Stanard
I was curious if this was still the case and upon doing some research it seems that the stats regarding the “largest” Navies and Air Forces have changed in recent years. According to the Wikipedia page on US armed forces, it seems that the largest Air Force in the world is still the US Air Force, followed by the US Army Aviation Branch. The US Navy has fallen to the fourth largest Air Force in the world, while continuing to be the largest naval Air Force in the world.
Regarding Navy sizes, it seems that the US Navy has dropped to the fourth largest Navy in the world behind China, Russia, and North Korea (this one was rather surprising to me).
That said, the world’s two largest Air Forces still apparently belong to the US military. Furthermore, size does not necessarily equal power. Countries could inflate their numbers, or even presumably count vessels that aren’t what we would consider military vessels; e.g. pad their naval numbers by counting unrelated fishing boats as part of a Navy. When you factor in technology, training, and modernization of “old” equipment, it seems agreed that each branch of the US military is still the most powerful in the world compared to other countries respective military branches. And judging by the fact that the US military still has three (!!!) of the top 5 largest Air Forces in the world, as well as having each respective branch of its military in the world’s top 10 largest, I would hazard a guess that the power gap is quite large.
According to the article, I think a more appropriate analogy would be claiming “I’m going to sell four apples!”, followed by actually selling three apples. Then claiming you spent a fortune to get out of an existing contract saying you would rent an apple-basket for x years, as well as having to pay the apples you sold because you sold them earlier than you told them you would. And then buying two apples from the person selling apples next-door that picks their apples from the same tree you picked yours from.
At the end of the day you’ve only lowered your apple count by one while you simultaneously:
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Manufactured a tax write-off for the expenses you incurred by prematurely selling three apples
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Manufactured a tax write-off for the expenses you incurred by prematurely terminating the agreement to rent an apple-basket
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Manufactured a tax write-off for the expenses you incurred by buying two apples from a rival apple merchant
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Sewed seeds of doubt among all fruits, vegetables, and other produce regarding their chances of finding a merchant
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Got investors to at least temporarily value your business higher because they thought you had five too many apples and were excited at the prospect of you selling four of them
Keep in mind that in this analogy you had teams of experts that calculated all of this for you well in advance of you even making an announcement, and that the rival apple merchant also took very similar, if not identical steps.
Edit: Oh, and don’t forget that selling apples isn’t actually the business you and your rival apple merchant are in. You’re both actually in the juice business and apples are just a means to an end for you.
I especially love the part where they say that X/Twitter not hiring after their layoffs has left many people wondering what those employees were doing in the first place. As someone who has never been very “into” Twitter, even I can see that the site has gone way downhill since Musk and his layoffs. I don’t have to wonder what the laid off employees were doing because I know by a quick glance that whatever they were doing, they were doing it better than it’s being done now.
That is a fair point. I only skimmed a page of search results and a couple of articles, but I didn’t see any mention of weight measurements. That really could be a better way to measure “size” though. Assuming extra weight means more/better armaments, thicker hulls, more munitions, more sailors (and all of the supplies that go with them), etc. Not to mention how much weight a top-tier Air Force would add to a Navy’s weight. It’s quite staggering to think about and I’m sure I’m still not fully able to comprehend the sheer scale of it all.
I suppose a few trillion dollars per year will do that though 😅
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but the way I take it is that the State requires the parties authorization to put a candidate on the ballot for the primary. In order to get said authorization from the party, candidates have to pay up.
Please note that this system is totally fair though because you don’t have to pay the party fee to apply for and appear on the ballot for the general election. And as a bonus, by not bowing to the two main parties you get to appear on the ballot as a third party candidate which is very exciting and a great opportunity for you to learn more about our wonderful two party system!
I could have lived my whole life just fine never seeing the combination of words “Gape-flavored Kool Aid”. It would have cost you nothing.
That said, it’s too late now so I think I’ll drop this on friends sometime so I’m not alone in my despair.
Stop that. Stop trying to have a reasonable stance in the middle.
Really though, I was under the impression that this was the somewhat reasonable stance that even progressive politicians have? I know that there’s scaremongering that DeMoCrAtS want big muscular men taking over women’s sports, tackling and hurting your daughters but I thought the actual stance was more along the lines of allowing the LGBTQ+ community to play sports while still allowing sports to be fair?
It definitely doesn’t seem like some super easy issue with a clear line in the sand that everyone will be ok with. And some of the scaremongering is certainly bigots being afraid of their children even interacting with someone that is LGBTQ+…
So, I’m legitimately curious, what are the actual stances of those on Lemmy?
Edit: keep down voting me while absolutely none of you are willing to engage and help educate me. I’m legitimately reaching out, asking, and trying to understand and all people can do is hit a down arrow. Fuck me for being an ally trying to trying to further my knowledge eh?
You seriously don’t think there’s too much gun crime in the US? You seriously think that every person involved in every gang shooting has a prior record?
Sure, I’ll concede that there isn’t a mass shooting every single day of every week every year. Congrats you win. But if you think there’s nothing wrong with our current gun laws when we have the highest rates of gun crime, and if you think that even the occasional mass shooting involving little kids is just “the cost of keeping our rights” then frankly I see no further point in engaging with you. And don’t for a second think that means you’ve won, it means you’ve already lost to the propaganda machine and have accepted loss of life as the cost of doing business. I’m not well trained enough to deprogram you.