|
What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦋 |
|
15 | 3.71% |
| 🦇 |
|
115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
|
12 | 2.97% |
| 🐦 |
|
67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
|
94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
|
14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
|
87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
|
I really hope 2022 means that I can wear green long sleeve t-shirts as formal wear in 2023. "This is a formal meeting with important industrial implication. Wait, what you wearing?" "Slave Ukrainia." "Oh of course."
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 10:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 20:44 |
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:Also, just a bit of trivia, Mennonites were shockingly supportive of the Third Reich, and Mennonites globally were a big portion of returnees to Germany before and during the Second World War. Apparently much of this has to do with the Russian Revolution, but I would have never predicted that. There were a lot of Mennonites in Russia that had been invited over in the 1700s to farm the difficult steppe lands that the Russian Empire had conquered. As a group, they were experienced in farming marginal lands in Friesland and Northern Germany, and had superior commercial and industrial knowledge compared to the average Slavic farmer (who was basically stuck in the middle ages up until the 1900s). With these advantages, the Mennonites acquired a privileged position in Southern Russia/Ukraine . Animosity bubbled even under the Tsars, and mennonites migrated in fairly large numbers to the Americas and formed diaspora communities due to various persecutions. Under the Bolsheviks though, the Mennonites suffered greatly, as their whole community were composed of wealthy farmers, and were thus kulaks. The state atheism stuff wasn't appealing to them either. The outrage and reaction among Russian Mennonites was communicated throughout the various diasporas, and particularly to Germany, where most of these pacifist farmers became fervent nazi supporters. Before anyone chalks this up to Bolshevik excess though, note that Makhno's peasant anarchists went out of their way to attack the Mennonite estates, and conducted more than a few outright massacres in them. When the cultural, religious, and class animosities of an dying empire erupt, things get bad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 11:05
|
|
|
oh no not the wealthy farmers
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 11:22
|
|
|
What ever happened to Robert Mueller and the Rule of Law, that's what I'd like to know.
Futanari Damacy has issued a correction as of 12:10 on Dec 24, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 11:28
|
|
|
Merry Orchristmas everyone! Hope you have all been naughty and nice this year! 😘  But let’s not forget the real reason for the season : Christ. Uncovered texts suggest infant Jesus may have at some point been kidnapped by an Orc!  Praying for peace may all orcs and humans lay down their weapons this New Year🙏
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 11:38
|
|
|
DancingShade posted:I really hope 2022 means that I can wear green long sleeve t-shirts as formal wear in 2023. this is not nearly passive aggressive enough. "oh, sorry. didn't realise I was dealing with a Kremlin-funded operation"
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 11:39
|
|
|
 
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 12:00
|
|
|
A big flaming stink posted:The greatest loss from this conflict was decided in the spring when it turned out the sanction regime of the West means absolutely nothing against an industrialized economy of a peer Which is very funny considering Yale University Press, one of the natsec house publications, just put this out: The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War The first international history of the emergence of economic sanctions during the interwar period and the legacy of this development “Valuable . . . offers many lessons for Western policy makers today.”—Paul Kennedy, Wall Street Journal "The lessons are sobering.”—The Economist “Original and persuasive. . . . For those who see economic sanctions as a relatively mild way of expressing displeasure at a country’s behavior, this book . . . will come as something of a revelation.”—Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs Economic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way of exploiting the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prevent war, economic sanctions are modeled on devastating techniques of warfare. Tracing the use of economic sanctions from the blockades of World War I to the policing of colonial empires and the interwar confrontation with fascism, Nicholas Mulder uses extensive archival research in a political, economic, legal, and military history that reveals how a coercive wartime tool was adopted as an instrument of peacekeeping by the League of Nations. This timely study casts an overdue light on why sanctions are widely considered a form of war, and why their unintended consequences are so tremendous. and the equally out-of-date-at-printing The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide to the New Way of War An engaging guide to the various ways in which war is now waged—and how to adapt to this new reality “This brisk everyman’s guide—straight-talking and free of jargon—is a useful tasting menu to a fast moving, constantly evolving set of problems. . . . A lively reminder that war adapts to technology, that civilians are part of modern conflict whether they like it or not.”