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New Crusader Kings: Modern Warfare expansion fully kickstarted then. E: bog 
Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 05:25
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Algol Star posted:People will be imagining a repeat of the Iraq war as well. As bad as that would be, war with Iran will be awful on a whole other level. We should have no part in it but I imagine Johnson is stupid enough to believe the US right's propaganda. I don't know how anyone who has looked at a topographical map of Iran can think this is a good place to invade. It's like Afghanistan but loving huge. I swear "Alexander did it, so can I" is about the extent of it. But then I don't understand much about this world anymore
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Jan 3, 2020 05:26
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forkboy84 posted:I don't know how anyone who has looked at a topographical map of Iran can think this is a good place to invade.
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Jan 3, 2020 05:34
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Bobby Deluxe posted:The military industrial complex wants a nice, long drawn-out conflict, not a short one. The harder it is to invade, the more toys they get to sell It's such poor politics though. The death count will make Iraq look like a cakewalk and we don't have a military that can hack casualties like that. Never mind, there's wrestling on, The Best of the Best Kento Miyahara is in the ring, Donald Trump trying to start World War 3 isn't ruining this. forkboy84 fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 05:44
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Whether someone’s class interests are those of a capitalist or a proletarian has nothing to do with how much they have relative to other people, and everything to do with where most of their income comes from and where they expect it to come from in future. The options are basically (1) wage/salary (2) capital return on assets you own; (3) payments from the state; (4) gifts from other people (eg your kids).* There’s a powerful emotional difference between these; only one of these doesn’t make you dependent on someone else who might decide tomorrow it’s time to cut you off, and that’s owning capital. Everything else puts the individual in a subordinate position to someone else. Everyone I ever met HATES that; it’s scary to be dependent on someone else’s whims. If obtaining money from the state was as easy as collecting a dividend or rental payment, and if governments were as reliable at maintaining benefits as capital was at rewarding its owners, we might see less resistance from the mass of the voting population (and particularly pensioners) to socialist ideas. This is one more reason why means testing is evil. IMO all government funded systems should be universal and, ideally, automatic, so that people take them for granted. In the context of the current discussion it’s also important: capitalism is the only system in which pensioners retain power and dignity instead of passing that on to the 40-50 year olds of this world or relying on an unreliable state.** * Being self-employed and taking pride in your work isn’t here, because the current trend is “be self employed but rely on someone else to get you customers” AKA the Gig Economy **To be clear, the state is only unreliable because governments switch policy regularly. Taking neoliberalism as an example, it probably needs about 20 years of consistency for a system to establish itself as the “new normal.” Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 05:49
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remember when corbyn was a tinfoil trot wacko for doubting the official narrative around douma https://twitter.com/ClimateAudit/status/1212055636080496641?s=19
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Jan 3, 2020 06:02
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Pistol_Pete posted:I work for a wealth management firm and think it's pretty funny that rich people's cash is paying my salary, while we provide a service to them that's inferior to the results they'd get if they just stuck their cash in a tracker fund and left it there. That is my capital/ labor story. I KNEW IT! (Same when my old law firm represented a Murdoch company once. Every extra hour I photocopied documents as a trainee at his managers’ request cost him an infinitesimally small fraction of his fortune, and in the end I’m p sure the case was lost as those managers were 100% chancing it so as to avoid owning up to whatever it was they messed up.)
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Jan 3, 2020 06:10
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Beefeater1980 posted:I KNEW IT! I'm pretty sure that most people only sign up to wealth management firms so they can say stuff like : "So, I was talking with my stockbroker today and..." at dinner parties. Unless you're seriously rich and eager to do tax dodging stuff, there's no other point to it.
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Jan 3, 2020 06:35
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Pistol_Pete posted:I'm pretty sure that most people only sign up to wealth management firms so they can say stuff like : "So, I was talking with my stockbroker today and..." at dinner parties. Unless you're seriously rich and eager to do tax dodging stuff, there's no other point to it. It can infect people who don’t care about status too. My long term partner is the one human being who cares least about status I ever met, and is hyper intelligent about anything she is interested in. She loves the idea of wealth management because she finds financial stuff boring and just wants someone* to take care of all that for her. *IE me since I talked her out of wealth management companies for the reasons you just gave. Proving again that she is the smart one in the relationship. Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 06:44
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Hopefully we try to invade Iran with the Queen Elizabeth land assault carrier and it gets stuck on a mountain with the crew becoming raiders who attack any and all in order to survive in their new mountain HQ.
