TheDemonRazgriz
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User ID: 3577
TheDemonRazgriz
5d ago
Fair point.
TheDemonRazgriz
5d ago
The people most likely to be loose in the world without one are professional white women who think their phone is a scifi universal gadget.
They would have IDs, even if they don’t always carry them. I would think the only people who really don’t have a government ID today are going to be dysfunctional hobos/junkies, and extremely “off the grid” types. But yeah, the idea that there’s this massive number of black people (even more so, black people who vote) who don’t have IDs is a nonsensical caricature. Something something DR3.
As an aside, I made friends with a few international students in college. When I voted in an election they asked what it was like, and were somewhere between shocked and baffled when I said that you basically just walk in and say your name (and registered address) to a volunteer clerk. “You really don’t show them… anything??” We really are deeply out of step with the rest of the democratic world on this one.
I would prefer, idealistically, that if we require an ID to vote we should also make getting it free, but one way or another it’s long past time for us to do so. The alarm bells of voter confidence in elections being a live issue have been blaring since at least 2000 and it’s only getting worse.
TheDemonRazgriz
7d ago
Japanese leadership in general seemed extremely bad. A lot of decisions seemed to be made for ego-stroking reasons, rather than around any kind of grand strategy to win the war.
Complete and utter failure of Japanese intelligence and reconnaissance.
If you're interested in a window to the Japanese perspective, I would highly recommend the book Memoirs of a Kamikaze. The author, Kazuo Odachi, was one of extremely few surviving kamikaze pilots (he was sent on a kamikaze mission, failed to find any American ships, and returned to base; literally while he was on the runway for a second attempt, the war ended). It's short, and just his personal story, but that story is a very interesting one. He talks a lot about what the Japanese leadership looked like "from the inside" and why/how the Japanese soldiers were so fanatical.
It also includes some very interesting stories of his life adjusting to US-occupied Japan after the war, and what the country was like at this time -- you can imagine that going from kamikaze pilot to a defeated subject living at peace is not the simplest transition.
TheDemonRazgriz
12d ago
I would imagine those 1.24/1000 deaths are dominated by traffic accidents and, secondarily, fatal overdoses. It’s not like 1.24/1000 25-29 year olds are just dropping dead at random.
TheDemonRazgriz
13d ago
Khomeini's government had been warned repeatedly that there would be consequences if they started shooting protestors or continued to threaten international trade. Khomeini ignored those warnings and now Khomeini is dead. This is known as "Fuck around and find out".
I would find this more convincing if the government was actually saying it. Instead, they offer up a medley of different explanations and goals, depending on who is being asked, who’s doing the asking, the day of the week, and whether Mercury is in retrograde. “Fuck it, we ball” is no way to run a military.
TheDemonRazgriz
14d ago
Regarding the school, all signs point to it being a (massive and easily avoidable) fuckup by US intelligence. The school building was, until sometime about 10 years ago, part of the IRGC base which was targeted. It is now fenced off from the base (because it is a school) but from the air appears to be part of the same complex (because a decade ago, it was). A clinic which also was once part of the base was destroyed as well. By all appearances the government rushed into this war without adequate planning or preparation. It is highly likely that a commander pulled up this base from a target list which had been drawn up before that building was converted to a school, and which had never been updated. Certainly that’s more likely than the same commander sitting down and deciding “in addition to this military base, I also want to bomb the school next door.”
You can refer to the photos in this article: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/04/nx-s1-5735801/satellite-imagery-shows-strike-that-destroyed-iranian-school-was-more-extensive-than-first-reported. NPR is an American source, of course, but not one with any interest in making Trump’s moronic war of choice look good.
I must note that this “stupidity defense” is indeed not a very strong defense, morally speaking. We are still directly responsible for the deaths of over 100 innocent civilians, mostly children. But there’s no reason to think the US intentionally bombed a school. Occam’s razor. What would there be to gain by doing so? The effect of the bombing is only to strengthen Iranians’ will to fight, weaken American support for the war, and reduce the chances of neutral countries choosing our side.
