Samuel Pflugrath

OMG PLEASE

waiting for starmer to fuck it so hard that Ireland reunites tbh

I feel like this is disrespectful most of all to Gorillaz, who are the exact opposite of all this being fake people drawn by real people with real people doing the music and also they’re sometimes good. This is disrespectful to Noodle.

we remain firmly on track for 'republican president leaves the country an omnishambles, next democratic president is punished for not cleaning it up fast enough'

Like, he paid someone money to make this!

Like it's BAD AI art too. One of the major characters that's on the cover has an eyepatch and it doesn't even properly wrap around his head

God I hate having to explain to my 79 year old dad repeatedly that if he uses AI art for his book, people are just going to assume the writing is AI as well (it clearly isn't, his writing has a distinctive voice, but people on Amazon aren't going to know that)

Zionism led to the Palestinian Genocide

there was also a Stanford study that found that a surge in AI slop by lazy people actually created significantly more work for others who had to decipher and correct it

this "I'm being efficient" (but not really) vibes well with the American obsession with artifice and appearing productive

Iran might not have the real-time super detailed sensor fusion that Israel and the US have with F-35's and loitering high altitude drones, but Iran's got satellite visibilityand intel through Russian and Chinese capabilities — more than enough to pick apart the US's strategic and theater radar.

And these "decapitation strikes" don't do much of anything. These guys are not fucking dummies.

They are well-aware of US and Israeli targeting capabilities, have been preparing for this for decades, and the whole system at every level is designed to keep functioning without centralized C&C.

This is why Iran's apparent strategy of a disciplined counter-sensor campaign makes a lot of sense.

The US doesn't have a bunch of spare AN/TPY-2 radars laying around (at $300M a pop), never mind the far more expensive fixed installation AN/FPS-132 sites at like $2 billion each.

The only reason Israel's missile defense works at all (and it is far from perfect) is because they have separate interlocking defenses for short-, medium-, and long-range fires. All protecting each other.

If you start losing sensors without replacing the capability, you will now lose MORE sensors.

For THAAD to work in real world scenarios, you ideally have both your UHF (long range) strategic level radar feeding into a sensor fusion system so that the THAAD's own x-band radars can be cued to the right areas.

Long distance radars need their own separate protection from short-range missiles.

Even if US forces had an abundance of interceptors (which they absolutely do not), interceptors can't see their targets without multiple, interlocking radar systems operating at different bandwidths and locations.

THAAD is blind without advanced radar. And it's only good for the long range stuff.

Iran has had 8 months to prepare. This time around, rather than simply lobbing missile volume to overwhelm sensors and interceptor stock, Iran's been running a counter-sensor campaign.

They've knocked out multiple advanced radar arrays. These sensors are strategic, theater-level assets. Billions$$

June 19th 👇

I don't know how this will all play out or what happened but I can tell you that what Hegseth is hoping is that you blame "AI" and not a department whose leadership believes that the reason we don't win wars is we care too much about collateral damage.

it’s burned into my brain that in the midst of his state getting ransacked and his citizens getting shot in cold blood, Tim Walz said he wanted ICE to carry out their enforcement at night when less people would be around. he likes tom homan because homan will do evil but in a quieter way.

Trans people existing is more important than eating at chili's or watching Harry Potter on HBO. I have no problem throwing all these companies in the dustbin

"the iranians did their homework" well... yes? they are a nation, nations have planners, usually. the US doesn't seem to believe in that but that doesn't mean everyone is like you

did you think everyone stopped reading books when all of us americans did?

i think 'the two most formative boomer crashes happen during a republican presidency' is probably the least-bad trump ii presidency

we're fucked either way but this way we can at least say 'i told you so'

'throw the economy into a brick wall right at the end of your term so dems have to pick up the pieces' is standard policy. doing it at the beginning makes escaping the crash-out a bit harder

the thing about 'trump escapes all consequences' is that its not actually true. he notably did lose a presidential election despite giving people a bunch of free money. the median voter likes him when they can imagine what he *would* do, not when confronted with what hes actually doing.

'positioning yourself at the exact bottom of the basin of peoples libidinal desires' is a real and dangerous skill that he undeniably has, but if he lost despite inheriting a good economy, giving people a bunch of free money, and having an excuse to be racist to china, he can be beaten.

i think jamelle bouie is where i got this point from (though its obviously not unique to him): trump doesnt escape consequences so much as the institutions designed to impose consequences refuse to penalize him. this is absolutely not the same thing. hes not magic, people are just lazy and stupid.

China is expected to push for an ethnic unity law that critics say will cement assimilation China is expected to approve a sweeping “ethnic unity” law that critics say tightens assimilation and weakens minority rights.

China is expected to approve a sweeping "ethnic unity" law that critics say tightens assimilation and weakens minority rights.