out-of-work, and there maybe food issues in the mix if we shut down agriculture exports to China as well.  Two million Chinese soldiers can’t keep well over half a billion out-of-work pissed-off Chinese out of the streets and fed.

    Even the US, Japan, and South Korea alone shutting off trade with China would kill their economy (and they are facing a demographic collapse as well).   Hell, just the US yanking our $600 billion in Chinese imports and a few hundred billion more in imports could probably tip their economy over.  COVID fucked with them, but we were still sending them money and food and materials, and they were still producing exports.  That goes away in an attack on Taiwan.

    And India, Vietnam, etc. will all be very happy to apply the screws to China and try and take their manufacturing business (Western, Japanese, and South Korean).

    You're correct, however China is rapidly closing this gap.  They've recently been actively training for beach landings and deployment using roll-on/roll-off (RO-RO) ships.  To your point, 100 miles is a lot and those waters will be contested.  But China knows that, and they're dealing with that too.  Specifically they've massively expanded their land based offensive ballistic and cruise missile capabilities for both anti-ship and land attack.  From the link:

    Quote

    In recent years, China has developed land-based ballistic missiles armed with homing anti-ship munitions, specifically the DF-21 and DF-26. If China can preserve what strategist Christian Brose calls “kill chains” — linking land-based ballistic missiles to satellite information about ship locations — it will have good prospects of sinking naval ships with these weapons.

    To be sure, Beijing will need terminal sensors on those weapons, since ships will often change direction, making their locations uncertain by up to 10 kilometers over the course of a roughly 10-minute missile flight. (More precisely, ballistic flight would take about six minutes to cover a range of 600 kilometers, fourteen minutes to cover 3,000, or something in between for a range in between.) Attaining those sensors seems within the realm of the possible.

    In this scenario, it assumed that China would use 100 to 200 such missiles against U.S. ships (even if the PLA does not have this number of missiles with anti-ship capabilities now, it could quite soon). If each missile wound up penetrating defenses even just 25% of the time, that math implies 25 to 50 hits on ships, depending on how many missiles are fired — or 12 to 25 ship losses, if we assume two hits per ship
    are needed to sink it. (Historically, in the latter decades of the 20th century, two to four hits were typically needed depending on the ship’s size.) There would be a similar range of ship losses if assuming just 100 incoming missiles but varying the probability of penetrating defenses between 25% and 50%.

    Now you might say our anti-satellite, EW, jamming, and cyber capabilities make that issue moot and break the kill chain.  You willing to bet 10,000+ sailors' lives on that?  I don't think Biden or the Navy will be, and for that reason the SCS and Taiwan straight will be relegated to subs only and our carrier strike groups will be held at standoff range beyond the first island chain.  We'll need 3-4 of them minimum and all the associated logistics that go along with that.

    At the same time, Guam and Okinawa will also be saturated by those missiles.  We don't have enough anti-cruise and anti-ballistic missile defense to make up for the sheer numbers that China can throw out today, let alone tomorrow.  If China gets serious, Guam and our other major Pacific bases will get cratered.  This is why our recent news with the Philippines to open new and reopen old bases there is critically important to spread our assets.  We can't keep all our planes hot seated, fueled and ready to take off on a moment's notice 24/7, so the AF is going to lose a shit ton on the ground.  A recent wargame found that ~90% of the AF's ~300 planes lost were destroyed on the ground.  We also tended to lose around 2 aircraft carriers and about a dozen ships in total.  That sounds unfathomable, unthinkable.  Our USAF and USN are too good right?  I'm sure the French had similar thoughts about the Maginot line.

    OTOH, China has issues too.  First they lack experience in amphibious landings, and that's really hard.  We paid for our learnings up to Normandy in blood.  The PLAN, PLAF, PLARF, and PLA haven't demonstrated combined warfare (yet).  Their top-down culture is risk averse.

