Don't count other nations the way you do the US, and don't compare the behaviour of troops defending some piece of jungle on the other side of the planet with those defending their homes.
I mean being given the prospect of the possibility of being treated fairly as a prisoner vs committing suicide I think many would end up being a prisoner. There is no rampant idealism in Canada like say Imperial Japan that would make someone resist their own inherent pragmatism.
In the Battle of Kapyong, Korea [0], Canadian forces refused to retreat from their position, delaying advancing Chinese forces long enough to cause them to regroup. The Canadian forces were encircled, and several times called down artillery on their own positions to clear the assaulting Chinese troops.
The fighting helped blunt the PVA Spring Offensive and the actions of the 2 PPCLI and 3 RAR at Kapyong were critical in preventing a breakthrough against the UN central front, the encirclement of US forces in Korea, which were at that point in general retreat, and ultimately, the capture of Seoul.
Sorry for the snide comment, but considering the last 6 - 8 months in the US, at least from what is being reported in the outside world, the 1st amendment doesn't seem to be providing much in the way of protection, and unless I'm missing something the general public doesn't seem to have the level of interest that would be required for your 2nd amendment to play out in any meaningful way.
The United States, uniquely, guards speech under its 1A, excepting only direct calls to violence. A hypothetical like "we ought to hang <person>, but the police would stop us, so have to draw a new plan first" is protected, a case study in law schools for where liberty draws its line.
If you suppress the avenues for peaceful political change, your courting violent revolution. History bears this out. Each, in its moment, seemed an unthinkable leap—overthrowing monarchs or empires—yet each remade its world.
The saying that history rhymes, not repeats, points to immutable human behavior.
Today, revolutionary pressures simmer. The U.S. saw a peaceful political shift in 2024, enabled by free speech's safety valve. Elsewhere, without such freedoms, violence fills the void. I pray other nations find paths to renewal without bloodshed, but history's lessons are not optimistic.
It’s working fantastic. US media is great at generating hysteria (competitive market pressures in the war for attention), but the US is at essentially very little risk for speech suppression at the level of the UK right now.
UK too, and concerned. I agree that amendment 1 and 2 provisions effectively underpin individual freedom in the US due to founder perspicacity. My fear re US constitutional provision is on separation of powers, and transfer of power. Fortunately Pence held to the constitution. Nobody ever willingly takes their hands of the levers of power!
The ignorance of what's been happening the last few months is ridiculous. Trump and his people have successfully pressured, or denied access, or removed security clearances, or demonetized (public broadcasting), or directly fired, or just called out to cause a hate-storm from his supporters, companies, organizations, individuals.
Oh sure, it is different from the UK: Instead of technical blocks and surveillance this administration targets people and organizations directly.
This does depend on what the engineers are being employed to do..
Are they there to be communication and documentation experts, or are they there to turn requirements into something that works?
I agree that there is benefits in having engineers who can engage with their managers, advocate for required changes and influence the management to act in a more beneficial way, but at some point the person doing this stops being an engineer and starts being a manager themself.
Managers are there to manage, that is organise, coordinate and ensure that their staff are completing tasks in the most efficient way possible. That will at time require them to communicate with both their superiors and their engineer staff. That requires them to be the the communication and documentation expert, not the engineer.
I'd be interested in how many people in the study from each group die off during the study... is there a larger number of people in the unmarried group dying off, thereby increasing the chance that the married group would age to the point where dementia is more likely?
The question about married people being more likely to be able to afford health care (via insurance) would seem to be a uniquely US issue... I'd be interested to see the health impact of marriage on different countries, different cultural groups etc.
Culture would seem to impact greatly on what marriage entails... many groups appear to have a strong link between marriage and cultural activities, others it allows the couple to be a self contained social group, removing the link to external socialisation.
The 50% figure seems to be pretty strong, but at least from the article it is hard to draw too many conclusions without knowing how wide the sample set of participants are.
When the obvious desire of 90% of customer support is to make the customer go away being able to use a box rather than a person to get rid of them seems a perfect solution.
Support is a cost centre, the people calling support are not the ones who will be making purchasing decisions so why provide anything close to decent support. Vendor lock in, subscription services and other ways to reduce the chance that the customer will go elsewhere all contribute to the downward spiral in support.
Truth is, if they can manage to provide proper feedback to the AI for when the support that is provided is actually useful or successful this may actually learn to be better than employing someone to read off a support flowchart that hasn't been updated in 20 years.
I love that they are deliberately tempting failures with the no and thin tiles.
In a lot of ways they will learn far more from the heat shield burn through around the flap(s) than they would have if they had been "lucky" and it had all gone perfectly.
You during testing you want things to fail, that is the point of testing. If it's all successful you only learn that under those conditions your design works, but if it fails, you learn another way to not do things.
That's an often underappreciated aspect of engineering.
When parts last longer than expected, it is considered something that needs "fixing". It is a signal that the part can be made cheaper, lighter, etc... If SpaceX had gone with heavy, thick tiles, and they did their job because they were overspecced, it is that much less payload capacity.
Even value engineering, which is often criticized when it comes to consumer products is a good thing. Yes, your new dishwasher is not as robust as the one made in the 50s, but it is also 10x cheaper (inflation-adjusted), and it can still wash dishes for maybe 10-15 years without repairs, at which point you may want a new one as technology has improved. Note that I am talking proper engineering, having a single point of failure that prompts a replacement is planned obsolescence and terrible engineering, there should be no single point of failure with good engineering.
It'll still be orders of magnitude cheaper than the nearest competitor for many years. They don't need to fix it before gaining very extensive experience flying it.
>> - Animals are not your friends. Research in advance what animals to expect wherever you're going, and what precautions to take. Camping in bear country is different than camping in raccoon country, for example.
Being an Australian it always entertains when you hear Americans talking about how everything in Australia is out to kill you... Truth is, almost nothing in Australia is out to kill you unless you really annoy it and you are far more likely to have problems with dying of exposure and heat exhaustion.
In the US on the other hand it seems you have lots of real predators who are out looking for a free feed that you need to take real care about. I had no idea raccoons were potentially dangerous.
I suppose it's all about what you are familiar with. I have no problem heading off walking in the Australian bush, with full knowledge that there are snakes out there that could bite me if I did something stupid but you rarely see them and if you do they are flaked out on a rock asleep. I'd be very cautious about bushwalking in the US, as I've no idea of the risks.
As far as I'm aware, racoons are not dangerous (unless they have rabies). They can just be a nuisance since they're good at getting into containers to steal food.
