faceh
5hr ago
I think you just want an Iran that you can keep supervised closely enough to not blow up their neighbors unexpectedly.
Since multiple other ME countries have been nominally brought 'into the fold' (I won't pretend this is a permanent thing) there must be some path to it.
faceh
5hr ago
I simply don't believe that.
I also believe that almost every other country aside from the U.S. has been overstating their capabilities because culturally that's how you scare enemies.
Whereas the U.S. has been understating its capabilities because that's how you take enemies by surprise.
The surprise being that the U.S. is even further ahead of everyone else than anyone, even the U.S. realized.
faceh
5hr ago
"When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."
Yep. That quote lives in my head rent free these days.
I think that literally sums up the entire mindset of every non-Western government. And even the West was only 'pretending' to eschew their strength because the last time a 'strong horse' decided to act out, a LOT OF PEOPLE DIED.
And it runs deeper than merely being an 'honor culture,' they simply CANNOT respect any power that doesn't demonstrate the ability to execute them on command?
I gather that for the Iranians, literally nothing matters but showing strength/hiding weakness. Beating them into the ground is a necessary but not sufficient to get them to submit, you've gotta somehow let them pretend to be victorious even if you are in practice locking them in a cage.
And on the flip side, they will interpret you trying to pay them off or negotiate with them WITHOUT guns... as weakness, and act accordingly.
If this is accurate, I don't know how you "westernize" such a culture without giving them multiple generations to assimilate.
I think that for a long time people thought that the US was relatively toothless
The situation seemed to have changed from the Cops being aware that the assassin underworld exists and willingly staying hands off (Jimmy the cop asking John if he's working again), to one where the Cops are functionally powerless since the assassins operate an international network with friends in high places.
Then the "High Table" seems to be some absurdly powerful entity that still operates outside the law, but its not clear exactly how powerful (dropping whole busses full of armored spec ops at the Continental is a clue), to, yeah, seemingly being a world power of some kind.
My 'headcanon' as far as that goes is that national governments accept their existence and use them as a nonmilitary method of intervention and conflict resolution, and this is what sustains the overall assassin economy (which otherwise barely makes any sense), as long as the High Table can keep collateral damage to a minimum.
Hence why John repeatedly going ham at dance parties/nightclubs becomes a real problem.
Even in dictatorships, individual leaders are usually fairly replaceable, as we have seen in Venezuela (and will likely see in Iran), and actually achieving lasting results tends to require putting troops on the ground to enforce your will (as we've seen with the failures in Yemen) and a real plan for victory (such as was lacking in Afghanistan).
I mean... if a geopoltical foe demonstrates the ability to bypass your entire defense grid and either abduct or atomize you at any time... do you have any CHOICE but to accept their terms?
That's what seems new. No protacted invasion, no insurgency period, just a chopper full of spec ops on your roof, or a missile through your window. Most of this conducted from the sky.
Only completely decentralized organizations, similar to the Taliban, could expect to withstand this particular approach. If your leadership is forced to hide in a maximum security fortress at all times just to function, are they even 'sovereign' over their own nation?
faceh
18hr ago
I'm willing to believe that the technological gap wasn't as notable prior to 2005.
But then I read accounts of Operation Desert Storm absolutely stomping the Iraqis in Kuwait, and then the invasion of Iraq proper ALSO stomping their conventional military.
And my conclusion is that the U.S. has, since the Cold War, always had the logistical capacity to bring overwhelming force to bear on any country with an ocean view. And air supremacy to ensure we can get in and out quickly and with minimal casualties, absolutely NO need to have permanent presence.
The decision to engage in protracted occupation and nation-building, therefore, was absolutely an intentional one and the ill-defined goals of such an endeavor, as opposed to "kill off opposing leadership until somebody accepts surrender", were tailor made for creating an expensive quagmire.
I'm extremely curious to see what types of movies get made about these campaigns. There's really no way to couch them than utterly triumphant for the U.S.
I think I can go on record to say that I bet the U.S. has the capability to kill Vladmir Putin at almost any time if they committed the same degree of planning to it, but the nuclear deterrent is the only thing that would ALWAYS shift the risk calculus against such a move.
China remains a question... but I suspect the apparent failure of the Chinese-made anti-air/anti-steal radars is a wake up call for THEM too.
Point being, the U.S. military is unquestionably the apex predator of the planet, but much of its doctrine for a long time required that this never be made explicit.
