Not only did they take down an F-35, they took down the biggest F-35 ever made!

Defense production is the key to all of these scenarios. Russia is off the board for about a decade, and most likely they’d go after Ukraine again in a decade, and if not Ukraine it would be the Baltics. If you have defense production we can produce more weapons and munitions before they lose any conflict in Europe.

With China they’re bottled up inside a line of islands… Philippines, Taiwan, Japan. They can’t get to Canada unless they can take Taiwan first. Again, with defense production we can supply Taiwan with what they need to repel an invasion.

Everyone looks at army size but seemingly forgets to look at a map. Army size doesn’t matter if you can’t get that army across an ocean. So it’s all about navy, and Russia isn’t all that good at navies, never has been. China is building a large navy, but they don’t have a lot of experience, and amphibious assaults are ridiculously difficult, and it’s not likely they would succeed in taking Taiwan. China is building Aircraft carriers (which they don’t need for Taiwan since it’s within range of airfields in mainland China) but they aren’t building a lot of dedicated landing ships (though it’s supposed the could appropriate civilian RORO ships), so it seems they’re doing the typical authoritarian military that’s designed for intimidation more than actually being effective. But in any case we should be more concerned with defending Taiwan than direct conflict with China, because that has to happen first… and even that looks unlikely to anyone that hasn’t been influenced by Lockheed Martin’s propaganda.

But the bottom line is no one is going to attack the Western Hemisphere without permission from the US. So really the only real threat is the US or a US proxy. To prevent that we don’t need to straight up win, we need to first make a war too expensive for the US to attempt. Secondly if they do make the foolish decision to invade Canada, we need to have the capability of killing a few thousand American soldiers over the course of an occupation and they will become war weary and leave.

So we need strong alliances in terms of defense production so we’ll supply other countries if they’re attacked and they will supply us if we’re attacked.

Submarines are great for both an invasion of Taiwan and for making a US invasion of Canada expensive. Not that we could destroy the US navy with a few submarines, but having the capability of taking out a few ships and hitting some targets on the US coast makes an invasion expensive for them. Sure they could eventually track them all down, but they are going to take some damage before they do.

The Gripen is actually a great option too. They’re relatively low maintenance (it’s a fighter jet so still pretty high maintenance, but way less than the F-35) and they’re designed for a conflict where they’d need to potentially use regular roads as airstrips. Again it’s not about destroying the US Air Force, but just inflicting some expensive damage.

The goal would be to have a Pentagon assessment of the cost of a war with Canada to have the highest dollar amount as possible, since that’s all that matters to the psychopaths in power down there right now.

Any fighter jet requires a lot of maintenance, and the F35 requires more than most.

If they US cut us off from getting parts for the planes it wouldn’t take too long before they wouldn’t be flying anymore.

And yeah the biggest concern for me is a country that’s potential adversary being able to shut down our air force when they want. I’d say it’s not likely they’d do this to attack us militarily, but I could definitely see a them doing this to put pressure on us in a trade negotiation. They did temporarily cut off Ukraine from supply in the middle of a war to pressure them, that’s a line that should never be crossed, and they crossed it. So yeah they’d be willing ground our airf orce to strong arm us someday.

So using American planes makes the RCAF a potential liability in negotiations in the future. The military should be a strength in geopolitics, not a liability.

The Swedish offer shouldn’t just be about jobs, though that’s a nice bonus. If we’re building the parts for the planes here in Canada then no one can cut us off and ground our planes.

If you want a laugh, go look up the photos Iran doctored up for this bit of propaganda. I remember one had an F35 with cockpit the size of a school bus on it. Another had the tail section on backwards. Probably AI slop, but fake photos to be sure.

Why is Ukraine still using jets?

Drones require a radio signal to work. Radio signals can be jammed. You can get around this by having the drone on a wire, but obviously the range of the drone will be limited by the length of the wire.

An aircraft with a human pilot can still do it’s mission even if radio signals are being jammed.

Also I can imagine someday they might combine the technologies. Human piloted jet carries drones close enough that it can hit the target while being connected to the jet by a wire so it can be controlled by the human pilot in the jet in an area where signals are being jammed. Of course the enemy will want to counter that… by sending a human piloted jet to take out your human piloted jet.

