This is old news, but where were you when the ukranian government released a combat montage with zoomer “phonk” music

Nobody said first so I'm saying first

Is it too early/too conspiratorial to speculate this was a mossad op attempting to drag Iran into the conflict again?

Lessons I've Learned From The Last 24 Hours:

1. Never get into a helicopter under any circumstances unless you have accepted your soon-to-be death.
2. The media is actively useless at reporting for big, sudden events like these and misinformation/disinformation is the default state; just touch grass for like 8-12 hours after you hear that something big is happening. The Iranian drone strike being exaggerated/misunderstood; Prigozhin and his fun adventure in Russia; and now this crash. All of it is a clusterfuck of rumors and images from 2019 and so on.
3. I'm sticking to long-term analysis, there's nothing productive in engaging in speculation which will be answered anyway in the coming hours and days unless there's actual knowledge to be gained from talking with an expert about possibilities. The Official 72 Trillion Vibes-Based No Investigation No Right To Speak But I'm Speaking Anyway Prediction is that the broader situation in Western Asia is pretty much unchanged and we're still in the same paradigm of Israeli defeat/Resistance ascendence.

some news of ec tweaking its prosecutors noses

its hilarious how euros can't see corruption unless its or russia

I guess Muhammad Mukhbar is now the president?

According to Iranian law, in the event of the president's death, the first vice president (currently Muhammad Mukhbar) temporarily replaces him, and election must be conducted within six months

The Bass break-in 100% reads like some CIA mind control gone mad.

This CNN article makes sure to include shit like this to keep my conspiracy brain on full blast:

The break-in happened on the morning of April 21, during the security officers’ morning shift change when there was a “short gap” of time when an officer was not on the property, Los Angeles Police Chief Dominic Choi said Tuesday. Police have remedied the scheduling gap with an overlap in shifts, he said.

Is it fair to compare Biden vs Trump as the vote between war with Russia vs. war with China? (i.e. each candidate representing a different faction of hawks)

https://twitter.com/StVincentGrad23/status/1790497188960694502

some dark humor at bloody blinky

https://youtu.be/DyUAl1bqqT0

Galloway giving them hell

OpenAI announced "Hello GPT-4o" today. It's a GREAT day for incels.

https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/

Helicopter site. I think it's a complete certainty that nobody survived this. There is no helicopter left.

A fun little exchange from a recent mainstream radio interview with a somewhat prominent politician from the coalition currently in power in Poland:

Interviewer: Another question from the audience… do intelligence agencies from countries other than Russia and Belarus operate in Poland?

Politician: There are agencies who are interested in specific regions/directions and there are other agencies who are interested in the whole world. So we can expect those from the latter group to operate here as well.

Interviewer: For example the Chinese?

Politician: Your are on the right track.

Interviewer: And the Americans? The British? The Germans? Our allies… are they also operating here or not?

Politician: They are in communication with us and are receiving information from us that is important from a security standpoint, and our agencies also receive such information from them.

Interviewer: Information is one thing, that’s an official exchange, but are they also spying on us?

Politician: We have rules that together as part of the pact we don’t do such activities to each other, but as history with Germany shows (I'm assuming he's talking about the US bugging Angela Merkel's phone here), it can vary in reality.

Interviewer: … and also the history of US-Israeli intelligence cooperation.

Politician: Also that, but I’m not worried about the allied agencies because even if they were to find something, they would let us know about it.

Interviewer: Are you sure about that? Because I’m not… No agency likes to share information, especially if it’s compromising to polish politicians, and the information they find may be of that nature.

Politician: Well... in that case every politician has to make a judgement of their own conscience… how their behavior can influence the situation in the country.

The Country of the Week is Vietnam!

Feel free to post or recommend any books, essays, studies, articles, and even stories related to Vietnam.

