2D3D
9hr ago
Ah thanks for the clarification, I've heard women bitch that men get more pay for combat and also complain that women are underpaid so I conflated the two in my above. Forgot that women want the pay without having to work it. Not sure I'd blame this one on feminism as much as shitbirds being shitbirds.
I understand that pregnancy out is a problem in the USN. An ex-chief complained to me that half his female rates get knocked op before any sail longer than 6 months, married or not. Not sure about girls wanting to get a train run on them while at sea, or even having enough demand from men. I still believe the YMCA is the accurate depiction of USN proclivities.
2D3D
14hr ago
Women prefer to have more kids when they are mothers and single women do posit married life as an idealized outcome, but women are pretty shit at playing the dating game as young stupid adults because the typical dating pool there is other young stupid adults.
Frankly, the idea that motherhood is necessary for the continuation of the state is a modern concept that strikes me as a loose end looking for a connection. There has never been a state that died out as a result of female population collapse because a surplus of males just means the males invade another land and take those females for themselves, like what Arabs and Africans are doing to Europe. Europe will survive and even thrive (demographically though certainly not politically) in future because the women will be forced into a natalist patriarchy, or they will be replaced by homeland imports that do accede to the natalist patriarchy. At this point the local women may wish they were in fact conscripted so that they can fight back against their fate, but of course without help from any icky men who may themselves be Potentially Right Wing.
2D3D
15hr ago
I wonder if this is reading too much into some pretty standard complaints about kid TV shows that existed since the 60s. Before Netflix parents had limited options even on devices, so kids shared a TV. Girl, guy, animal, older incompetent adult is a defensible permutation that prepubertal children can all enjoy equally. Shows that need emotional depth or interpersonal conflict are not parsable by kids in the same way being punched is, so action becomes default. The girlboss moments are irritating but its also a subset of kidbossing moments that dominate the show as a whole. Plenty of shows have the young disrespected kid of either gender show up the bossy adults or meaner kids. The boy ignoring his haughty crush and driving her mad because he's been lobotomized is an example of the anti-girlboss.
With regards to women in military, honestly its just hollywood optics. No one makes a drama about the paperwork grunts filing accounting claims in uniform. Intel briefs are not generated from spies downloading the USB inside the Chinese fortress mountain, its some dipshit shifting 20 million excel rows and trying to make Pivot table fit on a powerpoint. Men and women both are basically zombies fighting off the urge to OTH discharge early regardless of vocation.
We don't put many women in combat arms because combat arms already are fully staffed up (Ukraine is an exception because they are in a war and short notice conscription is pretty useless hence their manpower crisis). Women want to be in combat arms for that sweet combat pay, not because they're so intent on getting shot for their applebees discount. Since most combat isn't actually combat but rather patrol with random encounter chance and the fighting is 'shoot until you figure out where the attacker likely is before calling in an airstrike' the type of Vietnam era long endurance close range engagement is functionally over. Still need to boot on hill to hold, but there are plenty of backline vocations that need warm bodies there to begin with.
2D3D
15hr ago
Conceptually I think Kateleen Kennedy needed to escape the shadow of George Lucas's vision of Star Wars in order to keep the franchise bloom. Disneys purchase of Avengers hit an annual franchise value of about 2025USD3b/y (taking box office receipts and doubling it to include merch and ancillaries) 3 years after purchasing Marvel Studios and kept that hot streak going for 6 years before jizzsploding a 6bn double whammy with the Avengers finale. Lucasfilm stormed out the gate with 3bn right when TFA was purchased, but had a long tail of legacy stuff holding back development - canon itself was a drag. Or rather the sandbox kept retreating back to Jedi and Rebels. Abrams leaned too far into memberberries, Johnson composted the memberberries but also salted the earth, and Kennedy had no idea who was doing what.
2D3D
1d ago
Crystal Star is so out there that I'm convinced that, along with many other books, are actually edits of preexisting sci fi works hidden in the deep drawers if authors that were repurposed to Star Wars as long as there was a spaceship and magic involved. Black Fleet Trilogy, Crystal Star, even Courtship fall in this category. Once new concepts totally unrelated to established main canon are introduced as standalone concepts, then the whole fanfic aspect becomes obvious.
