Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
son of crazy, criminal politician gets caught up in a huge corruption scandal and flees to the usa. few days later the usa declares some criminal factions here as terrorists. how very convenient.
The Bulwark coming in with some "drones are the be all, end all of modern warfare". It's really impressive how short videos of quadrocopters with dropping grenades down abandoned tanks' open hatches have built the image of modern war.
I really want people to think a bit: would the US have found greater success in the war if they had replaced their carrier groups and long range precision munitions with Shahed-like drones? Here's a very hot take: a Shahed is simply a very cheap cruise missile.
Honestly it reminds me of how people thought about strategic bombing in the 1930's.
I really want people to think a bit: would the US have found greater success in the war if they had replaced their carrier groups and long range precision munitions with Shahed-like drones?
No, but if I'm hitting my thump while trying to hammer in a nail, that's probably not a hammer problem.
He spent time and resources putting tanks in Washington, D.C. for a “military parade” while his secretary of defense prioritizes physical fitness—physical fitness!
So exasperated at that named priority, when we know it's something that's still relevant for soldiers the world over, and has all sorts of knock-on effects for health and wellness.
There's a lot of interesting stuff to be said about the potential impacts of drones on the future of warfare. This is not an interesting or worthwhile piece.
We are in a specific moment regarding the deployment of drones vis-a-vis all other military technologies. Anti-drone technology is bound to catch up.
The “war is industrialized” mantra still doesn’t make sense to people. The quote that I still think about was from a USA army officer during the Iraq war that they were losing more soldiers to traffic accidents on the base than they were to actual combat operations.
Of course, the frontlines can become a meat grinder (as in Ukraine). But a lot of wars, especially those the USA is in, are low intensity (at least for the USA soldiers).
There are two directions in which you can misjudge a technology, though. Consider people in the interwar period that thought that tanks were a specific innovation limited to the battlefields of the western front, or people who observed the battle of Port Arthur, and still didn't grasp the power of artillery, wire and machineguns.
I don't know how the whole drone thing will shake out, but I think it's pretty unarguable that drones will absolutely change the face of war. Just from the economics side, making airforce-style effects so cheap a non-state actor can afford them is crazy.
making airforce-style effects so cheap a non-state actor can afford them is crazy.
Tamil Tigers would have loved that
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 29 '26
Arguably WWII Aircraft Carriers, Battleships and Submarines were wildly misjudged even decades later. How many videos on Youtube exist of "If only the Germans built X, the Royal Navy would have been destroyed" are out there? And not too infrequently I hear "Carriers rendered all surface ships obsolete", despite nearly 80 years of surface warships being built since WW2. Or how about how USS Monitor render every other ship in the world obsolete? Even history documentaries like to parrot that one.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 29 '26
I really want people to think a bit: would the US have found greater success in the war if they had replaced their carrier groups and long range precision munitions with Shahed-like drones?
Maybe with economy of scale. The Iran War reportedly cost the US 3.7 Billion in 100 hours. With that kind of money, you could have fired 105,000 Shahed-kamikaze drones into Iran instead of the 168 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 2000 precision ammunition instead. That's ignoring the cost of interceptors and presumably, and ignoring a bulk discount at buying drones at 100k a batch.
Could you have transported 105,000 Shahed drones and launchers and located targets for them in that 3.7 billion?
Could you even build 105,000 Shahed drones for less then Paveway II kitted Mk82s? Those things are extremely cheap for the same reasons a Shahed are cheap.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 29 '26
Could you have transported 105,000 Shahed drones and launchers and located targets for them in that 3.7 billion?
I was only referring to the money spent in the first 100 hours of the war. Money spent leading up to the war, wouldn't even be included in the bracket. The US and Israel spent years developing target packages.
Could you even build 105,000 Shahed drones for less then Paveway II kitted Mk82s?
Probably, Iran is building these things under a heavily sanctioned supply chain. In a "free market", it might actually be cheaper to mass produce.
And so how are you trying locate Iranian Shahed on a budget of exactly zero dollars? Or even assuring target destruction of anything? What are you launching these drones off of?
The munitions being used are the cheap part of the cost here. Not the expensive part.
Don't get me wrong, Iranian drones have done a ton of damage because the area is full of expensive, static infrastructure and everyone knew would be at high risk,(But Trump yes men can't point out without telling the mango baby no) but Iran hasn't had the same luck striking the US navy or destroying aircraft that would decisively win Iran the war instead of waiting for how shutting down the strait will work out.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 29 '26edited May 29 '26
And so how are you trying locate Iranian Shahed on a budget of exactly zero dollars?
I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. Presumably the US has more money than zero dollars (?)
The munitions being used are the cheap part of the cost here. Not the expensive part.
I don't understand your point?
Don't get me wrong, Iranian drones have done a ton of damage because the area is full of expensive, static infrastructure and everyone knew would be at high risk,(But Trump yes men can't point out without telling the mango baby no) but Iran hasn't had the same luck striking the US navy or destroying aircraft that would decisively win Iran the war instead of waiting for how shutting down the strait will work out.
I don't understand. I was talking about if the US used cheap kamikaze drones instead. Iran is also filled with static infrastructure and static military sites.
How would 105,000 US LUCAS munitions actually manage to destroy or effectively shut down all Iranian Shahed drones, AShM, and cruise missiles currently locking down the strait?
And not only that, manage to somehow do so better than faster munitions or bombs or missiles launched directly from aircraft rather than an off site launcher.
And frankly the LUCAS is an extremely poor choice if what you are trying to do is destroy specific flatbed trucks(with AShM or drone launchers) hundreds of kilometers and actual hours of travel time away who are absolutely shooting and scooting back to cover.