—Roger Boyes, The Times “Galeotti’s field guide is an admirably clear overview (in his words, ‘quick and opinionated’) of a form of conflict which is vague and hard to grasp. Variously described as hybrid, sub-threshold or grey-zone warfare, this is the no man’s land between peaceful relations and formal combat.”—Helen Warrell, Financial Times Hybrid War, Grey Zone Warfare, Unrestricted War: today, traditional conflict—fought with guns, bombs, and drones—has become too expensive to wage, too unpopular at home, and too difficult to manage. In an age when America threatens Europe with sanctions, and when China spends billions buying influence abroad, the world is heading for a new era of permanent low-level conflict, often unnoticed, undeclared, and unending. Transnational crime expert Mark Galeotti provides a comprehensive and groundbreaking survey of the new way of war. Ranging across the globe, Galeotti shows how today’s conflicts are fought with everything from disinformation and espionage to crime and subversion, leading to instability within countries and a legitimacy crisis across the globe. But rather than suggest that we hope for a return to a bygone era of “stable” warfare, Galeotti details ways of surviving, adapting, and taking advantage of the opportunities presented by this new reality. Sanctions and Russian Disinformation are so embedded in the liberal mind they’re still putting out triumphalist books about The Future of Geopolitics that must have been written in 2019-21. One of them said Russia would be hopeless in any confrontation with a Western or western-backed state because of their superior technological ability to 3D Print ammunition… including in forward positions…which Russia could never match or surpass. (You cannot 3D print ammunition). The 90’s seriously did a number on these guys. Great time to start a defence contracting firm that promises to develop 3D printed ammo, since they’ll be bound to throw who the hell knows how much money at that mirage.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 12:18
|
|
|
bigger number > smaller number don’t need any fancy books to hide that reality driving most geopolitical strategy coming out of the west today 
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 12:26
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:The 90’s seriously did a number on these guys. Great time to start a defence contracting firm that promises to develop 3D printed ammo, since they’ll be bound to throw who the hell knows how much money at that mirage. hey Jan6Defense LLC is going to sue your rear end, my 3d ammo printing solution might still be in its infancy but once I decide between using gorilla glue or just regular Elmer to hold together bulk order fireworks black powder, my patented Strategic Caseless Advanced Munition solution is going to revolutionize warfare
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 12:40
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/tsihanouskaya/status/1605246364388102144 🛋️🤳
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 13:12
|
|
|
Reminder that strict price controls by the state was one of the bedrocks on which Soviet and CPC industrialization was achieved. In fact the Chinese state has a history of strict price controls to achieve political stability going back thousands of years. Obviously inconceivable to a liberal mind that heavy state involvement in everyday life could be a good thing for regular people.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 13:39
|
|
|
but how would we know if human beings need shelter or food without price signals
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 13:47
|
|
|
Checkmate, tankies.  https://twitter.com/ValeriiTerentev/status/1606545150771331072
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 13:48
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Reminder that strict price controls by the state was one of the bedrocks on which Soviet and CPC industrialization was achieved. In fact the Chinese state has a history of strict price controls to achieve political stability going back thousands of years. if food were allowed to be sold under free market prices, the people would finally revolt and do the color revolution
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 13:49
|
|
|
SplitSoul posted:Checkmate, tankies. Both sides have Nazis which means even more Nazis which is why everything is fine actually
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 13:52
|
|
|
I forgot Belarus had a Guaido
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:13
|
|
|
Danann posted:(from t.me/zoka200/5716, via tgsa) So Russia is running out of drones?
