To be fair, right around 50% of us are vehemently opposed to this sort of thing. Far from all America

Agreed. A plane that can do 200ish knots for a few hours could hit a nice sweet spot for a lot of routes

I can’t comment for their engineering team, but usually open props are more efficient because any reasonably sized duct constrains prop diameter. Increasing prop diameter is the best way to improve efficiency. Ducting a very large diameter prop comes with a large structural and weight penalty.

Generally speaking, the only time ducts buy their way on is when they are also needed for bystander protection.

It’s absolutely not impossible. Airplanes are more efficient than drones, and efficiency grows with scale. Drones fly. Of course an airplane can do the same.

The problem is one of speed and range. The best form of propulsion we have for electric airplanes is the propeller, which has a lower top speed potential than a turbofan. The energy density of batteries is also lower.

Realistically, an electric airplane will have reduced range and speed compared to a modern jet.

There are a lot of other factors. For example, electric motors with propellers are far more efficient than turbofans

A propeller driven airplane will also be substantially slower than a turbofan one, allowing for unswept wings and better aerodynamic efficiency

In reality, battery powered passenger planes aren’t impossible but they will definitely have a shorter range and slower speed. They are realistically only suited for regional routes.

Since when could you hold a musket on your belt?

They typically had barrels over three feet long, with a total weapon length over four feet.

Guns also are not manufactured clandestinely en masse, anywhere, because it takes a lot of precise industrial machining to do at scale. They are not like sex or weed that are impossible to ban, when you stop manufacturing them for nonsense reasons, they stop circulating and criminals stop being able to get their hands on them.

This is false. There are multiple Latin American countries where street gangs have been manufacturing reasonably sophisticated all-metal submachine guns at scale in clandestine factories for over a decade. Even prior to the 3d printing boom, open bolt submachine gun were fairly simple for an individual to manufacture with common hand tools, and quantities scale rapidly with improvised tooling and readily available machines like benchtop lathes.

With 3d printing, it has become even more accessible. Printers can be used to manufacture tooling in addition to parts, and the DEFcad community has been remarkably resourceful in developing new methods utilizing 3d printers. Everything from electrochemically etched, rifled, barrels to recoilless rifles with shaped charge warheads can be made at home if a person has no compunctions about breaking the law.

You can see the impact of 3d printing overseas, where there are a number of rebel groups using 3d printed firearms as their primary armament. Banning guns might reduce the quality of what is available, but it definitely won’t end production in a country full of gun enthusiasts with the interest and skills to make firearms.

I do not understand why Americans think they are such unfathomably unique snowflakes that none of the evidence or lessons learned from every other developed country could apply to them.

As I said, our gun culture ensures people continue to make firearms regardless of what the law says. We have countless machinists, gunsmiths, and hobbyists that would manufacture guns as a form of protest if they were banned. Furthermore, we already have more guns than people and the vast majority of them would remain in civilian hands if the government tried to seize them.

But most importantly, many Americans believe that the equalizing force of firearms—something that allows the citizenry to defend themselves against tyranny and for the weak/frail to defend themselves against the physically strong— is philosophically worth a small reduction in public safety.

Never suggested they didn’t. I’m suggesting that the country would have been better off if they both had weapons and chose to resist.

We aren’t Germany. The founding fathers made sure we could arm ourselves. The choices we make are our own.

This is honestly, the dumbest, most American take in the world.

Hell yeah brother 🦅🦅🦅

It literally ignores the plainly obvious fact that not a single other developed country allows gun ownership, and yet, still have rights and democracy and freedom.

Many other developed countries allow gun ownership. Educate yourself, my man.

But more importantly, I literally do not care if they do or not. The point was never that democracy cannot exist without firearms, but rather that in the worst case scenario an armed citizenry can act as a force against tyranny. It’s a rare thing that it might be needed, and a last resort. No sane person wants a civil war

Guns did not get your rights

Except they literally did. How do you think the revolutionary war was won, softly spoken words?

they do not protect you from a government that has AI powered drones with anti tank mines on them. Hell a fucking APC with a sound cannon will make your AR look like a child's toy.

Guerrillas with small arms in developing countries have repelled the US military repeatedly over the past half century. More importantly, if you don’t think a combination of small arms and low cost homemade munitions are effective against a modern military you haven’t been paying attention to the war in Ukraine at all.

That’s a fair statement.

I don’t think we are there yet. It will be far better for our country if our problems can be solved by diplomatic and political means, and we are far from running out of levers to pull.

The founding fathers have written at length on their reasoning for including the right to bear arms in the constitution. It is very clear that they believed in the people’s ability to resist and overthrow the government if needed.

After all, this was a group who escaped the grip of the monarchy through force of arms. It’s odd to think that they didn’t see value in the ability of the people to do the same, especially when they repeatedly wrote about it in period.

