asciilifeform: contemplating design of btc-related anything while assuming sympathetic (or even grudgingly-cooperative) bureaucrats is like designing tanks and assuming a cooperative enemy.
asciilifeform: the correct engineering philosophy here is to treat law the way satellite designers treat cosmic rays.
asciilifeform: idiots will turn in $30mil rembrandts if those are banned one day.
asciilifeform: 'grandfather found a grenade in the field. over to the town hall he went. pulled the pin, threw in window. grandpa is old, he doesn't care.'
asciilifeform: russian folk rhyme: 'Дедушка в поле гранату нашел. Взял он ее, к сельсовету пошел. Дернул колечко, кинул в окно. Дедушка старый — ему все равно.'☟︎
asciilifeform: people in the 'iron curtain' lands still often find 'grandfather's schmeisser' in the attic, etc.
asciilifeform: people tend to bury or otherwise hoard them
asciilifeform: heh, yet another reason for the immortality of vintage small arms
asciilifeform: just rubs in the point that nothing fundamentally new has happened in the field since those times.
asciilifeform: interesting to picture future 'apocalyptic' war fought with ww2 arms.
asciilifeform: i'm told that yugoslavia still produces german 8mm rounds
asciilifeform: whose supplies you are to be plundering.
asciilifeform: general rule for 'partizan,' historically, is to stick to the caliber of the prospective enemy.
asciilifeform: my understanding is that people generally get whatever's lying around in the ruins of whichever great 20th c. empire they happen to live in.
asciilifeform: when this is said, i always picture a game-like scene, where a godlike narrator proclaims 'world has ended! choose your small arms'
asciilifeform: [insert obligatory armchair generals' 'ak vs m16' flamewar here.]
asciilifeform: all of this being rather funny in light of the fact that the vietnamese wouldn't pick these up, even when brand new.
asciilifeform: if i recall that was part of the recipe.
asciilifeform: manual for m16 (downloadable!) actually had a chapter on how to destroy the piece, if capture is imminent - instructed to scatter parts, and bend the barrel by jumping on it...
asciilifeform: and grunts are, afaik, severely punished for using it as such
asciilifeform: anyone recall the stories of u.s. soldiers in vietnam making fun of their plastic stocks?
asciilifeform: the bureaucrats got a good deal for that 500. case never went to trial, and so they'll get to pull this shit as many times as they like.
asciilifeform: ' he was the winner of the "nigritude ultramarine" search engine optimization contest,[5] and in 2005 he was photographed and printed in the New York Times on June 2, 2005, Fashion Thursday section in a Threadless t-shirt mentioning the web site Goatse.cx.'
asciilifeform: everyone here read 'hitler's table talk' ?
asciilifeform: the whole notion of applying concepts from 'human' civvie life, with various connotations, like 'self defence', to the doings of empires, is fundamentally disingenuous.
asciilifeform: whose writings on subjects he was personally connected with (gru, spetznaz) were interesting and plausible, the other stuff, not so much.
asciilifeform: not enought nukes on the shelf at that point to make a meaningful difference
asciilifeform: and not because of the u.s admins being traitors in disguise
asciilifeform: decimation: problem with herry moldy & co. is that the west refrained from 'dulles plan' (rearm the jerries and play a rematch in '45) because they knew they'd have their balls handed to them
asciilifeform: the buttons are a little dodgy nowadays. some clogged with spoodge, some connected to winblows '98 boxen, others miswired.
asciilifeform: discussions like this inevitably conflate '...was an effective ruler' and 'the buttons on his throne still worked in those days.'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: for the folks who actually run the place, this was an epic pants-creaming victory, rather than the apparent humiliation.
asciilifeform: chechen: 'nice house.' russian: 'it's mine. wanna buy?' chechen: 'i'll talk it over with my chums, we'll see you at 0400 hrs for a chat' next day: chechens in house, pigs eat well
asciilifeform: usually, free agents account for most of the heads, though
asciilifeform: once the collective hallucination pops, no amount of public beheading brings it back
asciilifeform: orlov's point 'business-as-usual is a manufactured product' is a useful one
