ABigGuy4U
16hr ago
Netanyahu was banking on pushing things to such a critical state that large scale US intervention and regime change would be required. Failing that, it would justify using nuclear weapons.
ABigGuy4U
16hr ago
What a wonderful alternative theory of events. We had to hold Israel back for their own good.
Ok what’s your explanation? Trump strong-armed Netanyahu into stopping because he just loves Iran so much?
Israel knows and they seem fine with it. Solve the problem once and for all, you know?
Gambling is always fun when your losses will be covered by someone else’s money.
Here’s what you are missing that explains the reluctance to wade into the Iran thing, both by Trump and the security apparatus as a whole:
ISRAEL DID NOT ACTUALLY DO THAT WELL IN THE LAST SKIRMISH WITH IRAN
While it was happening you were soaked in a bunch of propagandized news articles about how Israel completely dismantled Fordow and blew up every single Iranian missile and bombed Iran back into the Stone Age and caused every single member of Hezbollah to drop dead simultaneously.
Meanwhile any successful Iranian strikes against Israel were not covered by the mainstream media at all and if they were the damage was downplayed. And there were quite a few: a major military airfield got destroyed, the Israeli equivalent of the pentagon suffered major damage from a direct hit, a large power plant was destroyed, Tel Aviv’s largest hospital was damaged from a direct hit, a major financial building was severely damaged, there were several hits on apartment blocks that probably caused mass casualties that were covered up. And all that was in the four days before the war ended, as the interceptors were running dry. THAT’s why Trump leaned on them to stop. It was becoming unsustainable without major US military action in support, or Israel chucking nukes.
Then over the next six months the truth started leaking out: The damage against Iran’s missile sites was less severe than anticipated, Hezbollah has maintained organizational cohesion and just replaced all the officers killed in the pager attack, the attack on Fordow was so successful that we actually need to do it again.
If the US starts major strikes against Iran, the leadership will start throwing everything they have at Israel in retaliation. Combine that with the fact that every single Iranian protest action of the last 20 years has turned out to be a giant nothing burger, and it’s just not necessarily worth it risking a giant fiasco in the Middle East over a shot at toppling the Iranian regime. That’s said I think there’s a good chance they end up going for it anyway.
I’ve seen that. I wouldn’t be surprised, I heard a lot of stuff about sonic weapons and pain rays 10-15 years ago and then it suddenly went quiet which means they are probably actually deployable now.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
There’s frustratingly little information available about what’s going on in Venezuela or Iran right now which dampens in depth discussion outside of speculation. There’s a lot of information about Ukraine but that’s been going for four years so everyone other than me is bored with it.
There’s a directors cut then an extra special directors cut with the animated Tales of the Black Freighter sections added (this is the only version I watch, without the pirate stuff you’re losing the backstory and motivation of one of the most important characters).
ABigGuy4U
2d ago
It’s also the only state in the union that went blue in the 1984 presidential election. Although admittedly Mondale was a local boy so that’s part of it.
ABigGuy4U
3d ago
I thought the concept of the directorship of a federal admin agency being a King Arthur sword in the stone type thing was really funny.
ABigGuy4U
3d ago
I think that’s also probably why you saw space horror start to pop up in the late 70s. It kind of petered out in the 90s because space feels too far away anymore to be creepy.
ABigGuy4U
3d ago
the regime is not as ideologically aligned with the public as they had hoped.
The never really were, Iran is what would have happened if the Bolsheviks had gotten stuck in the Soviet Twenties for fifty years.
The US military, regardless of what the political branches think, is convinced that Global Climate Change is very real. Most of the northern arctic ice is going to melt off, leaving behind navigable water ways, habitable islands (at least habitable enough for major military installations) and major oil and minerals deposits. And due to the nature of a globe shaped earth all this stuff is both on North America’s doorstep, and Russia’s. So for the last ten or twenty years the military has been quietly screaming at the top of its lungs to anyone who will listen that controlling the Arctic is one of the paramount security concerns of the 21st century. Greenland is very important for controlling the Arctic, especially considering Canada is getting more and more politically unreliable. And leaving it under Denmark’s control is a giant liability, since Greenland is pretty close to Russia and Denmark has zero military capacity. They lasted literally 8 hours against Nazi Germany, and are probably in worse shape today.
Also to Trump personally I think there’s probably a legacy interest of being the first President in 150 years to make a major territorial acquisition for the United States.
I suspect an agent provocateur of some kind triggered Kent state by firing rifle shots over the heads of the guardsmen. There were several soldiers that reported that they opened fire because they were being shot at, and civilian reports of seeing armed people in civilian clothes. And the shooting doesn’t really track like a traditional riot control accident given the distances involved.
ABigGuy4U
5d ago
You guys have all gotten so into the weeds about the mechanics of the individual shooting that you’re missing the big Fort Sumpter style moves that are going on right now:
•There’s something like 3000 federal law enforcement offers deployed in Minneapolis right now
•Mainstream media, Reddit, and various politicians have incited multiple assassination attempts on these officers
•Relatively photogenic citizen non-felon in gunned down in ambiguous situation, there is now a bloody shirt to waive
•Mayor and Governor are now calling for the removal of all federal agents from Minneapolis
•Governor Walz is now threatening to use the Minnesota National Guard to remove federal agents from the city, setting the stage for conflicting guard federalizations and call up orders
•You will have an armed unit of the state/federal military apparatus actually having to pick a side in a legally ambiguous situation
•You will have armed state/municipal police facing off against armed federal agents with the national guard caught somewhere in the middle
This is not good. No matter who’s fault it is, this is not good.
ABigGuy4U
5d ago
Recently there was a post on the front page about how time seems to flow faster as you age. This, as far as I can tell, is a human universal.
I think this is generally true, but I think a lot of the posts about it on Reddit and elsewhere are astroturfed bullshit to cover for the fact that our collective time perception got royally fucked by the COVID lockdowns. Or perhaps by dark physics weirdness.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
I just have to point out a clever joke in the title that almost no one notices. The Patriot Game is the title of a pro-Republican Northern Irish ballad that was popular during the Troubles. There are a lot of versions, but one of the most popular ones was by two Irish brothers named Liam and Tom Clancy.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
I think everyone is quietly going to think that a mother of four is less pathetic than a cat/dog mom of four, but now days they probably would be more careful about saying it out loud.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
Pink is kind of unusual in that she started with a highly sexualized aggressively edgy punk style and then in the mid 2010s aggressively pivoted to much more middle of the road family friendly pop-banger mileu.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
There is no obvious counterpart of this for women
Cats. The female social equivalent of porn is cats. It’s a hyperstimulus that satisfies a biological drive that the person would have gotten social esteem for had they successfully achieved it “the right way”. In this case the biological drive is having children and being a mother. And you see similar stereotypes about the excessive user being creepy and filthy (the cat lady hoarder crammed into her apartment with her ten cats and a box of wine).
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
Whereas Swift seems to have managed to get those 20 year olds to be her audience as well.
Taylor Swift is kind of sui generis because she’s the last mega-celebrity that the mono-culture ever produced. She got in right under the line, just before social media fractured the attention economy into a million little bubbles. I don’t think it’s possible for any new pop star today to reach that level of name recognition.
Typically I would agree, but for Remedy games it only adds to the slight Twin Peaks-esque unreality of it. The only it really hurt was Quantum Break.
More options
Context Copy link