Arnaud
21d ago
A poetry reciting orc isn't so strange, they may be crude, but they are still intelligent beings with cultures of their own, they even come up with and sing songs.
It really is a shame that the people who write and make these shows have no real interest in fantasy, or at least not a Tolkien’s particular style of dark age fantasy, I've always been fascinated by the glimpses we get of the cultures that fall under the dominion of Sauron (and the Witch King). But you really need someone with a deep appreciation for history to pull that off in an interesting way, I suppose that's why a lot of the OG Warhammer guys did such a good job with their writing when creating their settings and cultures.
Arnaud
1mo ago
According to the crew, this was impossible.
The crew aren't in a position to make that judgement, I've read far too many accounts of seemingly very dumb friendly fire incidents, particularly involving airstrikes, to believe that it is impossible to screw up this badly. During WW2, a little over 20 years before this incident, Allied planes mixed up what country they were attacking and bombed Switzerland something like 70 times. War is a confusing mess and shit does indeed happen.
The flag was clearly visible, and they even had a passing Israeli pilot wave to them overhead.
Yes, if I was planning to blow up an allied nations spy ship as part of a cover-up, I would make sure to have my planes fly low and slow so that everyone on board can see whose air force the plane belongs to, for good measure I'd also transmit to them and ask in plain, unambiguous language to tell me that they have positively identified the American ship that we are going to bomb in order to cover up our nefarious wrongdoings. After all, even if my foolproof plan of sinking the ship and doing a few strafing runs on the survivors in the water fails, the famously hostile-to-life mediterranean sea will take care of the rest.
This and other war crimes were just some of the secrets Israel had sought to conceal since the start of the conflict. An essential element in the Israeli battle plan seemed to have been to hide much of the war behind a carefully constructed curtain of lies: lies about the Egyptian threat, lies about who started the war, lies to the US president, lies to the UN Security Council, lies to the press, lies to the public. Thus, as the American naval historian Dr Richard K Smith noted, "any instrument which sought to penetrate this smoke screen so carefully thrown around the normal 'fog of war' would have to be frustrated". Into this sea of deception and slaughter sailed the USS Liberty, an enormous spy factory loaded with the latest eavesdropping gear.
There is absolutely nothing that the USS Liberty could have recorded that is more dangerous to the state of Israel, or those in power in Israel, than deliberately bombing a US warship. This is the cold war, the US does not care about the rights and wrongs of the war Israel is currently fighting, who started it or who is massacring who. The Soviets are backing the Arabs, so the US is going to back the Israelis to try and counter-balance the strategically significant middle east.
Israel killed 34 American soldiers, the president and his advisors and most of the surviving crewmen all believed it was on purpose, and Israel then conspired with American Jews in government to threaten the president not to talk about it, while conspiring with Jewish journalists to quash the story, all this done through their consulate.
If you can do this, you aren't afraid of a grainy 1960s recording of intercepted radio messages from a war zone. You just aren't.
Arnaud
1mo ago
Well the linked write-up explains that Israel killed 34 American soldiers, the president and his advisors and most of the surviving crewmen all believed it was on purpose
I'm not familiar with this incident in any great detail, but what would the Israelis possibly hope to gain from a deliberate attack on a US warship, in the middle of a major war?
If Israeli influence was so strong over the US that they could effectively puppet the government and its armed forces, why even strike the ship at all?
Why not just use all that shadowy influence to covertly achieve whatever goal they were trying to achieve instead?
I'm struggling to come up with an explanation for Israel being malicious rather than simply mistaken that doesn't sound like;
"No, Muttley, we can't win fairly! We are villains! Ergo, we have to cheat!"
Arnaud
1mo ago
The Israeli planes then strafed the Americans in the water with machine gun fire from their aircraft - presumably to kill everyone and keep the story contained.
Or they believed they were firing on enemy personnel from an enemy vessel they had just sunk. Not exactly very sporting or within the norms of modern western nations, but not that crazy.
Mistaken identity/friendly fire incidents happen all the time, the US has a somewhat infamous reputation for blue on blue incidents with allied nations.
Arnaud
2mo ago
I do think that a philosopher ought righty to be judged by his death.
Should we judge a book purely by its final page, a song by its last verse?
By their nature philosophers are not happy people and are more likely to die by their own hand. Happy, fulfilled people do not go around looking for meaning in life, they've already found it. That doesn't mean that there isn't value for others in what they found while out searching. People are not all cast from the same mould, no "one-size fits all" method of finding happiness and meaning exists.