TheDemonRazgriz
17d ago
And won't do much to the tanker.
True enough, but I don’t think the average shipping company is going to send a tanker through the strait if there’s even a small risk. What if they send a dozen or more drones against one ship? What if one scores a miracle hit and leaks (or even ignites) the cargo? What if one hits the bridge and kills the crew? What if Iran, or even a rogue Iranian officer, says “fuck it” and uses a real anti-ship missile to make an example of a tanker?
Large companies like the ones that own these ships are famously risk-averse, “it probably won’t do anything if they drone your ship” isn’t likely to be good enough for them.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
On one hand you have Elon Musks who is pure heritage American stock.
Did you lose part of your comment here? Or is this a joke I’m not getting? Musk is a South African immigrant…
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Lol, yeah, IME “inclusive” often translates to “weird ultra-liberals only” for this kind of thing. I imagine equivalent orgs are out there in my own city too, although again I really thought the proof of vaccination stuff had died out ages ago. As for the inexplicable-yet-predictable masking-queerness correlation, I’m reminded of that tweet that went something like “I’ll believe long covid is real when I see someone who isn’t bisexual have it.” Good luck out there…
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Wild. Is that relatively normal, asking for vaccine proof at an event? Or was this one just run by committed weirdos? Either way that really is crazy to me, I had no idea people like that were still out there at a scale where they could end up running a speed-dating event, especially if it wasn’t explicitly branded as a “special” zero-covid event.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I tried going to fucking speed dating last year, and they handed out masks and required proof of vaccination.
Last year?!? If you don’t mind saying, where do you live? Or was this hosted by some oddball organization? Genuinely curious. I live in a deep-blue city, I do still see “maskies” out and about, but I haven’t seen an event hand out masks in a very long time. And asking for proof of vaccination in 2025 is basically incomprehensible to me, that was already dying out here (again, deep-blue area) by 2023 at the very latest, and realistically I don’t recall actually being asked to show it later than 2022.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
I don’t have the source at hand, but I recall reading that most of them felt proud. IIRC the example I’m thinking of was about the pilots who flew captured German fighters in the 1947 war. The attitude was basically “our enemy has been vanquished, we outlasted him, and now we get to spit on his grave by using his own tools to secure our future.”
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Pathetically whacking the hotel’s sign with a snow shovel is a far cry from, say, the BLM riots, or the anti-ICE riots in Cali a few months back. Vandalism is still bad but it’s not on the same level as what would be implied, to me, by “violence” (it’s not looting, it’s not arson, it’s not even trashing the hotel that’s being picketed). No one, including ICE agents, has been injured or killed by a protestor in Minneapolis.
Edit: immediately after posting I remembered that the agent who shot Renee Good had been bruised by her car. So, correction, one person has been injured by Minneapolis protestors, and none killed.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
The protestors are not causing the violence, this time. No looting, no burning cop cars, no trashing local businesses…
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Man, I wish I had a relative who could/would give me 10 grand in precious metals… I always get a sweater or a book or something for Christmas!
Great post.
I think it's safe to say that Xi is a very severe, ideologically driven actor who just Does Not Like Corruption. There's no parallel to Putin or Maduro or whatever. I don't know why this is so hard for people to accept, we've known such autocrats in the 20th century.
I very much agree with this. Frankly, it’s a big part of what scares me about Xi’s China. By all appearances he is a cruel and ambitious dictator, but is also a competent administrator and a genuine statesman who cares about the future of his country. It is true that his many rounds of purges have included his personal political enemies, and in part this is because everyone is at least a little corrupt in the CCP and so you can get anyone on “corruption” if you want to, but it is also because being (too) corrupt makes you into one of Xi’s personal political enemies. Americans (and the general West) don’t like to engage in this kind of thought because the idea of a dictator sincerely motivated by rooting out corruption is aesthetically icky, and this willful blind spot leads to a lot of overconfidence relative to China.