You could of course build more sophisticated drones that can operate autonomously. But remember they they may not be able to connect to a server farm to because of jamming. So you’d have to put a lot more stuff on the drone itself and before long it’s no longer a cheap $400 drone, it’s price tag goes up until you’re basically spending almost as much per drone as we do on missiles.

Military tech is all about inventing new thing, invent thing to counter that, invent thing to counter the counter to your new tech. In wartime procurement you just need the thing that works right now. With peacetime procurement you want to get things that keep your options open and not be too dependent on a tech that might be countered in a few years. So you get both jets and drones because maybe the jets will be obsolete, but it’s just as likely drones will be obsolete if the time comes to use them.

Oddly enough it seems like Microsoft themselves that’s working towards breaking the network effect. They are pushing people to use the web versions of their software now and since edge is chromium, their web versions should work in Linux.

In the past Microsoft made most of their money from Windows and Office, but now they make more money off of cloud services so the traditional Windows and Office products are becoming more and more about just driving people to their cloud services. But as they they put more emphasis on cloud services they’re actually making it easier for people to dump Windows, and as they make Windows more about marketing their cloud services, they give people more incentive to dump Windows.

Microsoft is digging the grave for windows.

A fan of manuals, obviously. There are dozens of us!

In most of the civilized world, refugees do not need a passport when they are seeking asylum.

You’re prohibited from entering a many countries in the Middle East if you have a stamp in you passport showing you’ve been to Israel.

Because of this Israel generally doesn’t stamp passports. It would be especially a terrible thing to do to a refugee that might have family in another country that they could stay with but get turned away because they have a prohibited stamp in their passport.

They usually give a paper (separate from the passport) with the necessary information. It’s possible they didn’t get that paper, but it’s also possible they had to dispose of it if the flight stopped over in a country that doesn’t allow Israeli stamps.

Whatever the case may be, it’s not at all unusual for someone exiting Israel to not have a stamp in their passport, in fact that’s the default. It’s weird South African officials wouldn’t be aware of this.

No I’m saying we’re preparing for every possible contingency no matter how unlikely. You’re talking like this is a certainty and we’re unprepared for it.

You’re not quite understanding the probability of an economic collapse of the US, the probability of the politcal collapse of the US, the probability of that leading to a civil war. These are far more likely scenarios than Trump convincing the US military to invade and ally without that resulting in the military turning on Trump, combined with the probability of our NATO (two of whom are nuclear powers) allies also abandoning Canada, countries like the UK which would’ve been fucked in WWII without Canada, along with a bunch of countries Canada liberated. I know as an American you think you single-handedly defeated the Nazis and all countries are beholden to you forever about it, but Canadians were flying over Britain in their darkest hour and Americans weren’t. Whose side do you think Europe will take? This scenario is 99.9% an internet fantasy, but we’ll be ready for that 0.1% anyway only because we have to plan for all possible contingencies. But you’re going on like it’s a certainty and it’s very very far from that.

Perhaps you should do meaningful boycott and sell your US based financial assets as a country

You think a guy like Carney doesn’t have financial plans for the US? It’s not in our interest to be the cause of a US financial collapse it’s better for us if that happens on it’s own, so Americans blame Trump for it.

dk why you’re mad at me I’ve been boycotting these fuckers for over half a decade, welcome to the club, you could do so much more, and be less hateful to people who have no controls over the levers.

Because you’re exhibiting the American superiority that’s the root cause of all of this mess. You think everything in the world has to revolve around the US, and can’t accept the US not being the bestest most greatest nation in history. You are not the rulers of the world, if your country collapses we’ll have a tough go of it for a few years, but we’ll be fine. Probably won’t even be as bad as the pandemic, and we got through that.

The key is “with human supervision”. Calling it Full Self Driving with “Supervised” in parentheses aftwards while putting out videos where they say the only reason there’s some behind the wheel is because of regulations (those annoying “regulations” amirite?) leads people to think they don’t really need to supervise the driving of the car.

Couple that with the fact that there are actual full self driving cars (Waymo) there’s even greater confusion.

People have been killed because of the misconceptions about Telsa cars actually being full self driving. Which they aren’t, they cheap out on the hardware needed for that to be possible, let alone the software.

