remzem
11mo ago
Vance was picked to appeal to the white rust belt vote. If Kamala is indeed the successor this could turn out to be a pretty decent choice. I don't see the DEI president helping much with the blue collar vote. Given her history as attorney general I don't see her appealing to the minority vote that well either. Maybe she'd poll better in the great lake swing states since she's been less supportive of Israel and could get some of the black/muslim vote there? Israel will be throwing big money around if she doesn't pivot on this and is the nominee though.
remzem
11mo ago
I'm still somewhat surprised they've been able to block Suez transit. Since when was Yemen a major power?
Seems like at current levels of technology navies are just outmoded? A lot of fundamental issues are stacked against them. Sea and air based suicide drones are available to countries with very low levels of development. Missiles available at levels barely above that. On the other hand anti air is more costly to develop and operate.
We see this dynamic a lot in the Ukr-Rus war, modern western AA and the higher end Russian stuff can be overwhelmed with saturation attacks via mixed drones + missiles. At sea this problem is compounded given that you are even more limited when it comes to your supply of AA missiles and can't easily be resupplied. Also with the advances in surveillance there is no way to hide at sea. You are basically a floating AA with a limited supply of missiles sitting on a featureless plane. Seems like this dynamic will just get worse with computer vision and other basic AI features becoming more and more available which can overcome EW.
On the other hand when it comes to shutting down land based missiles and drones the task has become nearly impossible. They can be hidden from satellite and drone surveillance on land though this is more difficult than in the past, but the biggest problem is shutting down supply. There is no obvious "missile factory" or industrial supply chain that we can target or sanction because we've globalized industry which means parts can just be sourced from all over the place and the weapons pieced together on site or at a neighboring country and then shipped in bypassing sanctions. Again we see this with the sanctions failing when it came to Russia and the US looking like lunatics complaining about China exporting washing machines due to "dual use" components helping Russia's war. Navies just kinda suck now.
remzem
11mo ago
Do you not remember her primary run? She is horrible in front of a camera. She has a tendency say absolutely nothing in an overly long way by repeating statements. Even the left made fun of her for it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=72vUngNA9RM
She has Hillary levels of charisma, and a weird mumble giggle that seems to pop up mid sentence for no apparent reason. Only thing she has over Biden is that she's unlikely to die in the next few years.
remzem
11mo ago
The situation neatly demonstrates both the advantages and disadvantages of highly centralized power.
On one hand as you say they will likely get everyone in line behind Kamala in time for the election and I'm already seeing people shift to commending Biden for having the humility to part with power. People who days ago all collectively had their knives out and were shivving him while shouting for him to step down. It'll all be memory holed by next week.
On the other hand if power wasn't so centralized there would've been more dissent in upper leadership as people who recognized how unhappy the base were with Biden and how poor his mental state was would be more willing to break rank. Instead all the higher ups in media and the Biden admin covered things up and pretended the emperor wasn't naked which got them into this predicament where 3 months short of the election the dissent from the rank and file got too extreme to ignore.
So I guess it's a double edged sword.
remzem
11mo ago
US urges citizens to leave Lebanon on 'any available ticket' https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c80xxeqel5po seems like something is close to kicking off
remzem
11mo ago
No American blood need be spilt in conflict with Iran? Why would it need to be even if we let Israel get steam rolled? Does Iran have ambitions in the Americas? If it's about oil and imperialism than plenty of American blood has already been spilt in the ME and Israel was less helpful than Europe.
remzem
11mo ago
Covid totalitarianism was memory holed so I doubt this slogan would work, but tbf the closest thing German's have to any collective identity is their weird guilt pride. So I don't see calling him a nazi backfiring by angering Americans of German descent, if anything it would be extra effective on them.
remzem
11mo ago
eh, objective / subjctive, if you believe that aliens are going to ascend you to the next plane of existence it's not odd to eat the phenobarbital laced apple sauce as their comet reaches it's closest approach to Earth. Still odd af to everyone else.
