ABigGuy4U
1d ago
We ain’t any different than Tombstone or Dodge City or San Francisco. First come the dreamers. Then the bankers. Then the salesmen. Then the sharks. Then the desperate. And then the thieves.
That’s a quote from the new Taylor Sheridan series Landman. It’s about an oil boom town in Texas, but it would fit the pattern of New World settlement, and probably the settlement of any new world. There’s 8 billion people on the planet, I doubt Musk or anyone else would have trouble finding a few thousand fit, motivated, high IQ people who would be willing to truck out to Mars. If the deadbeats and the penal colonists and the political refugees ever show up it probably won’t be until quite a while later
ABigGuy4U
2d ago
Democrats have a bad habit of marginalizing all their most promising candidates early on so they can’t compete with party flacks. Hell, even Barack Obama only broke out by accident, that wasn’t how that election cycle was “supposed” to go.
ABigGuy4U
2d ago
In the last hour there’s been reports of heavy gunfire in Damascus near the armed forces headquarters. There are rumors of an ongoing military coup d’etat.
ABigGuy4U
3d ago
It’s the less damning admission. Which would rather cop to:
-You were too dumb to realize that your 82 year old presidential candidate was getting a little slow
-You were a Machiavellian conspirator that intentionally installed a blackmail compromised figurehead President so that a CIA directorate could lead the country into the Third World War?
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
I remember Barack Obama saying something in a primary speech about being annoyed that his mechanic only spoke Spanish. Saying that today could literally get you fired from your job.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
They used to buy those games. But increasingly “woke” games are now associated with fundamentally broken or derivative technical/design aspects and are starting to flop. For example:
-Concord: a game you have to pay 60 dollars for that’s worse than a free game that came out 10 years ago
-Star Wars Outlaws: broken AI and particle effects that look like they came out out of a 1996 Tomb Raider game.
-Assassin’s Creed Shadows: the 400th derivative remake of the first Assassin’s Creed game from 2007.
There are exceptions, like Baulder’s Gate which was pretty woke and had solid underlying mechanics, but increasingly AAA games are just a garbage fire of slop.
ABigGuy4U
8d ago
Vance is a writer who later became a politician. Hillbilly Elegy is what made him famous and jump started a potential political career. It’s not a political memoir written for a sitting politician like Dreams From My Father
ABigGuy4U
8d ago
-Ron Brown the Secretary of Commerce who was killed in a plane crash in Croatia. The medical examiner found a execution-style bullet hole in his head that was explained away as a flying rivet.
-Mark Middleton, who hung himself from a tree, and then after that shot himself with a shotgun.
The real suspicious thing is just the sheer volume. How many politicians have a double digit number of associates die violently or commit suicide?
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
It’s not surprising, but I think it‘s worth mentioning when talking about an ICBM launch.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
It’s relevant. He’s going bald because all the hair has migrated to his palms.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
Yes, there is video footage of multiple MIRVs hitting the ground. There do not appear to be any interceptions. It looks like the MIRVs were targeted at an empty area and not any particular target, although I have heard chatter that it may have been a Ukrainian military facility. Given the apparent lack of conventional or nuclear explosives in the MIRVs, I don’t think there was any significant damage.
ABigGuy4U
12d ago
A few hours ago, Russia fired an ICBM with a MIRV warhead at Ukraine. It looks like it was just the kinetic vehicle with no nuclear warheads.
ABigGuy4U
13d ago
Unfortunately your argument fails because you used the letter “e” multiple times throughout the post. This was supposed to be a constrained writing assignment where you don’t use the letter “e”. You may have made some good points, in a well-written post, but unfortunately you fail because you didn’t meet the arbitrary victory conditions that I just made up.
ABigGuy4U
13d ago
I see a fairly large amount of criticism of Israel here, but it seems like about a 70/30 ratio of Ukraine supporters vs Russia supporters. Sometimes even as high as 80/20.