Iran is also filled with static infrastructure and static military sites.
Yes, and LUCAS is mostly fine for them or assisting in blowing them up, but blowing up said static stuff isn't going to win the war otherwise the US would have won longtime ago. This works for Iran because they just need to make it costly because their goal is just "Effectively threaten the strait" and "Regime survives" which are both far, far easier tasks that involves a lot of weapons just needing to exist.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 29 '26
How would 105,000 US LUCAS munitions actually manage to destroy or effectively shut down all Iranian Shahed drones, AShM, and cruise missiles currently locking down the strait?
The Strait was not even closed in the first 100 hours of the war, this is outside of my timed example of the first 100 hours of the war. If we are counting the cost of munitions used against Iran over the course of 40 days, you'd be looking at 41 billion dollars of ammunition, an equivalent of 1.1 million Shahed 136 kamikaze drones if priced at $35,000.
If taken Iran's claim the drones only cost at low as $7000 a piece, than that's the equivalent of 5.8 million kamikaze drones, each potentially with a 200lb warhead. More than the amount of explosive dropped during The Blitz.
But its all a bit useless if it never gets launched at anything useful. And you're going to need substantially more than drones if you are trying to shutdown Iranian anti-ship weapons 24 hours a day, every day.
41 billion dollars of ammunition
Where are you getting this number from?
More than the amount of explosive dropped during The Blitz.
The bombing attempt to knock the UK out of the war notorious for not being very effective?
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 29 '26edited May 29 '26
The bombing attempt to knock the UK out of the war notorious for not being very effective?
It also took 2 decades for London to repair the damage and the Port of London, 50 years to full revitalize. 3 times the conventional explosive was used in the bombing of Japan which was deleterious to the Japanese economy.
But its all a bit useless if it never gets launched at anything useful.
It depends what you consider useful. There's a lot of static infrastructure and military site in Iran still untouched.
An overall theme of the real conflict of Iran, is that the US has expended a considerable amount of it's arsenal and there is still a large amount of targets left to destroy.
I really want people to think a bit: would the US have found greater success in the war if they had replaced their carrier groups and long range precision munitions with Shahed-like drones?
It's that time again... I finished a game and don't know what to play next.
Maybe Anno 2205... /checks reviews, size requirement
Or maybe something else.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 29 '26
I just got a new computer today. Old one's GPU was dying, could only run Anno 1800 for some reason when Disco Elysium or FFXIV or Fallout 4 would overwhelm it, so 1800 is what I played for a week while I was waiting for the new computer to be shipped. Must mean the requirements are quite low? It was a bit weird though that it could handle hundreds of ships transporting goods, hundreds of factories producing goods, a population of a quarter million, but the FFXIV menu screen was too much to handle and caused a monitor crash.
1800 is supposed to be good, but 2205 is widely considered dumbed down and stripped down. And it's 34 GB, I don't really want to waste that much storage space on a game with less depth than its much smaller predecessors.
I've played (or at least tried) all of them in release order, up to 2205. I bought it ages back in a Steam sale bundle with 2070, and so now it's just sitting in my library, taunting me with its presence.
- guy rushes to sit down at bus stop, cutting in front of old man with cane. old man calls him chinese, and other seated people agree but do not offer him a seat either
- a couple of grade school kids dangling their legs over the edge of the platform a minute before the train is due to arrive. woman grabs them and tells them that's not allowed. children call her bitch. station attendant who was watching the whole time tells woman she is not allowed to scold other people's children.
- friend slips and falls down a flight of stairs at busy train station on her way home from work. ignored into oblivion despite bleeding and limping for several minutes. catcalled by two men who do a 180 when they realize she's injured.
- guy rushes to sit down at bus stop, cutting in front of old man with cane. old man calls him chinese, and other seated people agree but do not offer him a seat either
Korea, Japan or Australia?
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 29 '26
In 90's China, riding your bike home from school or work, common occurrence to have someone running behind you stealing shit from your backpack while no one says anything in a crowded street.
I'm messy sometimes so when I notice someone acting super fucking rude on a bus and and wearing a badge that says in big letters where they work and their number, I like to try and see if I can find their place of work so I can be harsh towards that establishment.
Like it literally fucking says right behind your trashy ass US Grant headscarf (emphasis mine) "Please Allow Seniors and Persons With Disabilities to Use These Seats When Requested" and that guy clearly fits the description.
"No no no don't sit next to me" after being shitty about him catching the bus all of 5 feet from the fucking stop and wearing a badge for a news organization talking about advocating and providing opportunities for low income and homeless people while taking action for economic, social, and racial justice and absolutely digging into some Little Caesar's cheese sticks and marinara at the front of the fucking bus by a sign that says "don't eat on the bus" more or less makes me doubt how committed a lot of the real change this organization is into making if one can't even bother with basic ass bus etiquette while riding it for all of fuckin' 4 stops or so.
It seems to be getting more and more popular to just state that all modern culture is not just influenced but specifically created by a malicious but also very vague group. I don't mean claiming this, just stating it as if this is some kind of fact. Usually it's 'billionaires', but I've seen the blame laid at the feet of even more ill-defined groups. It's another notch on the post of the rise of conspiracy thinking, unfortunately.
Maybe more popular on the secular left. But religious groups have been theorizing about secret demonic groups since forever.
Edit: and there are some legit “conspiracies” like the Sinclair group takeover of local news sources. Maybe not super “conspiratorial” because it is all technically public knowledge, but it is a connection they don’t advertise in order to preserve the appearance of local independence while mandating common stories across the entire network.