Americans always think the stock market = economy. While there may have been some connection between the stock market and the economy in the past, once you transferred most of the money to the wealthy, that’s no longer the case. Now it’s essentially a casino for billionaires, and they get all the insider tips.

Speaking of casinos, Las Vegas is a ghost town now because your tourism industry is suffering. Which means unemployment. China isn’t buying soybeans from US grown soybeans anymore which means farms will go bankrupt or (more likely) they’ll be bailed out by the government.

You really think you’re gonna be able to stop Donald Trump from consolidating power and invading you in 2-3 years?

The most probably outcome is things are mostly the same but suck a bit more for you. Next most likely, economic depression. After that US completely collapses hopefully like the Soviet Union did, but with the American fetishization of violence, civil war would be more likely.

You need to get far down the list of probably outcomes to get to the US invading Canada.

The US is good at invading countries. Not so good about about occupying countries. And you’d be asking people in your military to die because of the whims of a crazy old man. Remember that both Canada and the US were in Afghanistan for decades. Which means the US would be committing the greatest betrayal in human history, invading a country years after being in a decades long war together. All because a crazy old man want to change how things look on the map? Also remember Canadians have experience in Afghanistan. I have a family member that diffused IEDs In Afghanistan. Pretty sure he also knows how to build an IED. Something you should keep in mind when you’re fantasizing about a war with Canada.

You may be looking at the massive numbers and tech the US military has, but the only number that matters is 2000. That’s the number of American soldiers that died in Afghanistan, so that’s the number of soldiers we’d have to kill if they dared cross into Canada. And remember there wouldn’t be an ocean between you and the country you’re fighting, there would be war within the US which Americans wouldn’t handle very well. Y’all shit your pants when there’s a few unidentified drones over New Jersey, what would you do when there’s drones flying over you carrying munitions? You think Pete Hegseth and his right wing version of DEI of prioritizing people looking the part over competence would keep you safe?

Your military is being converted into a Russia style military designed to look good at parades, be loyal to the dear leader, and tell dear leader what he wants to hear. Your government is being tasked to go after the “enemy within” so with every passing day you’re becoming weaker against outside threats. In 2-3 years time, continuing the current trend, if you were to invade Canada it might go about as well as Putin’s “two week special operation” in Ukraine.

You’re becoming Russia. You’ve got the kleptocratic government, authoritarian leadership, and declining military capabilities, but the authoritarian leader isn’t aware because he fires anyone that doesn’t tell him what to hear. They’re working towards media control and phony elections like Russia has. Even a decade ago, the US didn’t have the capabilities to occupy a country the size and population of Canada. With your country in decline, you may soon lack the capability to successfully invade, which is relatively easy compared to occupation. But you still like to threaten other countries (like Russia does) to create a narrative about being big and strong while you’re in decline.

The trade war is top news here, and we’re spending a lot more on military including developing drone production capabilities.

Every week I go to the grocery store there’s fewer US made products on the shelf and more products made elsewhere. Most of us are avoiding products made in the USA, it’s a common sight to see people checking labels for where things are made and putting it back on the shelf if it’s American, I do the same. We can survive economic hardship as long as we have food. This is on the minds of every Canadian and a lot of Europeans as well.

China’s trade to the US is way down, but their overall trade numbers are up. Why do you think that is? It’s because trade is being routed around the US because we know the US cannot be trusted. Used to be China was the last place I’d buy things from (only when there’s no other option) but now the US is the last place. And not as much stuff is made in the US as you might think. It’s difficult to avoid buying stuff from China, but it’s actually very easy to avoid buying from Canada. The US is stupidly handing over the economic power to China, which sucks. But we’ll get by.

And don’t think this is a temporary thing either. Even if the US votes in a Democrat next election (if there even are elections) we can’t trust you to not go back to someone as crazy (or even crazier) as Trump. We thought y’all learned when Trump got voted out last time, but obviously there are fundamental problems in American culture that will take generations to fix, if ever. The most reasonable outcome is the the US to dissolve and form smaller countries, hopefully it won’t take a civil war to accomplish that. But it’s obvious the US doesn’t work as a country anymore, the sooner Americans realize that the sooner the world can form trade relationships with the less stupid parts of the US like California and New York. You know, the parts of the US that actually matter to the rest of the world.

