FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
2hr ago
Congrats! Our kids will go to different schools together.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5hr ago
I agree with this take, I think federal executions should be halftime at Redskins-Cowboys every year. But, the guy in the wheelchair seeking to make a martyr of himself in an incident most people vaguely remember if at all, probably not the place to start.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
5hr ago
Newt Gingrich, who has written several books about Trump now, concluded in an interview that Trump is aware that he’s playing a character, and that the character is Donald Trump. Newt said something like, Trump knows that he has to wake up every day and act like Donald Trump, or he doesn’t get to be Donald Trump. The image is the substance.
At this point, the book is older than me, to some extent didn't the interpretation of Trump through the book create or reify the Trumpian character. Trump may not have been the Trump of the book in the same way when the book was written, but he is now, in part because of the book.
Character is a very funny causal loop.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
I think my revolver has jammed more times than my semi-autos at this point
How?
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
I like the form factor, and I like the simplicity and reliability. I know that if I maintain my semiauto properly there's no reason it won't work when called on, but I like that the revolver more or less can't jam under pressure, even if it hasn't been used in a while. And while I have no fear of using a semi-auto, I like that the revolver has extremely visually clear loaded/unloaded states. Basically everyone I know who ever had an accidental shooting, the gun was "unloaded" at the time.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
Which naturally leads to gun manufacturers focusing on the small range of models that actually wear out, rather than on the larger market. There's probably just no mass market for revolvers these days, sad to say as I'm one of the few holdouts who love them.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
The problem is that, while like any man I admire beautiful engineering and want something way better than what I actually need, guns long ago passed the point where the gun is holding back the accuracy. Get me the finest $10,000 firearm it's not going to improve my groupings all that much over the cheapie.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
Yeah I buy a car or a drill because my last one died. I buy pens or chapstick because I lost the last one. When my grandmother died, all her blankets and sheets were either thrown out or used for moving blankets, because I don't think of that as something I'm going to inherit.
None of those apply to guns. It wouldn't surprise me if the median gun purchased in the past ten years is still around when guns are banned.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
1d ago
What's the attrition rate over time for consumer firearms? I would think it's pretty low on average. Leaving aside boating accidents, which don't take them out of circulation anyway. You're not going to see a lot of guns legitimately lost, like permanently lost such that the owner needs to buy a replacement. Some small fraction are stolen, but even those remain in circulation satisfying some kind of consumer demand. Are any significant portion of firearms damaged beyond repair each year? How many rounds do you have to put through a modern firearm before it wears out?
So if guns exist at some point to fulfill all existing demand, and they don't pass out of circulation, you're only selling guns if you're creating new gun owners or new demand. Tech advancements account for some new sales, but what new tech is going to come out of the industry at this point? When does that max itself out? Doesn't really matter if the owner dies, they are pretty much always inherited, or at least sold off.
The only thing producing fresh demand that I can think of are gun buybacks and murderers tossing a handgun into the Hudson. Unless some exogenous force is producing new gun buyers.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
4d ago
Good Deals:
Whitin shoes. They're plain enough that I wear them with everything, my sneakerhead puerto rican tenant thought they looked good enough that he asked if they were Yeezys. While I bought several pairs when I realized they happen to perfectly fit my foot, figuring that they'd wear down quick, and they hold up well enough to regular use lifting/walking/running/golfing/biking that I haven't actually had to retire a pair yet. And they're cheap. So much cheaper than anything else I've found out there.
Bad deals:
Everything to do with babies purchased new. 90+% of our baby stuff is second hand, and we have yet to have a single problem with quality. There's a sea of infinite baby stuff available on FB marketplace/poshmark, and tons of friends essentially just say please take this stuff we want to feel good giving it to you instead of feeling bad selling it on FB for no money.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
4d ago
Consider that Iranian have an institutional memory of using American elections to their advantage.
Back in the early days of the Islamic Revolution, when the Mullahs had just thrown off the yoke of the Shah only to face invasion by Saddam, Jimmy Carter put an arms embargo on Iran, seeing the Islamic Revolution as a dangerous pathogen to be stopped. The Iran Hostage Crisis weakened the public's perception of Carter as president significantly during the last years of his presidency. Carter would successfully negotiate a deal for the release of the hostages during his presidency, but they would not actually be released until Reagan was inaugurated some months later. Reagan would, of course, then sell arms to Iran illegally during the Iran-Contra affair. Many have made the argument or presented some evidence that this was the result of back-channel negotiations between Reagan's foreign policy team and Iran: help us win the election by refusing to release the hostages while Carter is in office, and we'll deal kindly with you after we're in power.
