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tokamak

Burnt Ends
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Everything posted by tokamak

  1. My #1 takeaway is that 'Umeozulu' is pronounced way differently than I thought.
  2. Yes, that is the official word at this time. You're too late. Cowboys tagged Pollard today.
  3. They're not "finding out" anything. Just read the article. They're just going to paint the accreditation body as woke liberals that hate conservatives. Expect an announcement from DeSantis and Abbott setting up their new accreditation body any day now.
  4. sure, why not? i got $50 burning a hole in my pocket
  5. This is 100%, incontrovertibly correct. Several decades ago, greedy people noticed how much money the government spends on education and thought to themselves, "we need to get a piece of that pie" and created the "school choice" movement. Everything that followed is just a means to that end, no matter what kind of message is wrapped around it. Anti-wokeness is just the newest (completely made-up) attack front. I can't describe how sad this all makes me. I have two children in Texas public schools. I am thoroughly convinced that the bill that's being pushed this year in the lege will utterly decimate the public school system, especially the big urban districts. How could it not?
  6. RIP Wayne Shorter. One of the all time greats.
  7. Ten different models of tank in the field seems like a logistical nightmare for Ukraine. Better than no tanks, but I wonder if it won’t be as decisive as advantage as it’s being hoped.
  8. Everyone is talking about fighters, but what about A-10s for Ukraine?
  9. Polish domestic politics are kinda a shitshow, but they, the Czechs, and the Baltic countries are solid motherfuckers when it comes to foreign policy/Russia. Would drink a beer with those countries for sure. They understand that this is for all the marbles.
  10. Mexico used to have a bunch of American nuclear weapons on its soil. Then the United Stated signed a treaty that said we promise to guarantee Mexico's security in exchange for the return of those weapons. Then, 20 years later, the United States annexed Baja California by force and propped up separatists who created defacto breakaway states in Chihuahua and Coahuila. American politicians and media started talking a lot about how Mexico isn't a real country and that anyone who intervenes in US-Mexico affairs should get a nuke thrown at them. Needless to say, this all made Mexico a little nervous and the Mexican people and government started feeling like they might be better off being friends with China instead of the US. Clearly this is all Mexico and China's fault.
  11. What am I missing? To me it's a standard "Ukraine should trade it's territory for peace" article. No different from idiot Musk. The author doesn't address the glaring fact that giving Putin some chunks of Ukraine in exchange for him to stop the war just means he'll come back and do it again in 5, 10 years. He talks about some "deal" where Ukraine gives up territory and in return gets EU accession. That's horseshit IMO. Ukrainian entry into the EU is up to Ukraine and the EU, not Putin.
  12. It's wild to me that we're doing trenches in the year 2023. I had thought they were rendered obsolete, oh about 1918 or so.
  13. I do, and that's the point I'm trying to make. Maybe I misunderstand what you're getting at. I buy that Russia is by-and-large incompetent, corrupt, and ill-prepared. What I'm struggling with is the idea that they are just complete morons and can be this bad at this, for this long, this consistently.
  14. Question for the thread. Obviously I'm rooting for Ukraine. You're rooting for Ukraine. All of the citizen journalists, retired generals, think tanks, etc from Twitter are rooting for Ukraine. Mainstream Western media is rooting for Ukraine. Western intelligence services are rooting for Ukraine. So the question - are we in an echo chamber? I ask because basically ever since the beginning of the war, the info I've personally consumed is that Ukraine is almost always awesome, disciplined, brave, effective, and winning, and that Russia is dumb, ill-equipped, incompetent, corrupt, and blundering. It's not hard to buy that in general, but it's just so....consistent? This recent Russian winter offensive is a good example. We read about that for weeks - here it comes! Then literally like 2 days into it, the NYTimes is publishing articles about how it's already a big failure and Ukraine is just mowing Russians down and it's fizzling out. At some point I become incredulous. I'm a naturally skeptical person, you might say naturally pessimistic, too. Is there really no deeper level to this than "yes, Russia really is that bad at this and they haven't been able to score any meaningful victories against a country with 1/5 their population and 1/10th their military budget"?
  15. I wonder how unwavering Putin is in his loyalty to Shoigu.
  16. Well now I'm super comforted by the thought that a huge percentage of their nuclear arsenal is rotting away in warehouses without any maintenance, guarded by drunks and convicts, and overseen by the corrupt. What could possibly go wrong?
  17. I wonder if this is some of the reason why we're starting to stockpile stuff in Europe. If shit's already in Poland or Germany in warehouses, no one can win political points by bringing it back because at that point no one gives a shit. Or if the winds change in, say, Germany, they can just say "well it's not our shit going to Ukraine, we're just getting rid of all this icky American stuff".
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