SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
No bio...
User ID: 84
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
14hr ago
You'd have to pay me rather more than ten bucks to read more than a summary of any remotely modern Scott article. He's a prime example of a writer who spends 95% of the words on completely pointless waffling and even the remaining 5% only very occasionally contains something of value.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
15hr ago
If the Iranian regime comes out the other side of this without being removed from power, the regime will spin it as a credibility win because they held together and the United States couldn't dislodge them. So hopefully there is an effective plan in place to dislodge the regime because the alternative is much worse.
Or to put it another way, "Kill lots of people" is not a viable war goal even though Hegseth seems to think it is.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
Mean Girls was supposed to be a satirical comedy, not a how to guide.
Thank you for giving me "proper" justification to continue my teen movie binge.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
But I don't get why people would want a location marker to correlate people's opinions on this question.
Christianity is one question where location marker would be quite helpful. A commenter claiming to be a Catholic from the US is going to have some very different opinions, outlook and rhetoric compared to a European (or South American) Catholic.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
Alternatively, do they have bands playing which sound like a third rate copy of U2?
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
Can you even be A Real American if your ancestors didn't move there at least 10000 years ago?
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
IIRC, the university lab I worked at 20 years ago was trying to apply for funding to become one. Yes, they used that exact English language term even though it was in Finland.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
You have to admit that "Operation Epstein Fury" does have a certain ring to it.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
That's modern administration for you.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
"Center of excellence" has been a common naming method for over two decades for all sorts of things in many parts of the western world.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
I suspect you'd get away with a lot more if you wrote in some other language than english.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
3d ago
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
3d ago
Nonetheless the Japanese fought tooth and nail and the Allies had to spend significant troops to win ground (with 12k killed and 40k wounded) and couldn’t simply bomb Japan to submission. Mainland or not made no difference to that.
Do you see US being willing to deal with even a fraction of that number in Iran? I sure don’t.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
3d ago
Japan notably was still invaded on the ground in WW2. See the Battle of Okinawa which was the bloodiest battle of the pacifiic war. ”Mainland” makes rather less of a difference when the entire nation consists of islands.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
3d ago
It’s easy enough: Only get into politics in languages other than English.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
5d ago
How does college make it so "you are still surrounded by the same set of people every day, forced into constant, recurring proximity"?
Certainly there are many easy socialization opportunities in college but those are very self selected, at least after the very beginning. Hell, I barely even bothered attending classes after the first semester (except for a few mandatory ones and those related to my later masters studies specialization). In comparison in high school the course selection is much more limited, there are at most a couple of different tracks and you have to actually be there every day.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
5d ago
There are definitely people who enjoyed their high school years more than their adult life, because the paradigm of ‘teenager’ as a category that exists creates an impulse in authority structures to incentivize the ‘fun’ parts and not the ‘becoming a grownup’ parts. That’s what this is corresponding to; people remembering their fun as the important part of life, not their responsibilities.
I can't help wondering how much of this is North America specific and created by the pop culture. I'm sure there are some people who enjoyed their high school more than anything later around here too, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone take that position publicly. The trope here is that your university years were the best time in your life (for some people), although that might have changed in the recent years (or not - I haven't seen much talk of that lately). There is certainly a lot more partying in university for those who want it.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
6d ago
It's hardly surprising that countries with significant Serbian minority would have anti-NATO sentiment after NATO struck Serbia. That doesn't reflect the rest of the Europe at all at the time.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
6d ago
Though we were all retarded teenagers at the time
Which is rather different than ”a lot of Europeans”. It’s like trying to seriously claim that ”a lot of people are lizardmen” because a bunch of edgelords put a mark there on a survey.
Eh, what?
The main perceived problem with the Serbian bombings for a layman on the street was that NATO took forever to actually start doing them. Certainly not that NATO bombed Serbia in the first place (outside niche edgelord or old communist far left circles).
No, it very much isn't.
"Kill people required to achieve this strategic goal" is a valid war goal. Same with "Kill these specific people". Even "Kill or drive away everyone in this area" might be. But just "Kill lots of people" isn't because it doesn't achieve anything useful.
More options
Context Copy link