No more.
It really does feel like the late-game stages of a Civ IV game where your economic and tech tree advantages have snowballed, so you can roll a doomstack of advanced military units up to any city on the map you want and take it out in a single turn.
And maybe, similar to Civ, the only thing that might stop such a power is if the other players can all agree on cooperation against that player and launch coordinated efforts to rein them in before they achieve space victory.
Which is functionally impossible in the real world.
And yes, I think Cuba goes splat later this year.
More to the point, it really makes you think that the whole problem of the last twenty years was leaders who were aware of U.S. dominance but had other goals in mind, probably including enrichment of cronies, that depended on the U.S. sandbagging hard. And arguably this is just the U.S. being let off the leash. We haven't even removed the leg weights yet.
"Soft Power" has an abysmal record, methinks. I do think Trump prefers the carrot to the stick, but the stick gets results.
I would agree, and quite a bit of the issues are editing more than anything.
One thing the first film thrives on is efficiency. Most sequences are short, aside from two major action set pieces. The highway chase/fight in Revolutions AND the burly brawl are too long, and aren't really serving the story in the way the subway fight does in the first one.
Lot of fun ideas at play though. The films at least had somewhere to go after the sequel hook from the first.
faceh
1d ago
lol.
Sort of makes the point, though, doesn't it?
If you have an actually interesting idea for an existing franchise... maybe its better for everyone if you mold it into its own thing, first, so it doesn't carry baggage from said existing franchise that might weigh it down.
Me, I don't know how to tell when its sensible to take a new idea on an existing series and add it to the canon, vs. create a new, wholly unrelated work so it stands on its own.
I just know that more series than not end up wearing out their welcome when they go that route.
faceh
1d ago
Another reason might be a bit more mundane. The Terminator made the most of its limited budget, but some of its visual effects looked pretty ropey even at the time. Half of the appeal of Terminator 2 was getting to see a story very similar to the original (indeed, the plot beats and structure are so similar that in some ways it's more like a remake than a sequel), but with an expanded budget and VFX wizardry.
See also the Matrix Trilogy.
They did their damndest to keep the visuals impressive and upping the ante thanks to unlimited budget. And sort of succeeded but also sucked the actual heart and soul out in the process.
It takes a lot of skill to create tension, in general.
T1 there was the whole "this is an implacable, nigh-invulnerable killing machine that is programmed to kill YOU, specifically. And your only defense is a squishy standard human."
T2 had that, PLUS the target was a child, who now had to befriend his own implacable, nigh-invulnerable killing machine.
Repeating the formula starts to break that tension, even if you ostensibly escalate with a bigger, badder robot. Harder to manipulate audience expectations.
Similar with Predator. You can keep iterating "now they're in the 1700s. Now they're in Japan. Now its an alien planet and there's 10 preds." But how do you get audiences to buy in a third, fourth, fifth time?
And the Alien series. "Oh man one of these things was terrifying. How about HUNDREDS of them?"
Where to do you go from there without being derivative?
I think this has also hurt the John Wick films. By the third, we know he's going to be pull his suit up to cover his head and will never take a serious wound during an action sequence.
By 4 he's surviving MULTIPLE 30 foot drops.
Its still great action, I still like the films, but the appeal in the first was that he did seem vulnerable.
Its should, I think, sometimes be easy to say that you can capture "lightning in a bottle" only 2-3 times and unless you're a generational talent at filmmaking, things will inherently get formulaic if you keep trying to recreate that success.
Glad that @TitaniumButterfly post made it in, it didn't get enough attention at the time.
Some guys (hell, myself included) could do for printing that out on a poster and using it as a mantra.
faceh
1d ago
The single greatest compliment I've ever heard a wife pay to a husband was "casual omnicompetence."
i.e. she considers him capable of addressing literally ANY problem. He has the toolset, the mindset, and the physical capacity to unfuck anything. And not just mechanical issues either.
And from her perspective, he does so while barely breaking a sweat. Though he will tell you, outside of her earshot, that sometimes it really does irritate him and/or stress him out to have to keep doing this.
But he knows he's appreciated, so that hardly matters.
faceh
1d ago
I've wondered about REALLY cheating, Get some convincing fake tattoos, ride a motorcycle but ONLY on safe, low speed roads, swig water from a flask, go gambling but only use optimal betting strategy... etc.