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Jan 3, 2020 06:57
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I thought they managed to finally get some F35 planes off that thing? Granted as just training flights, but still. Doesn't make it any less ridiculous. Unfortunately the US is perfectly capable of going at it alone. e: This reminded of a "Life in the UK" test question about whether Britain played a leading role in the first iraqi war/desert storm. Somehow it did, apparently, as objectively determined by said test. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 08:18
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JFC my dad just sent me this bullshit accompanied by the words 'you don't have to agree with the politics to find this intriguing'. I'm trying to decide just how sarcastically I want to respond - can someone offer a second opinion? This definitely feels to me like 'we want to hire some people who already agree with us to tell us we're clever, and we openly acknowledge that most people think we're stupid, so we don't want THEM', plus a strong dose of 'we think Facebook were on to something when they sold peoples' data to Cambridge Analytica, but we should be doing it in house not subcontracting'. https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/ (E: and the bit about 'we want diverse thought but not people teeling us to think diversely about gender and identity, those weirdos can gently caress off', jesus) thespaceinvader fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 08:21
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thespaceinvader posted:JFC my dad just sent me this bullshit accompanied by the words 'you don't have to agree with the politics to find this intriguing'. quote:We want to hire some VERY clever young people either straight out of university or recently out with with extreme curiosity and capacity for hard work. Tell your dad to apply so he can bang cummings if he likes him that much.
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Jan 3, 2020 08:30
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Private Speech posted:I thought they managed to finally get some F35 planes off that thing? Granted as just training flights, but still. Well, in all fairness it did. It was at the end of the Cold War and our armed forces were much larger and more effective then. I think we commited 50,000 troops to the invasion?
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Jan 3, 2020 08:42
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loving hell even I knew who that guy was. They did a massive hour long documentary on him on bbc 2 a year or so back.
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Jan 3, 2020 08:52
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Bobby Deluxe posted:The military industrial complex wants a nice, long drawn-out conflict, not a short one. The harder it is to invade, the more toys they get to sell Sure, but the political sphere can only tolerate so much loss these days. Selling against the fear of wsr is just as good, and runs far less risk of unpredictable things like a peacenik government getting in. I've talked before about invading Iran and it's inherent folly but to sum up: Iran's terrain is incredibly hostile and mountainous. It's also huge, like it's the size of Mongolia. Iran is not an impoverished basket case. Not a first world level of wealth, but they have a healthy economy that can sustain a military. Iran is as populous as Germany, way more than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Abundant people with military training. Sanctions have led to a very strong domestic arms industry. In turn makes them far harder to cut off or attrit. Said gear is also of decent quality, cf. shooting down that US drone last year. Iran is also not a political basket case: Leadership might be wankers but they are not Saddam-esque megalomaniacs. Military is led by some serious, professional generals who have training, experience, and competence, and aren't too likely to be overly messed with by a tinpot dictator or riven by tribal rivalries. Iran has been expecting this since 1979 and one imagines they have drawn up extremely detailed plans and contingencies. Like yeah the US and allies can win the war but I expect it to be vastly more expensive in both treasure and blood than the public will expect, and there's no way to win the peace in a country of 80 million people who inhabit a mountainous country the size of Mongolia and which will probably be flooded with arms by absconded soldiers, smugglers, and likely caches set up by the government in advance (i.e. right this minute).
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Jan 3, 2020 09:10
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A war that there's no way to win, and that can just be turned into another foreverwar? SOUNDS PERFECT.
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Jan 3, 2020 09:14
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Pistol_Pete posted:Well, in all fairness it did. It was at the end of the Cold War and our armed forces were much larger and more effective then. I think we commited 50,000 troops to the invasion? Don't forget the commitment of the SAS for anti-SCUD missions, a campaign notable for launching considerably more literary careers than it managed to stop the launches of SCUDs. Also the RAF eagerly volunteered for extremely risky missions to take down Iraqi anti-air defences in the first wave, then precision strikes later in the campaign, despite not being really equipped for such things (the 30-year-old Blackburn Buccaneer being used for target designation because nobody bothered to put laser designation kit on the Tornados).
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Jan 3, 2020 09:14
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Chapo did a decent bit on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZmLgB5cWdc If going to war with iran ends up with iran blowing up the assholes who started it I am not going to complain.
