And then one day they developed a taste for human flesh.

Not wanting to get rich in Norway? Not wanting toys? Meh.
Military spending in Norway per capita? We're in 7th place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditure_per_capita

In Scandinavia anyone can get wealthy. Anyone can get a proper college education.

Health care? In the US you spend more per capita than in Scandinavia.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-spending/u-s-health-spending-twice-other-countries-with-worse-results-idUSKCN1GP2YN

I quite prefer the model here, and wouldn't switch for the world.
Sure I pay a lot of taxes - half my salary goes to taxes, and I pay 25% VAT on the rest - but I do get value for my money; education, health care, pension and a good infrastructure.

And hey - to help other countries - how about we add up the military spending we use with with how much we spend on development aid:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors

Interesting....isn't he saying that mainly white areas tend to be better? That seems to be a fairly racist position.
Odd that he mentions areas all over the country, but details only from southern states, as if the whole nation is historically racist like the secessionist states.
Let's talk Vermont, who actively encourages non white immigration and those who go tend to report being treated kindly with respect, yet they're still far below average in diversity.
I live in Humboldt county, which is much whiter than average. I can't figure out why more non whites don't move here unless it's a lack of development and services. Those I've known were happy here and saw less racism than they had in major cities.

The laugh track addition is just dumb and inappropriate. Often the shot of the crowd showed them sitting quietly while raucous laughter erupted from the track over nothing funny.

A big part of the Zero's reputation came from racking up kills in China against a lot of second-rate planes with poorly-trained pilots. After all, there was a reason that the Republic of China hired the American Volunteer Group to help out during the Second Sino-Japanese War – Chinese pilots had a hard time cutting it.

The Wildcat was deficient in many ways versus the Zero, but it still had superior firepower via ammo loadout. The Zero carried very few 20mm rounds, most of it's ammo was 7.7mm. There are records of Japanese pilots unloading all their 7.7mm ammo on a Wildcat and it was still flyable. On the flip side, the Wildcat had an ample supply of .50 cal.

Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa was able to score seven kills against Japanese planes in one day with a Wildcat.

Yes, the discovery of the Akutan Zero helped the United States beat this plane. But MilitaryFactory.com notes that the Hellcat's first flight was on June 26, 1942 – three weeks after the raid on Dutch Harbor that lead to the fateful crash-landing of the Mitsubishi A6M flown by Tadayoshi Koga.

Marine Captain Kenneth Walsh described how he knew to roll to the right at high speed to lose a Zero on his tail. Walsh would end World War II with 17 kills. The Zero also had trouble in dives, thanks to a bad carburetor.

We were behind in technology for many reasons, but once the Hellcat started replacing the Wildcat, the Japanese Air Superiority was over. Even if they had maintained a lead in technology, as Russia showed in WW2, quantity has a quality all of it's own. We were always going to be able to field more pilots and planes than Japan would be able to.

As far as Soviet rockets, once we were stunned by the launch of Sputnik, we kicked into high gear. You can say what you will of reliability, consistency, and dependability, but exactly how many manned Soviet missions landed on the moon and returned? Other than Buran, which was almost a copy of our Space Shuttle, how many shuttles did the USSR field?

The Soviets did build some things that were very sophisticated and were, for a while, better than what we could field. The Mig-31 is a great example. We briefly lagged behind but have a much superior air capability now. The only advantages the Mig and Sukhoi have is speed, they can fire all their missiles and flee. If they are engaged however, they will lose if pilots are equally skilled.

As @newtboy has said, I am sure that Russia and China are working on military advancements, but the technology simply doesn't exist to make a Hypersonic missile possible at this point.

China is fielding a man portable rifle that can inflict pain, not kill, and there is no hard evidence that it works.

There is no proof that the Chinese have figured out the technology for an operational rail gun on land, let alone the sea. We also have created successful railguns, the problem is POWERING them repeatedly, especially onboard a ship. If they figured out a power source that will pull it off, then it is possible, but there is no concrete proof other than a photo of a weapon attached to a ship. Our experts are guessing they might have it functional by 2025, might...