From what we've seen of the war lately the Donetsk situation is a huge mess, they've been begging for reinforcements for months. Russia is entering Toretsk, captured most of Niu York, and has pushed through all but one defensive line between them and pokrovsk. Which is the main logistical hub for the entire region. Not even western analysts have been able to make sense of this border raid. Russia can just use conscripts to defend their own soil so it's unlikely to pull troops out of Donetsk. To use it as a bargaining chip they have to actually hold it, which considering they can't hold fortifications that have been built up over years seems unlikely given they will have to defend villages without those fortifications and with less established supply lanes, air defense issues etc. Capturing and sabotaging a Russian nuclear plant to create an environmental disaster just makes them look insane to the rest of the world.
Only explanation that makes some sense to me is that this is a Bibi situation, they are getting pressure to tie things up or at least begin winding down before the November elections and are spending 5k+ lives to escalate things and keep the war hot.
remzem
11mo ago
Is creating instability abroad and then inviting everyone in not an intentional goal of our leaders?
remzem
11mo ago
From a military pov it's a stupid choice, though they don't really have any good choices to make. They are not in the same position they were in with the Kharkiv offensive. Back then they had a large manpower advantage now they are increasingly at a disadvantage. The likelihood of it pulling Russian troops out of Donetsk is pretty close to zero. If seems like Russia has actually called Ukraine's bluff and doubled down on Prokrovsk and Toretsk so far. They already have ~30k reserves in the north due to the Kharkiv offensive. The whole point of that offensive was to force Ukraine to commit more forces to the north and away from Donetsk, pulling even more Ukrainian forces out of Donetsk to start a new offensive is almost a gift to Russia in the long run.
The tactics they are using might be working now, but it's more due to no one expecting anything this stupid. ISR is simply too good for rapid incursions deep into enemy territory. They will outrange their logistics and EW support and get picked off, which seems to already be happening in places like Gir'i where they attempted some more deep raids. Lots of fog of war still but it seems there is already a more static front forming around Sudzha in the east, Snagost in the west and Korenova to the north their are still saboteur groups operating further out but actual controlled territory hasn't moved much from these general areas since the initial raid. This is territory they will now have to try to defend without the advantage of years of built up defenses and established logistics routes for supplies, GL with that.
Guessing it's more politically motivated. PR and propaganda like a lot of people have been saying, though even western pro ukraine sources seemed surprised by this. I'm thinking it might be similar to Bibi's situation, Zelensky and co are cooked once the war ends, they seem to be getting increasing pressure with elections coming up to start negotiations or commit to a cease fire. By invading Kursk any negotiations are now off the table so they'll stay in power for longer. Not sure what the long term goal is, but I guess if you're hanging off a cliff's edge you cling to whatever you got.
So after all this time the story that the US intelligence agencies are leaking to the WSJ about the attack that turned Europe into an obedient lacky of the US, took away whatever leverage Russia had on them to oppose US foreign policy interests, and simultaneously enriched US companies via liquid natural gas exports helping the regime avoid recession by an economic down turn created by it's terrible economic policy turns out to be this nonsense?
Conveniently the people involved are not Ukraine military, they are some private nobodies, and not Zelensky since the CIA article goes out of it's way to make sure he is absolved of any responsibility even painting him as being a good boy of the CIA and asking to stop the op. The only person implicated that we will ever prove even exists and is alive somewhere on Earth right now happens to be one general that has already been sidelined into a position where he is irrelevant to Ukrainian leadership and simultaneously immune from any sort of prosecution that could potentially uncover information that conflicts with the CIA story.
yea, nobody with a brain is going to believe this. I guess it's better than Russia blew up their own pipeline.
remzem
10mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout
a limited hangout is "spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further."[1][2] While used by the CIA and other intelligence organizations, the tactic has become popularized in the corporate and political spheres.
remzem
10mo ago
League is Chinese? They might be owned by tencent, but is any of riot's dev work done in China?