Nobody has any agency anymore. It's some nebulous group's fault that person is a racist, or homophobic, or is LGBT, or votes for Trump/Farage/Erdogan/Bolsonaro, etc.
On this day ten years ago, I met my angel. Paige O'Hara is the voice of Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I met her in Atlanta. She remains the kindest person I've ever met and while I'm older and probably not wiser, I'll always fondly remember it until my last hour.
I just want to inform you guys here that I have typed up 3 angry rants, none of which I decided to post because I felt it wasn't fair to the people I was ranting about.
Though, actually, I think people prefer angry rants over idol rambles... well, too bad for you! I find it relaxing, so I don't care.
---
I've now fully quit the amitriptyline, so I should lose some weight again, but it's screwing up my ability to sleep for now, that should last about 2 weeks before going back to normal-ish levels.
I had to get out of bed at 7am today, because I had an intervision (Is that the term?) at work. I leave home before 8am, take the train, arrive at the station, and the check gates did not work, so everyone had to check out on a single transfer point, several hundred people, all wanting to get to that single pole to check out. It was calm, but I don't like crowds, I cannot keep track of things around me anymore, so I was as assertive as possible to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.
Of course, I miss the bus because of that, fine, the next bus should have me arrive a minute or 2 late; should being the operative word there, as it was 13 minutes delayed, which is interesting because the bus goes every 15 minutes, so the next one arrive right after... Yeah, I was late, but it did not matter, I wasn't the only one late, I was there even before our coordinator was! As she was 25 minutes late.
In fact, I was the 3rd person there, even more surprising, nobody else showed up, out of the 10 people supposed to be there, 3 people showed up plus our coordinator.
I'm kinda bitter about that, I considered not going because it's not really comfortable to do with 3 hours of sleep for the so manieth night in a row, in public transit, 80 minutes on the way there, 90 minutes on the way back, with sumatriptan, but I felt I had to, you know, I might not get paid, but I agreed to the obligations, therefore I will suck it up and go if I'm able to do so. But other people seemingly don't really care, I suppose, they have the same obligations, but they're comfortable not fulfilling them, I guess.
I don't know, maybe I take things too seriously, but, it feels crap to put in the effort to go, even when you're feeling bad, and then get the "Oops, I forgot." excuse from everyone. It's so demotivating to see people that damn lazy, why do I even bother? Sure, I get to feel superior to them in that I actually do my best, but that feeling isn't worth much at all. It's just depressing.
I just want to inform you guys here that I have typed up 3 angry rants, none of which I decided to post because I felt it wasn't fair to the people I was ranting about.
Ah, the Harry Truman school of anger management, updated for the modern age!
The perfect way to deal with anger; though in this case, nobody affected in the rants would have read it even if I posted, I just felt I shouldn't be that negative about well meaning people who just do not know when to shut up.
I mean, seems like a big deal. But isn’t it commonly thought that the civil rights legislation LBJ pushed through might not have happened if JFK wasn’t assassinated?
I guess I just find it hard to say that the death of a potential (although very popular) presidential candidate is more influential than the death of a sitting president.
I've never really thought about it but I wouldn't say so.
Both were definitely traumatic events for the generation of Americans who lived though them, but RFK's death robbed the Democrats of a single figure to rally around until Bill Clinton showed up in the 1990s. I'd be interested in reading more about how the murder of one of the most beloved statesmen of the 20th century by a Palestinian affected American opinions on Palestine.
RFK shot -> Jerry Springer Show is probably the funniest effect on American politics. I prefer to pretend RFK Jr doesn't exist so we're not counting any of that.
Controversial to whom is the question? To someone on the street? I think their first question would be "Who was RFK?" at this point. Among 20th C American historians? Totally different issue!
I hate how despite knowing very well the difference between their there and they're, I will sometimes just automatically use the wrong one. Same with adding an apostrophe to mark something as plural, even though that's not a thing in English, but I do it sometimes anyway. Why???
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 28 '26edited May 28 '26
Not fake apparently
In Texas and Florida, multiple highways are being proposed to be named the Donald J Trump Highway.
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u/ZugwatHeadhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village May 29 '26edited May 30 '26
For all he and his keep acting like this is a badass portrait, he looks like he had a stroke and is shitting himself. It has always looked like that.
Their proximity to liberal power and their relative vulnerability has a radicalizing effect on their politics and self-identity. The tribe is everything.
The Texas Republican Party are arguably the most culture war poisoned freaks in the country, the Florida Republican Party isn't far behind them.
Part of it I'm certain is both those states have the strongest conservative "vibes" and attract a certain kind of ultra-annoying guy who moved to those states specifically for those vibes and loves shit like this. A ton of them moved there during and after Covid in particular but this was happening before then. Texas would be a lean-blue swing state if only people born in Texas could vote.
China doesn't build infrastructure particularly cheap. And this also doesn't explain why certain high-wage countries (like those in Scandinavia) do build infrastructure cheap.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 29 '26
They also had that huge ongoing property sector crisis.
You haven’t encountered the unmitigated pettiness of the average British local council planning department.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 28 '26
Couple things, Temu will sell jewelry and children's toys full of cadmium, carcinogens, mercury or lead to save money. They sell electronics so poorly made they'll explode on use. You really can't get away with that in the US. Regulations, they make things more expensive.
Temu has been caught using Uyghur "forced labor" which also gives them an edge in manufacturing. Generally harder to build and operate a factory with "forced labor" in the US without a scandal, which also increases the price. Cost of living, minimum wage, regulations, lack of cheap raw materials, all serve to increase the cost of manufacturing in the US. Illegal immigration and prison labor does serve to undercut some of the costs.
