Deme

The horse probably couldn't handle the weight of the cow. Both animals might get pissed at you for trying to coax them into this.

Thales' Theorem

For the sake of clarity I will say that I was referring to the hegemonic position the US has within NATO. This is the result of them simply being a trusted ally with the largest military on the planet. The latter isn't about to change soon and the former would require very little effor, but the Trump adminstration seems to be doing it's best to demolish the trust between the US and its allies. (Soft power protip #1: Don't threaten your allies with invasion!)

No I do not believe that. I was talking about NATO troops in Russia, which could in theory also happen through a coup and a new government more alligned with the west. Even then I find it hard to believe that there would be "NATO troops on the Amur" as you put it.

Greenland and Canada aren't about countering a Russian military threat. Both are NATO members with US bases in them. The Russian threat to the US was much larger during the cold war and yet the US didn't annex them back then. This is about force projection in the arctic. Control of both the NW passage and the Panama canal would increase US leverage on the world stage, including on their so-called allies. Local resources are most likely of interst as well. Even then, I suspect that a large portion is just rhetoric to stoke up visions of grandeur and might among his supporters, since that would track pretty closely with how fascist regiemes have operated in the past.

I admit that "current de facto US ally #1" might be a bit strongly put, but it's not like the bar would be too high at this point. They do get along well enough. Putin isn't dumb enough to antagonize the US president who is more useful than any of his predesecors in a long time.

A NATO occupation of Russia, be that through overt means or a friendly coup, would still be incredibly expensive and thus politically unpopular across the board. Also Trump is all about pretending to be the peacemaker when it comes to Ukraine and Russia, so this would never go forward barring a major restructuring of NATO where the US is booted out or at least knocked down a peg from their current hegemonic position. Both seem unlikely to say the least.

The way I see it, China is just trying to position itself as a force for reason and making the most out of recent US shortcomings in soft power projection by exercising its own to fill that vacum.

Why would they wish to stabilize the current de facto US ally #1?

Or if the first side is objectively right, an infinite percentage more misinformation.

It's not that the triangle doesn't exist, but that the brain has multiple options for forming said triangle, only one of which results in the real image. Threw the following together to illustrate:

I was looking at a grid lattice wall paneling just this week which had the same effect. If the pattern is perfectly uniform, the eyes can't distinguish between different features in it. The whole situation is a bit comparable to a stereoscope. Shifting the eyes out of plane with the pattern causes the false images to split vertically while the one true image remains. This isn't an issue most of the time, but it does demonstrate how some situations invalid for stareopsis can be tackled with a simple head tilt.

Rangefinders aren't usually looking at patterns in walls for example. Aircraft or ships don't create uniform enough patterns. Yes it's still an edge case, but I just wanted to explain my point that tilting the head does offer the brain more to work with, which in some confusing situations can be critical to correctly perceiving the situation.

For singular dots in space your argument would be valid, but real objects are often more complicated. If the eyes can't reliably lock onto the same spot along the X-axis due to a repeating pattern or a complete lack of detail along said axis, tilting the head shifts the whole situation and allows the eyes to zero in on a fixed point to perceive depth. An extreme example: If you look at two horizontal featureless lines (offering no details along their length to lock onto, brushed metal railings for example) positioned one behind the other, running perpendicular to the field of view in the direction of the X-axis. The only way for depth perception to work here is to tilt the head to introduce a difference along the Y-axis. Repeating patterns with the right spacing (e.g. grids, lattices) in that same plane can also confuse depth perception, in which case the head tilt often helps.

Another (marginal) benefit of head tilting is the fact that as the head rotates, the eyes physically move, possibly revealing additional detail that may have been obstructed from the previous vantage points. All this for a much lower energy expenditure than the whole animal moving itself.

Oh and one thing that popped into mind from personal experience as I am writing this: In darkness tilting the head helps discern between shapes that are just lingering on your retinas after looking at a brighter thing earlier (rotates along with the eyes) vs. dim things that might actually be there right now (stays in the same orientation relative to the surroundings).

Not only does it help with hearing, but with sight as well. Two eyes looking horizontally at an object produce a dataset for the brain to process, but the depth perception is constrained to working in the horizontal plane. Tilting the head expands this into the third dimension, providing a lot more for the brain to work with.

Yes, ahead of what was practically feasible.

I don't disagree, but this context is a bit weird given that starship troopers depicts a rosy vision of the future but with fascism.