Interestingly Final Fantasy 14 went fairly woke this expansion and it is now the lowest rated expansion they have put out. Though to be fair it's also just some of their worst story telling and quest design and they brought in a new writer.
remzem
10mo ago
hmm for me the woke was mostly in how fake the world felt. A land that's full of diverse peoples that have been at war until just recently but they're all holding hands and singing kumbaya and if there happens to be a disagreement here or there it's fixed in an instant by something like tasty food, or resources. They've all had their cultures diminished to nothingness in just a few years of Galool ja ja's rule or something. Usually it's interesting to see how Japanese interpret foreign cultures via anime and other media since they are so insular they don't seem to bothered when the opinions are incorrect or offend. This felt like they were working with outside consulting groups until they got the usual soulless western media style fictional cultures that have all their rough edges sanded off.
remzem
10mo ago
Seems like Iran could have nukes pretty quickly if they wanted. Probably don't want them since it'd just be an excuse for even more sanctions from the west. Better to have the potential to make a nuke quick and the launch platforms but not actually claim to physically have one or test any since as soon as you do you become a pariah state. Unless you have foreign governments in your pocket like Israel I suppose.
Are you trying to convince us with this information that is irrelevant to anyone but you, or convince yourself? If yourself why bother us with it?
If it's not the orwellian stranglehold on all information in the west that is fueling the vibe change will your team finally relinquish control of it? Free Durov? Stop lawfaring Elon Musk. Maybe I can finally browse reddit for news w/o it being freeze framed photos of Kennedy stopped at just the right moment to make him look as stupid as possible "organically" voted to the front page.
I doubt it though. This post basically reads like, "It's not totalitarianism! it's Kamala's youthfulness!"
If you were trying to convince us and not yourself than I have to say no, I still think you lot are totalitarians.
remzem
10mo ago
Yea I could see it just being bad writing did mention that in my original post that this is probably the worst story we've gotten since ARR. Spending so little time on each culture would also force them to appear shallow rather than it being woke consulting.
It was weird that they seemed to feel so rushed to tour all the local cultures and not leave them open to exploration later considering this is supposed to be the 1st book in their new arc. ARR introduced a bunch of different people that we had smaller interactions with or whose story didn't really come to the forefront until later. You interact with Ishgard early on, but don't go there and really get a deeper understanding until Heavensward. A lot of the Thanallan / ala mhigo and lala plots don't get wrapped up til Stormblood even. This gave the player some mystery or stuff to think about and look forward to in later patches. For w/e reason we didn't get that with Tural. Every culture needs to be tied up with a neat bow by the time we leave.
With the lay of reeds quest this still felt woke to me. It wasn't written like, "tradition works," the point of it was that our lib arts degree majors know better than unfeeling STEM. Wuk isn't a traditionalist, bizarrely she seems to know nothing about her home country despite having lived there her whole life, she is more a "listen to people's lived experiences" type.
For me it was hard not to pattern match it to woke though with the shallow feel good cultures, girl boss mc, beloved characters being sidelined for the sake of propping up new mc etc. Even had a disney esque themesong. There has been a lot more western pressure on Japanese brands and the ff14 community is probably one of the more degenerate and weird ones out of all the mmo's. They've pressured yoshi p to make perv changes like allowing female gear on male chars and stuff.
remzem
10mo ago
Are you kidding? there is still a huge difference between the average republican party member and the average republican party voter. Are you forgetting they booted their speaker for the first time in history? Does the propaganda just work differently on you guys? You can't remember basic political happenings from a year ago? Is the dissonance between what you're told to believe and what actually is just so great that your mind starts to paint over things?
remzem
10mo ago
So we can't post links to well thought out articles without wasting time regurgitating parts of it in our own words or adding pointless takes, but we can just randomly showerthought now?
remzem
10mo ago
It delayed funding (money laundering) for globalist wars for a few months. After that it changed nothing, but this isn't because the republicans in congress are captured by Trump. It's because they rebelled against Trump and enough of them were talking about voting with the democrats to push the funding through. The reality is that Johnson isn't a Trump populist. He does what the other snakes in congress do and pays lip service to Trump, Trump is shallow and doesn't learn from his betrayals so this works, and then ultimately does what the neolib/neocon police state wishes.
They don't care who Trump appoints to get elected because the elections are already rigged in a, heads I win, tails you lose way. If Oz is a charlatan and loses then their guy that is willing to go to bat for the imperialist occupiers still gets in via the dem candidate. McConnell will even play with republican campaign funding to help that happen.