2D3D
1d ago
Agreed. Woke stuff is the sign to me that the writers room is too cowardly to push back on any potentially bad idea so the chance of a misfire increases exponentially. Peak woke resulted in absolute trash entertainment; something like The Society Of Magical Negroes would never have been greenlit outside of peak race grovelling.
2D3D
1d ago
Agree that TFA is reheated leftover memberberry slop. It hits the familiar notes one needs but did nothing new and reverting to "plucky rebels vs big bad evil" is a stupid move. Breaking out of the narrative confines of Empire Vs Rebel is what would allow new factions with new starships and uniforms to pop up and drive the toy empire that Star Wars really is. You need new cool outfits for heroes and bad guys both, and cool ships.
TLJ however is I would defend as good in concept but fucked entirely in execution. Wiping the slate clean is a Bold move, but it didn't actually wipe it clean enough and was so badly done Disney scrambled for a recovery in the memberberry double-down of TROS. All of that means the Star Wars aesthetic is suck with "dull desert robes" or "stormtrooper". No one is cosplaying Admiral Holdo, but thats also because Rian Johnson apparently told his costume director to make her (and Rose) neither sexy nor intimidating but still feminine which is a fucking insane combo for someone meant to be a goddamn military leader. Not even a fucking collar to cover up her expose nape, where the fuck do you put rank pins on that grandma ballgown.
Poe is, what, a O-4+? Rank in Star Wars is fucking ridiculous, seems to go lieutenant-captain-commander-major-colonel-flag ranks. Rank titles are based on how cool they are and the jump from captain to commander in Star Wars seems to be Captain-Major in real life, and Colonel is "highest field rank" while Majors mean nothing in the show.
In any case pre-demotion Poe would absolutely have had pull to request clarification of operational details from the OIC (I'm sure Vice-Admiral is Star Wars speak for 2nd highest dlag, but Admiral for a "fleet" of like 6 is fucking pathetic). Rank doesn't stop a shit order from being shit and grunts do expect more than "just do it" because clarifying objectives is what lets NCOs or field officers be flexible in fulfilling the task instead of rushing to wait. Holdo is a shittily written character who had no reason to hold out her (stupid) plan, and that whole space siege was definitely the worst part of the movie even without this weird slapdown of a dickwaving session.
2D3D
2d ago
While posters below are right that the Bantam/Del Rey era only featured one resurrected Emperor plot, you are broadly correct still because every new Big Bad Evil Guy was basically a new version of the Emperor.
As for wherher you can do a good star wars movie anymore, I think its possible (Andor as a movie could work) but that misses the point. Disney doesnt need a good star wars movie. It needs something that hits the toyetic fan cosplay dopamine to keep kidults continually spending money on roleplaying their Luke selfinsert, whether as fighter pilot (as Chris Roberts of Star Citizen fame promises his fans) or as badass warrior monk. George Lucas lucked out with mandalorian and stormtrooper/clone armor being so cool, otherwise no one would buy into the universe. Using lego set sales as proxies you can see most people resonate with OT and PT stuff still, not ST. Pure failure from Disney, but they decided to slaughter the golden goose to engage Modern Audiences.
2D3D
2d ago
"MOOOORE. MOOOOORE. MOOOORE". Literally the only meme that came out of the sequel trilogy that isnt used mockingly.
2D3D
2d ago
The points are good but I think it is too generous to RJ. TLJ came out at peak "subvert expectations" writing room trickery, a holdover from writers strike quality downfall coinciding with mass internet theorycrafting. Being intentionally obtuse may have been RJs objective, but you can be obtuse without being stupid.
TLJ had 2 main features: Hype Moments, and Narrative Scorched Earth. The Hype Moments (bomb drops, lightspeed ramming, horse chase, luke bombardment, Dark Rey Tease) work in isolation but make no narrative sense for any preceding work. The Narrative Scorched Earth was Stunning And Brave, but ultimately too blank for the Story Group to work with.