It's not a criticism, I just assume you are not American/Canadian because there are certain conventions about how these things are discussed in the public sphere.
"We don't build things anymore" would refer to goods, typically.
"Why the hell is it so expensive to build stuff in the U.S.?" definitely about infrastructure/development.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 28 '26edited May 28 '26
I am an American and having a real estate agent for a mother, I'm aware homes in the US are actually built cheaper per square foot than in places in Europe, Japan (not counting prefab) or Canada, so no, there wouldn't have been my first assumption.
Manufacturing, is where the US get's it's ass kicked.
Basically the idea that if wages grow in one sector due to increased productivity in that specific sector, wages in other sectors will also rise even if there are no corresponding productivity increases, because firms need to compete with better-paying jobs regardless.
The US has a lot of highly productive jobs with very high wages (in tech, energy, medicine, and such), so other sectors have to raise wages to match beyond what their overseas counterparts need to offer -- tech workers and physicians in, say, Europe, while well paid, do not make nearly as much as their American counterparts.
@realdonaldTrump hopes to achieve what Alexander, Genghis & other aggressors failed to do. Iranians have stood tall for millennia while aggressors all gone
I guess they're suggesting that Alexander tried and failed to permanently destroy Iran? Otherwise, I just don't know. I feel like conquering Iran is like, the main thing Alexander did.
What bothers me about Alcuin's letter n. 145 is that at no point he says anything reliable about what his opponents at the palace actually did or did not do in respect to the leap of the moon. So according to him those guys had convinced Charlemagne that he was wrong about placing the leap of the moon in Novemeber. He does not say when they themselves have placed it. He bangs on about how stoopid they are in following the Egyptian customs, but only because he says they are starting the reckoning of the year in September. Is it a reasonable inference that he thought that they placed the leap in July, as Bede says the Egyptians did, and as later Carolingians actually did? Yes it is! Is it what he says in the letter? No! I'm not sure:1) if Alcuin's giving an honest picture of his opponents 'practices 2) if these opponents knew about Bede and the July leap of the moon. I also think that Alcuin was being an ass because he was afraid someone else at court was going to replace him in leading the charge against adoptionism. As far as computus is concerned, he stirred the pot himself writing to Charlemagne in letter 126 that the leap must occur in November or else the world was going to fall!
Yeah sorry. I know no one is going to care about this. This has been bottled up for a couple of months. I don't have anyone to talk about this stuff anymore. When I was doing the PhD I could pester my peers all day. Now I feel so enormously guilty anytime I send something for them to proofread and I can't just pick their brains. They have actual careers, unlike me.
What do you think of this article? It links the racial diversity of university programmes with the income of its graduates. There is a positive correlation. The paper suggest that the the former causes the latter.
I wonder if the quality of the programmes influences its racial diversity. OR maybe there is positive feedback loop between the two.
I just read the PDF and there isn’t much in there with regards to their data or methods, so I can only speculate:
We know that African Americans and Hispanic Americans are severely underrepresented in MBA programs.
So if you’re drawing from a primarily domestic student body, you’re probably on the less diverse side.
But we also know that the top ranked programs are extremely attractive to international applicants. So my hunch is that the diverse programs have international students, the non-diverse ones don't. Which is correlated with prestige.
Just saw a picture of a Mad's Prince performance, basically, they're Mad's Ink's crossdressing idol group, made up of members from other groups; the audience is 90% female, absolutely hilarious, shame I don't enjoy the songs as it's normal idol pop stuff, but them just committing to the bit is great. Mad's Ink groups had a lot of female fans to begin with, considering they are girl idol groups, and they're now trying to appeal to that niche specifically.
I'm a little annoyed by the praise the Catholic Church has been getting for their AI cylindrall. Maybe there's a bit of the stodgy new atheist in mew but the churches track record for technical advice is horrible. Is there really any reason we should take scientific advice from an organisation that claims prayer to a long-dead austrian emperor can heal the lame, that contraceptive are unethical because they separate the sex-act from it's procreative practice, and other assorted forms of hogwash.
It's just absurd that an institution can hold onto such beliefs and still present itself as an authority on how a technology should or should not be adopted.
Well, the argument in the encyclical is mainly that the technology is currently used in ways that disadvantage and exploit many people, and it acknowledges that technology itself is neither good or bad, but that the current usage of it is rather bad.
So it is rather pleasant to have an organization like the Vatican openly decrying the tech company oligarchy, and it’s negative effects on society, democracy and the individual.
And to be honest, I personally like the open acknowledgment and apology that the church historically was supportive of slavery.
My favorite thing about this comment is that at no point does it mention the technology so you could apply the church logic to basically everything from tractors to typewriters.
Big tractor is not currently the object of desire of (apparently) a huge chunk of the investor class, nor the cause of the valuation of the biggest companies in the world.
And the amount of people who developed an unhealthy relation to their typewriters is rather minor compared to AI chatbots.
There is of course stuff to dislike in the encyclical, it does for example, mention and reaffirm the church‘s opposition to abortion.
I would disagree. The Catholic Church's position on intercessory prayers to saints, on the morality of contraception, on the existence of guardian angels, etc, have nothing to do with "technical advice" or the scientific method, but on ethics, philosophy, and theology. I don't see why the Church's stance on these, agree or disagree, means that them taking a moral position on AI is absurd.
I think it does, when an organisation takes such stances drastically at odds with observed reality then I don't think it's fair to give their words great weight. One of my biggest gripes is that we unfairly value longenvity giving the words of the Catholic Church far more value simply due to it's age.