    Pros for China:

    • Homecourt advantage
    • Nationalistic fervor
    • Easier supply chains
    • Asymmetric advantages in missiles, potentially cyber
    • Quiet diesel subs good for cross-straight and near costal fights
    • AA/AD in SCS
    • Enough nukes to hold us to MAD

    Cons for China:

    • Technology disadvantage vs. US/allies
    • Economic considerations of fighting one of their top 2 trading partners (this goes both ways)
    • Lack of experience in amphibious landings
    • Taiwan's geography works against them once they land (few viable beaches/ports to land at, lots of mountains and choke points make it defensible inland)
    • Time - the longer it takes the worse for China once things go hot

    Pros for US:

    • Overall much stronger military, better training and more professional
    • Technology advantage in stealth, standoff weapons, anti-missile defense (although #'s limited), anti-sub warfare, space, and others
    • Blue water Navy

    Cons for US:

    • Military is currently spread around the world
    • US population isn't bought into the need to defend Taiwan or spend our lives on another war in Asia
    • Could go nuclear
    • Long supply chains make sustainment really hard
    • Relatively low supplies of anti-ship standoff range missiles like LRASM, which forces the USN to either put subs or carrier groups at risk
    • Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan cannot realistically be resupplied once the conflict starts because we cannot guarantee air superiority due to mainland China's missile reach and proximity
    • Limited basing options in AsiaPac make juicy targets for Chinese missiles + our antimissile defense is nowhere near enough to deal with their #'s

    If you really want to geek on this stuff, read the output of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) unclassified wargame "The First Battle of the Next War - Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan" released in January 2023.  It's a sobering look at what we face.  The bottom line: in most scenarios Taiwan is able to sustain as an independent democracy.  The bad news: we lose a lot of lives and materials and our military is severely degraded for years to come (as is China's).

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  14. 1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

    Russia doesn’t have 1.4 billion people to keep satisfied like China does, they have 140 million people, and unlike the Chinese they don’t have hundreds of millions of people who rely on both imports as well as exports to the rest of the world.  Russia’s exports were fairly basic and revolved around oil and gas and things like lumber and food, and the people working on those things will still be working on them, unlike say millions of Chinese who can no longer make and ship iPhones.   It’s not going to hurt the typical Russian if their Lada doesn’t have airbags because of a lack of microchips, since the vodka will deaden the pain from bouncing their heads off of the steering wheel or dashboard  

    And there’s some irony with the fact that if China hammered Taiwan, they’d be harming Chinese factories that rely on Taiwanese imports.

    As for Russia - Iran, Belarus, and North Korea can only do so much. We’ve seen shortages of artillery shells and barrels. We’ve seen the cruise missile salvos slow down in intensity.  Russia only has so many convicts and rurals they can feed into the line before they have to start hitting the large cities hard, made worse by the 700,000 that fled.  

    With that said, the Chinese have to be nervous at the economic firepower being leveled at Russia.  

    Everything you write here would be relevant if China were not a dictatorship, which they are.  This is the same country that during the Great Leap Forward allowed some 50M+ people to starve to death, and tortured and killed another 2-3M people to keep the population in line.  And that was on a population base much smaller than now.  Will things be different now?  Maybe?  Their government is not afraid of their people, the other way around.  Xi is gonna do what Xi wants.  His bigger fear is trying for Taiwan and losing, because that's how dictators get deposed or killed.  He'll go if he feels like he can get it, and doesn't give 2 fucks about the losses.

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  15. 48 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

    Thanks! What if we sent our own balloons to China filled with containers of vodka? Like wave after wave of balloons? 😀

    I’m more concerned with the US/Canada’s ability to detect their balloons. I think they did learn a little about our warning systems/ability to detect them by sending them. I think that’s why they did and why the sent them on the routes that they sent them on. I know the Japanese employed balloons during WW2 (shit we are all reading up on the damn balloons because up until now most of us didn’t know much about balloons at all or that four other balloons had crossed at different points in the last few years.) if they wanted they could, in theory, weaponize them. But I guess it does make me a little nervous…how long did it take for our systems to detect their balloon? Before or after it was over the US/Canada? I guess that’s the worrisome element for me. Like there is a medium between hysteria and apathy…but I just don’t trust a fucking thing China does. 

    We can detect them.  We just never regarded it as a threat because of a combination of:

    • We assumed they could get equal to better intelligence out of satellite surveillance so why care
    • The public wasn't awake to the threat so nbd
    • We lack a symmetrical response...we just spent around $2M shooting down a $100K ballon.  We can afford it so whatever but before the public cared I'm sure that no general wants to get dragged in front of the HASC to answer questions about "herp derp ballon"
    • We lacked imagination about the threat...these are a serious problem, they could be a delivery vehicle for an EMP.  This isn't Clancy-novel level shit, it would be an easy, non-attributable way to fuck the US in the ass if you put a ballon with a EMP-tuned low yield nuke device at 150K ft over the Eastern seaboard.  We'd lose multiple millions of lives in the ensuing chaos and power outages.  Now imagine 5000 of these balloons launched in the span of a few days and you have to shoot them all down...while China is making their crossing to Taiwan.