Where TLJ fails is in making its characters just so fucking unlikable. Everyone is an incompetent stupid ugly retard soyface, so the fans did in fact want the dead old characters back because they were just that much more compelling than the replacements offered up. RJ smugly challenged coonsumers that their theories were wrong, and gave nothing compelling in return.
The ultimate mistake of course is to return to "Mystery Boxes Are A Substitute For Plot" Abrams as the writer/director for Ep 9. In the hands of a competent writer director there maybe could have been some salvaging of a new story from the ruins of the TLJ and TFA narrative. Galactic level chaos, competing philosophies of the Force, new cool ships, whatever. Nostalgiagooning is the worst memberberries to hang a story off of and it is telling that Disney is trying desperately to find a time period where Star Wars can exist again without relying on the bullshit of the Sequel Trilogy.
2D3D
2d ago
Kevin J Anderson (author of the Jedi Academy series and the I, Jedi fixfic written solely to close narrative loopholes) is one of the worst writers of the Bantam era of Star Wars Expanded Universe, and there are an incredible number of contenders for that title. Timothy Zahns Thrawn trilogy and the Michael A Stackpole series of X Wing novels were adrenaline shots for the franchise legacy, since much of the rest were middling quality and canon inconsistent.
The easy way to see which aspects of the canon worked are to see which survived the disney transition: Thrawn.... yea thats it. No Kaarde, Calisto, Xizor, Han Solo Twin Brother... most concepts are too dirt tier to be worth maintaining. There is deep lore here that is not worth brain cells to expound; suffice to say Star Wars was a limping property that needed the prequel trilogy to give narrative space for the key ingredient (jedi, superweapons, cool armor soldiers) to thrive in the clone wars narrative era. The dearth of sequel era works is precisely proof of the narrative graveyard that Disney ran the franchise into.
2D3D
2d ago
From what I recall these foreigners were not trusted with guns because they are too incompetent and presumably disloyal. Foreigners were pressganged into mobik support as porters and trenchdiggers. They're basically GLA workers with shoes pre-issued. Russia would have 0 problems sending them all to die, problem is whether they would even do so in the first place. Actual adventurers seeking to kill are rare and usually are ideologically motivated or psychologically damaged or have ulterior motives like the columbian cartel boys racking up xp in Ukraine before going back for the real war. Most pressganged foreigners in Russia end up in low risk (to Russia) roles that still need to be done, which means Russia needs to liquidate these guys by some other means to avoid paying out recruitment bonuses.
2D3D
2d ago
You're right that we both perceive reality differently. I live in a different information space that prioritizes different facts than even the me of yesteryear, so there is no point in considering value matrices. We do however live in common physical reality, and that is where the subject of wunderwaffen often breakss.
Existing ordinance is already hypersonic at terminal phase and interception is at this end phase because thats where the targets and thus the defenses are. Intercepting at glide isn't done even for normal long range missiles because no one knows what the target is at that point and detection out that far is spotty.
The objective of a weapon is to destroy a target. To do that you must hit a target. but also do enough damage. There simply aren't enough Russian hypersonics to actually make a difference against static targets. Again, what are we trying to destroy? An airfield? That gets repaired 30 minutes after a barrage ends, and you need dozens if not hundreds to kill the field. A HQ? We don't live in command and conquer where you have a big juicy target known in advance. Something moving? Not happening. Hypersonics materially change the theoretical interception calculus at the phase where interception doesn't happen anyways, so in the end what matters is your magazine depth. That is what Russia lacks and why I dismiss Russias hypersonic arsenal as wunderwaffen.
And Russian drones are good as terror weapons and ambushes. Not as peer conflict combined arms enablers. We aren't going to see Russia sniping individual vehicles or soldiers marching openly in contested territory. because NATO simply does not fight that way. Russian drone support at the squad level is definitely operationally tighter than NATO doctrine with the combination of organic support at squad level upwards, but drone grenade droppers or fpv ambushers simply aren't relevant against a competent force (which the Ukrainians are not). If drone spam was easy against competents then Hamas would have spammed drones against IDF. Iran did the thousand black shahed drones of allah spam against Israel for limited effect.
