A different model of war and Empire.

Yes brutal, for the defenders of the castles and fortified cities they conquered.

But again, very targeted at key sites so as to assert an Imperial-vassal relationship. Not to really to metamorph the populace, and run the day to day, which was left to local leadership.

Their point was to demonstratively subjugate for the purposes of control and tribute, not to kill, replace, or even miscegenate. They were the mob-bosses of Eurasia, not the crusaders or jihadis.

They had a very kludgy, homegrown, but generally well-liked and cost effective EMR calls Vista.

The fact that it was cost effective, but required internal expertise was exactly what led the Trump administration to kill it.

Now they are transitioning to Cerner, the worse of the two major commerical EMRs by a fair margin, for many billions of dollars to the Kansas-based company, now owned by Oracle.

You can fill in the details of why this is happening by looking at where the CMS appointees at the time have landed in their post-government careers.

I am trying to use more neutral language when I comment, so that the underlying assertion of facts are more likely to resonate with someone who may disagree with me.

I agree with your characterization, but I just wanted the parent comment to look up the ILWU, where they would probably see some of those facts for themselves and be more likely to understand my position.

As the human internet dies, I feel like it's more important for those of us that want some of it to survive to participate constructively.

Much more frequent conflicts, yes.

Much less total death and dying as well, though. Battles were short and small scale until the Civil War (maybe the Napoleonic Wars prior? Debatable). The largest battles of history prior to the industrial revolution were in the thousands, 10s of thousands of people. Forces were usually broken and defeated or fled after brief engagements. Brutal in experience, but smaller in scale.

It was that perception of war as personal, intimate, chivalric, by old men that let to the peak atrocity period (PAP? Did I coin a term?) of ~1850-1950. WWI was really the first modern reckoning of industrialized, globalized war, that led to the staggering scale of suffering. Incomprehensible to the men that commanded it, as they were born and acculturated in pre-modern war era culture.

But then the epoch-defining tool of the atom came along, and war has gone back to smaller scale, focused, targeted, "precision".

So here we sit, straddling two eras again. Pre-drone and post drone. We have not fully reckoned with what the new era means. But it will come quickly, like most modern tool-culture cycles.

Stryker holds monopoly supplier positions for a number of medical products, esp including surgical implants and associated OR tools.

If Stryker stays down, supplies of some things will run out soon and many people will find themselves without medical procedures available.