They keep saying “51st state”, which implies Canada will only be a single state under the electoral college, and thus will be shafted just like California.

The price has nothing to do with patents, it’s economy of scale - LCDs ship at a rate of billions per quarter, and are included in every device under the sun, whereas e-ink screens basically only ship in niche luxury devices (ereaders/enotes) that can be replaced by your phone and an ipad respectively. As a result, LCDs ship several orders of magnitude more screens, and reap the resulting economies of scale.

Yes, EInk corp has patents, but that doesn’t prove that the price is caused by the patents.

Currently, our best hope of seeing prices come down is 1) if the fast-multidye tech (i.e. the Gallery 3 thing) takes off enough to give e-notes mass market appeal (color drawing and comic book reading could be huge, maybe) and thus some extra economy of scale, or 2) if GoodDisplay’s DES screens get their PPI up to 300 and thus are able to compete in the ereader space against E-Ink’s MED.

DES = Display Electronic Slurry, AKA the cofferdam tech. It’s a different method of creating an e-ink screen that (apparently) doesn’t touch E-Ink’s patents, and it works by creating a grid of ditches to be filled up with the e-ink liquid and ink (where 1 ditch = 1 pixel). In contrast, E-Ink’s MED (=Microencapsulated Electrophoretic Display) produces self-contained microcapsules that have the liquid/ink sealed inside, and then the microcapsules are sprinkled onto the screen’s pixel grid like Hundreds And Thousands, and each microcapsule is substantially smaller than a pixel, and each pixel toggles several microcapsules. The microcapsules sometimes overlap the border of the pixel grid (since they’re a bunch of packed circles basically), which breaks up the straightness of the pixel grid and is what gives E-Ink screen their ‘grainy’ look where DES screens are more noticeably checkerboarding. This could potentially give MED a long-term aesthetic advantage, although that might turn out to be a non-issue for DES with sufficiently high PPI.

The advantage of DES is that because it skips a layer (the slurry is directly on the substrate, rather than in microcapsules on the substrate) it could potentially be higher-resolution(/PPI), and higher contrast. Also possibly cheaper, since it might be able to skip a manufacturing step of making the microcapsules. Maybe.

They fought in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. Which is distinct from mercenaries AIUI because Ukraine is 100% in charge of the chain of command and takes full responsibility for their actions.

Ukraine has had a “no mercenaries” policy IIRC, if NK troops are seen as mercenaries then maybe it’ll legitimize Ukraine shopping for manpower.

Neither are ATACMs. They aren’t air force though.

What if they switched to shooting sand? Raining sand isn’t too deadly, it’s not dense enough right? And if it’s not lethal enough to the drones, then they can just up the caliber to shoot more sand.

How much obsolete tech does the WW2 infantry have, is the question - e.g. if it’s US troops then they’ll have Garands, which are only obsolescent, and they only need to stall until the modern air force can come help.

…actually, no. The modern air force could split up, put 10%ish of its forces into ROFLstomping the WW2 air force and the other 90% into supporting the WW2 infantry. So the WW2 infantry will always have air support from the moment the war starts. If the air force can obliterate a few platoons of modern infantry, then the WW2 infantry can scavenge some of their equipment and level the playing field a bit.

What exactly does “take a city” mean? If you’re not too squeamish then you’ll find you don’t need infantry, just a few MIRVs.

Aren’t those planes brought up to the air by actual planes? If modern planes have air dominance, then those plywood planes had better have a functioning plywood engine because there won’t be anything else to get them skybound.

Drones are army, they’re just a fancy grenade/pair of binoculars, when you think about it. Or maybe a missile.

If the modern air force can take out some modern ground troops, the ww2 ground troops could loot their corpses to be somewhat modern-ish ground troops. The modern air force could use radio to explain how to use the equipment, if they have access to wikipedia.

WW2 forces will get obliterated at nighttime, no night vision. Assuming modern ground forces are still alive by nighttime, that is.

Okay so statistically speaking, in agrarian/preindustrial societies more than 9/10 of them would be farmers, which means they would (hopefully) have pitchforks. And if you don’t have a pitchfork, then you shouldn’t be at the front because then you’ll be blocking someone with a pitchfork. You can carry a torch or something maybe.

Also, some farmers might have multiple pitchforks (so the wife/kids can pitch in, I’m pretty sure that’s the literal meaning so not a pun BTW), and would know you probably don’t have a pitchfork so would kindly bring along a spare to the angry mobbing.

Point is, the stereotype is at most off by 10%.

If Russia drops a bomb, then NATO immediately deploys conventional bombs with their own air force on all Russian forces in Ukraine, and China/India both sanction Russia (which basically means the whole world is sanctioning Russia, since nobody will want to piss off the USA and EU and China and India - even NK might sanction Russia).

In other words, if Moscow drops a nuke then their military and their economy both disintegrate.

I think tanks would be their best bet - mounted machine guns and can carry lots of ammo, and if they’re surrounded and about to be overrrun then they can just drive away - through the zombies. It’s a tank, it has torque up the wazoo.

Actually, no, barbed wire would be their best bet - the blade doesn’t have to move if the zombies slice themselves apart on it.

In practice, just use both!

The reason chemical weapons are banned is because (they’re monstrous and) they’re useless. You can fire a chlorine shell and if the wind is juuust right, it’ll kill anyone within a few meters. You know what else will kill anyone within a few meters? A normal artillery shell.

Except, chlorine gas can be blocked by an airtight gas mask and a chemical suit. They cost less than $500 for complete immunity to the weapon. Good luck finding a $500 flak vest that’ll stop a mortar though. And meanwhile, if you want to press the attack and benefit from your chemical weapons, there’s one slight problem before you advance: there’s a bunch of chlorine gas in the way.

In other words, it’s an unreliable and inferior weapon that gets in the way of modern military doctrine. Although there are some good niches in shitty armies by dictators who are too paranoid of coups to give their junior officers any independence or proper kit. Like the Iraq army that the US army utterly steamrolled in 2005.

The right wing has been making loads of pro-Russia noise, but do also try not to alienate their popular support too much before they’re in power.

Realistically, Trump will sell out Ukraine to Russia if he’s offered a good deal, but there’s no point publicly destroying his ability to welch on supporting Russia before he’s paid to support them (if you can’t afford to walk away, you can’t afford to negotiate), and there’s no point in Russia paying him before he’s actually in power and able to make the US govt cave in the first place.