According https://militaryspend.org/iran... there are between 9,044 and 18,371 civilian casualties in Iran due to US air strikes. So yes, preventing collateral damage of civilians is not a priority at Pete Hegseth's "Department of War".

My violence premise is based on the fact that Trump has ordered military strikes on seven different countries during his second term so far. https://factually.co/fact-chec...

Every authoritarian regime needs some form of multi-generational conflict to justify their power over the people. Trumpism is a form of anti-democratic, authoritarian-oligarchy that exists only within the context of an eternal conflict. The conflicts only exist to distract the people from Trump and his oligarch's corruption, abuse of power, and outright theft from the American people.

In May 2025, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth disbanded the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence in the Pentagon, because in his own words, he wanted a military "focused on lethality". I think that is the real story. Pete Hegseth only cares about civilian casualties if they could potentially become a liability to himself or the President. That is also why the President ordered Marco Rubio to "dismantle" the ICC "brick by brick".

To better understand the Maven system, I highly recommend reading the book, "Project Maven" by Katrina Manson. In it she does a deep dive into the history of Maven, what it can and cannot do, and how it can be misused in the wrong hands. Maven was never intended to be a stand-alone targeting system, and the people who created it were very aware of the deficiencies of relying solely on an AI system to make military decisions. It is a great read for any military nerd who wants to understand the history of AI in military planning, and why these systems were created.

I think the blame can be correctly applied to Pete Hegseth, and Donald Trump for ordering this war, and for ordering the military to stop considering "collateral damage" when making targeting decisions. Pete Hegseth bragged about the military striking 13,000 targets in the first month of the Iran war. This is only possible if you forgo the traditional target development process, and strike targets based on thin or no current intelligence, no collateral damage analysis, and no weaponering (selecting appropriate ordnance for the target) considerations. It appears the military just took a long list of potential military targets and ordered strikes on all of them without any verification or thought of how those destroying those targets ties into a greater military strategy. This retired military officer believes that violence was the military strategy.

In my opinion, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and their many acolytes believe that violence is how you win human conflict, and the side that is more violent will win. Military officers who do not share his world view are suspect, possibly woke, and have to be purged. In his word view all targets are good military targets, even civilians, if their deaths result in the desired outcome, regime change in Iran. It is the same world view that has taken over policing of minority communities in America, ICE enforcement to include shooting down protesters, or Israel's military operations in Gaza and Lebanon. What military history teaches us is that unmitigated violence doesn't win wars, but only prolongs them and turns them into multi-generational wars.

If you lose a tactical jet in a MOA, Restricted Area, or Warning Area, there usually is not much chance of hurting anyone on the ground. Also special use airspace is NOTAM'd when in use to keep other aircraft not participating in the training exercise out of the area. Doing tactical training over populated areas just puts the public at risk for no good reason, other than to massage the Secretary of War's ego. As the situation in Iran continues to deteriorate for the US military, the Secretary of War will be needing more and more massaging.

No one expects the splashing inquisition! In case of crusade against AI overlords, perhaps splashing holy water on the server racks would be a good opening move? Baptizing the silicon souls in their server racks as a means of redemption seems like the modern reformation out of work people could get behind.

The consumer market is so lopsided. Consumers pay money for hardware and features that change: improvements, deteriorations, and even cancellations. It is unfair to pay for features that disappear because of the manufacturer.

It seems like a tiny law that says deteriorations in services within X years of purchase should greatly lower the bar for refunds.

Futurama warned us about this twenty-five years ago: Don't Date Robots!

See the episode "I Dated a Robot".

I was hoping this was recursively odd like Samsung not selling RAM to Samsung.

Nope, just an uncaught typo.

Here is a video of an incident where hidden handles nearly killed most of a family.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Abrup...

Everyone gets out alive in this case. It looks like everyone panicked a little bit, which should be expected in the midst of the adrenaline rush of a car accident! The features of a vehicle should work well even when people are not thinking clearly.

Will the RAM shortage impact the price?

There have already been reports that chip shortages will impact the availability of chips for home computers, phones, and automobiles. Maybe Microsoft put in a huge order for its requirements and is ahead of the curve.

Without European bases, the US will lose its ability to project force beyond North America. I'm done arguing Greenland with Trumpists. You can't reason with a fool.

As a veteran of the last Regime Change/ Nation Building exercise that ended in failure, I can only think that capturing (kidnapping) Maduro was the easy part. Trump has publicly declared we're going to run Venezuela now. But removing Maduro doesn't remove his government. Marudo was just the top of the pyramid. All the other layers are still in place. So I don't know how Trump is supposed to run Venezuela, unless he proceeds with some sort of invasion. I highly doubt the rest of the Venezuelan government will simply surrender to American occupation. If anything, I think removing Maduro was a symbolic exercise for an ego-driven and insecure President, who disparately craves attention and demands respect and fear. Imho. Maduro was a marginal leader, and if anything his replacement will be far more competent and more resilient than Maduro was.

Sounds like just about every '80s action TV series. Get captured, guards leave, lock the door, turn around and have Murdock bite through the ropes until B.A. Baracus can just break free. Then free the other hostages, use tools and scrap materials that the kidnappers conveniently left behind, build some kind of armored vehicle with flame throwers, propane tanks for rockets, and use that to defeat the bad guys. Maybe if you get kidnapped for your crypto, if your hot 20-something daughter can find them, maybe you could hire the A-Team...

Would you rather pay a tariff's cost or pay more for products produced domestically? We will see how every company deals with this.

Tariffs are often presented as a shield for domestic industries, but economically they are counterintuitive: by limiting foreign competition, they reduce the pressure on local companies to innovate, improve efficiency, or lower costs. Without that competitive drive, businesses can stagnate, producing inferior goods and services while charging higher prices. The irony is that the domestic consumers tariffs are meant to protect end up paying more for worse products, while the broader economy loses out on the dynamism and progress that open competition usually sparks.

Suddenly reshaping supply chains to respond to tariffs carries significant risks that ripple across the economy. Companies may be forced to abandon established, efficient networks in favor of hastily arranged alternatives, which often means higher costs, logistical bottlenecks, and reduced reliability. These abrupt shifts can disrupt production schedules, strain relationships with long-term suppliers, and erode quality control. Worse, the uncertainty discourages investment in long-term innovation, as firms divert resources to short-term survival.

When unemployment is already low, suddenly finding enough workers to reconfigure supply chains in response to tariffs becomes nearly impossible without driving up labor costs. Firms must compete for scarce talent, often retraining or relocating employees, which adds further expense and delays. At the same time, the abrupt shift discards sunk costs. Prior investments in established supplier relationships, infrastructure, and logistics are thrown out before they would have been depreciated. These wasted resources are replaced by new costs for recruitment, training, and building fresh networks, all of which inevitably flow into higher prices for consumers. In effect, tariffs don’t just disrupt trade; they force companies to burn past investments while layering on new inefficiencies that must show up in the prices of goods.

It was about tax breaks for billionaires. They needed to offset those tax breaks to make them revenue neutral. The GOP could have offset tax breaks against military spending and probably gotten some bipartisan support, but they chose to offset them against medical insurance for the poor, disabled, children, and the elderly. Then the GOP/Trump expected at least 7 Democrats in the Senate to be corrupt enough to go along with this, so they could call spending reductions on the poor bipartisan. When that didn't work, they lied, falsely claiming the Democrats want "healthcare for illegals". That is untrue, as illegal immigrants are not eligible for healthcare subsidies under the ACA. The GOP created this mess, and they put the Democrats in a no-win hostage situation.