Day: March 4, 2024, 5:29 AM

Kapow

Chill Uncategorized

I am not laying out a complete strategy here and eliding very, very, very much, but the Russian army could be substantially defeated with a few weeks of AGM-88 HARMs to take out air defense radars and then 100 A-10s tearing up shit. The Russians just don’t have that many Verba (and similar) MANPADs and those won’t even take out an A-10 most of the time. The Ukrainians will never advance much in de facto drone-constrained trench warfare without CAS. And they aren’t going to get that, sadly.

Also sadly, I believe this is a deliberate but cynical strategy on the part of the US and other Ukrainian “allies.” They correctly ascertain that tying Russia down indefinitely in Ukraine with a trickle of just enough equipment and ammo will weaken Russia while preventing it from attacking the Baltic states and Poland.

As such, it’s working. But it’s not what we should be doing.

Gor

Chill Regular-ass Post

Why does women’s tennis enjoy as much if not more popularity than men’s tennis?

The current top commenter nails it. Men’s tennis is too boring; the men are too powerful for the court. But women’s tennis isn’t nearly as popular as men’s tennis, contra the OP. It’s not even close, really.

For some people, the women’s inability to hit as hard as the men makes for a better viewing experience. These days, men’s matches end up being a bit of an age game, because the server’s power is greater than the receiver’s reflexes. Because women can’t hit so hard, they don’t fall into this trap, and you see their matches get a lot more and longer rallies. This gives the audience a better chance to actually view the skills on display, and also adds much more tension to the game, as you see back and forth within individual points.

That’s exactly why I strongly prefer women’s tennis. It involves more skill and less power. Gorillas hitting everything as hard as they can all the time just isn’t that fun to watch after a little bit.

Restaurant in Peace

Chill Uncategorized

Why You Can’t Get a Table for Six at a Restaurant.

Restaurants for the most part have really gone to shit post-pandemic. It’s like they want to lose money — and business. Even fast food places now charge insane prices and have lower quality food (and it was already pretty bad). Higher-quality establishments now make it difficult to secure reservations if you have more than four people while also charging absurd prices and deposits. And often even with a reservation, there’s a significant wait.

I don’t think there’s a single explanation for this. Part of it is just the general expansion of the scam economy to every aspect of life. Another is that MBA/HR type thinking has overtaken everything.

There are just no places in the US that groups larger than four can meet easily anymore. Restaurants are private establishments and can do whatever they want. But this will hurt most of them more than it’ll help because if I were trying to seat six and they turned me down, I’d never go there even with four or two. I bet that’s going to happen a lot more than these establishments think it will. But as usual, most people can’t strategize even one move ahead, much less two or three.