Yeah but the cartridges that come with a new printer are usually only 1/3 full. As another guy said, get a printer that uses toner. They’re more expensive (because you’re actually paying for the printer) but you don’t have to worry about ink drying out because it’s toner, it’s supposed to be dry.

Inkjet printers are basically a scam, if you don’t print all that often, the ink will probably be dried up when you go to use it, and if you print frequently, it’ll be cheaper to have a laser printer that uses toner in terms of per page cost.

If this AI stuff weren’t a bubble and the companies dumping billions into it were capable of any long term planning they’d call up wikipedia and say “how much do you need? we’ll write you a cheque”

They’re trying to figure out nefarious ways of getting data from people and wikipedia literally has people doing work to try to create high quality data for a relatively small amount of money that’s very valuable to these AI companies.

But nah, they’ll just shove AI into everything blow the equivalent of Wikipedia’s annual budget in a week on just electricity to shove unwanted AI slop into people’s faces.

The term “late stage capitalism” is not a call to action, it’s a call to apathy. It’s promoted by online influencers to make it permissible to participate in capitalistic endeavors (it doesn’t matter the collapse is inevitable) so they can entice people to buy their merch so they can be rich. It’s a sign that leftism has been successfully captured by capitalism.

No, we get news all about Alberta throughout the country. There’s some idiots there to be sure, but they’re the minority. The oil industry dominates there and they’re only loyal to the almighty dollar. The farmers in Alberta don’t seem to like how things are going with the oil industry domination of their politics, and certainly don’t like the separatist bullshit promoted but the oil industry assholes that only care about money.

PP has had to moderate quite a lot and Mark Carney is what we call a Red Tory… a conservative in the Liberal Party. Carney has a lot of popularity because he appeals to traditional conservatives and liberals aren’t going to be voting for PP, so that leaves the NDP which has lost the working class and seem directionless at the moment. PP is an internet weirdo (and only appeals to internet weirdos, not traditional conservatives) and there’s a very good chance he’ll be removed as leader of the party. There’s a significant probability that Doug Ford will replace PP next year, but in any case the Conservative rhetoric now seems to be all about them being tougher on the US than Carney. Even with PP has had to push that kind of rhetoric.

See politics is more complicated that your simplistic view of things. There isn’t really any chance that Canada will fall in line with Trump, it would be political suicide to do so. The only grumbling I hear is that Carney is being too friendly with Trump.

The other examples you listed are incumbents voted in before the tides turned.

Consider the possibility there may be more going on in politics in other countries than people just mindlessly copying the US. But there’s an undercurrent throughout the world that Trump sucks (because he does) and politicians that resemble him are being rejected.

Sorry, but the US is sinking ship and everyone else in the world knows this and is trying to get as far from you as they can to avoid getting sucked down with you. You’re the goofiest country in history going from the wealthiest country in the world to becoming a shithole country because something about your culture created the conditions so most of you got hypnotized by a real estate conman.

Actually, I got the information about China’s handling of toxic waste from processing rare earths from Australian news (ABC).

Where do you get your information from? Some influencer on TikTok? Those people are for entertainment only and consider who’s choosing which content you see.

Yes they will charge you more, because there’s toxic waste involved and it can be expensive to handle in an environmentally friendly way. It’s cheaper to refine rare earths by just dumping the toxic waste on the ground, which is what China does and it’s how they cornered the market.

This is one of the cases where tariffs are good. Produce the rare earths the right way (even if it costs more) and slap tariffs on products that are produced in ways that damages the environment (as China does).

I guess you realize now the MAGA style politics is losing traction outside of the US.

The US invading it’s allies would be insane, and very costly. There’s a reason why countries don’t go to war with countries they do a lot of trade with. The US is already teetering on the brink of economic collapse and that would send it over the edge. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, it was almost as stupid for Putin to invade Ukraine, authoritarians do stupid things sometimes.

But that’s a low probability. You’re being goofy if you don’t realize a civil war within the US is a much more likely outcome than the US invading allied countries that will fight back. Of course Trump’s supposed “enemy within” will fight back too, but the US is already in a cold civil war states are sending soldiers into other states. It’s still cold since shots aren’t being fired yet, but it could go hot. I hope for your sake it doesn’t.