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:16
|
|
|
No drone left behind.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:18
|
|
|
Hello, it's me, the national leader of Belarus. Here's a picture of me in case you forgot what I, the real leader of Belarus, look like. I'm legitimate
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:18
|
|
|
i am using my phone for important leader things. i am not playing a mobile game. i did not just match three gems of the same colour
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:27
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/creation247/status/1606315521183342592 Not from this angle but you can make an argument garment and shoe industries are the most "globalized" industries because they can be make by 3rd world uneducated slave workers in literally zero safety warehouses; and unlike the electronic appliance industry, they have much shorter supply chain so its much easier for the capitalists to move them from country A to country B to country C on the drop of the hat and extract the maximum profit.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:28
|
|
|
ContinuityNewTimes posted:Hello, it's me, the national leader of Belarus. Here's a picture of me in case you forgot what I, the real leader of Belarus, look like. I'm legitimate that’s right https://twitter.com/tsihanouskaya/status/1603323912691286016
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:33
|
|
|
stephenthinkpad posted:Not from this angle but you can make an argument garment and shoe industries are the most "globalized" industries because they can be make by 3rd world uneducated slave workers in literally zero safety warehouses; and unlike the electronic appliance industry, they have much shorter supply chain so its much easier for the capitalists to move them from country A to country B to country C on the drop of the hat and extract the maximum profit. clothing supply chains are actually absurd. i used to work for li & fung around 20 years ago. we would ship and produce clothing items across multiple countries, such that a single shirt from any given major western brand might have been produced across like china and three different SEA countries. qc was .. not easy.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:35
|
|
|
Zodium posted:clothing supply chains are actually absurd. i used to work for li & fung around 20 years ago. we would ship and produce clothing items across multiple countries, such that a single shirt from any given major western brand might have been produced across like china and three different SEA countries. qc was .. not easy. 20 years ago, there were sweatshops inside Manhattan that made quick fashion clothinges, filled by Chinese immigrants and illegal immigrants.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:41
|
|
|
crepeface posted:you idiot tankies see swastikas everywhere after adidas dumped him they said they'd continue making yeezys lmfao
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:47
|
|
|
https://www.stadiumgoods.com/en-us/shopping/yeezy-shoes Check out the prices on these still
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:47
|
|
|
also clothes were among the most popular ways to adopt western culture and modernity. Wasn't japan famous for doing that the moment the meiji era began?
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 14:53
|
|
|
Tankbuster posted:also clothes were among the most popular ways to adopt western culture and modernity. Wasn't japan famous for doing that the moment the meiji era began? I am trying to think of countries that doesn't wear "globalized" clothing day to day, I can only think of Arab countries and maybe some Indian people. Even African developed tradition of reusing western used clothing (some African countries doesn't like it and ban this practice).
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 15:10
|
|
|
even in india younger people - especially men often have shirts and trousers. A lot of western clothing in India has been indianized. the blouse in india increasingly resembles the Choli which also serves the same purpose, to the extent that blouses and cholis are used interchangeably.
Tankbuster has issued a correction as of 15:18 on Dec 24, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 15:13
|
|
|
Leandros posted:So Russia is running out of drones? the war is officially to go on forever i'm sure both sides will get low on stuff at points so it's best to be resourceful
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 15:33
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:The thread is vindicated in the book on "Putin's Wars" that just came out Sounds like revisionism to me, i read nothing about the inherent failure of volksturm tactics.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 15:57
|
|
|
IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:Sounds like revisionism to me, i read nothing about the inherent failure of volksturm tactics. I read a book about Werewolf before going on holiday and the resemblances at this point, now that civil society is being mulched, are even more apparent when it’s a long war instead of what looked like a short one.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 16:51
|
|
|
Im shocked that those guys supported Hitler... because I also supproted Hitler and I didn't see those dudes anywhere. WTF? Did they not even come to the meetings? 
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 17:00
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/creation247/status/1606315521183342592 Plus "back in the good ole days, famous models and actresses would dress up and pose for photographs. That's all gone. Now, everyone just gets photographed from the waist down in jeans smh"
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 17:08
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:I read a book about Werewolf before going on holiday and the resemblances at this point, now that civil society is being mulched, are even more apparent when it’s a long war instead of what looked like a short one. what book? is it fun? I wan t to read more about the last days of the reich especially in the east. I did read violence in defeat that you recommended.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 17:21
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/rybar_en/status/1606668112241299466?s=20&t=CE1ZxNLJgwfmyGbTcb4tug Grim day for the Ukrainians on the Bakhmut front, according to Ryber. Russian forces are pushing forward across the entire line.
