egerlach

joined 2 years ago
[–] egerlach@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 hours ago

I think we agree on the overall premise, but disagree on the degree. I also think that's fine. I don't know how hard it would be to arm Canadians broadly as you suggest. I'm suggesting that armament will be most effective built on a foundation of intelligence and logistics.

I think there would be value in something like the Swiss model (though I understand that it isn't as ubiquitous as it once was).

[–] egerlach@lemmy.ca 1 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Wars aren't won with weapons. Battles are won with weapons. Wars are won with intelligence and logistics.

Russia tried to make their "special military operation" a battle and take Kyiv in the first few days. They failed, and now they have a war on their hands. If you follow the details of the war, a lot of focus is placed on cities that are well-connected to other cities by road or by water. Your military can be much more agile in where it chooses to deploy resources if you control the supply infrastructure.

Occupations are notoriously even worse. The asymmetry of maintaining resources for an occupation is huge. Relatively small pockets of resistance, well applied, can cripple an occupier's forces, even if the resistance is relatively poorly armed.

The question is what the limit of the American populous's tolerance for soldiers dying to occupy Canada, of all places. I hope we never find out.

[–] egerlach@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 week ago

There was a good discussion online between Christine Lemmer-Webber, one of the editors of the ActivityPub W3C Standard, and Bryan Newbold, protocol engineer at BlueSky.

These are long reads. But they are worth reading. Christine and Bryan agree that ATProto and ActivityPub have different design goals and so what you get from "federation" with each is different. ATProto makes a centralized index of the entire system possible, at the cost of relying on very few (practically likely one) centralized providers.

As a result, the Lemmy ecosystem, as it exists today, wouldn't be possible with ATProto. It would probably look more like Reddit, but with a "credible exit" possible as a defense against enshittification.

[–] egerlach@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

The entire premise of this piece is that it happens consensually within the law. Secretary Krasnov-Trump of the 47th Oblast is not known for respecting consent or the law.

The outcome we have to be wary of is forcible annexation. Trump only respects strength, so the right thing to do is to be strong. Trump's reaction to Ontario's energy surcharge is proof that we're on the right track—it's him whining "no, I'm stronger". We have to keep showing Canadian strength in response. Not aggressive strength, but a forcible "no" with enough oomph to back it up.

He's a bully. He'll give up when we're no longer fun and hand the file over to someone who will be willing to negotiate. Then when a deal is reached that is almost exactly where we were in December, he'll claim victory for bringing Canada to heel.

Peace, Order, and Good Government is the right goal. But right now all three of those aims require paying attention to Trump, not ignoring him.