Post a controversial opinion

Why would you wish that?

Because the air in London is not v breathable

I figured you were just looking for an excuse not to go out with friends

Yeah, exactly. And (which will elicit less sympathy) my wife (who is from China) is seriously into TCM, and while I don't agree with her on this particular topic it's taught me a lot about not judging people for doing whatever works best for them. The :/ is confusion at other people not getting this but instead getting annoyed with other people for not being logical.

― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Monday, February 6, 2017 1:42 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you don't like old movies?

I always think of Texas Chainsaw Massacre first.

US Army hasn't properly won a war on its own since the nineteenth century. WW1&2 they came in after years of fighting by everyone else, and Korea, Vietname, Iraqs 1 & 2, Afghanistan, Cuba etc all were varying degrees of fuck-ups.

tbf 19th century wars were all also fuckups as were wwi and wwii

None of the next 46 US Presidents should be men.

Reassuring that you think there'll be any at all

Maybe Sarah Palin will get another shot.

We will not have a non-celebrity president for as long as we continue to have presidents.

I should be paid to not work

the whole food thing

I confess that on my first reading, I parsed this as "the whole 'food thing.'" rather than "the 'whole food' thing."

Like mh was coming out to us as a breatharian and questioning the whole concept of eating food. Which would definitely qualify as a controversial opinion.

US Army hasn't properly won a war on its own since the nineteenth century. WW1&2 they came in after years of fighting by everyone else, and Korea, Vietname, Iraqs 1 & 2, Afghanistan, Cuba etc all were varying degrees of fuck-ups.

― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), 7. februar 2017 08:06 (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This list severely underlists the amount of wars the US has started... There were glorious victories in Grenada and Panama, for instance. Glorious! Clint Eastwood even made a film about it, that's how glorious it was.

From a ways back:

the US military's great weakness is capturing and holding territory where there is a significant hostile population. they're great at attrition on the battlefield, but occupation is a numbers game and the US army can't muster the numbers without a YUGE military draft

Is there an example of a military organization that was truly good at this?

iirc the Persian, Macedonian, Roman, and Soviet empires did best by suborning local regimes to act as vassal states, rather than by occupying hostile foreign lands with large military concentrations.

Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan did a good job of accumulating territory rapidly, but they failed to hold hostile territory for long. Partly because they needed to do so with their own presumed-loyal forces, and failed to successfully enlist auxiliaries.

Yeah, I grant that there could never be enough pure German Nazis to hold and pacify everything from Norway to Morocco long-term (let alone the UK). But which military powers have _ever_ captured and held a large piece of hostile territory against significant resistance?

Napoleonic France? The British Empire in India? Early USA vs. Native Americans?

no I mean the whole "food thing" as in what, out of the spectrum of all foods, which will make your stomach try to kill you is difficult to predict outside of a few known allergies

my opinion is to try all kinds of foods and then avoid the ones that don't work for you

Okay, mh, so you're down with food - just not all of it. That makes more sense.

the whole food thing -- food is necessary and some is very good, but some may kill you so be careful

the whole fossil fuel thing -- they're pretty bad for the environment and getting them out of the planet is an environment and geopolitical nightmare, but using some is probably necessary right now

Napoleonic France?

also worked on a vassal state / client state system - the one place where they were forced into an occupation (Spain) turned out to the quagmire (or ulcer) that brought down the empire.

to be* the

Good point, Mordy. Also worth pointing out that in their greatest eras of expansion, European powers and America had microbial allies that often did more damage than their militaries.

Irish pubs

Not to be too controversial, but the US in itself is a country occupied and taken from hostile populations...

re the US and Native Americans this isn't 100% accurate but for a large part (in addition to the disease) the "occupation" so to speak occurred at an individual non explicitly State driven level (though the State obv did participate cf things like Trail of Tears) but individuated settlement is a different kind to occupation - and if it could even be called occupation which implies the native population gets to stick around under the thumb of the occupier and isn't ethnically cleansed/straight up murdered.

That said here's controversial opinion: I don't think the US is at risk of authoritarian fascism. I don't think it's in the character of the American public to have a centralized powerful state generated nationalism - too many individuals of all political persuasions, too much foundational myth of anti-authoritarianism, Americans are (mythopoetically) homesteaders w guns. They prefer self directed collective action/violence to State-run violence. Which isn't to say the US isn't at risk of State crimes or even mass crimes throughout the general pop just that a) there is a sort of antibody to the kind of classic fascism found in 20th century Europe and b) that the worst case scenario for the US doesn't look like Nazi Germany but really its own thing a kind of anarchistic breakdown of society violence; the threat coming from the people themselves ad hoc cohering into a massive movement rather than a formalized programmatic totalitarian State. (Nb caveats required cf FDR's internment camps, Polish citizens taking the initiative in massacring their neighbors but speaking in terms of broad trends I think this distinction is accurate.)

Concerts are only fun if yr drinking

tbf 19th century wars were all also fuckups as were wwi and wwii

― the late great, Monday, February 6, 2017 11:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

spanish american war - if we ignore the moro uprising

which we should imo (different belligerents)

further addendum - the mustering of troops and logistical planning for the invasion of cuba and the landing were totally amateur-hour but they routed the spanish anyhow

The Spaniards were already practically defeated by 3 years of the José Martí's guerilla campaign for independence, hunger as they starved in urban barracks, and yellow fever. Cubans always felt the Rough Riders essentially thwarted their own independence movement.

there was also the naval battle in the pacific which the u.s. bossed

also marti died 3 years before the spanish american war

He's sort of the dominant figure (and certainly, thinker) of the third Cuban insurrection of the 19th century, though he died (rather pointlessly) in an early battle.

in Miami you can't escape Jose Marti. His legacy's everywhere, especially in a Cliff Notes sense

i hate having to eat regularly

Not to be too controversial, but the US in itself is a country occupied and taken from hostile populations...

Yeah, but piece by piece and not all by the same players.

That might be the trick to it.

the trick is that it's easy to "occupy" a country if you get rid of the inhabitants. the whole problem w/ occupations is the insurgency.

metallica otm.

i hate having to eat regularly

― flappy bird, Tuesday, February 7, 2017 6:39 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh man, do I feel your pain...

I think it's annoying more than anything, because sometimes I just can't be bothered eating or can't find anything I want to eat but I need the energy. Not a huge deal though.

What's worse is that brushing your teeth never stops being a pain in the ass.

Shaving is the worst though.

Which is why I only shave once or twice a month.

Yeah I've gone bearded and trimming once again week is a pleasure compared

i always use a beard trimmer and have constant short stubble because i hate wet shaving so much.

but then you always stumble out of the house (or perhaps stubble out of the house!!!) looking like don johnson or george michael. or steve bannon.

I'm stumble out like first two stumble in like last

Love good food as much as the next person... But the daily yearning/basic need for food, needed to just keep going, always catches up with me. It's so vexing. And I hate that we aren't able to temporarily postphone that need. Even just for a little while. Give me day, at least, before the trembling starts good god.

Shaving same thing but way less annoying. I've p much given up, resorted to trimming too.

"Postphone"

Shaving is a pain but get some good oil and a safety razor and a medium good-priced boar brush and you're off to the races, free of the Gillette/Bic hegemony. Bob's your uncle!

quite a few chunky people, me included, need to lose weight entirely because of a lifetime of consciously unhealthy food choices. Body positivity aside, there's a certain kind of middle age fatness that comes from overindulgence and complacency.