The anti-vax thing is just another weak man. Republicans were no more anti-vaccine than dems, if anything the vaccines cause autism thing was more of a California hippy, "nature is good, not nature is not good" thing prior to covid totalitarianism. The friction came when the state decided to force it on people and use a bizarre and illegal interpretation of OSHA rules to pressure employers until that was struck down. Before that there was a lot less pushback and maybe if the globalists hadn't held back news that the vaccine had passed trials til after the election to help their team republicans would've been more for it.
Not really pro Russia, but anyone that fights the globalists I can't be too mad at. They are the biggest threat to the world and have the most immediately negative impact on my life so the more they bleed the happier I am. If its some place that I have no real connection to doing the work and taking the blows in response all the better for me. They lost a lot of prestige in the middle east but unfortunately plenty of lied to Americans had to die for it, when Ukraine collapses and they lose even more face no Americans will have died (the mercs and spooks that go there are only American on paper, and in reality are globalists or opportunists chasing globalist cash that know what they're getting themselves into)
I also don't buy that Russia is an aggressor or much of a threat to America at this point (they are an impediment to global empire though). This ignores a lot of history and hand waves away all of the globalist / NATOs foreign intervention and expansion. NATO acts a lot like mafia protection racket on behalf of DC / Brussels, destabilize and regime change parts of the world, then offer protection from the chaos they create, with the implied threat that this could happen to you as well if you don't submit.
Also just pro common sense, there has never been any chance that Ukraine could win, regardless of how much of our money the globalists pour into the country (while skimming lots for them and their friends in the MIC). Trying to hunt for Russia's nuclear red lines is just profound idiocy, continually escalating and using each non response as a reason to be more confident that there will never be one is just... It's rare to see something that stupid even with how corrupt and full of yes men willing to human centipede there way up the ladder globalist institutions have become. Almost hope they find the red line at this point.
This wasn't originally a reason, but over time after having followed the war closely I've just come to be absolutely disgusted by the Kiev regime. From day one the propaganda coming out of that place was just insulting. On par with urban legends of North Korean propaganda. If Zelensky played golf at all he'd shoot nothing but hole in ones. You expect a certain amount of propaganda during a war, but it's been absurd. Seeing how their border with Europe has become a drone monitored barbed wire spectacle that the Republicans here could only dream of, and watching people get beaten and ripped off the streets for conscription, watching them and the globalists concoct ways to force or deport Ukrainians back into the country after they support asylum for muslims that have passed through a half dozen safe countries... The way troops are sacrificed and sent on suicide missions to Crimea, or across the Dnieper to Krynky for months... all just for Zelensky's publicity. It'd be abhorrent even for a war that had some achievable end goals, but for one that has no purpose beyond robbing western countries, psyoping their increasingly delusional populations into misplaced jingoism and enriching some treacherous Ukrainian elites it's just disgusting.
They could've taken defensive positions with all the western kit gifted to them, ceded some more territory and taken a big L yes, but really dug in and shortened the lines enough that even with their limited population they could've had plenty of reserves more concentrated AA etc. Basically the ability to keep the front stable for years and convince Russia to negotiate, instead they blow it all on some publicity stunt to impress their western masters complete with Hollywood movie trailer (shhh). This operation's goal was to "liberate" the part of "occupied" aka separatist Ukraine that has the least desire to be part of Ukraine and the most Russians... now they randomly invade Russia, again lengthening a front they already can't man, for an op that even western propagandists are struggling to invent a purpose beyond PR for. Weeks later we have a stalled out offensive with the biggest Ukrainian losses since their summer offensive and their Donetsk front is collapsing...
So yeah, best of luck to Russia, to AFD and FN, to Trump, to the Ukrainian men trying to escape, to Elon Musk, and really at this point anyone that isn't just parroting what they read in globalist media.
remzem
10mo ago
nah, empires need to continually expand to keep the spoils coming for the interior. Globalists exhausting themselves in the ME and eastern Europe, especially with China on the rise could easily end them. At the very least it'd ruin their hopes for some eventual whole world centralized control.
It might be legal and make sense from the view of the party but it's pretty skeezy from just an average citizens pov. There is no time for any democratic process to be involved in picking a successor, which is pretty amusing from a party that is "saving democracy." Also, the polls are bad because he's senile. Staying in as the president while dropping out of the race and claiming it's just has to do with the polls conveniently ignores the context around the polls. They don't exist in a vacuum.
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