2D3D
3d ago
Noble Russia only wishes to defend and kills invading Nazis by the thousand! Defensible line close to border, which is why the rush to Kiev was Just A Feint.
I can linkspam endless analysis from CSIS, UK MoD, Mediazone etc citing 200k+ dead and 900k+ total casualties, but you have already declared, in true Russian fashion, that the data presented cannot possibly match your perceived reality and thus the data is simply false. By charting out negative space in a positively affirmed stance - the claim is Russia has high casualties, but Russia has not collapsed, so Russia cannot possibly have high casualties - the positive affirmation is dismissed by claiming a negative. The affirmative case of Russia having collapsed is not the one being presented, but deliberate conflation serves to blur the boundaries of the argument and widen the counterclaim without needing to make a falsifiable claim.
Semantic games are irritating enough, but this conjuring of fallacies never actually employed by opposing viewpoints is not smart arguing, its cowardly retreating into "I never said that but you actually said something and you are wrong so I am right by default."
So, what is it you are claiming
Russia continues to take land and destroy the AFU.
or
Russia is content at defensible lines close to their border where they can shell, bomb, and drone AFU fortifications, push forward with small forces to provoke a Ukrainian counterattack and then kill the counterattackers
I never said Russia losing a bagillion men will stop Russia, I have CONTINUALLY said thar Russia is extremely happy to toss minorities into the meatgrinder and that it can do so forever. I have always said that Russian C2 is a clusterfuck of ineptitude that prevents armor mass (which doesnt even exist anyways because Russian maintenance was is and always will be shit), that offensive operations are adhoc using whatever meat and alibaba junk vehicles can be scraped together, and that it is a slow attritional grind that Russia can sustain forever because sunk cost fallacy is the most consistent behavioral pattern of failed regimes everywhere.
I have staked my affirmative positions. I don't rely on casualty counts as first principles to justify a negative claim, I see Russian failure - defined against Russias own stated objectives and not the inferred "we are just defending ourselves" cope - and find ample proof of why they fail. I can do the same for Ukraine as well, since you can repeat ever C2 failure of Russia with how Ukraine absolutely bumblefucked their Zaphorizia offensive and their Kursk retreat, and those DID materially affect Ukraines theory of victory. The west also loves to imagine that Russia will break under economic pressure and valiant resistance because it keeps western hands clean, but whether thats a fiction they internally digest because they're incapable cowards or feckless warmongers is subject to. ones own biases. Its not like Europe has actually expended any of its actual warfighting equipment its doctrine calls for. Whether that doctrine is a good one is a different question, but the assumption that Russia is defeating the west by sacrificing the 1st Guards Tank Division for a bunch of javelins and legacy 152mm carted out of Bulgaria is just so adorable.
2D3D
3d ago
Hypersonics dont do shit. SSM intercept rates are low enough to begin with, yet they fail to consistently degrade tactical level CNC nodes meaningfully, let alone operational. The idea that Russian hypersonics will lock down the backline is entirely out of step with platform count and magazine depth. What is a hypersonic supposed to cripple, an airfield? A big tent labelled "HQ"? A carrier battle group? Russia throwing Shahed (I know they have a local name I refuse to use it because these worthless copycats need to be continually reminded that they prostrated before Iran to get ANFO tipped glorified microlights) is proof of total incapability, not genius adaptation.
Wunderwaffen don't matter. If Russia wants to really cripple the USA now, investing in flashy hypersonic shit that pops off a few times and then gasses out isn't worth it. That Poseidon thing sounds much better, since you can annihilate US/Western economic overmatch by choking off Panama, Suez or North Sea, not to mention cutting underwater cables or pipes. Pity that stuff is not sexy enough for the retards staffing the Russian MOD. Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is my wunderwaffen!