I think it's relevant to note that DFW hanged himself. Is that kind of radical empathy perhaps beautiful and perhaps true and perhaps admirable? Sure. But can you live with it? DFW couldn't, could he?
Also I just have to add that I find this a bizarre line of thought, imagining someone finding a man's hanging body, shaking their head sadly as they mutter to themselves "If only he'd berated more cashiers".
Arnaud
2mo ago
If the idea of taking responsibility for another humans life and prioritising it above your own scares you, you probably shouldn't have children.
Arnaud
3mo ago
To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the height of excellence. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the height of excellence.
Armies exist to further the interests of their employers, killing people is a common byproduct of pursuing that goal. To say armies exist to kill people is akin to saying that slaughterhouses exist to produce runoff, or that the purpose of driving is to wear down your tires.
Arnaud
4mo ago
prominently featuring a character designed to appeal to and monetize the (male) protective instinct (known as "moe" in Japanese parlance)
The game industry doesn't like any of these things.
Nonsense, drivel, sir I say that this is not only balderdash it is poppycock!
Bioshock 2 came out 16 years ago and has since been followed by modern beardy dad games like The Last of Us, where you take on the role of a beardy dad looking after a child.
Arnaud
6mo ago
The people in the middle east aren't going to like Israel more if they do nothing either, so that's something of a moot point. Iran is also not particularly popular with large sections of the middle east due to religious differences and the fact that Iran has been funding proxies and trying to destabilise the region to their advantage for decades now, to the detriment of Israeli/US interests as well.
You are nakedly a partisan on this issue and therefore probably emotionally obliged to try and spin this as both a massive blunder and an act of unprovoked evil from Israel, but what they are doing now is entirely logical from a military/geo-political perspective given the circumstances, Iran is probably Israels greatest long term enemy and they're on the ropes, they would be stupid not to attack now.
As a wise man once said, "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight".
Arnaud
7mo ago
is PRC... Good?
Go live there for a while, travel the country and then come to the same conclusion as pretty much every other foreigner, which is "No, god no, absolutely not".
People here have touched on the topic of the PRCs moral bankruptcy and how unpleasant the culture is, but I'm going to focus on something a little more mundane and say that if the PRC becomes ascendant and starts trying to export soft power via cultural exports, you will weep and beg for the woke media to return to save you.
It is my firm belief that Chinese opera should be classified as a form of torture and America missed a trick by not staging mandatory performances at Guantanamo. Lion dances are great though, I'm fine with them exporting that.
it seems like the UK has literally criminalized dissent on the issue of immigration, how could this possibly be?
Because you have looked at a few pieces of information and then extrapolated it to an extreme, or you adopted a worldview in 2014 and then haven't updated it since.
Reform is the party with the most momentum in British politics and is on track to form the next government on a wave of anti-immigration sentiment. I am hopeful that what we are seeing with Pathways is the last gasps of a dying culture in British politics, the finger-wagging respectable "adults in the room" with their heads in the sand.
Americans online will sometimes go on about Britain being an authoritarian dystopia, possibly because they've grown up being bombarded with folktales about the tyranny of the British crown and it feels comfortable to follow those well worn grooves, but it's always rung hollow to me. The dystopian part I'm not going to argue about, I'm amazed people can live in certain parts of England without immediately committing suicide, it's a true testament to their mental fortitude that they don't look out the window in the morning and immediately ram their heads into it and slit their throats on the broken glass. But the British political establishment isn't authoritarian, they are far too ineffectual for that, instead they nag and tut and wag their fingers. Britain does not have gulags, what it has instead is this kind of vaguely condescending and ineffectual propaganda paired with equally condescending and ineffectual harassment.
I'm sure a libertarian may feel the urge to crawl out of the woodwork here and try to bring up some protestors being arrested for being mean or a video of a policeman standing outside someones door looking like an idiot as they try to caution the homeowner for a mean tweet, but that just makes my point. I'm sure to some this is indistinguishable from 1984 and the jackboot of the Nazis, but to actual authoritarians this is laughable, it's like one of those comedy bits where the camera pans over a list of hardened criminals and then stops at Bill from accounting, who is also there.
Arnaud
7mo ago
Trump has stated he plans to seize Greenland by force, putting a tripwire force in place is simply good sense, regardless of what is happening in Ukraine.
