[–] 9 points 1 year ago

Having worked a wage slave summer job assembling fireworks, you eventually get comfortable. Usually complacent too, which isn’t great in a factory but there’s standards like spark prevention and max magazine size that keeps most accidents inconsequential.

In a battlefield tho, 100% not. The rule of “If you didn’t see it placed there, it’s booby trapped” should be universal, doubly so if you’re handling UXO.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Let me introduce you to the Disney Bomb… circa 1943:

    [it] was fitted with solid-fuel rockets to accelerate its descent, giving it an impact speed of 990 mph (1,590 km/h)—substantially beyond the 750 mph (1,210 km/h) free-fall impact velocity of the 5-tonne Tallboy "earthquake" bomb for comparable purposes.

    The Disney could penetrate 16 ft (4.9 m) of solid concrete before detonating.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I enjoyed crypto when it was a decentralized asset that isn’t bound by monetary policy inherent in fiat shell games. Transfer fees were eh, but avoiding forex scalpers was dope.

    Dumbasses who only see it as a financial instrument are what has ruined crypto. We literally had the potential for a new gold standard-esque inflationary hedge, and instead we got NFTs, rug pull scams, and a permanently bag-holding ‘investor’ class.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    The map designer was a total hack, took zero consideration for balance, player experience, or the future tech tree. Just make up the lines on the map and move on:

    His ideas were of the outside; and he lacked patience to test his materials before choosing his style of building. He would take an aspect of the truth, detach it from its circumstances, inflate it, twist and model it, until its old likeness and its new unlikeness together drew a laugh; and laughs were his triumphs. His instincts lay in parody

    On an empty server it’s not so critical to get things like the map boundary perfect, but the fact that cs_Arabia is often played as a de_ map is telling

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Ahh. “Why don’t these ingrates appreciate what they’re given?” cool, keep blaming voters. Your 1-2-E-Z electoral strategy has no issues with circular reasoning, yesss no reason to develop further

    Their universal suffrage will keep ignoring your demands for loyalty. Voting is transactional. Give them what they asked for. Or don’t I guess..? The Whig party refused to change too, and look how they turned out

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Agree wholeheartedly. It’s why I hold the term ‘journalist’ as an honorific, and don’t apply that to easily 95% of the people who work in news media. Reporter, sure. But a journalist speaks truth to power, knowing that that power figure may retaliate. A real journalist risks being assassinated with a car bomb for investigating a global money laundering ring, not invitations to state banquets, or ‘embedded live’ with government troops whilst accepting the censor.

    Like I said, find a journalist with a good SubStack and support the news and analysis you find valuable. Find somewhere that tells you the what and the why, instead of a story.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    How much of that was accessible before social media though? Unless you went looking, Israel generally was a pretty sanitized package on the media landscape, or was framed within the “well we were attacked first” narrative that contextually requires ignoring the prior grievances and violence

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    I feel you’re missing the point I’m making; Obama did have legislative victories yes. Did usher in an economic recovery from the precipice and a (relatively) speaking soft landing. But what fundamentally changed in healthcare? Especially for the low propensity and/or information voter? Nothing from their perspective, unfortunately. The reality delivered did not match the marketing, and though childish and petulant the reaction may be because of real issues like thin majorities or constitutional limits on power, that is the perception. And that is all that matters.

    I don’t see Trump’s rise as being caused by his unique policy stances, white nativism, or better electoral strategy than the Democrats. He’s mediocre-to-awful, but has no institutional fealty or cogent ideology which is what makes him uniquely suited to the current populist vibe. Trump is a bomb that voters sent to blow up the established order in Washington, and in 2016 they got what they asked for. The palace coup that is MAGA, ate the Republican Party from the inside out, within a single four year cycle. Now you’re seeing the base souring on him as his second term has has been co-opted by capital and power structures, and is abandoning the ‘maverick outsider’ policies like “no new wars” or “I want to sell off the national parks to foreign nations”.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)
    1. Let me introduce you to group known as the ‘Obama-Obama-Trump’ voters.

    Confusing on the face of it no? How can someone vote for Barack twice, and then pull the lever for Trump? And the map is not clear either; counties in New England, the Rust Belt, southwest, and northeast. All over the country, red and blue states. So what happened?

    • These 206 counties cast 7.5 million votes in 2016, which accounts for 5.5 percent of all votes cast in the election.
    • Between 2012 and 2016, the Democratic popular vote margin declined by 2.1 million votes. Even though these 206 counties make up only 5 percent of the total votes cast, they accounted for 51 percent of that decline.

    Low propensity voters, now disillusioned with politics. These are the people who got sold a vision of hope and change after the Great Recession in 2007-2008, and while yes things changed, not in a fundamental way. They still drive on crumbling roads to take their kids to the same underfunded schools. Still watch their taxes fund overseas wars, for nebulous ‘foreign policy’ reasons that aren’t clear. Still paying out the ass for their dialysis care. Watching standards of living regress around them, knowing their kids will be worse off regardless of a college degree.

    You see, there’s a part 3 that you’re forgetting that needs to happen, otherwise another opportunist grifter can slide in with false promises and spam-abuse the populism cheat code:

    1. Deliver results for the people who voted for you - or don’t be in power when it goes bad
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