All four of these episodes are really good, I learned a lot. There is also a 5th one about the boxer rebellion specifically with the same guest

So noted.

“Then two hexbears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the libs.”

2 Nerds 4:20

Actually the shadow fleet was constructed by Darth Putin using lenin’s star forge, which is currently in orbit in the tunguska system

When I was much younger I did some summers of manual labor and the crew I worked with had a habit of taking in a mouthful of warm water, a spoonful of instant coffee, then shaking your head vigorously before swallowing. I think that focus on coffee as a caffeine delivery drug stuck with me. I enjoy a good cup of coffee but I will drink just about anything as coffee. If I want something that tastes good I prefer tea.

There was a western news story recently(last couple weeks) about a journalist going with a ukrainian unit and seeing a bunch of pensioners and old men. There were several good photographs of the soldiers. Does anyone have the link?

Who knows, but the answer isn’t cheering for global nuclear war.

This is psychotic sentiment. Get a grip.

Thank you comrade, slava disinformatski

I get paid in uranium and borscht because the sanctions are so effective, tyvm

I’d like to see some corroboration of this from a source that isn’t an unnamed spy confessing to Yemeni security forces.

The irony is that since zelensky is the hardline anti Russia guy, he might still do fine in an election of just the territory they control. The eastern regions that russia has taken would almost certainly vote for more conciliatory politicians than the west of the country. In other words, the part of the country that would be most challenging to poll is also the part that’s probably least supportive of zelensky’s current policies.

The ghosts of Kiev

Xmen first class was a documentary

My prediction is that people will keep getting news about the Petrodollar from sites that flog crypto and gold

This was also why the Republicans were so insistent on crucifying Hunter, because he was a prominent link between Biden and Ukraine - an operation that the Republicans are left out of.

While I appreciate that there are factions within the US imperial elite, I think you greatly underestimate the extent to which republican interests and donors benefit from project ukraine. The defence and lng majors have benefitted the most from the most maximal aspects of the project (provoking hot war, sabotaging any peace process and blowing up Nordstream). Are you really trying to say that there is no connection between the defence industry and the republican donor base? If so, where is the peace wing of the republican party? There isn’t one. They just do stupid rhetoric where they would have done project ukraine so that they would have won. I’m sure that around the margins there would be different firms and individuals that are the biggest beneficiaries, but it’s naive and reductive to say that the GOP donor class is “left out”.

I started reading this book recently and haven’t taken part in the book club discussion until now. I picked it up because I have been doing volunteer work with kids, some of whom are neurodiverse, and I want to be a good volunteer for them. Hexbear has spoken highly of this book so I picked it up. I recognize and can relate to some autistic traits as described in the book so far, but as far as I know I’m just a weird but neurotypical middle aged person.

Anyway, one thing I’m struggling with in the book is that I recognize a lot of behavior described in the book in myself and other people I know, but to different degrees. The book spends a lot of time talking about masking and hiding autistic traits to fit in with neurotypical society. It isn’t always clear to me what the difference is between masking and things that I think loads of allistic people do. For example, I’m cishet male but I don’t share a lot of stereotypical masculine interests like meat, sports, fishing, cars. I’m not that fit, and I am more introverted/bookish. When I was a kid all that meant people called me gay, so I learned to feign interest or just prompt others to talk about their capital D dude shit. This is masking because I didn’t want to be made fun of for being effeminate. I’m sure other people do analogous things to fit in to groups they don’t naturally belong to. Similarly, I don’t speak to everyone the same way - I use different language when talking to my child, my partner, my parents, my colleagues, my online friends. I have a lot of education and I speak to other academics differently than strangers I meet. This is code switching. I also very regularly think about and view situations in the context of climate change and ecocide. I can’t help but see the foundation of skulls that our society is built on. That makes me sad, but I keep it to myself 99% of the time. Is that masking depression/anxiety or is it just being polite and not being a downer all the time? All of these examples are things that I’ve observed to be pretty common among loads of people, they don’t seem to be specifically autistic behaviors.

None of the above is particularly onerous to me anymore and it doesn’t cause the same type of stress as described in testimonials from the book. Is the degree of difficulty that people have with this kind of behavior the distinction between allistic and autistic people? It doesn’t seem like the behavior itself is the distinction. I mean maybe I’m way out to lunch and the behaviour I’m describing in myself are truly uncommon and I’m actually realizing I’m neurodiverse but i think that’s just stealing autistic valour. In any case, I think the book would be stronger if it highlighted in more clear terms how some of these traits can manifest in neurotypical people and how exactly they differ from autistic people.

Regardless of the above, I’m finding the book very useful in how I think about engaging with kids. The general rules about support/accommodation seem really widely applicable. Being a volunteer with ND kids that don’t know you well can be fraught, but this book is helping me take away good general approaches.

the idea would be to send thousands of drones, unmanned submarines, and drone boats into the Strait to buy time for the US and Taiwan to prepare a defense of the island.

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Paparo said. “So that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”

This is strategically idiotic. The description of using thousands of drones as something that is distinct from (buying time for) the defence of the island is out to lunch. Building thousands and thousands of drones and munitions will be the entire war, not just a month. Have these people learned nothing from Russia v Ukraine? Drones are consumable objects. A war isn’t won by having a bunch of them stockpiled, it’s won by having the productive and logistical capacity to replace losses and keep putting rounds on target. Their goal here is 18 months of production to buy 1 month of time - that is 5% the speed it needs to be.

all-domain, attritable autonomy, or ADA2

army guys have the worst acronyms

yes. it comes up in maybe 1 in 50 posts. the majority of the column is about geopolitics.

This is more than three words, but “I fetishize real work and imagine that the only thing that counts as real work is when white guys with beards do stuff that would fit in the age of empires tech tree”

I guarantee the author of this meme is some urban liberal that is working through their own alienation from work