I don't know if there's a way to say this that will be well-received, or if it possibly violates some rule for here but reading this post I can only think that you should try taking a break from internet politics and spending some time outside of whatever bubbles you're in.
Arnaud
7mo ago
I'm going to go with a perhaps controversial opinion here and say there is no doctrine here at all, Trump is acting opportunistically and for his own reasons that range from a a simplistic and transactional view of geopolitics down to petty ego. He's surrounded by yes men and getting high on the news coverage of himself, it seems most likely he's seen information about resource deposits and decided he has to have it, plus securing his place in history as a US President that expanded the nations borders with a big chunk of land.
The only "doctrine" you might be able to find will come from the courtiers whispering into his ear, trying to aim the loose cannon roughly at problems they want dealt with, but even then that's going to be filtered through Trumps own strange lens and more probably than not there will be different parties trying to push him in different directions.
This Greenland stuff is madness, there's no reasonable justification for it from a military or political standpoint, anything the US wants from Greenland they almost certainly could have negotiated for and gotten without any real hassle and certainly without threatening the existence of NATO and setting off alarm bells in Europe.
Arnaud
1yr ago
You're comparing the successes of woke in its ascendancy compared to the final days of the nagging god-botherers regime. I would say in the US you could chalk up Prohibition at least as an example of their powers of priggishness and moral busybodying, but I'm sure there are a lot more if you bother to look back.
Arnaud
1yr ago
Then your definition of victory is narrow and unsuited to this conflict, or any other of the many interminable conflicts that clutter up the history books, there are kinds of victory other than those which are absolute or permanent.
Degrading or destroying Hamas reduces the danger posed by Gaza substantially, the remaining population can be as unruly as they like, if they lack the equipment, networks or know-how of how to turn ther discontent into military force then they simply are not a threat, not in the short to medium term at least. Sure they might eventually overcome these shortcomings and become an actual threat again in the long term, but in the meantime Israel can enjoy peace and security, which is absolutely a win.
This all assumes that the Gazans decide that yes, they really are going to learn nothing from this whole experience and just repeat the exact same mistakes that lead to them being bombed flat for 0 gain, which I really don't think is guaranteed. Yes the Gazans aren't going to come out of this experience overflowing with love for Israel, but I can't imagine they'll be very happy with Hamas either, or anyone who has the really bright idea of triggering an unwinnable war over what amounted to a very violent PR stunt. By all accounts Palestinians before the war had a delusional perspective on the conflict and their chances of victory against Israel, vastly overestimating their own population and vastly underestimating that of the Israelis, there is a chance that this conflict might knock some sense into them.
Arnaud
1yr ago
The strategy seems to be based on eroding the power base of Hamas, possibly with a side of forcing Gazans to confront the reality of their situation and their complete military defeat.
Apparently Hamas had previously been seizing food and using it to maintain power and influence by controlling who got what, which the new system pushed by Israel and the US is designed to thwart. This makes sense and seems like it would be effective, so I wouldn't be surprised if Hamas and those aligned with them would do a great deal to try and undermine that effort.
Arnaud
1yr ago
Unless I've been reading maps really wrong up to this point, North Koreas main adversary is immediately to its south and connected by a land border.
Speaking as a man who was once described as "manorexic", who genuinely believed I was a fat blob when in reality I was just a regular guy with some muscles, I'm not entirely sure how you deal with this specific case, but I certainly have experience dealing with and eventually overcoming comparable issues so maybe you'll be able to extract some value from that.
I will say, a previous comment seems to have hit a number of salient points, that this occured at a point in my life when I felt I had very little control and that the extremes I went to in pursuing my fitness and diet goals were an attempt to regain control over some aspect of my life. It later turned out I was trying to ignore/brute force a whole bunch of issues and that this really wasn't sustainable long term. As soon as I was removed from the stressors and able to accept the issues I was facing, I was actually recalibrate mentally, that burning need to reshape my body evaporated and now I have a much healthier approach to fitness in general.
Another big factor for me was the content I consumed and the websites I frequented online. I spent a lot of time in bodybuilding and weight lifting forums and it definitely distorted my idea of what was normal.