Now the important thing is not whether we think that the Iranian's actions during the election were the proximate cause of Carter's electoral loss, or even whether Reagan sold arms to Iran because of some backroom deal. What matters is whether the Iranians themselves believe this version of events.
And it's not so crazy as a theory of foreign policy. Consider the famous 2012 open-mic incident in which Obama told Medvedev that he would have more flexibility to deal with some issues after the election.
As he was leaning toward Medvedev in Seoul, Obama was overheard asking for time - "particularly with missile defense" - until he is in a better position politically to resolve such issues. "I understand your message about space," replied Medvedev, who will hand over the presidency to Putin in May. "This is my last election ... After my election I have more flexibility," Obama said, expressing confidence that he would win a second term. "I will transmit this information to Vladimir," said Medvedev, Putin's protégé and long considered number two in Moscow's power structure.
It's probably fairly routine for American administrations to, sub rosa, tell international partners not to screw things up too badly before an election, after which they can take a freer hand.
I actually suspect that some of Trump's public signaling around the midterms, particularly his statements that "we're going to end the war after the midterms," reflected not a plan to escalate, but a plan to de-escalate and sign a deal, with the midterms acting as a signal to Iran: hey you just need to make it to November without rocking the boat and then we'll give you what you want, but we can't sign that deal now because it will cost us the election. Not that anything the Trump admin says to anyone, let alone to Iran, is reliable evidence of their intent to follow through, but it seemed to me that was the signal they were trying to send.
Anyway all of this is to say that the Iranians might believe, rightly or wrongly, that they can use the elections as leverage to negotiate with America on the war. They may be incorrect, but that doesn't mean they don't think it. If politiical actors were always right and never made incorrect strategic guesses, we wouldn't be in this war to begin with.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
4d ago
So to summarize, it looks like the war is expanding, Iran's proxies continue to be able to strike US allies, and Iran's proxies are escalating the conflict instead of backing down.
Expanding a war is a pretty common tactic when slowly losing, historically speaking.
While the strikes between Saudi and Houthi territory are fairly well reported, what are the actual facts on the ground as far as dispossessing the Houthis of the territory gained a couple weeks back?
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6d ago
To be clear my argument is limited to: this is a dishonorable act that ought to be done discreetly, not broadcast proudly, and being proud of doing something dishonorable shows a lack of character. I'm not arguing that he oughtn't to be executed, merely that it oughtn't to be on tv.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6d ago
I haven't read Mishima in a while, but I assumed it was the act of being penetrated by the arrow that lead to the fascination.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
6d ago
My image of American masculinity will always be John Wayne et al, the noble Cowboy gunslinger beloved of early 20th century Hollywood and Louis L'Amour novel. And I just can't imagine a scene in a John Wayne movie where he shot a cripple. I'd imagine such a scene, in which some foppish cavalry captain or Eastern judge sent west, the symbol of government bureaucracy and oppression, asks our protagonist to shoot a cripple. The response, I'd imagine, would go something like Wayne spitting on the ground in front of the judge and saying "I reckon the man deserves to die, but I ain't gonna shoot a man who can't walk."
I asked ChatGPT for the scenario, and it pretty much agreed with me. To be fair, I could probably prompt it to do otherwise, but I think this a reasonable use of the LLM: to conjure the zeitgeist around a stock character and see what the oracle tells us.
The man deserves to die. He deserved to die quite a while ago. But I ain't gonna be the one to shoot him, and I ain't gonna watch.
I say this despite fully agreeing with you that if we are going to execute people, it ought to be the halftime show at Cowboys-Redskins every year in DC. We shouldn't hide behind medicalization and privacy. But shooting a man in a wheelchair is inherently dishonorable, even if it naturally has zero impact on the justice of the sentence being carried out.
This whole thing feels like "vice-signaling," engaging performatively in actions that the individual himself feels to be morally wrong, in order to pick a culture war fight. I don't reckon the federal government ought to be in that business.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
7d ago
I think about St Sebastian and how cool he looks, and he’s pretty much the firing squad victim of antiquity.
