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Ghost of LL

Burnt Ends
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. In what quarter will Quinn complete his first pass?
  2. Yeah—and good booze, too. I think they were pouring JW Blue as their scotch.
  3. This just signals that the Qataris are done with all this bullshit. They’ve had their feelings hurt over the fact that Westerners aren’t just showing up and enjoying soccer, as they expected. They’re asking questions about slavery, flying Lufthansa jets celebrating “diversity,” and contributing to talk about the corruption that led to Qatar having the World Cup to begin with. So now they’re not in any mood to accommodate any Western sensibilities or expectations. And the result is going to be an absolute shitshow.
  4. Oh, not recently, Clark. They recently read that goats were high in cholesterol.
  5. That makes more sense. As with everything with the EU, there's always a mechanism. The EU is a creature of a multilateral treaty. So all it would take is all of the other members of the EU agreeing to abrogate their treaty with Hungary. That's obviously hard to do, but it's not impossible.
  6. Hungary is doing its level best to get kicked out of NATO and the EU. It's hard to imagine how it can be a part of the EU and have an economic deal with Iran in light of all of the secondary sanctions in place.
  7. It's Happening. But before it happens, let's take a moment to acknowledge that Nancy Pelosi has been the most effective party leader since Sam Rayburn. And without her, we wouldn't have gotten through the Affordable Care Act, the Infrastructure Bill, or any other Democratic priority that has been done over the past 15 years.
  8. It means that there are a lot of people who, on seeing that the race was close, hustled their assess down to the county offices to cure their ballots. You might imagine that those will break heavily Democratic, but I'm not sure that's a safe assumption.
  9. But a lot of those people are in jobs that aren't specific to the tech sector. A lawyer or someone in HR or in sales can go do that in some other sector. And for that matter, everyone needs coders and engineers. As someone who just tried to make a reservation at marriott.com, I can tell you that they're in serious need.
  10. So was that going to be two different events? Cancer then smiting? Or was the cancer the tool through which God was going to smite? And if the latter, why the fuck does God need cancer these days? It used to be that He would fucking smite you directly with His own hand. But now he outsources that shit to cancer? Sounds like God has gotten lazy in His old age.
  11. Bullshit. The Romans had their own pantheon. They adopted some Greek gods (they also adopted some Egyptian and Levantine gods), cause that's how shit works when you're a polytheist. And they drew some analogies between their pantheon and the Greeks'. But they didn't just up and completely bogart the Greek pantheon. Diana is a good example of that, actually. Diana was a Latin goddess that predates Rome. She got conflated with some of the attributes of Artemis over time. But that's not a goddess that they stole from anywhere.
  12. There's some real satanic panic in Waco these days. I'm sure it's all QAnon-adjacent. But there are billboards all around Waco about sex trafficking ("Not in my town!"). It's just really weird that people in Waco think that their town is some hub for international sex trafficking. As always, that town is just fucking nuts.
  13. Wars are frequently fought over concerns about an adversary's future capabilities. World War I largely started because of Russia's fears about future Germany capabilities and Austria's fears about Russia's. Israel attacked Egypt and Syria in 1967 based on its fears of increasing Arab cooperation and capabilities. And obviously the Iraq War was started over the United States' misplaced fears about Iraq's future WMD capabilities. But with that being said, China doesn't have the ability to land an amphibious invasion force on Taiwan. Bateshorn is right that China hasn't fought a real war since 1953, and an amphibious invasion isn't exactly the first thing you want to try to pull off out of the gate. For that reason, a blockade is a much more feasible scenario. But one wonders whether that is a real viable war plan, given the likelihood of escalation with the United States. Regardless, I really have to wonder how China's Zero-Covid policy would play into this. I think part of the Zero-Covid policy is about social control. The CCP really likes being able to lock down entire cities whenever it needs to. And if there's any kind of protest in a city, they can just say "oops--there's a positive Covid test so everything has to be locked down for two weeks." But all the same, I do think there is some real paranoia among the CCP about Covid and the impact it could have on the country's political stability. And nothing would be a vector for disease like putting together a huge invasion force. After all this, any preparations for an invasion of Taiwan would virtually guarantee a massive outbreak in China among a population that has a shockingly low vaccination rate. So for those reasons, I really don't expect China to undertake an invasion of Taiwan (or even a blockade).
  14. The fact that they're saying construction is going to begin in 6-9 months, however, tells me that they've got their ducks (i.e., financing) in a row. I can definitely see this going forward.