All of that said, I think it would be great if you could get your girlfriend into fitness in general and weightlifting in particular. While it is possible to go too far and harm yourself, it's a hell of a lot harder than it is with simply starving yourself. The thing that will really help to shift that mindset I think will be her watching female fitness influencers and getting her into that whole eco-system, one where women are striving to be more than just skinny, but actually fit and healthy. The company you keep does influence you and your outlook on life and to our monkey brains, influencers and social media types are company. Also it might help to explain that looking attractive is not simply a question of bodyfat percentages, but also what is underneath the fat. The video I linked earlier actually has a decent breakdown of bf% versus muscle mass for men and what that looks like.
Oh and it would probably be a good idea to one day figure out the source of the problem, I'd seriously recommend looking up things like what female autism looks like and just trying to explore things of that nature. It can seem somewhat orthogonal to the problem at hand, but the mind is a funny thing.
Arnaud
1yr ago
the ancient Christians, who steamrolled over the strength-is-beauty-is-justice pagan ethos of Rome, did not need mustache-twirling wordcels in high places berating anyone on their behalf to gain followers, nor did the French Revolution with its cries for égalité.
I'm going to take issue with both examples here, both nascent Christianity and especially the French Revolution had wordy intellectuals at the hearts of their movements. Robespierre wasn't just selling like, vibes man.
Arnaud
1yr ago
Can't speak for the cane sugar, but the gluten sensitivity thing is real from my experience.
Cut out gluten in a desperate attempt to sort out some digestive issues years ago and it helped a lot.
If I eat gluten in moderate quantities nowadays it results, like clockwork, in a headache, brain fog and later indigestion.
So yeah, sample size of one but I'm sold.
Arnaud
1yr ago
The kid is sleeping like a log
Sleeping through bombardment, a veteran already.
Arnaud
1yr ago
In fairness, SEALs have something of a reputation of being the idiot frat boys of the special forces world. Pretty much every negative story I've heard about US special forces was about the SEALs.
Probably comes from them being able to walk in off the street and sign up, rather than the more usual system of only allowing applicants that are already in the military.
Arnaud
1yr ago
But im pretty sure they weren’t choosing fashions or foods or other products because they were associated with abolition.
They absolutely were.
Modern politics isn’t politics as they would have understood it. It’s more of a lifestyle brand in our culture. And in a lot of ways I think I would compare our way of thinking about our political party affiliation much like someone pre-enlightenment might have thought about religious denominations.
Religion was central to politics in medieval Europe, not a distinct thing that was seperate and fenced off. The distinction between the nationalist killing a communist and a catholic killing a protestant is on a conceptual level, not that different. In both cases it is an argument over how the world as we understand it is arranged and who is handing out bread.
Ultimately I think you're starting from a false premise here, or have an odd definition of politics. At the end of the day humans are going to be humans and love showing how much they are part of the tribe through how they dress, act, eat, etc. I mean, just look at the history of nationalism and nationalist movements.
Arnaud
1yr ago
Anyone know any games, roleplaying or otherwise, which end up encouraging real/historical tactics?
That is an impressively vague question and one which I can only really answer by saying "yes" and "more than I could list in a single comment".
To start with there's the entire world of tabletop historical wargaming, which (as it says on the tin) is supposed to encourage historically accurate/authentic gameplay. Now, sometimes you end up with games like Team Yankee, which somehow managed to make a Cold War game look more like a Napoleonic one thanks to a business decision to use a miniature scale that is too large for the rules. Games I would recommend include Chain of Command for WW2, Warmaster is good for a fairly wide period of real world history, as well as fantasy. Speaking of fantasy, the Lord of the Rings/Middle Earth tabletop game from Games Workshop is actually great and does an excellent job of capturing the "heroic" but still quite grounded combat you'd expect from that kind of story and out of all the stuff I list here is most likely to be the kind of thing you're looking for. There are tonnes of other good games but those are just ones from the top of my head.
In terms of computer games you're slightly more limited but there's still a pretty decent selection, in terms of realism/authenticity I struggle to think of much that can top the Field of Glory/Combat Mission/Graviteam games. The last two are really not games for the faint of heart though, it turns out that in our modern age, real world tactics are actually quite complicated and unintuitive.
I was playing D:OS2 this weekend and found myself thinking, "wow, all these spear-wielding magisters have zero incentive to form up and fight in ranks." It's a chaotic free-for-all.
This is what really killed my interest in that game, it's all so incredibly over the top. It's more than a little silly how everyone seems to be able to do these incredibly over the top attacks and have these incredible abilities and yet it is still somehow a standard issue medieval fantasy world.
So it would appear that the real problem with the Nazis was that they were Germans.
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