In his semi-autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask (1949), Japanese author Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) describes the saintly image that inspired his sexual awakening: “A remarkably handsome youth was bound naked to the trunk of a tree . . . Were it not for the arrows with their shafts deeply sunk into his left armpit and right side, he would seem more a Roman athlete resting from fatigue”.
Mishima famously stated that "inverts" commonly glommed onto the image of St Sebastian pierced by arrows.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
8d ago
Sure, but he also wrote a lot of books. I suppose I meant more that I didn't think anyone else on this forum would have read and remembered it offhand.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
8d ago
I didn't even know it existed back then
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
9d ago
To be honest, I wasn't sure anyone other than me ever read that book. Was it really popular in any way?
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
9d ago
There was a Tom Clancy novel in this vein The Bear and the Dragon. One of the later Jack Ryan novels where he becomes president and his best buddy becomes vice president. A pseudo-Putin ex-kgb Russian president discovers major resources in the far east of Russia, an expansionist Chicomm government looking for resources and lebensraum* invades Russia, the US steps in and kicks the piss out of the Chinese invasion force on livestream using drones**, the Chicomms in desperation launches ICBMs at Washington, which an Aegis destroyer shoots down with President Ryan personally on deck***. In the aftermath of the failed invasion and stalled nuclear attack, the Chinese government falls to a group of student protestors angered by watching the Chinese army get wrecked on livestream.
The "natural" alliance theory of Russia and the United States relies on the idea of creating an other who they both hate more. This idea comes up every few decades, often with a different boogeyman. The USA and the USSR were natural allies against the Nazis. They were natural allies against international Islamic terrorism. They are natural allies against China. They are natural allies in the face of alien invasion. Etc.
One can see the outline of the logic. Both are frontier peoples, the Americans went west and the Russians east. They each have vast hinterlands of natural resources existing alongside urbanized industrial and post-industrial cores. Once you create an evil anti-western-civilization threat, they both look pretty similar by comparison. It normally involves a hopeful projection that Russians want to embrace American values, and I suppose that when the same theory is offered in Russia they project Russian values onto the American people.
The irony of the novel two decades on is of course that it was both very prescient, we really have seen the invading expansionist army of a declining power shredded live on the internet; and very wrong, it was Putin's army that was embarrassed on livestream and it has had no discernible negative impact on his hold on domestic power. The people did not, in fact, rise up after watching a promised easy victory over a declining neighbor devolve into sci-fi murderbots wiping out a generation of men. And while there may be a rapprochement between the current American and Russian presidents, it doesn't represent a personal bond between two noble ex-intelligence operators seeking to bring Russia into the liberal Capitalist future, but a friendship between two regressive oligarchies who admire each other's efforts at kleptocracy.
*Seeking to save their economy after President Ryan implements trade sanctions (due to a controversy over a forced abortion and a murdered Catholic bishop, this was at the height of the One Child policy, and there was a broad right-wing fear of the ruthless forced abortion population reduction policy. This has, of course, entirely flipped, it's almost impossible to imagine the Chinese forcibly murdering babies in the name of population control today.
**There's also a subplot where a pseudo Vasily Zaitsev old man in the mountains WWII vet snipes the Chicomm commanding general
***After President Ryan personally allows soldiers on duty to smoke cigarettes, improving morale and productivity. It's an excellent 1000 pages of Tom Clancy stuff.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
9d ago
I'm really disappointed that you just made this scenario up, rather than Ovechkin actually being the subject of deportation proceedings. That would have been kind of funny.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
10d ago
I feel like that might more be the old "move" of putting an slr with a tripod in your dorm, allowing the easy transition when you bring her back to a "photoshoot" which no drunk girl can resist。
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
10d ago
Oh man we're on our way to one of my favorite college urban myths: the friend of a friend cocksman (often a lawyer or law student) who required a written or filmed consent contract prior to hookups.
FiveHourMarathon
a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
10d ago
I feel bad for Jane Doe
Why, particularly?
She is the one who made the affirmative choice to make this her whole personality, rather than quietly transfer to a state school where no one knew her and reconstruct her life. Even assuming that she did experience a traumatic sense of violation after the fact, I still can't get my head around just how awful her behavior after the fact has been.
That's the unstated assumption that makes this such a good scissor statement.
Europe's disunity at the time was such that within five years of 1939 they would be collectively incapable of wiping their own asses without American support.
Africa's disunity now makes the idea of a cross-continental campaign rather unrealistic.
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