Just mimic every single "bad boy" signal without the element that makes them actually dangerous.
But if you're shooting for a long-lasting relationship, probably not good to found it upon a lie. Unless you're willing to then become that guy as the relationship progresses, at which point just go all in at the start.
This girl had intentions of being an EMT (she was pre-med in high school, just as I was pre-law).
On net, her premature death may mean more people have died than otherwise would have had she been there to help them.
And yeah, donorcycles are terrifying in an existential way. Careening down a highway at 70+ mph with only a thin layer of leather and (if you're not dumb) an armored helmet all you have to protect you from the 10 ton metal boxes that are ALSO zooming around at 70 mph.
Because I intend to live a long time you will never catch me on a motorcycle.
"UNFORTUNATELY" girls tend to be attracted to risk-takers/bad boys, so I've also pointed out that Motorcycles and Tattoos are indeed a cheat code for getting a woman attracted to you.
But my rational brain simply cannot accept that tradeoff.
"Nontrivial chance of death, dismemberment, or permanent disfigurement/paralysis... vs. a +2 modifier to my charisma and +50% modifier to seduction any time I flirt with a girl with a tongue piercing and 3 STIs."
Its BECAUSE these things signal bad decision making (well, call it 'lack of fear') that women hone in on them when they're in a certain kind of way.
And it must work because no matter how often these guys manage to remove themselves from the gene pool, their DNA persists.
That said, some of the most ardent bikers are know are single and have no kids (or grown children) so it really is their life to lose. And seem to have a fatalistic acceptance of the risk.
faceh
1d ago
Phew.
We broke up first semester of college.
I didn't take that well, but eventually got over it, and made some efforts to reconcile. We were back in contact and generally on good terms by Junior year.
Then, Senior year, her boyfriend was teaching her to ride a motorcycle (sans helmet) and she lost control and slammed into a stairwell, spent a little bit of time braid-dead in ICU before the plug was pulled.
I sometimes think about that guy and have to assume he's got even more trauma from it than I do. And I was fucked up about it for almost a year and a half.
The indelible mark it left on my personality is that I refuse to leave any relationship I actually care about on a bad note. Even if we had a knockdown drag out argument, I will come back around to make sure the last words we exchanged were in some way positive.
Like, the horror of thinking that the last interaction I had with someone might have been negative and painful... and then they unexpectedly DIE leaving that as the last remaining memory of the friendship, it would kill me. I cherish the memories I have of that girl and I'm so glad that I did in fact attempt to patch things up.
Even though I now know that many people don't really care that much, and I'm just like twice as empathetic as the average person... I still think its the right way to go through life.
faceh
2d ago
there was some initial level of spark or interest or “this guy is attractive/high status” even before the flirting started.
Yes!
In some cases they were initially ignored or rejected. Usually they were able to do something that marked them as highly skilled or high status within the social context they knew each other.
That's actually helpful. Rather than competing against every other theoretical male out there, you just have to be near the top of the local hierarchy in whichever subculture you identify with.
But what you definitely can’t do is be unimpressive, boring, standard, and ‘merely nice’, and expect any attraction to develop.
Unless you're so passively charismatic that people gravitate to you on personality alone.
I've known some guys who were simply 'unimpressive' on paper but have such good 'rizz' off the cuff that for anyone present in that room with them, they manage to read as high status and talented.
So with a few repeated exposures they can be successful with women. Saul Goodman uses this tactic in his spinoff series.
But I notice they also tend to maintain short, superficial relationships with others.
I dunno. You have to account for how certain types of dude (drug dealers, hippie spiritualists, amateur DJs) manage to snag decently attractive women despite overall being social outcasts.
Nevertheless some people find a great partner there, I just honestly never tried because I believed they were just hookup apps,
The problem is they try to be both. The people who are interested in hookups are mixed in with the ones who are more serious and there's some incentive to lie and obsfuscate.
Part of the issue is that the apps take no responsibility for (lack of) filtering your matches for people who are truly interested in relationship vs. those who are idly swiping or just want a hookup. They don't even try.
And they don't give YOU the tools to effectively filter. Its a laughable abdication of responsibility.
They want their algo to control who you meet/encounter but accept no blame if those choices are not actually good matches.
I mean, Redpill is very right about how you actually build attraction in a woman.
