Didn’t they have a comic book series or something?

What? I’ve said yes twice now. What has that got to do with this? It’s not, and has not been, my question.

(Sorry - It’s a reference to my post history. You may need to turn on NSFW photos to get the joke, I know some clients block them by default.)

I’m all for the reason they wear them being exhibitionism (clearly) but that’s never been what I’ve said. They’re answering the question “are female beach vollyball players forced to wear bikinis”, an easy question to answer and one I’ve never asked; what I asked was “if they’re clearly a performance enhancement, why are the men not wearing them too?” which is a much more difficult thing to get an answer for.

That’s uh. Well, rather demonstrably wrong. On both points.

You said you were skeptical of two pieces being better for performance than other clothing.

Where did I say this? It has never been the question I asked, but it has been the one you’ve answered and I’ve repeatedly clarified that it was not my question. It would be nice if that was my question - indeed, I think it even requires far less than two minutes to find an answer to. But it’s not my question, nor has it at any point been.

Ah, my apologies - I did not realize someone had lept in for one comment.

And while abstractly interesting, those all continue to not address my thesis. They’re addressing yours quite well, though. I applaud you for having such a well supported thesis. I do invite insight on this - perhaps the journal of ergonomics would be a better place to start looking than Business Insider though.

My thesis statement here is that the female athletes who choose to wear bikinis are choosing to of their own free will, and whatever reasoning a person has to wear what they wear is their own business.

Ah, I see. Unfortunately for this conversation, it’s never been in question that since 2012 women’s beach volleyball players have had the option of several less-revealing outfits. So in light of that, could you please tell me why you felt it was appropriate earlier to insult me when your cited article was evidently provided entirely to address your own thesis, but did not in any way address mine?

I am aware they have options. That has never been in question. But, like your emphasis calls attention to, it’s important to have the freedom to choose what works best for you. So in the spirit of that, why are men not allowed the same freedom? Again, if it actually is a blanket improvement to a player’s performance like the above person implied, you’d think that men would have adopted a similar outfit.

That’s irrelevant.

No it’s not. Especially when the initial topic was male gaze.

and denied them because it actually harmed their performance, compared to the current standard.

The part I responded to by saying "Y’know if that were true and it actually did give an advantage, you’d think the men would be wearing something similar too. " Your link says absolutely nothing about it being a competitive advantage - did you respond to the wrong person?

Since 2012, yes I’m aware. But that does not address anything I said.

It’s not particularly doing any work, and a great deal less than the statement you made that I’m referencing. You just want to poke holes in an argument you refuse to engage with substantively, and now you’re just insulting me… why? If your position has merit, why avoid addressing all of the massive glaring flaws I’ve pointed out, instead of being a jerk?

Y’know if that were true and it actually did give an advantage, you’d think the men would be wearing something similar too. You got a citation?

You don’t understand, all that suffering and all those dead babies are part of His plaaaaaaan. How can you even have morals without believing in god, please excuse the piles of dead babies.

If that were true, I suspect you would have answered the question instead of dodging it (and the fundamental logistical realities you ignored) in favor of going the route of asserting that you’re correct, without any explanation, while ignoring the logistical realities of the situation you have proposed when they’re in turn explained to you…

While in general your statement may indeed have merit, subsurface static infrastructure is not easy to find or access. For that matter, neither is this a situation in which subsurface vessels have a wide range of depths they can hide within. Hundreds upon hundreds of them crammed into a small area is not so much asymmetric maritime warfare as it is shooting squids in a barrel.

A shocking revelation!

To borrow your own words:

Answer my question

But seriously, If you’re already trying to dodge the question, seems pretty clear you can see where this is going.

So, how many pipes currently run under your house/apartment/van/whatever?

Russia is already fairly adept at the sabotage of static marine infrastructure

Oh good grief. Yes, sure, they and china have done plenty to sabotage marine cables. Civilian cable, however, is not generally guarded. The solution to someone dragging an anchor between Sweden and Lithuania is international sanctions; the solution to someone doing it between Qeshm and Ash Sha’m is to blow the ship up. With missiles. Just… the idea that hundreds of large moving vessels would be harder to find than a Big Hose buried at the bottom of the sea is just. Really, really wrong.

Additionally, you would need more submarines than currently exist to make this even slightly viable just to make up the difference for the US’s import thru the straight. And not only is the US *the world’s largest producer of LNG, the amount of LNG it imports through the straight per year is approximately Three Santiago’s worth. Which is both practically nothing in scale, and would require 30,000 round trips, or 82 6-hour round trips every day.

For context, china would need… uh… Napkin math says, using the largest Narco sub ever recorded (which was only semi-submersible) it would take 22 THOUSAND 6 hour trips per day.

Seriously, this is dumb. Even Big Hose is dumb. Having a whole bunch of unmaned submersible SCVs running your vespene through a sea-mine infested strait is a ridiculously unworkable idea. Why would anyone even want to do this? If you can field that many UUVs, surely you could just build a regular pipeline instead of all this Wile E Coyote nonsense.

Ah, I see. Sorry for any confusion, I just meant we were talking about a specific study.

Absolutely nothing! It’s an excellent point.

Look I could keep this up as this kind of thing is basically my catnip, but to explain further why Big Hose, submarine cables/pipelines are buried. And also LNG is 1/2 the density of water. (Large tanks of LNG will float, which makes them very fun in floods if they get ripped off their mounts!)