However, all that being said, I agree with your sentiment that leftists should be arming themselves. Just because the 2nd amendment has almost completely lost it's original intent or meaning, doesn't mean we can't take advantage of the fact that it exists with tons of legal precedent to strap up in preparation for what might come next. Things are unlikely to get better from here, and if things get worse you will be glad you have a firearm for protection.

Also this here is kind of the point. The original intent is not important; many people believe in the modern era that an armed citizenry is important as a last ditch balancing force to government overreach. We are all better off if left leaning people arm themselves instead of using pro-gun arguments as some sort of self-righteous gotcha against the right.

I believe it’s fundamentally important that we keep that right to an equalizing force.

Acting like we are going to directly fight a tank with an AR-15 is either a straw man or just frankly ignorant. The US military has repeatedly been repelled by guerrilla forces with small arms, and if you have been paying any attention at all in Ukraine you will see what can be done with very little technology in terms of drones etc.

If we ever need to raise arms against the government, it will be a dark day indeed. No reasonable person wants that. We have many methods of recourse before that even enters the conversation IMO.

However, there can eventually come a time where resistance is appropriate. Hitler never would have taken complete control of the country, exterminated so many Jews, and started Europe on the path to a world war if the Germans were armed and actively resisting his rule.

It seems self evident that the German people would been better off resisting Nazi rule than allowing the death camps and WW2 to come to fruition.

That’s still the purpose of the second amendment, for people to own guns to defend themselves and others against tyranny

You can’t expect everyone to agree with you ideologically, and obviously they won’t rise up against a government they agree with. Conservatives don’t see the current administration as tyrannical, so there is no conflict for them between the ideals of the second amendment and their actions.

However, you can absolutely choose to exercise your second amendment rights.

As a gun owning liberal, I’m tired of my peers acting like the second amendment is some conservative agenda. The right to firearm ownership is an eminently liberal ideal. More liberals and leftists should own guns— the second amendment is more important now than ever before.

If you think there is a pressing need for an armed liberal/leftist citizenry, go buy guns and arm yourselves.

As someone who worked from home for almost a decade before being pulled into the office, I regularly got flack from my peers for it as well as older boomer types. IME, people who are forced into the office frequently feel a sense of “fairness” where they want everyone else to come in as well.

“If I have to be miserable, you should too”

I love how most of them are kinda risqué with the clothes partially removed but hiding everything, but then every once in a while it’s FULL NUDE or HERES SOME NIPPLES

The fucked up thing is that anon could actually be fired for this.

I was homeless for a bit and there was a woman who worked at Panera who would help me out. A couple times a week, she gave me a day old loaf of bread they were planning to throw out. That bread was like 75% of my daily calories, so she was basically keeping me from starving.

Corporate fired her for giving me the bread instead of throwing it out, then sent someone to confront me and ban me from the store. The guy from corporate gave me a BS line about “liability” when he was kicking me out.

I can’t comment on the northeast, but I can say I was one of the more fit guys around town when I lived in the south simply because I did the bare minimum of exercise. The food is incredible and the weather encourages you to sit inside and hide from the heat.

Then I moved to Denver, where I am now the fat guy in the neighborhood. I quickly lost 20 lbs doing nothing besides not living near southern food and going to the mountains on the weekends.

There are also rumors about… other stuff.

In the early 2010s there was a guy who would park in downtown San Diego with a van covered in accusations against the US government. He’d stand outside the van with signs and tell anyone who would listen crazy stories about military experiments. I talked to him a few times and he was always going on science ethics, mind control research, and shadow plots to radically change the viewpoint of the American people.

After we talked, I had a good chuckle and assumed he was just a crazy loon.

However, some local journalists thought he seemed a bit too coherent for the far fetched nature of his claims, and spent some time digging into his past. He held a doctorate in mathematics from an ivy-league institution. When they interviewed his grad school advisors, they gushed about how he was the most brilliant student they’d ever had. They were able to confirm that he left academia to take a research position at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), where he held a Top Secret security clearance.

When interviewed, he told journalists that his research at SPAWAR revolved around dolphin consciousness. The military allegedly had him experimenting with mind control on live dolphins in the hopes that it would improve their utility.

He says the guilt over the unethical cetacean experiments drove him to blow the whistle on the program. Nobody believed him, and it devolved into him standing on the street hoping someone with a bit of power would take him seriously enough to bring national attention to the experiments.

Is any of his claims true? No idea. He was probably crazy. However, he has just enough credibility to make you think…. maybe he was trying to blow the whistle on something real.

Sadly, getting more places with less money is absolutely possible, but the key to making it happen is abandoning planetary science. It’s a shift from a paradigm where engineering exists to support planetary science efforts to engineering for engineering’s sake