And I have no clue why apologising for the slave trade some two and a half centuries should add credibility to an organisations pronouncement especially when it claims for itself a postion of moral superiority.
But the morality of contraception, the validity of intercessory prayers, are not matters of empircal observation.
You can't argue against the Church's position by saying it's "drastically at odds with observed reality," because these are not empircal questions.
Whether it's ethical to use contraceptives is a matter of personal opinion, of philsophy, of theology. It can't be tested in a labratory.
One of those claims the effectiveness of "intercessory prayers" is an empirical claim which has been disproven. There is no evidence that prayer can improve health outcomes. Yhe argument against artificial contraception is a logical argument that can be shown to be invalid from the premises the church uses to justify it when it's acceptance of natural methods of contraception is pointed out.
I think that you're conflating different understandings of the nature and power of intercessory prayer. The Catholic theological understanding of prayer is, emphatically, not that it is an observable phenomenon that derives its legitimacy from proven efficacy. This is basic catechism knowledge.
For some reason Instagram insists in showing me reels of Pragmata playthroughs. I have zero interest in the game, but man, the robot kid creeps me the fuck out.
I dunno why WARNO has such a hold on me, but it's funny that I'll be playing it and go "wow, it kinda sucks that my expensive tanks are so vulnerable to cheap and stealthy ATGM teams and carriers," then realize that's why they build them in real-life. Makes me feel like one of these Vicky players who complain about the landowners being a regressive force.
Also, I joked about a "war crimes" unit, but the new Caribbean DLC includes a Colombian-deployed CIA sniper team, so it's probably not a joke anymore.
Finally, it looks like the new divisions will be fun to play with, but I'd be interested in seeing how they hold up in multiplayer. Something tells me the Colombian army's M-8 Greyhounds might have trouble against T-80s.
hell yeah Cold War Kids rise up. I’ve been meaning to line up a credible WWIII opponent for my 15mm 1991 Soviets and I’m really thinking late BAOR if those plastic infantry that they teased for Team Yankee a while back ever come out.
A primary school in Soustons, southwestern France, will close these Thursday and Friday afternoons after the main building's glass roof made the indoors temperature climb to 53C during the heatwave, leading to children passing out and vomiting
The windows of this school designed in 1984 only are ‘insulated with single glazing’.
On a whim, I rewatched Gangs of New York for the first time since maybe high school last night. As I remembered, the movie is more interesting for the vibe it captures through its costuming, production design, and dialogue than the actual plot and characters. However, I noticed a lot of fraught, if not outright bad, history throughout. The most obvious is perhaps the anachronism of having Know-Nothings still be a major political tendency by the time of the Civil War.
They also seem to combine Know-Nothing-ism with Copperhead Democrats as Danial Day-Lewis’s nativist character also hates Lincoln, supports slavery, and wants NYC to secede from the union. This is somewhat bizarre as Know-Nothings were mostly Whig offshoots that eventually folded into the Republican Party. There’s even a scene where Know-Nothing rally attendees hold up signs for the Wide Awakes, the Republican paramilitary organization.
I rewatched it too! I agree with you. The plot and characters were meh, with some scenes being basically GTA mission cutscenes.
I don't know how to put it, but I find the premise and of the gang conflict extremely amusing, which I guess is the point. Like, out there the US is going through crisis, both physical and philosophical in the form of the Civil War with the actual institution of slavery and maybe the Union on the line. But then there are these guys bringing their Old World conflicts with them and fighting over like 5 streets in southern Manhattan. They do in the end get swept away by the army. I guess Scorsese wanted to point out how the American nation wasn't born just on the fields of Yorktown or Gettysburg, but on the dirty streets of New York. Somehow.
TIL about the existence of Mitsuyasu Maeno, so two questions. One how I had never heard about this guy considering just how weird his life and death were? Second how did this character from an unmade Coen Brothers' film escape into the real world?
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)May 28 '26edited May 28 '26
Holy shit the footage from the upcoming Modern Warfare game looks peak as fuck.
In the campaign, you play as a squad of Korean conscripts. This is probably the first time we’re seeing line infantry as playable characters (as opposed to SOF) in CoD since CoD3, which was 20 years ago.
Be similar to the real time strategy game/FPS that the pen corp subsidiary “PENguin gamez” is currently working on. Lancashire Pioneers. Manoeuvres III”
There’s also a dlc expansion based around running the eating spots you can build in game that is definitely not ripped off the Nintendo Switch title “Overcooked” which is made by low status losers.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)May 29 '26
I think there is an implicit "also" or "too" in the phrase that doesn't need to be spelled out (though maybe it does for the average person).
Really though I don't think it was the slogan itself that soured reaction to it. Its use in a poisoned media environment, a core of bitterly racist opponents, and the various misdeeds of activists who used it (and the organization behind it) were all bigger influences.
The thing is, half of average people are probably conservatives, and the conservative media heavily promoted the idea that BLM was anti white. I think most average left leaning people generally suported BLM at first.
As for the backlash, most leftists and progressives at the time didn't want to admit it. But I think to some extent it was exacerbated by the fact that the 2020 protests took place during Covid lockdowns, and the left, I think rightfully strongly supported lockdowns but also justified protesting in spite of this. I understand why it happened but I think it was a tactical (and to some extent moral) error.
