JulianRota
11mo ago
Finished Uncivil War: The British Army and the Troubles. Found it interesting and a sufficiently unique perspective. Goes on a lot about how a core problem was the refusal of the British Army to really take action against Loyalist militias due to lack of resources and competing demands from height of the Cold War NATO to keep sufficient troops in Europe to counter any possible Soviet large-scale invasion. In addition to all of the usual problems often seen in COIN operations. The British Army didn't seem to spend too much effort on the problem-class of, unit builds up some local relationships, then rotates out after 6 months, new unit rotates in and has to start the relationship-building thing from scratch. Possibly inter-linked with the issue of apparently British Army divisions having their own independent identities and cultures not necessarily tightly linked with any other Army Division.
Also started and finished Blue Dawn which I found from the thread 2 weeks ago. I think I generally like the genre of Red-team action fiction, and I liked the Kelly Turnbull books, but this one just didn't seem that appealing to me. It seemed kind of cringe at times, the premise a little too farfetched. It's not like the Turnbull series isn't farfetched, but it seems to have the vibe of being deliberately and un-self-consciously absurd in a way that I find entertaining and funny.
Now reading War at Every Door, on the splits within the Confederacy in the American Civil War, which I found from this response to one of my older comments (I do get around to this sort of thing eventually, if not always right away). Just started it, but it seems there was a lot more internal dissent and resistance on both the Confederate and Union side than most popular summaries of the war pay attention to.
It is possible to meet girls in a bar. Having any success at doing so is all about stuff like your looks, how they're feeling that night, how funny and interesting you are to them, etc. Offering to buy her or her whole group a drink only works against you, as it makes you seem like a sucker who's too boring to just have a conversation with somebody, and will make you waste the critical first few minutes on boring stuff like figuring out what they want, getting the bartender's attention, placing the order, etc.
If they ask you to buy them a drink, 90% it's this guy is lame, let's see if we can milk him for a free round before we ditch him, and the other 10% is a shit test. It's never in your interest to go along with it.
The bottom line is always, only go to a bar and drink there if it's actually fun for you, regardless of whether there are any girls there or you might stand a chance of getting with them.
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