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Jan 3, 2020 09:16
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Tom Watson is on BBC Breakfast News trying to claim that he had nothing to do with the manifesto and is also not a politician, both of which are weird claims for someone willing to get up at this hour in the morning to sit on a sofa and talk about the manifesto and politics.
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Jan 3, 2020 09:16
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Tom Watson is on BBC Breakfast News trying to claim that he had nothing to do with the manifesto and is also not a politician, both of which are weird claims for someone willing to get up at this hour in the morning to sit on a sofa and talk about the manifesto and politics. Trying to position yourself as an "elder statesman" only works if you've been a statesman Tom. Alongside that, whilst it wouldn't surprise me if the USA goes to war with Iran, the subsequent fall out has the potential to be, well, really loving bad for everyone doesn't it?
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Jan 3, 2020 09:21
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thespaceinvader posted:A war that there's no way to win, and that can just be turned into another foreverwar? We have always been at war with
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Jan 3, 2020 09:21
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Josef bugman posted:Trying to position yourself as an "elder statesman" only works if you've been a statesman Tom. I may well be wrong (predicting the ebbs and flows of the genius brains at the top of the US is hard for mere mortals like me) but I doubt we'll see a large-scale ground invasion - we'll get to see the worldwide MIC trying out all of it's most expensive toys and a shitload of "targeted" attacks that thanks to the sneaky Persian's mind-control techniques will somehow keep hitting hospitals and schools. This will be good for the Almighty Number and provide lots of grainy video of poo poo blowing up to keep much less important domestic stories off the top of the news cycle. We'll also see all of Saudi Arabia's oil and - more importantly - water infrastructure get knocked out by weapons that cost, in total, less than a single F35, and kick off a whole new wave of international terrorism, but these all also are positives for the Republican domestic agenda.
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Jan 3, 2020 09:33
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Tom Watson is on BBC Breakfast News trying to claim that he had nothing to do with the manifesto and is also not a politician, both of which are weird claims for someone willing to get up at this hour in the morning to sit on a sofa and talk about the manifesto and politics. Lobbying hard for that regular Guardian column. Ms Adequate posted:
Correct: Iran's military doctrine is specifically formulated around their key threat being an attack by the US and its based on the lessons learned from watching previous US invasions of Iraq. Unlike Saddam's military, which was highly centralised and staffed by cronies at the senior level, Iranian officers are encouraged to use their own initiative and be able to fight independently in smaller formations without waiting for specific orders. Iran's influence-building across the Middle East is part of the same strategy: it aims to push the front lines of any war away from Iran proper and to maximise the damage and instability in the event of the US starting something.
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Jan 3, 2020 09:37
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Josef bugman posted:Trying to position yourself as an "elder statesman" only works if you've been a statesman Tom. Quite literally considering Iran has definitely previously had the technology to enrich uranium and will have very little to prevent it going back to that if the multi-trillion-dollar US military machine starts trying to kill it.
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Jan 3, 2020 09:39
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Guess things weren't looking so great for Trump's re-election. A good ol' middle east eternal war should sort that out though!
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Jan 3, 2020 10:32
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forkboy84 posted:Sure seems like it would've been a good time to have a pro-peace Prime Minister but never mind. I'm sure Boris won't do something staggeringly stupid like leap into helping America in Iran. With brexit, US has UK by the short and curlies. Of course he will. I remain to be pleasantly surprised but I doubt it.
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Jan 3, 2020 11:32
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Ms Adequate posted:Sure, but the political sphere can only tolerate so much loss these days. Selling against the fear of wsr is just as good, and runs far less risk of unpredictable things like a peacenik government getting in. Which leads me to suspect that they might just nuke it. Netanyahu and now Trump too have been itching to nuke Iran for ages. Josef bugman posted:
Yeah - nuclear fall out. I had this book about 40 years ago. At least the cockroaches will be ok.  Jaeluni Asjil fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 11:36
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Invading Iran would be another Vietnam, quite possibly worse. There's a very real chance the Iranians win, especially if the Americans go in dumb and just assume they'll win through brute force. I don't relish the idea of another pointless bloodshed but if nothing else a clear military loss will make trump (and johnson if he jumps on the bandwagon, which he will) look weak, which is never a bad thing. E: I'd be very surprised if the US actually was willing to risk the fallout (lol) of a first strike nuclear attack. It's completely unprecedented and they would make zero friends and a lot of enemies. That said, loving trump in charge of a decaying empire is the exact time that poo poo would happen if it's going to. In other news, HIGNFY is hot garbage and I'm embarrassed that I ever used to laugh at their sneering bullshit https://twitter.com/haveigotnews/status/1212686086767620096?s=19 ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 11:52
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:Which leads me to suspect that they might just nuke it. Netanyahu and now Trump too have been itching to nuke Iran for ages.