China has shown that long range QEEC is possible. It has been around but they created the first one capable of doing it from space. The problem is, they had to jury rig it. Photons, or light, can only go through about 100 kilometers of optic fiber before getting too dim to reliably carry data. As a result, the signal needs to be relayed by a node, which decrypts and re-encrypts the data before passing it on. This process makes the nodes susceptible to hacking. There are 32 of these nodes for the Beijing-Shanghai quantum link alone.

The main issue with warfare today is that it really doesn't matter unless the battle is between one of the big 3. Which means that ANY action could provoke Nuclear conflict. Is Russia going to hypersonic missile one of our carriers without Nukes become an option on the table as a retaliation? Is China going to railgun a ship and risk nuclear war?

Hell no, no more than we would expect to blow up some major Russian or Chinese piece of military hardware without severe escalation! Which means we can create all the technological terrors we like, because we WON'T use them unless they somehow provide us a defense against nuclear annihilation.

So just like China and Russia steal stuff from us to build military hardware to counter ours, if they create something that is significantly better, we will began trying to duplicate it. The only thing which would screw this system to hell is if one of us actually did begin developing a successful counter measure to nukes. If that happens, both of the other nations are quite likely to threaten IMMEDIATE thermonuclear war to prevent that country from developing enough of the counter measures to break the tie.

The fact that the current state of the technology is not public knowledge, and the fact that it's development is a secret military program, likely without a publicly available budget in all 3 countries, makes me think it's secret. Just tests on models require a supersonic or hypersonic wind tunnel....you don't pick those up at home depot.
Nobody has seen one fly, so if it was even in the early testing phase, no one noticed. Since we're watching, I'm dubious it's past models and simulations anywhere.
I don't doubt they, like us, are working on it. I have doubts any nation has made exponentially more progress than we have, and I wouldn't trust China or Russia if they claimed to have them without seeing them demonstrated successfully, just as they shouldn't trust us if we make more unsubstantiated claims, we're proven liars.

Why do you think it was secret?
Why do you think nobody noticed?
Do you think they just began on it since sanctions?

Every major power has had back-burner development of this stuff since the cold war.
The only "secret" was how much progress they made. That it existed, you can freely take for granted.

Just how you can take for granted that everyone is working on genetic weapons, everyone is working on directed energy weapons, everyone is working on infrastructure hacking weapons, everyone is working on automated robotic weapons, etc.

Do you think there is a better / more-cost-efficient place for Russia to spend defense dollars, than on a system which can trade the price of a missile for the price of an aircraft carrier?
I would be more surprised if they hadn't put their money into a program such as this.

Look at what progress China has made :
Which country is fielding a rail gun today? China.
Which country is fielding a man portable laser rifle? China
Which country has demonstrated quantum entanglement encrypted communication? China.

The world is moving on, while we stand around confidently patting ourselves on the back.

-scheherazade

Short answer: yes. 100%.

Long answer:
Well, let's unpack this.

"the acts of a 17 yr old boy"
I did some dumb shit when I was a kid. Nothing major, but I certainly wasn't a choir boy. But this isn't some drunken hijinx. It isn't even some petty crime.

This is an accusation of violent sexual assault.

Now, even then, I'd be willing to grant that people can change. If he'd paid his due, apologised, and proved he had changed, I'd be willing to say that everyone deserves a shot at redemption.

But...
"no other history of repeat offense"
you mean apart from the other two women accusing him of sexual assault?

Finally...
"destroy a career"
Let's cut this bullshit right here. Your career is not "destroyed" if you don't get to sit on the supreme court. I'm a software developer. I'll never work for Google or Apple or Facebook or whatever, but career is doing fine, thanks.

It's the Supreme Court... it should literally be the elite of the elite in legal minds. If you've got two candidates who are identical in all respects except one got slightly better marks in high school, you take that one BECAUSE YOU CAN.

