Left Below

Stuck Boat Theory

I doubt he's dead unless he did something very stupid, but the fact that he hasn't gone on camera while the IR government broadly is in full boast-and-troll mode is odd. Perhaps he's in no condition to show his face?

The current war is a signature example of this. The war is a product of the internet but the inability to control the outcome is causing an ingress of material conditions, a backwash that the hyperreality was not designed for.

The internet is not real life is a true statement, but only because the internet has become more real than reality.

Used to be the concern was moments bleeding out, the internet radicalized going on to enact violence or whatnot, now the concern is material space bleeding *in*.

oh in that vein, the Taiping Rebellion creates a syncretic Christian-Confucian-Daoist kingdom in much of central and southern China.

An Lushan Rebellion succeeds and makes a hybrid Sogdian-Chinese dynasty (a la the Manchus or the Yuan making hybridized dynasties).

Yes. *If* the global community decided it was time to put down the Islamic Republic then it should have been a joint effort with all the eventualities accounted for.

Not necessarily saying that would have been a good thing (they kill a lot of people but how many will die in this war?) though

Need to get gun-adjacent people thinking *real* hard about the risk of the people they're dealing with. I hate guns but acknowledge most owners are safe, question is driving out mass shooter culture using the legal tools we have.

Yeah I'm opposed to gun violence but I'm not sure this will go anywhere. The focus ought to be on holding owners and dealers accountable for the (admittedly rare) instances where one of their guns is used. Like that one guy in Michigan jailed due to his son's mass shooting.

It was weird watching this episode after going to see Undertone which was also A Woman's Mommy Issues: The Film

Final effort to purge Hezbollah.

Extremely stupid on Israel's part because Lebanon was finally going to step up there. Instead they'll get the whole country mad at them by turning a 3rd of it into rubble like Gaza.

It's weirder. That's the female squirrel from the part of Sword in the Stone where Arthur briefly becomes a squirrel and this female squirrel flirts with him.

Famous in the furry community.

fought one another as in Churchill, probably leads to the answer you're looking for.

Other question is whether the modern information environment is what forces Conservatism to sort into Centrist Liberalism or Fascism.

The historical degree to which Fascism and Conservatism have used (a la the Nazis and Mussolini getting big business and old-guard nationalists on side in order to seize power, or Franco and Antonescu using the Falange/Iron Guard as a vanguard and then discarding them) or/

I think an examination of Winston Churchill is in order to help this discussion along: imperialist, rabidly anti-communist during the Russian Civil War, did not hesitate to throw in with Stalin against Hitler and never suffered delusions about what Hitler was.

So Kronk is a himbo but someone more intelligent and self-aware like say, Brock Samson, is not?

"Is being wholesome a requirement to be a himbo" is good discourse.

I would tend to agree but that's without any evidence.

Certainly that's the aspirational fantasy of Trump and his underlings: not only do you *not* have to filter out your bad thoughts you can actually get rewarded for them!

Karp and Thiel are in the crew that thinks we'll never get power again because they run the Cathedral now.

30 years ago Clinton would have hesitated but probably sent in ground troops to occupy the Iranian side of the straits.

40 years ago Reagan would not have hesitated at all to do this. Times have changed not just the capacity to fight, but the will.

Something underappreciated is how society has been demilitarized. For all the defense spending we do, we have but a fraction of the industrial capacity needed to sustain something like World War II.

More tellingly there's a lack of will to spend lives or re-route economies for war.

Recall doing a game theory course in college that said most wars boiled down to information failures (though this was attributing warmakers as being maybe too rational, certainly a lot of fights that get picked are quixotic).

Wasn't the problem that South Vietnam was never really viewed as legitimate by a majority of South Vietnamese the way say, South Korea was by South Koreans?

I've seen it described as a post-colonial rump regime for Vietnamese Catholics.

was stuck saving for a condo at the time. Thankfully I did a half-step upgrade from a 2021 build in 2023 so I'm not shit out of luck for so long.

given the lack of willingness to put any troops/ships in harm's way I doubt there will be a Taiwan campaign. Maybe fling ordinance to try and impede the initial crossing and that's it.

Now this lack of willingness to feed soldiers to a meat grinder is good, but strategically limiting.

worst case being what, Iran figures out that they've got the entire world by the shorthairs and keeps the straits closed until some insane demand is met?

I'd be impressed at the dedication if it were applied to anything remotely productive.

Demons-from-Frieren discourse stays winning.

you're calling Daines empty seat over Collins?

recently was in a Reddit thread on this and people were making the same mistake as here: a farce comedy is not an idiot plot, so Coen Bros classics don't count.

It's more when the characters are contrived to be/act stupid (especially compared to usual).

Think Snyderverse Batman.