If you literally just approach a girl in your friend group and express interest then yeah you can expect to be rebuffed.
For reference my first GF was a girl I'd known since freshman year of high school. We finally became a thing Senior year when we were both at an out-of-town academic competition thing. It just so happened that I ended up DOMINATING the competition (in my category) and I was riding that high.
So as things went I ended up making out with her in the hot tub of the hotel, then headed up to her hotel room. Didn't bang her at that point alas.
Wasn't clear until later that it was my performance at the competition and the thrill of being in a new town that finally piqued her interest in me.
I still have extreme fond regard for that girl. Sadly she is dead now.
More to the point, most of my best friends from college, and several of my current buddies, all have relationships (up to and including marriages with kids) with girls they had known for a while, either in college, from work, or through mutual friends.
Its the safest filtering mechanism I can imagine.
The apps, by comparison, are just an ongoing humiliation ritual.
faceh
2d ago
Could have been me that linked it, its a fun one.
Watch Hardcore Henry for a full length movie experience by the same director.
I think I'm done with dating apps, forever.
SAME. I've gotten genuinely offended by the choices the algorithm gods have seen fit to provide me. They will receive no patronage from me any longer.
For the new year I'm going ALL IN on maximizing my IRL social 'surface area' and being enthusiastic towards any woman who seems single and available and otherwise doesn't have a disqualifying red flag (which, sadly, is a lot of them).
Do I think this is likely to work out for me? Well, not quite. Do I think it'll be more fun? Yeah.
I'm well aware that I'm still competing with the apps in a real sense, but there also seems to be a general vibe shift where even the women are realizing these apps are wasting their time and ruining their emotional state.
I was flirting with a bartender at a local cigar bar (normally populated by Boomers, so I stood out) earlier this month, got her number, it was a fun little back-and-forth, finally felt kind of alive and in the game. She seemed enthused to have me around.
THEN she turned up with a boyfriend on Valentine's day (not sure how long he was in the picture).
It beats being ghosted.
faceh
3d ago
My preferred mode of forming relationships, particularly romantic ones, involves knowing the person in some personal level (at least 'acquaintance,' possibly 'friendship') before actually initiating romantic intent.
It is possible that the ACTUAL version of modern dating everyone is forced into is innately distasteful to you.
I want to be 100% clear that the current paradigm for finding a partner WAS NOT NORMAL until just over 10 years ago. And it SHOULD NOT BE ASSUMED to be the best way to go about it.
But it occurs to me that anyone under 30 lacks knowledge of the before times, so apps is just how it is done.
The apps have an unfortunate effect where every time you invest emotions early on and get burned, it teaches you to withhold your enthusiasm. But this means you intrinsically don't approach a new date as an exciting new opportunity. And so you don't bring that enthusiasm to the date, and its less likely to result in 'chemistry.' (assume that this same thing happens on the other side!). And so it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy.
- No willingness to invest emotions due to past rejection.
- Neither party is particularly excited about any given date with any given person regardless of how they look 'on paper.'
- No individual person seems interesting enough to justify investing in.
Both sexes end up withdrawn and reluctant to invest... so even if one side gets interested after the first or second date, the other might not reciprocate.
I suspect that if you met someone more 'naturally' you'd end up getting a sense for your compatibility before you had to enter the romantic arena with them... and that's a foundation you can build some enthusiasm on!
So your distaste for dating might literally just be how the apps have 'trained' you through repeated operant conditioning, and isn't really just because you're too comfortable in your routine to let somebody else in.
You'd let somebody in, but they have to get past your filters first. And too many people are failing at the first 'filter' because of how you're meeting them. Whereas knowing someone for a bit BEFORE expressing interest means they're PRE-FILTERED to a certain extent.
Anyway, my two cents, as I have been in the trenches for a long enough time to see this problem arise in many men.
faceh
3d ago
I immediately open up my Polymarket account and max out buying shares of "will the bank robbers escape" (no) and "will the money be recovered" (yes) and any other related markets that I currently possess insider info on.
I agree.
Some of my favorite series of all time basically just advance the plot in interesting directions, let the characters have meaningful development, and then, (key point) put those characters in situations that actually, believably challenge them.
The Bourne Trilogy (I generally don't acknowledge anything that came after) was incredibly tight on scripting, never let the scope grow too big. Add likeable characters here and there, and then ratchet up the tension on them.
More options
Context Copy link