  15. That's going to make it real tough for kids to go anywhere at Halloween. Even school. You have one goddamned girl dress up as Dracula and you've got to pack every schoolteacher off to the hoosegow. And don't even get me started on the church Christmas pageant.
  16. This reflects the popular view of Versailles. But it's largely at variance with the facts. The reparations imposed on Germany were far from crippling. In fact, the war debt that Britain and France had to repay to the United States was significantly more onerous than Germany's reparations debt. And while the United States pressured Britain and France to forgive a huge portion of Germany's reparations bill, the United States didn't forgive any of France and Britain's war debt. The result is that Germany's economy recovered faster than any other country's in Europe. There's this popular idea that the reparations debt caused hyperinflation. But that's not true; hyperinflation in Germany was caused by the Great Depression and the German government's spending policies in trying to address the economic effects of the Depression. It had nothing to do with Versailles. The other provisions of Versailles were not terribly onerous or unusual. The limits on Germany's military is no different than what we did with Japan after World War II, and nobody thinks that was unfair. The loss of territory was less severe than the peace Germany imposed on Russia a year earlier. World War II didn't come about because Versailles was unfair. It came about because large portions of the German military thought the verdict of the battlefield was unfair. And I think the movie does a good job of reflecting that. The German High Command told the Kaiser on November 9 that the war could not be won and that the armistice had to be signed. But then the military refused to meaningfully participate in the armistice negotiations. Instead, they forced the civilian government to sign and take responsibility for the armistice (as accurately reflected in the movie). And, at the same time, you had large portions of the German military (particularly in the officer corps, as reflected in the movie) that wanted to continue to fight. Therein is the foundation of the Dochstosslegende--the legend that gripped Germany in the interwar period that the German military wasn't defeated on the battlefield; it was stabbed in the back by a cabal of socialists and Jews. With that mindset, the origin of which I think the movie does an excellent job of capturing, German revanchism was guaranteed no matter what the terms at Versailles ended up being.
  17. So you both missed out by not going into the pyramid (they only open one at a time) and didn't miss much at all. You go up to the entrance of the pyramid, which is probably ten blocks or so high. As shown on your photos, each block is about five feet high. So the entrance is probably 50 feet or so off the ground. It provides kind of a nice view over the Giza plain. Then you go in, and almost immediately there's a shaft that is at a 45* angle. And that's maybe the most disconcerting and vertigo-inducing experiences I've ever had. To be in an enclosed space where there is no orientation to level; the sole orientation is at a 45* angle. It's just really weird. At the top--probably another 50 feet up or so--you turn right and go into a small antechamber. It's small as to square footage, but the ceiling is probably 30 feet. To get into the crypt, you then have to crawl low on your hands and knees underneath a solid granite block that is just kind of wedged in there. And yeah, it's been there for a few thousand years. But it doesn't exactly look like it's going to remain in place for another moment. So there's some incentive to be quick in your crawling. And then you're in the crypt, where there's . . . nothing. There's the remains of the granite sarcophagus (without a lid). But other than that, it's empty. There are no paintings as you see in the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Really no decoration at all. It's a very large room. But really the only thing interesting about it is that you're in the pyramid. Then it's time to scramble underneath the 50-ton granite block again. And then back out to the 45* shaft. And that's where you see the angle from above for the first time, and that's where the vertigo can really set in. So yeah--definitely worth it. It's incredible to be in the pyramid. But if you didn't see it, . . . you kind of didn't miss much.
  18. We're in more danger if she's the nominee. I would have serious concerns that a lot of Democrats would leave that race blank rather than vote for her. Her approval rating in Arizona is in the absolute shitter.
  19. No chance. Running as an independent is hard. Apart from getting on the ballot, there is a ton of legwork that needs to be done in developing an organization. And Trump is just waaaaay too lazy for that. He'll stay in the primaries through the convention, and then he'll contest the convention. And after he loses the convention, he'll absolutely shit-talk the nominee through November. Because if there's one thing worse than being beaten by Biden in 2020, it'd be the sight of another Republican beating Biden in 2024. His ego wouldn't be able to take it, and he'll do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening.
  20. But actually, as we demonstrated last year, it is now easier to replace the players than it is to replace the coach. And yeah--I recognize that this is a huge paradigm shift in college football. But we can actually tell nonproducing players to hit the portal. And we can replace them with guys transferring from lower-tier programs.
  21. I’m getting the distinct feeling that this isn’t going tonight.
  22. Thank God, it looks like we don’t have to go to war today.
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