Unlike many (most?) other dictators, his personal ambitions seem to be wrapped up in national ambitions in a harmonious way. The likes of Maduro (or Saddam Hussein, etc) are motivated primarily by personal wealth and the security of their own family; the success of the nation is good only secondarily and in as much as it further entrenches their personal wealth and power. Even Putin, who clearly does have some degree of grand national ambition to recreate a Russian Empire for the 21st century, clearly puts the personal wealth of himself and his allies first. In practice he rules more like a mafia don than a king (in some ways literally, as the government still has close connections with various criminal and quasi-legal enterprises) and has built his power explicitly on personal and transactional relationships with the country’s various powerful oligarchs. The idea of even partially earnest corruption purges in Putin’s Russia is laughable in a way which is not true for Xi’s China. The case in point is the state of the Russian army, which was allowed to degrade enormously (or, at least, not seriously pressured to improve) under his rule, as we saw in the catastrophic failure of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Xi also, at least so far, does not seem to show signs of the over-ambitious ideological derangement that characterized the likes of Hitler and would get in the way of successful leadership, or lead to delusional overreach. China surely does suffer from all the classic informational problems of dictatorships and (relatively) closed societies but they appear to be at least trying to mitigate that weakness.
This is not to say that Xi is some mystical paragon of leadership, or that China does not have problems with corrupt and incompetent leaders. In particular their managed economy is showing some weaknesses that could become much worse in the near future if not addressed (for example, the infamous real estate bubble). But he is a qualitative step up from the average dictator and should be taken seriously. In particular he appears to value long-term planning and a long-term legacy, and if nothing else does seem to view corruption as a problem which must be mitigated rather than a natural fact of life.
The emphasis on forward-looking strategy (his big legacy looks to be “Xi Jinping thought”, the anti-corruption campaigns, and the modernization of the army and navy) is relatively unique to China in the modern world (notably, another country I can think of in this frame is Kim Jong-Un’s DPRK, provided you grade on a North Korean curve), and is certainly better than the long-term planning of Russia, America, or Europe these days — and that is dangerous. The Chinese emphasis on industrial dominance in critical sectors is unique and presents a massive and still-growing threat to American dominance of world affairs. In some ways the best hope for America to “win” against China, given current trajectories, is for Xi to become impatient as he ages and to kick off a war before the PLA is ready. That’s pretty cold comfort.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
That’s not better. “Yeah, we’re going to import a permanent underclass to keep your wages low, and it’ll push up housing prices while degrading your local culture too, but don’t worry, we won’t treat them like human beings.” It’s not much of a sales pitch.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
People already know you can’t run over a cop. This does nothing against panic.
the lack of even preliminary SEAD/DEAD
This is not really true, there were substantial airstrikes on air defense assets for a few hours before the helicopters arrived, continuing through their arrival. Details are still limited as of now but the pre-positioned US assets included over 100 fixed-wing aircraft including fighters, bombers, and EW/jammers. All on an extremely short timetable, absolutely, but the image of the helicopters just popping up in the capital (in the largest military base, in fact) without support is not correct, this was a really enormous and tightly-timed air operation.
While pretty much all of the large-scale and medium to long range anti-air equipment in the area seems to have been destroyed by US airstrikes, it is definitely notable that there seemed to be no serious presence of Venezuelan MANPADS. One US helicopter was hit but not shot down, which could have been from an Igla, but that’s pretty minimal. The Venezuelans were supposed to have something like 5000 Iglas available, even if many existed only on-paper you’d think the ones they did have would be clustered around Maduro and, again, the largest and best-defended military base in the country.
