Seems to be a rash of these Homeworld style 3D fleet combat games coming out. All look the same to me.

My mistake.
I'll admit, his delivery is going down hill these days. I've been a fan for a LONG time, but he's not as good as he once was by far.
I get especially annoyed when he gets upset when his audience groans at a bad taste joke, it's like he doesn't understand that's a POSITIVE reaction to a bad taste joke, and indicates his audience understands it's in bad taste. You would think he would know that after 3+ decades in snarky 'comedy'.

To your points....
When a parent takes the kids side over the teachers....well, that depends on what the issue is, but on it's face that's also coddling. The implication/infrence is that it would be about the child's behavior in class, or their academic performance, and in either case taking the child's side over the teacher is teaching them that they are more important than the authority, and/or that their word is going to be taken over an adult in authority, and their POV or opinion is the only one that matters. That's terrible, and sets them up for failure and/or prison later.
Not telling a child to shut the fuck up when they are rudely interrupting adults DOES breed poorly mannered narcissists, as it's teaching the child that what they have to say is the MOST important thing, far more important than the adult discussion they are interrupting. That's terrible, bad manners, completely unrealistic, and not good for the child's development into a decent human being. Children are not adults, and 99.9% of the time what they want to say/ask is not important. Even in those rare cases where it is important, not teaching them to not interrupt creates mannerless narcissistic douchebags that never allow other people to speak and believe their every fleeting thought is golden.
Asking a kid where they want to go to dinner....OK, that's stupid. If you just ask them, the child isn't automatically in control. If you always ask them at every meal and defer to their whim over the wishes of adults (which is what I think he meant, but not what he said), that's coddling and breeding a narcissist that believes his is the only opinion that matters to anyone and should always take precedent over other's needs/wants.

Anyone notice that some conclusions of the basic premise were drawn from the behavior of rats? It's kind of interesting how we all just kind of nod and smile when a scientist or psychologist draws conclusions about us from rodents. The reason that the rat is happy in rat happy land is because that is all the reason the rat is here; to be a rat. If a rat is getting his senses stimulated, physically and socially, he is going to be happy because there is nothing more to his life. There is more to our lives than having our senses stimulated by physical pleasures and social interactions.

We, unlike rats or any other animals, were created to have a relationship with our Creator. Existence in the material world will never fully satisfy anyone, because our hearts are longing for eternal, and not temporal satisfaction, which only God can give us. Our happiness on Earth is largely dependent on our conditions, and if our conditions are bad, happiness and peace are fleeting. Real life with God brings a lasting satisfaction and peace which transcends every circumstance of life, and a living hope which buoys the spirit and brings unending joy.

I agree with the idea of the cage, and that cage is the prison of sin. it has nothing to do with social connections, or lack thereof. Some of the most famous people on Earth, who have the whole world as their oyster, are addicted to drugs, depressed, disillusioned, and grasping for meaning in their lives. Sin is a spiritual prison which brings only death and destruction. In this life you reap what you sow, and the wages of sin is death. A seed thrown into dry ground, cracking under the noon-day sun, is not going to bear any fruit. So it is when people go into the desert of sin looking for paradise; the illusion will occasionally be dispelled by a mouthful of sand, but like a rat they keep going back to the trap.

There is a way out, because although we cannot pay for our own sins and escape the trap, the Lord Jesus Christ took the punishment for our sins so that we could be set free. On the cross, He paid the price for our sins, yours and mine; when we begin to trust Him as our Lord and Savior, He will give us a new life, and a new heart with new desires to turn away from sin and live according to His will. We are set free from the bondage, not only of addiction, but sin and death. He heals our deepest wounds and comforts us, he heals deep seated habits, depression and mental illness.

When you open the cage of sin and let the Lord in, this scripture begins to operate: 2Cor3:17 Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty

Just hoping this game isn't Spore meets Elite - that'd be a fleeting bore.

It's interesting---against the United States Navy's 3rd Fleet, Japan's attempts to to use islands to hold a perimeter against the United States in WWII, while certainly causing the issue to be in doubt from time to time, ended up stranding and wasting more resources than not.

Not that we'd ever get to a hot war except through miscalculation and bad judgement---but defending each of those "islands" against a full strike might get tricky.

But this is the internet and I could easily be wrong.

Y-Wings are the fat kids of the entire fleet. And, what, no A-Wings? How do you beat every mission in classic LucasArts X-Wing? With the A-Wing.

I never finished Homeworld, great as it was. There's one mission where you have to destroy some technological doohickey that's surrounded by a vast sphere of hundreds of enemy ships. So obviously I ignore the doohickey and spend hours and hours capturing every single one of them. At the start of the next mission my now enormous fleet can't deploy properly and the game crashes every time.

I get your point, and agree to an extent.
Unfortunately, the F35 fails at increasing our abilities in any way, because it doesn't work.
As to the $100 hammer, most if not all of what you talk about is also done by companies NOT working for the Fed. They have systems to track their own spending and production. It does add to costs, but is not the major driving force of costs by any means. It's maybe 5%, not 95% of cost, normally. The $100 hammers and such are in large part a creation of fraud and/or a way to fund off the books items/missions.
The F35 has had exponentially more issues than other projects, due in large part to spreading it's manufacturing around the country so no state will vote against it in congress.
I think you're overboard on all the 'steps' required to change a software value. I also note that most of those steps could be done by 2 people total, one engineer and one paper pusher. It COULD be spread out among 20 people, but there's no reason it must be. If that were the case in every instance, we would be flying bi-planes and shooting bolt action rifles. Other items are making it through the pipeline, so the contention that oversight always stops progress is not born out in reality. If it did, we certainly wouldn't have a drone fleet today that's improving monthly.

