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Cake day: August 22nd, 2024

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  • Whether you see it as brainwashing or principles is irrelevant when they’re still capable of effective military resistance against superior nation-states.

    If anything, you’re right; people who are ideologically driven for their cause are the bane of a professional army; ideology is much cheaper and much more motivating than a paycheck and promise of a cushy pension.


  • Vietnam was as much a modern war than an insurgency. The Chinese/Soviet govts supplied the PAVN with modern weapons including air defence, armour, and an air force. The Viet Cong were the irregular militia forces that supplemented that. At least by the time of US deployment.

    Though then again, that started with a unit of 23 people equipped with a machine gun and two revolvers. It really doesn’t take long for any militia to achieve some serious weaponry if it can get the attention of sympathetic states.



  • merthyr1831@lemmy.mltoGreentext@sh.itjust.worksAnon explains the 2nd amendment
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    17 days ago

    Every time this fucking meme is made I’m reminded that the US military is currently being embarrassed in the red sea by a non-state actor with zero air superiority, which began itself with a thousand-or-so civilians with AK47s.

    That or how Israel is currently struggling to achieve any kind of military victory against two groups of lightly-armed militias which rely on scavenged and hand-made explosives to defeat state-of-the-art tanks.

    Let’s not even remind ourselves about the Taliban.







  • The same relationship of the cost of high virulence hurting the fitness of a pathogen may not apply if hosts are kept in proximity that a fast death doesn’t necessarily mean the pathogen cannot find a new host.

    It may have been how the 1918 flu pandemic was so deadly yet still successful at spreading to new hosts; being spread amongst soldiers in trenches and infirmaries and troop ships compared.

    Plus, there are evolutionary pressures on pathogens to become more virulent; using less resources by the host only leads to being outcompeted by more virulent pathogens. While mortality is a limiting factor, there is a temporary benefit to strategies that select for virulence until that limit is reached.