2D3D
3d ago
Copesnorting Ukrainians and cheerleaders are their own problem, but directionally they were never as bad as "rossiya stronk forever" antiwest ziggers whether DSA communist or antiwoke conservative. That doesn't mean the RUSSIAN theory of its path to victory is any more resilient. Russia force generation is "on pace" with casualties, and they recruit approcimately 20-30k a month. Math it out however you want, the Russian milbloggers are themselves bitching about massive losses for meters of dead dirt. If the AFU recruitment crisis is so abysmal and they're a shattered force with no men left, then why is Russia not just steamrolling back to Kharkiv or Kherson, the prizes won back early on. You have to make an affirmative case for your own theory of victory, and the Russian theory of victory has, ever since its inception, been "we can lose bodies forever". Their only major true victory in any war since founding was annihilating the Reich, and THAT had its own 'the enemy is on its last legs and we totally didn't lose the entire 6th to a useless siege' copesnorting.
Again, its fucking Ukraine. Flat empty land, equivalent rail gauges, fully mapped out, and literally the poorest country in Europe BEFORE the invasion. To fuck this up is fucking pathetic. Without nukes modern Russia would have been curbstomped to the dustbin of history like the failed traitors they were to the Kievan Rus and the Golden Horde. Muscovy delenda est.
2D3D
3d ago
Meduza confirmations of Russian KIA based on orbituaries were far more in line with Ukrainian estimates for casualties based on a 4:1 wounded to dead ratio, while Russia was just hilariously reporting "no casualties to glorious Russia, Kiev quakes in fear as we approach". Russia only started reporting casualties when Wagner untouchables were being killed. Ukraine also underreports their own casualties by massive amounts but the zigger smugposting about "well we still have missiles and tanks and people to throw so the west is clearly wrong about how much we are losing" is just neener neener loser shit. If you've got the resources then fucking win you useless shitheads. Either you're facing a tough opponent which explains your abysmal pace of advance or you're gassed out against a weakling. Dean writes that "all we have to do is wait for the enemy to lose the will to fight" is a great example of Bad Theories Of Victory, but "we can win but just choose not to" is a strong contender for the top prize of copesnorting. Its fucking Ukraine, a flat open land that used to be your own fucking territory and with compatible rail gauges. If fucking ziggers can't take on their bumfuck rural cousins then they aren't a great power exercising regional strength they're just the dying office boomer bullying juniors while whining about the good old days.
2D3D
4d ago
Russia can only do that because they punish deserters and disappearing into the Russian countryside sucks. US made the same deal for local allies in Afghanistan and every ANA proceeded to both defect to the taliban and demand asylum in the USA for the promised riches available to every ubereats rider. The EU making that offer just ends up with a shitload of refugees making demands for asylum from 'forced recruitment'.
If throwing thirdworlders into the war to cripple Russia is the objective, the easier thing to do is pretend to be a Russian recruiter and hire from the opposing tribe. You'll have instant fratricide if you get a Sunni Iraqi in the same recruiting office as a Shia Iranian, and the only way to stop them infighting will be to hire a mutually hated enemy like an Indian to be introduced. For the price of a Novorossiysk embassy officers annual Lada payments and an Air India flight, the west can flood Russia with "volunteers" that will murder each other on sight and leave the corpses for noble muscovy to deal with.
2D3D
4d ago
I honestly think that excuse from Russians (and Ukrainians) about not massing armor due to drones is just cope. They aren't massing vehicles tread to tread, mobility kills on vehicles are still overwhelmingly mines and artillery is for (great) effect. No, the slavs just suck at coordinating multi prong advances whether it is armored or unarmored, and doing ATV spam is proof of incapability not prudence. Russians certainly effected multi prong armored pushes in Kursk when the ground wasnt mined and torn to shit, and any massing being within artillery range is fucking criminal since you shouldn't be massing within 5km of a first line of contact and if you're rushing to wait under an enemys artillery range then you're fucked whether you're sitting in an ATV or a BMP.
2D3D
4d ago
Russian victim complex is as bad as SJW. Why is everyone mean to me after I belittled and degraded them at every opportunity. I am such a victim boohoo. Maybe thats why progressives love Russia, they love a victim narrative especially if its against the USA.