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Jan 3, 2020 11:53
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https://twitter.com/SolHughesWriter/status/1213051616691204096?s=20 Imagine being more worthless than Jess Phillips. Imagine having a worse response to a literal act of war than her. Honestly, there's not a lot to be optimistic about in the current bout of Labour leadership candidates.
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Jan 3, 2020 11:58
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Guavanaut posted:This is the dumbest timeline so it'll probably be something more like they'll use ICBMs with conventional warheads and not bother telling Russia or China in advance. forkboy84 posted:https://twitter.com/SolHughesWriter/status/1213051616691204096?s=20
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Jan 3, 2020 12:01
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thespaceinvader posted:JFC my dad just sent me this bullshit accompanied by the words 'you don't have to agree with the politics to find this intriguing'. Cummings has a broken brain. I read some of his posts going back. It seems like he had a bad experience with UK bureaucracy (I can confirm firsthand that professional interaction with UK bureaucracies can break brains). His solution is to burn it down and rebuild it as fast as possible by giving carte blanche to a bunch of theoretical physicists, coders, master mega-project managers (who rather paradoxically he also thinks do not exist), and other esoteric technical types who have zero relevant domain expertise. David Deutsch is smart! We just need to put him in charge. He idolizes the general that managed the Manhattan Project and the head of the Apollo program, as if they have transferable lessons to the peacetime management of national education or something. It's really weird to read his posts because there are references to genuinely interesting ideas and things, but then you take a step back and realize none of the interesting poo poo is relevant, and it's all an insane hodgepodge that could drat well be right off the conspiracy-theory cork board of Alex Jones.
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Jan 3, 2020 12:16
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Smeef posted:He idolizes the general that managed the Manhattan Project and the head of the Apollo program, as if they have transferable lessons to the peacetime management of national education or something.
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Jan 3, 2020 12:20
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Weetman is currently furiously retweeting a bunch of 'actually it was good to blow up the Iranian general' takes, good to see the melts not even bothering to pretend anymore
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Jan 3, 2020 12:20
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Smeef posted:Cummings has a broken brain. I read some of his posts going back. It seems like he had a bad experience with UK bureaucracy (I can confirm firsthand that professional interaction with UK bureaucracies can break brains). His solution is to burn it down and rebuild it as fast as possible by giving carte blanche to a bunch of theoretical physicists, coders, master mega-project managers (who rather paradoxically he also thinks do not exist), and other esoteric technical types who have zero relevant domain expertise. So he wants to do a Tesla on the civil service, basically? RIP 
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Jan 3, 2020 12:23
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ThomasPaine posted:Weetman is currently furiously retweeting a bunch of 'actually it was good to blow up the Iranian general' takes, good to see the melts not even bothering to pretend anymore
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Jan 3, 2020 12:34
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What the gently caress, I come back into the thread after a hangover and the US is straight up assassinating foreign military leaders now? E: The only response is terror attacks, isn’t it. It’s not like Iran has any capacity to mount a conventional attack on the US. E2: ok so sequence of events is - Iran organises protests against US embassy in Iraq to show they are the big important power locally - US murders prominent Iranian general to show that no actually they are the big important power locally - Iran threatens war E3: I guess this is a response to what happened in Benghazi: the idea is to deter individual foreign military leaders from the “let’s gently caress with your embassy” strategy. Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 12:35
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^^^ A ton of which we'll end up getting, us being easy to lump in with the US as 'the english speaking rich white assholes' and us being easier to reach. Smeef posted:It's really weird to read his posts because there are references to genuinely interesting ideas and things, but then you take a step back and realize none of the interesting poo poo is relevant, and it's all an insane hodgepodge that could drat well be right off the conspiracy-theory cork board of Alex Jones. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Jan 3, 2020 |
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Jan 3, 2020 12:38
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Crispchat warning: the Pringles Rice Fusion flavours are disturbing. Not because they're bad but because they taste exactly like the foods they're replicating.
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Jan 3, 2020 12:41
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