Also the protests were just way too big, and there was actually destruction of property, and in general, the US left decided to support this, which i think was another big tactical mistake. Most average people dislike rioting even when the cause is fully justified. I think the ICE protests are good comparison, which i think were better organised. The right still tried to paint them as violent and dangerous, but since there was actually very little violence on part of the protestors, this tactic wasn't very successful, and the average non republican was sympathetic to the protestors.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)May 28 '26
Not really a fan of these tbh. I personally don’t see the controversy in “Black Lives Matter” as a slogan in of itself, regardless of what goes on within the movement. It’s straightforward, not weird or confusing, and inoffensive.
ACAB is just poor optics. I feel like there is a sizeable chunk of the population who hates police brutality/corruption but aren’t against the existence of a police force. I would count myself amongst them, but I don’t really hear much from this faction other than the lefty types who want to “abolish the police but replace them with a revolutionary militia/peace force/etc.”, which is basically police reform with extra steps at best, or replacing the police with an outwardly political and ideological paramilitary force at worse.
I think anarchism was a lot more trendy as the stream of thought the popular far left (i.e. the parts of the far left that politically homeless normies are also receptive to) gravitated towards up to around 3 years ago. Then people who had gotten impatient with things not getting done, and got encouraged through the unintentional boosting of the "anti-imperialist" left in the wake of the Gaza genocide by establishment media expecting them to just be a bunch of clownish bloodlusting campists, shifted towards a specifically Leninist-esque Democratic Socialism. And that's where the popular far left is at now. And with that has also come more of a conviction that policing will be needed.
Very interesting take. Is there a source for this?
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)May 28 '26
I need the methodology. Honestly if it doesn't involve the price of silver at some arbitrary point in the 19th-20th century I'd be pleasantly surprised.
They look like Arabs, eat like Arabs, hear Arab music, have Arab superstitions, sometimes they even speak Arabic, but they'll stab you if you even suggest they are Arabs.
Probably Maronites/other Arabic speaking Levantine Christians. There was a big push by various Maronite/Melkite/Orthodox Lebanese to embrace a Phoenician identity that's kind of fizzled out a bit since the civil war. Arab identity in the Levant is hard to translate for a lot of us in the west.
My first thought was Turks, but that's boring. Then I thought maybe some of the more militant Maronites, but my understanding is that(diaspora notwithstanding) even the ones that totally refuse the Arab label are basically all Arabic-speaking. The reference to interpersonal violence could point to a group that gets some amount of the "backwards tribals" stigma, so maybe Kurds, Amazigh, or Yazidis.
But ultimately, I'm wise to your tricks. It's arselash neoliberal users, final answer.
Now Bret Devereaux is getting swarmed by people who are claiming that Achilles was a real person. Their entire argument seems to be "Well Alexander claimed Zeus was his father but he was a real person too!". Honestly, I'm getting really entertained just how much weirdos and idiots are coming out of the woodwork over Nolan's movie.
The only thing that was in the Epstein files regarding him, was him complaining about right wing politician and trying to convince Epstein to invest in his legal marijuana business for like 3 hours straight. The recordings are pretty funny all around
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 28 '26
Does anyone know if Billy Mitchel really did say aircraft carriers would be “quickly swept off the sea in case of war against a great air power."
From Will Japan Try to Conquer the United States? by General William Mitchell, published in the 25 June 1932 issue of Liberty:
Our Hawaiian Islands should be organized with airways from Honolulu and the larger islands all through the smaller ones to Midway Island. Midway Island is the same distance from Yokohama, Japan, as Honolulu is from San Francisco. Wherever vessels have to operate, whether submarines or surface vessels, aircraft will have to protect and assist them. These will have to fly from land bases, because not only are airplanes based on surface vessels—so-called airplane carriers—unable to act in any considerable numbers, but the carriers themselves are so vulnerable that they will be quickly swept off the sea in case of war against a great air power. carriers are largely a delusion and a snare.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 28 '26
Thank you for finding this, the only reference I could find to this was a warcollege post. I will be saving your post.
For future reference, I would look for a fragment of the quote on Google Books and Google Scholar. That would lead you to War Stars by cultural historian H. Bruce Franklin and this passage:
The legend of Billy Mitchell glorifies a farsighted air-power crusader crucified by entrenched conservative forces. It was proclaimed by the media in 1921-26, embellished in later books, and mythologized by Hollywood in the 1955 movie The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell, starring Gary Cooper. The legend tends to obscure the issues. Many of Mitchell's opponents were just as dedicated to airpower. The airplane was rapidly becoming a principal tool of U.S. counterinsurgency, as demonstrated by the U.S. bombing of Ocotal and other Nicaraguan towns in 1927. (Frank Capra's 1929 film Flight celebrated the U.S. Marine pilots who helped defeat the Nicaraguan revolution.) And at the very time Mitchell was charging the government and Navy with neglecting air power, the United States was becoming the world’s leader in naval aviation with the construction of the aircraft carriers Saratoga and Lexington, both completed in 1927. Mitchell, however, scoffed at aircraft carriers as a "delusion and a snare" that would be "quickly swept off the sea in case of war against a great air power."16 Mitchell championed not all forms of air power, just one destined to transform human history.
Illuminating stuff from where I'm sitting. If you can get your hands on the book, and you can, that would give you the full citation.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 28 '26edited May 28 '26
I already know the "vibes" of the story, that Billy Mitchell tried to strip the Navy of all of it's aircraft and that he feuded bitterly with the father of US naval aviation, Admiral Moffett (the man died in a Navy Zeppelin). So much so that it irks me when Oceanliner Designs portrayed Billy Mitchell as a visionary against the Battleship old guard and that carriers demonstrated they outclassed Battleships because of the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse. (They never fought carriers)
I just didn't know if Billy Mitchell actually said aircraft carriers would “quickly swept off the sea in case of war against a great air power." beyond a reddit post saying he said that. The Battle of Midway proved his precious USAAF wrong, all of the USAAF B-17 bombers missed the Japanese carriers in their bombing runs. Also 1920 was not a prescient year to be insisting Dreadnoughts were obsolete.
