nvelty

I get the feeling electrification of vehicles is going to happen in a geographically similar fashion to the American political divide. EVs work very well in urban areas, but are less ideal for rural use for the reasons you mentioned. There's also the cultural issue of it - working on cars is a classic pastime once you leave the cities and the anti-repair nature of EVs doesn't fit well with this.

This is a direct result of the (intentionally) punitive nature of vaccine mandates. Broad, heavy-handed actions by the government are the classic spark for societal backlash. A softer approach that focused on positive benefits for having a vax pass versus punishing unvaxxed would probably had better results. Instead, we've pushed (presumably) otherwise law-abiding citizens into using forged documents. This directly undermines the legitimacy of the government - people lose respect for an authority that cannnot enforce its own orders, and these people will be more likely to carry out similar acts of defiance in the future. Considering the political polarization in America, this is not a recipe for success.

It's interesting to hear you say this, as I hear similar sentiments from friends on the opposite end of the political spectrum from you - though directed at their own leaders (including Trump). It seems everyone is getting rather annoyed at the ineffectiveness of the federal government - I imagine we'll see more political flashpoints at the state level going forward.

Depends how TEOTWAWKI you wanna get. I think at some point most preppers realize that having a degree of self-sufficiency and a strong community is far better for a collapse scenario than any alternative store of value. I've been splitting the difference between stocks, crypto, and bullion, and I'm looking to buy a home in a smaller community where I hope to try my hand at small scale farming/ homesteading. Ultimately though, having a large number of competent people you can trust with your life is the best thing for any prepper scenario.

I think there's a disconnect between some of the folks here and the live of the average suburban family. My mother regularly had to drop-off 4 kids at school then pick up groceries for 6 people. You can't do that with a sedan. There'd be a better case against trucks - they're undoubtedly a fashion statement most of the time, but when you need a truck (which is inevitable for someone with a house/land) there's no substitute. It's even more so in rural areas - no one's gonna throw a deer carcass in the trunk of their Tesla.

This reminds me of a debate that Tucker Carlson was having, wherein he mentioned that, if he were king, he would immediately ban self-driving trucks, reasoning that truck driving is the #1 employer of non-college educated men in the US. I don't think Carlson thinks such a ban would be advisable in the long run, but there's certainly a point to be made that destroying the livelihoods of large swathes of the population is not something to be trifled with. People aren't fungible, truckers don't become software devs overnight, if ever. There's a cultural aspect to it too, which I think UBI will not fix. Take the coal mining industry in Virginia - there are families there that have been miners for generations. At that point it's become a matter of pride and a centerpiece of their culture, not just a source of income. Cash payments from the government cannot replace that. I grew up surrounded by the abandoned mills left after the collapse of the textile industry in the South. Although a few have been converted into lofts and trendy bars, many remain empty and it hollowed out the communities that grew around them. Parents sent their children to the cities to seek other work; when they get there they lost the old support structure of parents, extended family, friends, and Churches. The kids have no friends to rely on, the parents go into nursing homes as they've no one to take care of them, and there is no transfer of culture. These are the issues that conservatism should attempt to address - instead we get wal-mart patriotism, hyper-libertarian off-shoring of jobs, and neocon wars in the name of evangelical democracy.

Honestly just more transparency regarding them would be fine. Stigma and insults aren't very convincing, especially when the target has a strong community for support. Things like the refusal to shut down travel with China and the about-face on masks early on in the pandemic eroded a lot of people's trust in government. Politicizing the issue didn't help either. I recall reading a report during the early days of the pandemic where the volunteer being interviewed said they had much better receptivity to masks in conservative populations than others. This stopped about the time masks become mandated. Many members of my home community were also early adopters of the vaccine - their support dried up immediately following the series of mandates, with some of them participating in anti-mandate protests. At this point, further stigmatization of unvaxxed will only create more of a bunker mindset. Perhaps it's best for the future of the country we just accept a 100% acceptance rate is not going to happen.

The big problem is that there's a strong incentive to make UAVs autonomous as doing so would mitigate the risk from jamming to a control signal. Downside is that now we're putting control over weapons into the hands of a (likely) poorly understood amalgamation of algorithms. I'd see this happening with aerial UAVs before the robo-dog, however.

It depends on the nature of the event and the area you live in. Preppers who plan on "bugging out" are usually concerned with local unrest following the loss of services. They would also (hopefully) already have a destination in mind rather simply going "innawoods". Provided you have a safe community, having a reasonable stockpile of basic supplies and neighbors you can trust, remaining in place is usually a better option. A firearm or two would also be advisable in either case.

Electronic warfare isn't unbeatable - good operating practice, flexibility, and persistence can still allow communications to get through in a contested spectrum.

HN seems to forget about this in HAM threads. Obviously the odds of losing internet access suddenly and for extended periods of time seems pretty unlikely in the US, but a few days ago many in Sudan probably thought the same. Radio requires no additional infrastructure between you and the receiver, receivers can be improvised by someone with an undergraduate knowledge of electronics, and HF communications can reach literally across the planet. Yes the internet is superior for the overwhelming majority of use cases, but if it's not available, radio is a very important fallback.

They may have a right to do so, but given the importance of social media this gives those companies immense power. For right-wing Americans, simply shrugging off blatant targeting like this is politically suicidal. At this point, their only recourse is to use government power to push back, so we shouldn't be surprised if moves like this push red Americans further from libertarianism into more authoritarian views of government. To not do so is untenable.

In much of red America folks are already living freely like before. Most of the major impacts like job walk-outs and shortages are directly resulting from more heavy-handed covid measures imposed in other states or by the federal government.

Massed conventional armor didn't fare too well in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. China has a large amount of long-range fires and has invested heavily in UAVs - these were the decisive things for Azerbaijan. Hopefully their planners have been studying that conflict and adjusting accordingly.