Shurimal

The Mist.

Not movies, but Rifters series, Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts; and Killing Star by Zebrowski and Pellegrino. These will never become movies or TV, they're just too nihilistic and have some extremely heavy themes. Watts especially does not shy away from describing and closely analyzing the psyche of some truly horrible characters in Rifters series.

You don't need to point it at eyes to blind someone. At these power levels a diffuse reflection from a matte surface is enough to blind. Basically, anyone accidentally seeing the laser's light spot without protective goggles tuned to the specific wavelength of that laser will go blind. Laser weapons are ridiculously dangerous to anyone around, including the user themself.

They only make sense in space warfare where a.) power levels used measure in megawatts so that going blind is the least of your problems, b.) not much surfaces around for the beam to reflect from, c.) windows on warships don't make sense—in fact, crews on spaceships make little sense, too.

dont think it should exist to be an armed-to-the-teeth thorn in Russia’s side

I live right next to Russia, an hour's drive from the border. One thing many westerners don't seem to fully grasp is that Russia is a very blatant bully state. Always has been, for centuries. Russia as a state goes by the motto "might is right" and only understands the language of violence, or threat of violence. This is why all of us in the small states in the eastern parts of Europe are/were so eager to join NATO and arm ourselves to the teeth—it's the only way we could avoid being steamrolled by Russia's imperialist ambitions and incorporated into their corrupt authoritarian hegemony.

I don't like what US and by extension NATO has been doing in the world, either (project Gladius, South America, Cuba and all that shit), but Russian hegemony is much worse. At least we have freedom of press, LGBT+ rights and somewhat functioning democracy under the western hegemony. For small players it has always been the choice between joining one hegemony voluntarily or (attempted to) be incorporated into a worse hegemony violently, as we see with Ukraine now.

I read the article and still had to do a web search for that acronym because it wasn't explained in the article.

Drop it
Hide it
Lose it

Heh, I always find someone pushing 30 km/h with one's own muscles, not caring about weather going through rain, cold and heatwaves while carrying what they need to carry far more hardcore (won't use the word "masculine" because people of any gender do this) than someone sitting in a heated seat in climate-controlled box that moves forward without any effort from the user and not even requiring significant driving skills in the age of automatic transmission, traction control and all the other electronic assists (ABS is fine and recommended)🙃

There are some, but I'm not willing to install a random ROM from who-knows-where breaking who-knows-what functionality on my only phone.

They are. Pixels are also good for longevity and alternate ROM-s.

The problem is budget phones—people who can't afford to pay 600€ for a phone are left with devices that are obsolete in 2 years and no custom ROM-s even when the bootloader can be unlocked. The ROM community mostly consists of enthusiasts who are generally not interested in budget devices.

Case in point: my Poco X4 Pro. Excellent hardware (5G, 120Hz OLED, headphone out and SD card slot, IR blaster), cost me only 300€, but no LineageOS, CalyxOS or /e/ OS support unlike the older X3 Pro because it was not as popular among the enthusiasts.

Second-hand market is also very situational, eg in my country Pixel phones are not popular and thus the second-hand market is filled with mostly Samsung and some iPhones.

Who needs more than 20HP anyway?

20 hursepurses is maybe pushing it, but 30 to 50 kW would actually be plenty if we kept our cars lightweight and aerodynamically efficient instead of insisting on 3-ton ugly boxes with the frontal area of a house.

Hell, for a single-person lightweight (<40 kg empty weight) electrical vehicle that is expected to go no faster than 30 km/h (often legally limited to 25km/h here in EU) and requires no license to operate, 250 to 300 W is more than enough.

Lotus had it right.

Horseshoe theory is hogwash.

Even in Soviet Russia there were communist factions who disagreed with Stalin and his (expendable) cronies. See: the 4th International. These factions, of course, were purged and deleted from history as "revisionists" and "counter-revolutionary".

Not to mention anarchists, who are far on the left and generally agree with Marxist theory (Marx's vision of "stateless, classless" society is principally anarchist), but can't and won't agree with authoritarianism, be it stalinist, fascist or of any other flavor.

Not a pole, but from the neighborhood and can confirm. And by "formerly occupied" we don't mean just Soviet Union. Russia's imperialist shit has been going on for literally centuries.

Perfection.