Kavanaugh is clearly not the best available. If nothing else, this process has shown that he is woefully unsuitable for this position. He has constantly lied, deflected and then become hysterical (and yes, I'm using that particular word very deliberately).

But what saddens about this whole thing (and it really shouldn't surprise me at this point) is the hypocrisy of the right. Because it's Trumps pick, they're all "it's just youthful exuberance" and "let bygones be bygones" where you know if the tables were turned and it was a democratic pick who had even a minor misdemeanour they would be screaming from the rooftops.

The funny thing is, I still think that Kavanaugh (whatever I may personally think of the slimy fuck-weasel) deserves the presumption of innocence. If he really was the guy he's made out to be by the right, he would have said "I'm innocent, but of course this should be investigated. I am terribly sorry for this woman. She has obviously been through a traumatic incident, but she has me confused for someone else." and then it would have been investigated, probably nothing would be found (due to the age of the claims and the difficulty of gathering evidence).

He could have handled this with humility, sympathy and dignity.

But he failed every possible test. He has shown himself utterly unfit to be on the supreme court, and quite frankly, he's shown himself to be a poor excuse for a human. Fuck him so very much.

can't say I would promote this - fine that this guy can develop this talent, but we frequently lose deep dive wannabes who try this without proper support teams and end up drowning due to shallow water blackout...

Heh I can understand why you think so. No I was talking Truman. Granted he wasn't as completely unaware as Trump was when he was elected. But he'd only served in the senate for two years before he was pushed in as VP. Note that the VP selection process was really different even though it was only ~70 years ago.

Once he got selected he became president that same year. Instead of working along Roosevelt's post-war plan and he refused to be a part of the grand alliance (meetings between the leaders of the big 3 powers that came out of that war).

Instead he started threatening the USSR with nuclear war if they worked toward developing nuclear weapons or expanded their territory... the so called Truman Doctrine.

He also played a fairly big roll in starting the whole middle eastern mess we're still dealing with to this day. Though that obviously goes back to the political failures after the Great War.

Guy was a dumb-ass who by reports of those around him didn't know WTF he was doing half the time.

Regarding the so-called "Space Force"

He's promoting it, at least in part, to cash in personally.

He's got a team branding it, coming up with logos, and developing merchandise he can sell. I don't think he cares about any of it, so long as it makes money for him.

This is not the Spider Man Arc. This is the Lethal Protector Arc.
They even had a complete action figure line of the main 5 symbiotes in the early 90s.

"Venom is loosely adapting the Lethal Protector comic arc, which saw Eddie Brock and Venom going up against the sinister Life Foundation and their hideous experimentations. The results of that were the Five Symbiotes: Riot, Scream, Agony, Lasher and Phage. Developed from "seeds" collected from the parent Venom symbiote, each had their own distinct powers"

https://screenrant.com/venom-movie-villains-symbiotes/

Surely the solution should rather be to fix the real problem of unequal opportunity in primary education?

Even given disagreement on this, surely the left(you?) can acknowledge that reasonable good minded people could disagree? Surely it's an over-reaction to call people racist for believing that choosing students based upon performance and not race is a good thing? One has to acknowledge that the counter example, of using race before merit as a selection criteria is in fact the very definition of racism?

More importantly to the Democratic party though, allow me to gift them moral justice and rightness on the issue. Even given that, practicality dictates that spending many years with a policies that choose certain people over more qualified others based upon race will create tensions. If you made that policy against say whites, or males, they might develop resentment. One might predict that they may even vote against those imposing that policy, arguably even willingly voting for a kind of racist orange haired loud mouth that they hope will end the policy discriminating against them based upon their race.

You might even argue it's starting to happen already...

was development of this car started before of after VW got busted for cheating diesel emissions? Or is this their attempt to scrub themselves?

or the British, who had the added dickishness of exposing their own soldiers to the blast.

sidenote: the hypocrisy of the US, Britain, etc criticising North Korea or <insert middle east bad guy> for developing nuclear weapons would be amusing if it weren't so tragic.