johnfabian
11hr ago
Good rule of thumb for US military interventions: once all the toys are out of the toybox, they're going to get played with.
A message to people trying to negotiate with the US is that the longer you let the build-up continue, the more you're going to have to give up to call it off. The effort involved in assembling these many military assets in-theater makes its momentum hard to stop. The inertia is just too much.
johnfabian
11hr ago
This has been very much the tone of Trump 2.0. It was either this or "Operation Bacon420"
johnfabian
3d ago
I really enjoyed seeing Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie in theaters recently. Very funny movie, and the first time in a long time where I spent so much time afterwards thinking how they managed to do the various things in the film. You'll probably have to wait until it's on streaming because it's a niche Canadian release with limited theatrical rollout, but I'd definitely recommend it
johnfabian
3d ago
It's very easy to imagine the reverse scenario too - a Democrat president asks all those who think fascism has no place in America to stand up, most (or all) Republicans refuse because they understand that when the Democrats say "fascism" they don't mean the Nazis, they mean them. Then all the Democratic-aligned media say look at all these fascists.
johnfabian
7d ago
In one of those weird things where it feels like the internet is actually fulfilling its promise, Angine de Poitrine has gone viral. They are a... uhh, alien? rock group of two guys from Saguenay in the interior of Québec. They play a simultaneously incoherent and very danceable style of microtonal music. They've been active for a few years but blew up in the past two weeks thanks to the video I linked of them playing a studio session in Rennes. Previously obscure if you weren't a real music nerd, their current tour is now selling out everywhere.
The youtube comments are quite funny, but there's also a realization that this is the kind of music that is both cool and totally unmarketable, and so it sort of falls to the whims of the algorithm as to whether unique, interesting, and talented artists like this can find a following.
johnfabian
9d ago
I think much more simply, the conception is that "soldier" is an occupation, and "warrior" is a social class. A soldier's execution of his duty is because of the contractual and occupational obligations foisted upon him. A warrior fights because it his nature.
johnfabian
10d ago
To somewhat ludicrous extremes, when the Sardaukur (the supposed uber-warriors) are taking 3-to-1 casualties fighting the Fremen women and children.
johnfabian
11d ago
Germany performed respectably during the war and lost because it was facing multiple peer adversaries simultaneously+the British naval blockade.
Why did Germany end up facing multiple peer adversaries, including the world's greatest naval and industrial powers?
I don't think you can shrug it off as mere coincidence. The German approach to diplomacy in the decades leading up to WWI was aggressive and confrontational, they very much set this strategic situation up for themselves.
johnfabian
11d ago
All of them are liberal constitutional democracies, however.
johnfabian
22d ago
This reminds me of the maxwellhill conspiracies, in that there's a sort of semi-flattery by those who posit them that evil world-controlling billionaires do the same things for fun that the lazy and unemployed members of /r/conspiracy do. (Also in that they are retarded and the smallest amount of skepticism derails them instantly)
johnfabian
23d ago
Even if you were to define "fascism" solely based around your personal feelings toward and experience with the government (rather than some greater, big-picture perspective), vaccine mandates were in no way a novel or unique feature of COVID. There's a long history of them in the United States, at various times and for various reasons.
That was more classical siege etiquette, not medieval. In medieval times sieges tended to be very prolonged, assaults rare, and in general hunger was the main tactic used to force surrender.
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