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 17:48
|
|
|
Tankbuster posted:what book? is it fun? I wan t to read more about the last days of the reich especially in the east. I did read violence in defeat that you recommended. The Last Nazis: SS Werewolf Guerrilla Resistance in Europe 1944-1947 Founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1944 when it became clear Germany would be invaded, the Werewolf guerrilla movement was given the task of slowing down the Allied advance to allow time for the success of negotiations, or "wonder weapons." Staying behind in territory occupied by the Allies, its mission was to carry out acts of sabotage, arson, and assassination, both of enemy troops and of "defeatist" Germans. Perry Biddiscombe details Werewolf operations against the British, Russians, and fellow Germans, on the Eastern and Western Fronts and in the post-war chaos of Berlin. Giving the lie to the established story of a cowed German population meekly submitting to defeat, this is a fascinating insight into what has been described as "the death scream of the Nazi regime." It was way more intense and widespread than I’d thought, though far less than the Allies, Soviets or Germans expected. By the end, German civilians were happy to turn them in, but there were some pretty sharp incidents before then, mostly terrorizing German “collaborators”, the occupation government etc. I hadn’t really read about the French occupation but lol as soon as they crossed the frontier they said they’d burn down villages if anyone shot at them, took hostages, shot people in retaliation for assaults on their troops. The Canadians in 4 CAD also went way harder than I’d thought, though I had heard stories from my uncle about Germans stringing wires across the roadway to string up motorcyclists and jeeps and that they would gently caress up German stragglers and holdouts. I had no idea the Canadian Army policy was to put the fear of God into the Germans once on German soil. The Americans seem to have varied unit to unit but also faced the strongest Werewolf resistance, HJ and SS holdouts etc. by nature of Geography. The BAOR were perfect gentlemen but inherited the SPD/KPD strongholds of the north and faced hardly any trouble. The more uh morally complex aspect is that the author’s estimation is the Soviet terror was effective in preventing any meaningful post war resistance. He cited the rape and looting that the Soviets eventually began to rein in as being detrimental politically, morally, obviously ideologically, and hardening German frontline resistance, but that after the fighting moved on nobody who experienced that wanted to bring down more horror on their women and children. I don’t know how to feel about that, other than sad. He examines both how the conduct of Soviet forces like that began and how it ended, which never really gets an explanation in the west other than “Russian Bad”. Specifically he said that Soviet forces initially slowed after liberating the Motherland, which they saw as the purpose of the Great Patriotic War, and so a conscious propaganda effort began in the fall of 44 to motivate them to fight through to Berlin. He says specifically that this rapidly got out of control of the Soviet high command and reining them in became a major project for the Red Army, which had not previously needed intensive Military Policing or Civil Relations. He said that a lot of the blame in the Russian archives falls on Jewish journalists attached to the Red Army, Ilya Ehrenburg specifically, and that probably there was some postwar throwing under the bus. Again, that’s a really hard thing to make sense of. To circle back, he said it wasn’t just the conduct of French troops that was similar to the Soviets but the propaganda campaign - as a good part of the French Army by then were former Resistance guys who did not want to go past Alsace Lorraine. They similarly stirred them up, unleashed murder and mayhem and then desperately tried to regain control. Also, because French agriculture was in ruins, they garrisoned several times more forces in Germany than they needed to, so they would eat German food stocks, not French. The professional French officers in 1945 were former Vichy guys and were held in suspicion, unable to enforce “professionalism” until 46. He also lists how many French officers in Indochina learned their trade in the initial occupation of Germany, which I had never read before, but gives you an idea of what happened once the French Army was on German soil. Anyways, in the sectors controlled by the Western Allies there was more resistance, sabotage and murder than I’d known, mostly aimed at Germans. On the other hand it was the complete military defeat of the Third Reich and collapse of the state that undermined any guerrilla movement, with party popularity in the single digits before the Allies crossed the Rhine. From that perspective, the Russians may have faced more resistance after a two week victory in February than if they shatter the Ukrainian Army and state - nobody wants to fight for something that brought ruin to their country and lost. I do wonder about motivating the Militias to fight on the other side of the Dnieper, but hopefully lessons have been learned eh? He also talks about the building of the Communist party in East Germany postwar, which I thought was pretty neat, and how denazification there really put a silver bullet through Werewolf. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 18:26 on Dec 24, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 18:02
