ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
How much in the way of resources does the US realistically stand to lose here? I'm definitely not a military expert, but it looks like the Iranians seem to have little ability to attack anything of significant military value. They've set a hotel in Dubai on fire and killed one Israeli AFAIK. And I don't particularly buy the Iranian line that they're holding back, but next time they'll really retaliate.
I also disagree on the reputational front. Striking when the protests were at their peak would of course have been ideal, but carrying out a strike now after having moved so many military assets into the region and having made so many threats seem strictly better for the US' reputation at this point than not doing anything at all and demonstrating that none of the threats or posturing had any credibility from the start. I also do think that demonstrating that the US isn't afraid to eliminate the leaders of actively hostile states does affect the behaviour of these leaders even if it by itself doesn't revolutionise the state in question.
ZanarkandAbesFan
12hr ago
In related news, not everything is lost. Here is how Iran can still win. When all human wit and wisdom failed, listen to the cat girls. What can go wrong?
Watching third worldists' minds melt is always a surreal experience. Thanks for the lols.
ZanarkandAbesFan
12hr ago
I don't really see what the failure case is here. Trump's unlikely to send in ground troops, so the most probably worst case outcome from the US' POV is that a heavily degraded IRGC maintains control of the country. That's not any worse for the US than the status quo.
ZanarkandAbesFan
16hr ago
They had a deal yen years ago but Trump broke it.
Well, the obvious answer would be that Trump wants a better deal.
ZanarkandAbesFan
19hr ago
If I were in charge I'd name these operations the same way reddit autogenerates usernames.
Operation Strange_Custard_5437
ZanarkandAbesFan
22hr ago
Clearly.
I assumed Trump was too invested in a deal of some sort, even a bad one. I also thought he would be too cautious to commit lots of US forces against a country like Iran. All misjudgements on my part.
Playing through Lies of P for my second time. Partially because I got the itch after watching some of Joseph Anderson's stream of it, and partially
It's really surprising to me how much more I've enjoyed it this time through. I think a large part of it is just how much easier it's been for me this time around, meaning I've been able to enjoy the combat mechanics and boss fights rather than finding the whole process mostly stressful the first time through. This has other benefits: taking the time to beat the tougher non-boss enemies rather than running past them means I've picked up more upgrade materials, in turn making my character stronger and the boss fights less punishing. The whole time period and setting has also really grown on me, probably because having played Soulsborne games for ~13 years now I'm just tired of the whole medieval fantasy aesthetic.
ZanarkandAbesFan
3d ago
The FBI director being a fanboy is cringe, but that's all.
I don't even know see it's cringe, honestly.
ZanarkandAbesFan
5d ago
About half of US deployable air power is ready for Iran boogaloo 2.0. It would be very symbolic if it began exactly at 4th anniversary of three day special operation to desatanize Ukraine.
How it will start? As massive decapitation strike on enemy elite human capital.
I'm fairly sure nothing's going to happen. My bet is Trump will get no concessions in negotiations, then he'll loudly make up something about how he got the IRGC to agree to a deal where they stop funding terror/their nuke program and rant about how he deserves the Nobel Peace prize, the Iranians will say they didn't agree to any of that and Trump just hopes everyone will forget the whole circus.
I think prescriptivism has its place when it comes to helping individual people communicate more smoothly or socially appropriately, but trying to apply it on a larger scale is basically nonsensical. If enough people start saying "him and I went to the store together" then the analysis of the language simply updates to recognise "him" as functioning as a subject pronoun in that context (or more realistically, acceptable in a certain register of the language, but that's another topic). I'm fairly sure you already do this sort of thing: for instance, I'm going to bet you say "It is me" when you answer the telephone, rather than "It is I", despite the latter being technically "correct", according to prescriptivists.
I get a lot of the motive behind prescriptivism, particularly in an era when it seems like it's difficult to recognise the value of certain standards in behaviour, dress, or indeed language without some relativist going all "akshually" about how it's all just some cis-heteronormative construct or whatever. And if I'm helping a younger relative write a university or job application letter I'm definitely going to make sure they get their "he and I"s the right way around. But if I'm doing the same thing in twenty years and everyone is saying "him and I" by that point, then I'm going to tell them to write that instead.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6d ago
I live in Sweden. The vast majority of people I come into contact with speak English and Swedish. Almost none speak a third language (that I know of), unless they're originally from another country.
IME the whole "Europeans all speak 3-4 languages" meme is standard reddit European superiority complex.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6d ago
Why is second language education so routinely terrible in the United States?
Is it worse than second language instruction anywhere else? The main argument I hear for this is that Americans (and Brits) only speak English, while educated people everywhere else speak English as well as their own native language. But I'm fairly sure this has less to do with the superiority of their teaching methods and more to do with the following:
1/ The sheer amount of English-language media means they can spend hours every day being exposed to engaging content in their target language. 2/ Economic opportunities in English speaking countries mean there's simply a much stronger motive for these people than for a teenager in the US sitting through a French or Spanish class (you allude to this in your second paragraph)
ZanarkandAbesFan
9d ago
Fair enough, that' an interesting perspective.
ZanarkandAbesFan
9d ago
One funny part of this whole discussion is that the weak man/skinny nerd archetype (that Anti-Ds claim have been overproduced as a consequence of America's "good times" and will be responsible for America falling into its next "hard times") probably make up the majority of people employed at LockheedMartin, Raytheon et al. designing and building the advanced weapons, aircraft and warships that are actually largely responsible for the overwhelming nature of America's global military superiority today.
ZanarkandAbesFan
17d ago
There is a huge amount of sex and sexual assault, while which I'm sure happened plenty in the Middle Ages, reflects our modern culture's obsession with sex more than it reflects the lived reality of the characters.
I think it might reflect somewhat on the author as well. One of the reasons I stopped reading his books was all the weird sex-related stuff. I'm a bit prudish though.
ZanarkandAbesFan
26d ago
Glad to know someone got the reference :)
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Bigger cities probably account for a lot of it, but French people are more likely to make friends with strangers than stick to their friends from secondary school (like I did). They still do the latter but it's less of a barrier than in Ireland.
That's interesting - growing up in the UK it was generally understood that the Irish were generally more social and more open to chatting with strangers on a night out than ourselves.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
I'll say the same thing I said in previous threads, go watch the British show Police Interceptors and compare their professional deescalatory polite behavior to the current thuggery of the ICE and you'll understand how much room for improvement there is while still getting a job done. They are public servants, they should be professional instead of behaving like some sort of legalized gang.
The British approach of being polite and "Policing by consent" has led to large parts of the UK essentially getting to make their own laws because the dominant ethnic group doesn't consent to being policed like the rest of the country. It's not a strategy I'd recommend.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
(Demography is the most important thing ever and nothing else matters)
Tell that to North Korea!
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
I assume they do a lot of monitoring.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
And regarding the police (and ICE), a great way to get the left to stop attacking law enforcement so much (and to hopefully improve community relations and improve the skewed perspective most leftists have about law enforcement), would be to get more leftists working in law enforcement.
This has not worked out well for the UK.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
lol
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
Hanania/Fuentes
What do these two people have in common?
That's fair enough. Do we have a sense of Iran's likely missile capabilities? My sense was that Israel destroyed/absorbed a huge chunk of this during the Summer, and given that the Iranians don't seem to have managed to fire off much that's hit anything of strategic importance over the last 24 hours, I assume they haven't managed to replenish their stocks. Or has the US been spending its interceptors already?
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