The US had a fleet of RQ-170 stealth drones overhead during the operation, is it possible they were able to observe all of the anti-air troops setting up and blow them away with air support? This certainly could have contributed but is somewhere between extremely unlikely and impossible at scale. Were the Venezuelans simply in such disarray from the shock-and-awe raid that they couldn’t muster their defenses in time? This seems to be the case. The Venezuelan army is large, but not exactly known for high standards of training or strong morale. We’ll find out more in time but by all appearances they didn’t really believe this raid was going to happen and were taken totally by surprise. The speed and coordination with which the first airstrikes took place seems to have both ruined their defensive plans and scared the absolute pants off the defenders. It seems likely to me that large swaths of troops probably ran away or hid rather than die for Maduro, once the bombs started falling. And by the time they would’ve started reorganizing, the whole thing was already over!
There are rumors that at least some of the Venezuelan army knew about the raid ahead of time but this seems unlikely imo, at least at scale, the chance for a leak would be too great. We do know the CIA had at least one asset reporting on Maduro’s whereabouts at essentially all times, so clearly they were infiltrated, but that’s very different from whole army units defecting at once (and not telling anyone). Fear and disorganization seem like plenty of motivation, without any conspiracy needed.
Edit: I forgot to include, in my mention of Venezuelan disarray, that (according to Trump) the US also used some sort of nebulous cyberwarfare capability to selectively shut down power to parts of Caracas, and presumably forcing the military bases to run on back up power. This is a very effective way to instill fear and disorder in its own right. It also allows the possibility of even greater penetration into Venezuelan military and/or civil infrastructure systems, this is not necessarily true but could have been another contributing factor to the seemingly spectacular disorganization of the Venezuelan army.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
Maduro’s wife is (was) an actually-significant political figure in the regime, getting both of them would be necessary for any kind of clean regime change plan. If nothing else she would make a great figurehead for a continuation government, there’s a fair chance she would’ve been the successor had only Maduro been grabbed.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
I’m American and my company uses a single pool of PTO. It’s a small startup-esque company, so maybe that plays a role? I will say that my friends in tech (I’m a mechanical engineer) have simultaneously better PTO policies and worse PTO cultures than anyone else I know. Plenty of allowed time off and they barely use it.
TheDemonRazgriz
3mo ago
I’ll admit it took me a few tries the first time I saw it too, lol, it’s just a “one of these things is not like the other” puzzle. It’s 2 pairs of thematically-matching images and 1 odd one out.
TheDemonRazgriz
3mo ago
Are you just supposed to pretend they don't exist, or something?
Everything I’ve seen out of Britain in the last few years suggests that yes, this is exactly what a Good Subject is supposed to do.
TheDemonRazgriz
3mo ago
Under modern customs, irregular combatants are not considered total outlaws and are still expected to be treated properly as POWs. I'm not sure if this is explicitly codified in international law or in US military policy, but it is certainly the general case. For example, even when fighting Al Qaeda or the Taliban, coalition forces were not allowed to summarily execute surrendering enemies (which is essentially what the Navy is being accused of in this case). The clearest example of this is the case from a few years back where an Australian special operations unit was found to have executed a group of Taliban prisoners because they could not fit them into their helicopter. The fact that the Taliban troops were neither regular military nor civilians did not protect the Australian soldiers from prosecution.
This doesn't even get into the question of whether the drug runners should really be classed as "combatants" in the first place as opposed to merely "criminals". If they are properly classified as criminals then these strikes are summary executions (or arguably just murder), not legitimate combat, and would be illegal anyway... but that's not really what's at issue here.
The victims were all members of the movement and have said that they kept quiet for so long because they didn’t want to tarnish his memory and in so doing hurt the Cause (possibly rightly so). They don’t gain much by coming out with accusations now, and “the cause”, in as much as it still even exists, isn’t really tied to his memory anymore. If you’ve hidden something like that for such a long time it’s easy enough to just keep on keeping quiet, but by the sound of things, one now-old-lady ex-activist decided she couldn’t take the truth to her grave, and then the floodgates opened.
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