    Now that we're awake to this we'll plan for it better...and China will find another vector we're unconscious about.  Hopefully we have some smart people in the intel community sitting around gaming all this out to protect us, because the current news doesn't exactly make me brim with confidence.

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  16. 2 hours ago, statsman said:

    No, it’s glorious. Bellmont goes out of its way to be gracious, hospitable, amenable. Share revenue, even though you’ll always be a taker and not a giver? Sure! Appoint us as your rival, and focus efforts on us, even though we don’t have time for you? That’s the fun of the sport! 
     
    Try to endanger and cheat our fans, just because you want to? You’re on the list forever. Cautionary tales don’t work unless they have some bite, and sometimes the big friendly giant has to remind you that he’s a giant. 

    What do you think we're doing by leaving the Big12?  I'd say that has some bite for those remaining.

    Texas doesn't have the power here with regard to the schedule.  Until we're out of the conference, we play by the conference's rules.  Or I guess just forfeit because we're sad and stuff, which is a great look to our new conference mates in the SEC.

  17. 14 hours ago, BachelorTrek said:

    And any game they want us to play on the Cougar High campus we should say, "We'll take the forfeit and schedule someone else to play at home for that Saturday!" even if it means it's an old-school radio-only game due to the networks being pissy little twats that we *dared* ("Horrors!") to forfeit a game on a campus that we will NEVER set foot on again.

    Texans' stadium, Rice Stadium, even that Shell Energy soccer stadium (that's also used for football) is preferable to playing in that Shithole-campus known as Cougar High. Not after the 2001 stadium-gate "Texas fans go in the dangerous rickety stands and aren't allowed in the empty stadium seats" Bullshit..... Consequences must be dished out.

    Sounds good and is fun to think about but this is on the same level of thinking of people who say "let's just nuke Iran and turn the middle east to GLASS!!!!!1!"  The repetitional and media hit we'd take for forfeiting a game b/c Houston was incompetent in setting up their stadium 20 years ago would be massive and lasting.  It would give yet another excuse for the national media who already want to shit on Texas to do so, and the ensuing pile on from other fanbases about "cowardly" Texas, regardless of the real reasons.

    Thankfully our admin are adults.  "The best revenge is living well."  Go play at Houston, beat them by 4 TDs at their place.  Stomp the rest of the Big12 and win the title on our way out with middle fingers held high.  That's the plan.

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  18. Set aside COVID for a sec, as hard as that is.  Also set aside the origin discussion of lab leak vs. wet market vs. natural.

    Why do GoF?  This is literally creating killer viruses in the lab that don't exist in nature.  Some of these are relatively benign flu-like stuff, and some of them would make COVID look like a sniffle.  We are basically trusting the future of humanity (not an exaggeration at this point) to the security of largely unregulated labs and disinterested governments around the world.  It's like nuclear weapons, only worse, because there are only a few countries that could create nuclear devastation.  There are at least dozens of countries capable of GoF now.  We're one finger prick, one broken slide, or one mis-configured BSL lab from an extinction-level event.  It came out that the Wuhan lab was supposed to be doing research at BSL-4 but was actually at BSL-3 or -2.  This is scary, scary stuff and we're getting by on luck and voluntary regulation.  It's beyond playing with fire, it's incredibly irresponsible because we're basically putting the nuclear football and big red button in every lab doing this research around the world.

    As pointed out above, our virological research and understanding has progressed independently of GoF research.  We don't need it, it doesn't provide demonstrable value commensurate with the risks it poses and it should be banned WW. We've managed it with with human cloning - even China is onboard, and jailed the mad scientist that was going that direction.  Any country that makes supportive moves of scientists trying human cloning would turn into a world pariah.  We need to treat GoF the same.

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  19. 9 hours ago, FartingMonk said:

    I just don't understand.  No one has a hard time when we GMO 80 different types of carrots.   But when someone says we GMO 80 different coronaviruses.  People have a hard time believing it. 

     

    GMO carrots don't kill millions of people.  Engineered viruses can.

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