ABigGuy4U
13d ago
That was actually a real proposal that was kicked around by the Roosevelt administration, which is where Chabon got the idea. I don’t think it got particularly far in real life, but it was considered.
ABigGuy4U
13d ago
Maybe it’s just the sites I go to but what I mostly see is:
Pro-Israel/Pro-Ukraine (“I am an Eglin Air Force Base shill-bot”)
Pro-Palestine/Pro-Ukraine (“I support the Current Thing at my Ivy League university”)
I think there is a faction of Pro-Russia/Pro-Palestine third-worldist tankies (“GLORY TO COMRADE DOLEZAL! GLORY TO R/STUPIDPOL!”), but those are considerable rarer.
I’ve literally never seen a Pro-Israel/Pro-Russia poster in the wild, probably because those people are all posting on Hebrew or Russian language websites.
ABigGuy4U
13d ago
It’s really not that different than anything Russia did in Grozny or Aleppo. And it’s definitely more humane and circumspect than what America did in Dresden, or Hiroshima, or Pyongyang, or Hanoi, or Cambodia. Although many (though certainly not all) strong supporters of Israel will weep bitter soyjack tears when such tactics are used by any other party in any other situation.
Frankly I think it’s a miracle that we haven’t seen any kind of massive cross-border terrorist attack like the one portrayed in Sicario: Day of the Soldado. And I think if the border isn’t secured it’s only a matter of time before that kind of thing happens. Especially given that the State Department keeps antagonizing multiple peer adversaries that could easily fund and coordinate that kind of attack. The security situations on the American border and the Israeli borders are very similar, but many people of various political and ethnic stripes engage in ridiculous casuistry to differentiate them.
ABigGuy4U
14d ago
I am reminded of the 4chan greentext about the anon who hires a prostitute to talk to about his problems because her hourly rate is cheaper than his insurance copay for a real therapist.
ABigGuy4U
15d ago
The 90s and the 2000s were when the manufacturing started going overseas and the industrial Midwest began turning into the Rust Belt. It wasn’t quite the opioid ravaged hellscape you see now, but it was beginning to get creaky.
ABigGuy4U
16d ago
And what happens when they get the weapons and lose anyway? Do we just all start collecting Nuka-Cola caps?
ABigGuy4U
16d ago
I really don’t like this sudden government panic over UAPs. Either they really exist and the government has no clue what’s going on, or the government really wants us to think they exist. Both possibilities make me uneasy.
ABigGuy4U
16d ago
I think it might just be depression, housing unavailability and financial insecurity. When you’re clinging by the fingernails to the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy, you aren’t going to be too concerned about self-actualization and fulfillment.
The idea that Taylor Swift’s endorsement was going to sway the election was always stupid. Anyone who would be swayed to vote for Kamala Harris because Taylor Swift told them to was already going to vote for Harris. Her country music fans wrote her off some time around 2012. And it really didn’t help with the grim impression that all the oligarchs were closing ranks around Harris the chosen political industry plant.
Regarding your second point, I know slobbering over TayTay is the Motte’s favorite pastime, but she’s a mercenary. She’s never going to genuinely “come around” to anything. She will go with whatever Current Thing makes her the most money.
The President of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, has declared a state of martial law, accusing his opposition in parliament of colluding with North Korea and engaging in anti-state activities. Yoon’s party lost in a landslide in the last parliamentary election, and this is likely an attempt to maintain power. Troops have been placed around the parliament building to prevent parliament from convening. Opposition leaders are telling citizens to take to the streets. The parliament has voted unanimously to disband martial law. But the troops in the streets are currently refusing to disband until ordered by the President to do so. My suspicion is that Yoon either planned this with the military beforehand, or he is very incompetent and desperate.
This has significant potential to inflame the Korean peninsula, my understanding is that Yoon is an anti-communist hardliner, and I can’t imagine North Korea reacting well if he manages to seize dictatorial control over the country.
From a culture war perspective, Yoon is an anti-feminist (or at least he’s described as such), and there will likely be much wailing and gnashing of teeth from Western media if succeeds at staying in control.
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