2D3D
4d ago
Ukraine isn't achieving any of their headline goals. DPR and LPR are basically North Korea, unreintegrable and a net drain on the patron. Russia also can't achieve its goal (rapid overthrow signalling rebirth of the empire) and is just seeing how long they can keep throwing racial minorities into the meat grinder to get a mission accomplished banner. I maintain that the Wests continued interest in Ukraine is not (just) to continue poking the bear but to ensure the bear doesn't get kidney punched and does a nuclear spergout. Leashing the dog is better than letting it run wild in its dying breath.
2D3D
4d ago
Its pretty clear from satellite imagery that Russian vehicle parks were drawing down rapidly, but the pace of drawdown slowing is largely to do with tactical evolutions. Russias strategy of infiltrate and airstrike identified strongpoints has no place for armor partially because armor has many more limitations but simply because there isnt anything useful available to call up: vehicle parks are dry, the vehicle operators suck shit, and generals cant coordinate for fuck.
I am curious as to what the CIA Mossad SIS info you cite is, because all evidence shows that Russia has lost the thousands of vehicles cited byOryx and has not meaningfully replenished their TOE, and there is no statement from any of those entities to the contrary. If the claim is that Russia has a strong reserve that it can spring forth when the moment is right, there us no evidence for that still: the 1st Guards Tank Army and 4th Guards Tank Division (fuck Russia for their inconsistent nomenclature) are not on the front and are still functionally degraded, sitting pretty in the LMD for propaganda purposes. Russian C2 is degraded by institutional incapacity and the adhoc nature of any push being scraped from whatever is present. There is no actual reconstituted Russian Bear waiting to roll over once Pokrovsk breaks.
Chinas support of Russia seems the most hilarious part to me. China is buying up Russian oil continually, but it is RMB-effected (nominally presented in USD terms) so the actual levers of international finance to punish either China or Russia are limited. Yet China does not provide explicit military equipment to Russia, instead selling dual use components and forcibly adapted shitty golf carts or ebikes for Russia to get blown up. If China was kinetically supporting Russia like North Korea did, Russia would get its thousand tank fleet immediately: there are about 2000 type 96 idling in mongolia visible from Russia, pristine tanks preserved in sandy but dry terrain, needing less to reup than even tanks atmosphere protected facilities.
Instead Russia gets alibaba Desertcross jeeps and suicide tier dirt bikes. If Russia had better frontline electrification they would get the fields of Light Electric Vehicles with 40 mile range that China produced in the hundreds of thousands back in the 2010s. I don't doubt that China is happy to see western treasure expended on internal conflicts far from its border, but China didn't need to start this fight. Its not like the US seems to care about China given that the US is busy preparing for a Venezuela regime overthrow (Monroe is BACK baby!) while China is gearing up for a new Sino Japan war.
2D3D
5d ago
Women who play dnd roleplay alot more than munchkin. Killing baddies is the boring part for girls, just like dialogue filler is boring for guys. The girls (including autogynephiliac men) I dm'ed for back in college were really into their female characters being put into near rape scenarios ("I remove my clothes in this prison to increase my stealth check roll!" "uh... ok...you can just stay in your enchanted leather..." "I roll for wisdom check if I remember that the enchanted leather is stealthy enough" "pass" "fuck roll again"). I know that a pbp forum had to offload all ERP because the main threads were getting clogged with sex roleplay and wasting turns for the rest of the party.
True that the girls never wanted anything to do with the guys playing. Creeps or munchkins are equally irritating. and the presence of a woman just makes that much worse. Though I have seen relatively healthy dnd groups among younger kids where girlfriends tag along just for shits and giggles, and thats honestly one of the best outcomes for an irl dnd session. Getting epic failstreaks to be funny requires good DM and good players and thats generally pretty rare.
Fuck that in my company there was a guy who faked a pregnancy in basic. The others in his gang claimed he was possessed by a female spirit and would commit suicide (kill him)if she lost the baby, so he had to be on light duties till the baby came to term. Our top hat accepted it and instructed him to be locked in the infirmary till delivery, then he could resume training. As skaters go that was a particularly stupid one, but not the last by any means.
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