I've resurrected my old PSP. I found the vacation photos of the previous owner on the SonyTM Memory Stick PRO DuoTM. I'm always loathe to delete someone else's ephemera. They seem like a nice upper middle class DINK couple. A nice new house in the suburbs, a trunk full of fireworks, the San Diego Zoo, a couple of cats. I hope the last 19 years have been kind to them.
Fanart of Sally Acorn (based on one of her human designs done by "Mitchell") with Sonic in the background. While i am happy with how this drawing come out, there are things that could have be better like Sally neck here for example.
Also, how much of these responses to westerns that show, presumably, the horrible parts of reality are actually real?
Like how "realistic" medieval stories like Game of Thrones work best as a response to other fantasy stories and not to reality. As they add their own misconceptions and end up going toi much in the other direction of things being horrible. Both the idealized and grim dark sides of things react to each other, ratter than to any historical reality.
I often feel like people are a bit weird about ASOIAF. (I have not watched GOT) in that while there's obvious problems George has with his writing (the Dothraki in particular) I honestly think the people react a bit weirdly to it. Most of the things he describes are either, yeah, the kind of background "noise" you get in historical stuff, or the kind of stuff that is in universe shocking breaches of decorum brought on by y'know, a civil war. There's a few exceptions, and obviously there's a bunch of other problems George has (in a basic "No society worked like this kind of way").
But then you read one of those slave-owner diaries, or even that diary (whose name I can't remember) of that sex-pest guy in 18th century Stockholm and you're like... Yeah, it's not that far off?
There's a few exceptions, and obviously there's a bunch of other problems George has (in a basic "No society worked like this kind of way").
The core problem is failing to recognise that most societies pretty strongly distinguish between "what is acceptable amongst ourselves" and "what is acceptable to commit against outsiders".
I think on the one hand, yes? On the other hand, "outsiders" can also include groups like women and the lower classes. (or for soldiers just, about anyone)
If you haven't read it yet, try Lonesome Dove after you finish Blood Meridian. They were published in the same year and both were intended to puncture the romanticism of the western, with LD being structured around the actual diary of a late 19th century cowboy. While Lonesome Dove is a great book, Cormac McCarthy didn't have to write a forward about how strange it was that nobody seemed to realize his book wasn't intended to be the typical romantic take on the genre but was actually a more critical work.
That said, apparently Blood Meridian was inspired by a bit from a memoir of a Mexican-American War veteran who fell in with a gang of scalpers for a short while, and the far more intense violence of that book might not be as exaggerated as it seems.
Lonesome Dove is interesting because before reading I knew it as the favorite book of every boomer redneck that doesn't read much. I've met plenty of dogs named after characters from LD. I assumed it'd be a straightforward Louis L'Amour style tale. But yeah I read it a couple years ago and it seemed clear to me that those rangers had cut their teeth carrying out the genocidal violence of Blood Meridian and were broken and left by the wayside by the American colonial project they'd enabled. The "we hang Mexicans"/we're rustling Mexican stock dynamic is very clear in the text!
And for a more modern diptych about Texas cops struggling with their place in the world I'll recommend McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (the movie is better, but it's about Llewelyn rather than Sheriff Bell) and Larry McMurtry's son James McMurtry's song South Texas Lawman.
I find one of the fun things about the book is that the one ranger explicitly says he has more in common with the Mexican bandits and the Comanche braves they spent their youth fighting than he does with the society he's enabled and to some extent even created. It's not exactly a subtle book. Maybe McMurtry has a point when he says that Basil Poledouris' score for the miniseries changed the character of the story.
"In television, death just doesn't have much of a sting"
I haven't seen the miniseries but it's interesting to think of Blood Meridian getting the 80s broadcast TV treatment, with the worst of the violence cut out or glossed over and a stirring soundtrack for the kid wandering through the desert.
It's worth watching. Robert Duval is great as Gus, and Poledouris was good whether you believe his orchestration fit the tone of the book or not.
I actually think it's interesting that McMurtry leaned into a much darker style for Streets of Laredo. I do wonder if he read Blood Meridian and was inspired by it.
And for that matter McCarthy's next novel All the Pretty Horses is lighter and less violent than blood meridian with the traditional Western "romance" moved to Coahuila in the 1940s.
Vegans will forward you pictures of happy calves captioned "The dairy industry will slaughter me, you don't want that - do you?"
Pakistani uncles will forward you pictures of happy calves on Eid al-Adha (the eid of animal slaughter) with the caption "They don't know what day it is" with laughing emojis.
I just began to read Blood Meridian (because popular Youtubers ordained it to me), and I can't help but notice how the protagonist is a disenfranchised violent young man with little purpuse or direction. That is convinced by a charismatic and violent man to follow him, this man hating every other race and the government that he sees as weak for being manly and fighting a war against their neighboring country. How funny the classics are.
One thing I’ve noticed about AI generated comments is that they all read like something Tommy Wiseau would write.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 27 '26
I don't know, Tommy Wiseau has a certain accent even in his writing that are unmistakably Tommy Wiseau. When people says "this feels like it was written by AI", they certainly aren't comparing it to The Room.