|
|
|
bet a werewolf gorilla would be pretty strong irl
|
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 18:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 20:44 |
|
|
Tankbuster posted:also clothes were among the most popular ways to adopt western culture and modernity. Wasn't japan famous for doing that the moment the meiji era began? Kiiiiind of. The "reunification" of Japan around the year 1600--that is, a process roughly equivalent to the development of absolute monarchy in Europe around the same time, where a particularly powerful house among autonomous feudal lords simultaneously subjugated its weaker rivals and began to de jure repudiate its responsibilities to the priest-emperor whose de facto decline had kicked off the feudal era to begin with--was started, though not ended, shortly after first contact by a westernizing reformer who adopted western dress for himself, arms for his armies, and sponsored the Jesuits as a counterbalance to imperial power. He made a lot of enemies, died in a still-unexplained coup, and was quickly succeeded by a man who took the exact opposite tack to secure loyalty, going with strict traditionalist sumptuary laws and a closed-off foreign policy, but the conflation of western dress and habits as "radically reformist" had begun even before the west was particularly militarily, economically, or technologically ahead. Shortly before the "restoration" of the emperor in 1868--"restoration" is, of course, a euphemism for "liberal/aristocratic revolution which put a shine of legitimacy on their dethroning of the dominant noble house by pulling the teenaged claimant to the priest-emperor title out of a monastery and putting him in a gilded cage"--trade with the west was forced open again, something which greatly displeased the lesser nobles of the periphery who had maintained a booming business in smuggling, and following early clashes the dominant nobles refitted their own military with western arms and uniforms, including a French commander's uniform gifted from Napoleon III himself for the... essentially "king" to wear in the field. This was the first recorded mass production of western clothing in Japan, and it was quickly followed with many of the rebels westernizing their militaries as well. Then, shortly after the restoration, two key edicts were promulgated as part of the liberal purge of the more energetically conservative elements: the first, in 1871, banned the (previously sumputary mandate) topknot hairstyle and sword as badge of office of the nobility, and the second, in 1872, mandated western dress when in attendance at court. Shortly thereafter, uniforms for civilian government workers (police, postal, rail, and education) were established in the western style, establishing the standard for business attire; casualwear and clothing for laborers was not mandated, and for a couple decades hung on to traditional styles, but just as the sturdier clothes of the western frontier left a mark on American fashion, Japanese fashion was touched heavily by how hard it suuuuuuucked to wear what were essentially skirts up on the cold northern frontier which underwent a settlement boom at this time. Westernization of women and childrens' clothing proceeded significantly slower, and didn't truly take off until the 1920s when department store retailing and its emphasis on industrialized fashion truly took off--helped along by the earthquake of '23 and a new appreciation for clothes you could run out of a burning building in. The final blow to traditional dress wasn't until the war and immediately postwar years. On the mens' side, cloth shortages led to a return of sumptuary laws mandating a simplified outfit similar to the Mao suit; for women, the choices were either this with a skirt or a combo of the cut-off top half of a kimono plus loose single-layer slacks. And then, after the war, the devastation of local industry meant most clothing was imported from America, and of course that came in American styles. So essentially, the changeover to something I guess similar to the modern subcontinent, with fully westernized clothing as a badge of authority or stylistic choice of presenting yourself as a modern man of means and global ties, was sparked for a moment, forcefully halted for a couple centuries, and then enforced almost immediately. Women's clothing followed urbanization and industrialization, and the full conversion to traditional dress taking the same place as "a costume" in the vulgar sense it does in western culture (weddings/funerals/festivals/presenting yourself as quirky) took the abject wartime destruction of the traditional clothing industry and its unavailability long enough to break the habit. E: Actually, "archduke" is a better translation of "shogun". Really nails the "my great-great-grandfather beat up the guy whose great-great-grandfather was appointed supreme military commander in the name of the civil authority of the Vatican/Heian, and the Vatican/Heian had best remember who commands their guards" aspect. Mandoric has issued a correction as of 19:02 on Dec 24, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 24, 2022 18:21
|
|