Absurd levels of wealth disparity, beyond anything in recorded human history, breaking society and making a whole bunch of generally useful metrics now basically meaningless.

Consumer debt levels skyrocketing.

Housing/Rental prices still rising.

Average college costs / debt still rising.

Job growth isn’t keeping up with population growth.

(Even after recovering from Covid, the Employment to Population ratio is still lower than what it was from 04 to 08. Its only 1% higher right now than it was at its lowest from the 08 crash, and its been headed downward since 23.)

Trying to get a decent job without nepotism/networking is 5x harder than working a decent job due to completely insane requirements and ghost jobs… and nepotism.

And real median income is basically flat since 2020, not rising by much at all.

…

Your headline econ inflation stat does a neat job of not really reflecting the reality of what a common person’s budget looks like.

Please tell me this also comes with a new map set in Ohio.

So I have no actual source on any kind of coinshot…

But why not use half pennies?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_cent_(United_States_coin)

Yes, the US used to have half pennies.

Imagine buying an apple for $0.03½

Anyway, they stopped being minted in 1857, but that’s still within the early timeframe of ‘The West’, and I’d bet they were still used in circulation for another decade or two.

That’d be cheaper than using nickels, haha.

acid metal

Oh yeah, I was trying to stick to retailed products, but yes, homebrew shotgun rounds have been around for basically as long as shotguns.

Another kind of homebrew shot is coin shot:

https://www.alloutdoor.com/2020/06/17/shooting-pennies-shotgun/

I’ve heard anecdotally that people have been doing that for quite a while.

I did not know an actual anti drone, net round existed!

Not especially useful against drones, nor open warfare, there are also less than lethal rubber rounds…

… and a self contained taser round:

https://www.forgottenweapons.com/taser-x12-xrep-a-taser-in-a-shotgun-shell/

I don’t know if the xrep is still actually manufactured though.

Oh right! Dragon’s breath! Illegal in half the country!

https://www.firequest.com/G12-113.html

I mean, I think this looks absolutely ridiculous…

… but I certainly could not bend over like that in 1 foot heels without falling over and breaking my ankle and probably wrist.

Impressive!

I heard that guy’s a real crack shot.

Hah, I suppose that could work!

Reminds me of ratshot .22 rounds.

Maybe somebody will start properly manufacturing basically ratshot 5.56 rounds.

Other people have already pointed out that your conception of shotgun spread is essentially based in video games, where the spread is (in all but basically milsim games) greatly exaggerated.

You’ve countered that drones can fly higher than an actual shotgun range.

Yep. They can.

… Did you read the article I posted?

Shotguns are being used fairly commonly by both sides.

It doesn’t matter what you or I think about how practical or useful they are…

The people fighting the war think they are practical and useful.

…

Nonetheless, here’s my attempt to explain the popularity of shotguns in Ukraine as anti drone weapons:

This is not a solution geared toward being able to shoot down any drone, of any size or capability, at any range, at any altitude.

Obviously a shotgun is not going to be able to shootdown a greyhawk or reaper style drone.

Most of the small FPV drones that attack infantry or ground vehicles do so by basically either dropping a bomb or grenade or mortar round from maybe 25 to 150 feet in the air…

Or just being rigged with some kind of an explosive to explode on contact or via a remote trigger.

(Also, these cheap FPV drones do not really handle altitudes above roughly 150 ft that well (though this will vary by exact model). Unless its a dead calm day, gusts of wind easily blow them around, draining its limited batteries as it tries to keep its position steady, severly shortening the drone’s range.)

These kinds of drones are extremely cheap, plentiful, and effective against infantry and many ground vehicles…

When it comes to these kinds of drones, shotguns are also extremely cheap and plentiful, and practical self defense weapons.

Shotguns are more useful against these kinds of FPV drones than an average assault rifle, due to the spread of shot.

They are way, way more cost effective than using a tunguska or gephard or some kind of MANPADS platform designed to shoot down jet aircraft.

Shotguns are also just more numerous, and don’t require specialized training/equipment like a dedicated AA platform or EM jamming and all the equipment that entails.

You can just give a few out to every squad or vehicle crew, and thats way, waaay better than just hoping you’re operating near enough to an expensive friendly AA platform that exists in far more limited numbers, or being SOL if you’re not.

Further, a shotgun is also just useful as a general combat weapon.

Sure, buckshot has limited range, but sometimes fights occur within tight conditions… namely trenches or an urban environment.

Also slug rounds exist and can give you more range than buck or birdshot.

Also you can use door breacher rounds, or slugs in a pinch, to blow apart door hinges and locks.

There are some, handheld firearms that are used as a last-ditch / cheap anti drone solution in Ukraine, by both sides.

Drum roll…

https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2024/analysis-shotguns-emerge-as-a-frontline-defense-against-drones-in-evolving-military-and-security-tactics

Its shotguns.

Because they have a spread of multiple shot pellets instead of a single bullet.

Fucking obviously duh, they’ve been used to hunt small, evasive birds routinely, everywhere, for like 150+ years.

Hunting a nimble flying object with a sniper rifle is a laughably absurd idea.

This actual post from this woman is so stupid I would have thought it was from a 12 year old whose only experience with guns is from CoD… but nope, its a 50ish(?) year old woman.

Guess she’s never hunted birds, and thinks its just the same as hunting deer or hogs or something???

Yeah, this means nothing.

Did people already forget that Trump just basically stole a small library worth of classified documents after his first term, lied about giving them all back, got raided by the FBI?