All well and good, but the reason why all the oversight costs piles up is because this plane isn't a solution to a military problem, it's a solution to an economical problem.

It's government stimulus, pure and simple. Get a whole bunch of different contractors from different companies and hand them money to build parts for a warplane that covers roles that are already covered. Keep those guys ticking over to prevent a collapse of the arms industry (or to prevent them developing products for sale to buyers the US might not consider kosher).

And then, because you're dealing with different companies, you need to coordinate, ensure compatibility, oversea each company to make sure they are on time/program/budget etc etc.

You build a plane under one roof, the entire process is overseen by the company and the government get's to check up on them. Far simpler. One department doesn't deliver inside that company, their management has to fix the problem or default on the contract. One company holds up the whole plane, do the other companies get penalised? Of course not, their staff sit around drawing wages with their thumbs up their asses waiting. And the government keeps paying.

Additionally, the planes the F35 is supposed to replace are all better at their jobs because they are specialised. You put every topping ever conceived on that government pizza and no one will like it (apart from perhaps the homeless who would eat anything to stave off starvation). Build a new warthog, improve on the materials, give it better armaments etc and put the tried and true design back to work. That's the core of the super hornet program, right?

When you look at the state of the world, the only real threats currently to America are the bloody terrorists (which, as you note, isn't exactly an existential threat), and the flexing of military might in 2nd world countries not withstanding, there is very little need for a frankenplane that doesn't do anything particularly good.

China and Russia? Lol, the US has 75% more combat aircraft and 400% more combat helicopters. Factor in China's pretty sparse air assets, in an air war, including force multipliers such as electronic warfare/early warning/air co-ordination and carriers, the US would be able to show down both nations handily with it's existing fleet.

I really do appreciate the point you're making, but that just adds insult to injury. The awful waste built in to the program is even more appalling when you consider that the F35 is a plane no one really needs, or even wants.

When I was a kid, I had a 'Mighty Mo' dump truck. It had a flywheel 'motor' that you pushed to build power, then it drove on at 3 mph for about 15 ft. It was WAY tougher than any power wheel, and a fleet of them could have carried that truck while moving. I think the power wheels might have lost their wheels if they tried to move.

Just after the A-10, the Eurofighter is my second favourite airplane. I still think the Canadian government should update our fleet with these. Those CF-18's won't last forever.

Well, OK....if you live(d) there you DO know it better than I. I have family near by, and have driven through many times. It always seemed far more 'conservative' than you say, but again, I never lived there, I'm just going by fleeting impressions and second hand info.
What set me off was 2 part...first that you didn't bother to watch the video but still commented on it as if you had (not so bad a thing, but odd), and second the implication that anti-homeless laws were a 'LIBERAL' thing and not a 'CONSERVATIVE' thing, because the videos shown/seen have clearly shown the opposite. Apologies if I went overboard.
The one's on film saying 'feeding them is keeping them homeless' or 'we don't want homeless people here, period, and anything that removes them or makes them uncomfortable is what we want' have all been republican/tea party elderly white people. It may be they're the outliers and it really IS a 'liberal' plan, but I ask you, which 'party' does the chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust belong to (I honestly don't know)? (I must admit I was really surprised to see the mayor is a Democrat).
So, while you seem to be at least partially correct (maybe totally), I hope you understand why I was (apparently) mistaken, since all the vocal people out there promoting starving the homeless are conservatives.
Where I live, it's a 'liberal' bastion, and we DO feed the homeless here along with other services they're offered, and we have a very vocal 'conservative' population that wants to do exactly what Ft Lauderdale did, make feeding them or offering ANY service illegal, including police and medical services. They're pretty hard core about it.

Yes, I think it was about 'starve the poor' as a method of removing them from sight, either by death or (more likely) displacement. It's not so much they want them dead, it's just they don't care if that's what it takes to remove them. That in itself SEEMS to be a 'conservative' mindset, not 'liberal'.
...but perhaps a Florida 'liberal democrat' is more right wing than a West coast 'conservative republican'?

Ahh, and we all live in a cesspool of retards and liars. Never forget! ;-)

so you have this uber wealthy society that has perfected medical science to the point that every household in Elysium has one of those medical tables.

so what was the purpose of those fleets of medical ships filled to the brim with med robots and med bays. since every home in Elysium having a med bay, those fleets would have been collecting dust

They could have helped earth with, quite literally, with the press of a button or a voice command

but they didn't

so their economic system is very much irrelevant. They were simply assholes to withhold medical help when it would have been no skin off their back

Airboats (used in swamps) also have Hugh Jass fans in close proximity to the human driver - that problem has already been solved.

And because they are lighter, these would need less downward thrust than a helicopter, but I agree that debris propelled by downwash could be a hazard. (but even the entire fleet of huge Chinook helicopters' downwash only caused a few minor injuries over past several decades in service.)

Meh, I'm just waiting for them to release a Star Destroyer capital ship. Then I'm going to hire some minions in a fleets of scythes (sweet looking ship) and begin my career as a space pirate in style!