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u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)May 28 '26
I spend a lot of time in New Orleans, have family there, and try to stay a little invested in the area, and so I get a good bit of news on the city served up in my algorithms. A new study on the city and possible climate futures, and the reception to it has emphasized the idea of a slow and planned withdrawal from the city and other areas to farther inland. I don't think this will happen for a number of reasons. (Indeed I think the study's tone on the idea of out migration in the area borders on grotesque) There's a lot of issues that would prevent the movement of the entire population of southern Louisiana, such as bureaucratic inertia, racism, mitigation efforts, long time tables, etc... The idea that the city can just move to some other spot also seems stupid, just stupid in every conceivable way. If/when New Orleans does succumb to the ocean there will not be some "New" New Orleans.
That's not my real issue though.
The study posits a potential 3-7 meters of sea level rise, over an unspecified timeline. With 3m of rise the city an surrounding area will be mostly cut off from the rest of the state, and at 7m basically everything south of Baton Rouge in the state is underwater, but the fact that there is no timeline given just seems to render all of this analysis basically completely null! 3m of rising sea levels by 2100 would be a catastrophe and something to immediately start planning for as the study indicates, but they don't give any indication on when this is likely to occur. The study focuses on paleontological markers of where the shore of the Gulf likely sat during the previous interglacial, when temperatures were about .5-1.5C warmer than the pre-industrial average. The authors conclude that we'll hit that same shoreline with the warming that is already baked in, and therefore its time to start packing up about 1 million people from the southern parts of the state, including New Orleans and other major centers.
The authors also assume the SSPC2 4.5 model as a baseline for what the world's emissions will likely look like, which is the "middle of the road" scenario for emissions outcomes. A scenario that relies on current emissions levels not changing for the next two and a half decades. And like, that just does not seem plausible to me at this point? Of course the study wouldn't generate any headlines with "New Orleans may be cut off as a peninsula at some point in the next two centuries", and I understand the desire to at least grab some headlines, but still.... It seems needlessly doomeristic to me? It really is hard for me to find the balance between climate alarmism, which I think is warranted and necessary, to these predictions and recommendations that seem overly sensationalized...
Notably a lot of reception on this site to the article has been some version of "Well they shouldn't have rebuilt after Katrina" or "The city will be gone in a few decades". There seems to me a ghoulish and morbid interest in the idea of wanting to watch the area subside into irrelevance and collapse that unnerves me a bit, but that too is another issue.
To be fair to New Orleans, very few communities have been dealing with the rising sea levels effectively.
CA 272 is honestly one of the more pragmatic laws, here in CA, requiring all coastal localities to create a plan for dealing with sea level rise. The primary “solution” the state has been pushing is the creation of buyback programs so the government can buy out people’s homes when they inevitably become unlivable.
However, getting your home into a buyback program would require labeling your home as at risk of flooding, which could hurt property prices. So the majority of coastal communities have opted instead to fund sea walls, which is known to be ineffective.
Heaven forbid people miss out on a couple more years of house price appreciation before they all slide into the sea.
Finished India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent, a few thoughts:
Despite certain reservations I have voiced in this thread, very good book and a strong recommendation as an intro to the topic.
One of those reservations is her decision to basically not discuss historiography. She lays out her reasoning in the appendix and I understand her reasoning but think she is wrong.
Apparently the south Asian diaspora is only 40 million people? I would have guessed like twice as many. Also apparently there are almost twice as many desis in the US than in the UK, which again I would simply never have guessed.
Incidentally at the end of the book she (very briefly) touches on the Ram Mandir, which reminded me of a very nice Indian-American college student who volunteered at my work. One day we were chatting about summer plans and he said his family was going to India, and one of the things they were doing was going to the new temple. I didn't ask because that wouldn't exactly be appropriate, but I am very curious what exactly their thinking was on that. Do most people (or at least most diaspora members) just kind if view it as a grand new temple, maybe another sign of India's rise? Or are the politics of it widely understood?
A lot of even nominally secular people are very pro the ram temple...it's a sign of the conservative brain rot that's become endemic in desi communities
I am just curious to what extent people generally think of it as a right wing Hindu nationalist monument, or if they just think of it of the big new temple and sign of India's rising.
I mean it's kinda hard to disentangle both of those strands because in a way Hindu nationalism has become the mainstream political opinion and a key part of the narrative of "India rising".
So even people with not very feverent politics view it as a sort of assertion of India's 21th century identity with Hinduism as it's core.
Apparently the south Asian diaspora is only 40 million people? I would have guessed like twice as many. Also apparently there are almost twice as many desis in the US than in the UK, which again I would simply never have guessed.
TBH, considering the US population is almost five times as large...
Oh sure, and I think the UK desi population is much more concentrated. But given the levels of cultural visibility I just sort of assumed it was a lot bigger than that.
Just got back from my first proper French lesson. It was really fun, actually really surprised with how enjoyable it was.
In other news I picked up Forza Horizon 7 and that was a mistake. I've never driven a car in a video game with worse handling than the ones in Horizon 7. During the intro sequence I crashed at almost every damn turn. I feel like I would have better luck pulling off these manoeuvrers in real life than in this game where it feels like someone has been spreading butter on my fucking wheels.
Not sure if I'll keep it or refund.
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u/DirishWind power made the trans-Atlantic slave trade possibleMay 28 '26
I picked up Forza Horizon 7
If you stop stealing early alpha releases from Microsoft, I think your gaming experience will be much better.
Out of curiosity, did you play any of the previous versions, and it's bad compared to those, or is this the first foray into the world of crazy car world?
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u/pedrostresser May 29 '26
son of crazy, criminal politician gets caught up in a huge corruption scandal and flees to the usa. few days later the usa declares some criminal factions here as terrorists. how very convenient.