That Trump was just having meeting with fucking whoever and showing off various classified documents?

Trump can and will give Elon anything he feels like giving him, he has less than 0 care for any concept of security classes.

Oh right, did people forget that’s all legal now too?

Trump’s defense: Uh giving Elon the nuclear launch codes had to do with my official duties as President.

Bombed out, radiation soaked ruins of fallout ghoul supreme court: Yep, checks out.

… The only thing constraining Trump’s ability to just do shit like that in his first term was that most of his staff and other government officers/liasons did eventually turn out to have limits, they were not all pure sycophants.

Now THEY ARE.

Neither of the two articles are well sourced.

But you acted like yours was credible, until I presented another one, whereupon you admitted they are both equally valid.

That’s assuming that the random article you found is correct, the veracity of which I can’t verify any more than the interesting engineering article…

That is to say, you cannot verify either of these articles at all, ie, they are both of dubious legitimacy.

You accused someone of being racist based of an article you admit you cannot verify, posted a bunch of related research papers that indicate, sure, they’re trying to develop the thing your article claimed they did… but doesn’t indicate that they actually developed it.

…

I can link you a patent for a triangular shaped aircraft, listed as filed by a US Navy Scientist that claims to outline how to create an electromagnetic, gravity negating field around the craft.

That would not be evidence that the US Navy officially announced that they basically built a UFO, that it works, and there’s a video of it, all officially documented and released.

But to you, it would be, if China had done all those things.

…

I am not saying China certainly has or has not developed a hypersonic passenger liner.

I am saying your source for this claim is dubious.

I am saying that you believe(d?) it credulously, without any skepticism, got very hostile with people who doubted its claim less tactfully than I did, and now you admit you got hostile based on a claim that you now admit is dubious, and shifted the burden of proof from the article making the claim to the skeptic questioning it.

Again, this is the logic of a fanatic.

If we just pick which dubiously sourced claims we believe based on vibes, truth stops existing.

So, you just assumed a unsourced, unverified story is true because you have a bias in favor of China, and put the burden of proof onto the other person to disprove it, and are completely fine with calling the other person a ‘sad racist’, despite now admitting that the veracity of the claim they are skeptical of is in fact not well established.

This is the argument/personality style of a fanatic, a religious fundamentalist, a QAnon adherent, an Elon Musk simp.

This is how we got ‘the Trump assasination attempt was staged!’

Please stop posting trash tier misinformation as ‘technology news’, please stop jumping to ‘everyone who disagrees with me is rascist’, this level of unjustified vitriol only makes you appear manic.

So… then… you agree that this entire Interesting Engineering article you posted is wrong?

Are you going to apologize to Sarah Brown for calling her a ‘sad racist’ when she expressed doubt as to the veracity of the dubious article you posted?

Ok so 24+ hours later and I now see a few different websites I’ve never heard of before that basically have the same article as this:

https://scienceinfo.net/chinese-hypersonic-aircraft-prototype-reaches-mach-6-speed.html

Still no actual link to the apparently original source somewhere on some social media site.

Now whats being said is that this was a flight test that actually occured 3 years ago, and was classified until now.

And they do provide an image, and credit it to CAS (without an actual link, I still can’t find this on CAS’ english site, but again maybe they are still writing a proper English post?)

This is a test article, that doesn’t appear to have any intakes for scramjet. I think I can make out two small rocket bells inside the thing, but the image quality is very low.

It’s just a test article, launched by a rocket, that Inwould guesstimate to have a wingspan of about… 4 meters, ish?

This new article also mentions that Cui, the team lead, did not mention anything about the current status of the hypersonic passenger jet which this was a test article for.

So… this test article got up to mach 6.5, 3 years ago.

Absolutely nothing about whether or not a successful test flight of a passenger jet sized craft achieved hypersonic speeds with an air breathing turbo ramjet / scram jet or something like that.

Completely different than the originally report.

… This is why I wanted an actual source.

If this very poorly sourced article from this random, clickbait style website is more accurate than the OP article (another poorly sourced article from another clickbait style website) is more accurate, that would mean SCMP, and everyone in this thread saying China has built an air breathing hypersonic jet liner is wrong, and everyone saying that this is basically comparable to the X15 is correct.

(Differences being the X15 was carried up to 45 thousand feet by a B52 instead of a rocket, and the X15 was manned, and this test article is presumably unmanned.)

First the Altoona Pizza Abomination, now this.

Doordash only picks SNAP food from basically gas stations, good luck ordering fresh fruit and produce from Amazon.

Instacart does do pickup from some local grocery stores that take SNAP, kind of, barely, but thats waaaay outta my budget.

I have a Walmart+ subscription, literally the only thing I’m subscribed to (beyond utilities or whatever).

Why?

I’m disabled, live off of only disability, my car got stolen.

Walmart accepts SNAP, and a + subscription gets you free, same day deliveries from your local store, as well as free 3 day shipping for something they retail but don’t have in stock at the moment at your local store.

Very, very useful for groceries when you have no means to get to a grocery store.

A subscription costs a bit less than $15 bucks a month, and deliveries cost $10 bucks minimum each time otherwise.

… Had I a car, I’d hobble to food banks. But I don’t, and am basically immobile, and still require food to not die.

…

You know all those meal kit delivery plans you see everyone advertising on their youtube videos?

Yeah, none of them (that I’m aware of) accept SNAP, even though they easily could, as they’re not sending you hot food.

This is a fucking culinary crime.