And never mind the fact that Russia, even in its currently degraded state, is objectively less evil than the United States

I have to know if/how any of them justified saying that, those are next-level brainworms

I’m sure anyone who’s even halfway familiar with this scenario has seen this map before, but I’m including it anyway because it hammers home how absurd the notion is that the rest of the Allies stood a chance against the Soviets. Even without taking the actual combat readiness of these units into account, the numerical disparity is simply obscene, as is the disparity of experience (recall that 8 of every 10 German casualties in this war were inflicted by Soviet troops; the scope and intensity of fighting on the Eastern Front is simply beyond the experience of the American and British armies, at that or at any point.) My off the cuff assertion is that this would’ve ended with mass American casualties and a rapid loss of political will, rendering superior American manufacturing capacity moot.

The other day I was coming onto the freeway where the entrance lane merges with the right lane, and before I could merge a truck that was travelling in that lane forced me onto the shoulder and almost ran my ass into the retaining wall. Had plenty of time and space to shift left before I got in the lane, and I know for damn sure they were able to see me.

People drive like absolute sociopaths in California.

Plus it’s been darkly amusing to watch those same liberals struggle not to call him the n-word

Yeah, I’ve never seen anybody else talking or complaining about yet. Very peculiar, and I haven’t got a clue what could be up with my phone specifically that could be causing that.

Android, and as far as I know, everything’s up to date. It’s really bizarre.

Does the site just straight up not work on mobile for anyone else? I can only sign in when using an adblock browser, I can’t filter posts or communities, search doesn’t work, and hitting next keeps me on the same page.

(if I recall correctly, wikipedia even has a page just for Tibetan torture methods)

Would you happen to have a link handy? A cursory google search yields nothing but the expected anti-Maoist trash

It’s always a head trip being reminded that the engines from Thomas the Tank Engine are all real

I might be going to see Santa Fe 3751 next month, and I’m so jazzed about it

Jesus Christ, how embarrassing. This kind of behavior is so baffling to me. I’ve been verging on poor for a good bit of my life, and I’ve earned money by working with my hands more often than not (and thank fucking god I’m not doing that anymore for the foreseeable future.) If I had Tim Pool’s money, nobody would ever see my happy ass again.

At any rate, yeah, I never could get a grip on it. Never got a handle on roller blades either. Got pretty good with four-wheelers though lol

I’ve always been crap at sports in general, even things that I should’ve logically been good at, like wrestling (I’m a large lad.) I don’t know if it’s the ADHD or what, but not being able to get good at something right away often leads me to quit from sheer embarrassment.

That all sounds utterly fascinating, and also cause for me to once again bemoan my utter lack of coordination and balance

I never could get a grip on skateboarding as a kid. Alas

Exactly, no accountability, no citation, no critical analysis, not even basic questions like “How in shit’s name would the MOD be able to derive anything like an accurate casualty projection in this situation.”

Like I get that articles like these aren’t meant for people who tend to actually think about what they’re reading, but goddamn, it’s just gossamer thin.

Adding to Ukraine’s woes are Russia’s huge advantage in manpower and its willingness to accept staggering losses in return for capturing small objectives

Do we even have reliable casualty numbers for the Russians (i.e. that don’t come from Ukrainian reports) or is this just the usual ‘Russians have no regard for human life and rely on human wave tactics’ trope

Edit:

The offensive has also come at a huge cost to Moscow, with an estimated 70,000 troops lost in two months, according to the U.K. Defense Ministry which posted the projection last month on X

That explains that I guess

Hirbawi is fantastic, I bought mine in the same pattern ages ago, and it comes with me on every desert camping trip I take (back when I wasn’t too lazy to do that)

Spec Ops: The Line, beyond being a pretty good game with a lot to say about the average gamer’s enjoyment of military shooter power fantasies, also introduced me to my favorite band, the Black Angels, and I’ll be forever grateful to it for that.

That screenshot is from IMFDB I’m guessing? I’m not saying this isn’t also a gamer thing, but those guys are a special kind of anal retentive.

Yeah, really the nicest thing you can say about Lawrence here is that, his genuine affection for the Arabs and their culture aside, his ego and his misguided desire to be a hero saw him used as a pawn by both Allenby and Faisal, and he winds up a broken man for it.

Which isn’t too far from how the real Lawrence viewed himself after the war. He’s very self-deprecating and pessimistic in the Seven Pillars, which was of course the primary basis for the movie script. The big difference though is that the real Lawrence knew about Sykes-Picot almost from the beginning, and was actively working to sabotage it for most of the campaign. That hardly excuses his arrogance in thinking he was able to play king maker and thwart two empires. Again, the best you can say about him is that he was a somewhat well-meaning, extremely capable, but ultimately misguided and foolish figure.

That may be an overly charitable interpretation, but in my years studying him, I’ve never gotten the impression that he was some scion of British imperialism. He was just a guy playing hero who dearly paid for it.

I don’t really have singular favorites of anything, but if you put a gun in my face and told me to name my favorite movie, it’d probably be Lawrence of Arabia.

It’s a pity that this movie gets mentioned whenever the concept of the white savior comes up, because it’s the one movie I could point to from this era that has anything like a deconstruction of that concept. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say that it’s an anti-imperialist movie, but it’s definitely not pro-British empire by any means.

Edit: I completely forgot to mention, for any film nerds that live in southern California, who would like to see this movie in 70mm, look into American Cinematheque. They’re a nonprofit that operates three movie theaters in the LA area from the 20s and 30s. They show all sorts of classic movies, mostly on film, and sometimes host talks by stars, directors, and producers as part of screenings. They screen Lawrence in 70mm pretty regularly, and I can’t recommend that experience enough.