If you know a lot about the country and want to share your knowledge and opinions, here are some questions to get you started if you wish:

• What is the general ideology of the political elite? Do they tend to be protectionist nationalists, or are they more free trade globalists? Are they compradors put there by foreign powers? Are they socialists with wide support by the population?
• What are the most important domestic political issues that make the country different from other places in the region or world? Are there any peculiar problems that have continued existing despite years or decades with different parties?
• Is the country generally stable? Are there large daily protests or are things calm on average? Is the ruling party/coalition generally harmonious or are there frequent arguments or even threats?
• Is there a particular country to which this country has a very impactful relationship over the years, for good or bad reasons? Which one, and why?
• What are the political factions in the country? What are the major parties, and what segments of the country do they attract?
• Are there any smaller parties that nonetheless have had significant influence? Are there notable separatist movements?
• How socially progressive or conservative is the country generally? To what degree is there equality between men and women, as well as different races and ethnic groups? Are LGBTQIA+ rights protected?
• Give a basic overview of the last 50 or 100 years. What's the historical trend of politics, the economy, social issues, etc - rise or decline? Were they always independent or were they once occupied, and how have things been since independence if applicable?
• If you want, go even further back in history. Were there any kingdoms or empires that once governed the area?

From our reading list:

These books focus on general history:

• Viet Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present by Ben Kiernan (2017).

These books focus on the Vietnam War:

• Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard Fall (1966).
• Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience by Gabriel Kolko (1985).
• The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam by Douglas Valentine (1999).
• Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse (2013).

https://archive.is/ChKfH

Another military industrial grift is publicly declared dead after nearly a decade of siphoning tax dollars. If it wasn't for the fact that its just a naked cash grab, I would wonder why the fuck would the military waste money on trying to strap freakin' lazer beams to jets do they can theoretically melt holes in ballistic missiles before they take off.

Another Dead End for Airborne Lasers: Air Force Scraps Effort to Mount Directed-Energy Weapon on Fighter Jet

After years in development, the U.S. military's latest attempt at an airborne laser weapon to protect troops on the ground from incoming ballistic missiles appears to be headed for the scrapyard.

The same place where they dug up the idea I'm the first place

Initiated in 2016, the Self-Protect High-Energy Laser Demonstrator, or SHiELD, was envisioned as a laser weapon mounted on fighter jets such as the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II that would neutralize incoming air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles, as well as ballistic missiles potentially targeting U.S. forces abroad, according to a 2023

Whoever comes up with these acronyms should be shot out of a circus cannon straight into a piranha tank.

Congressional Research Service report. The Air Force had planned on the SHiELD system taking flight for airborne testing aboard an F-15 Eagle some time in fiscal 2024. The service had already reported a successful ground-based shootdown of test missiles and taken receipt of the laser weapon system and pod subsystem in recent years. But any plans to complete the weapon and put it into operation now appear to have been abandoned, according to service officials.

Ground-based as in they can have it plugged into an outlet to power it. And by "test missiles" it's whatever trash that's in the u.s arsenal, so not really that impressive.

"The SHiELD program has concluded, and there are no plans for further testing and evaluation," Dr. Ted Ortiz, SHiELD program manager at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate, told Military.com in an email. "The Air Force has not installed a laser pod on a fighter jet test bed."

The grift is complete. We finished what we were paid to do.

SHiELD is the second airborne laser weapon effort that the Air Force has scrapped in recent months. In March, Air Force Special Operations Command revealed that it had abandoned plans to mount an Airborne High Energy Laser system, or AHEL, on a AC-130J Ghostrider gunship, citing "technical challenges" even with "significant end-to-end, high-power operation" during ground tests.

See? A complete grift! Everyone already knew theres no way to power the damn thing so why bother wasting money to find out its impossible.

Despite that, Air Force officials remain bullish on the potential for airborne laser weapons to reshape the battlefield.

Chair Force officials who's only contact with the air is their big fucking heads in the clouds

"Through SHiELD and related efforts, [the Air Force Research Laboratory] has made significant advances in the readiness of airborne [high-energy laser] technology, and we continue to mature airborne HEL weapons technology for the operational needs of today and tomorrow," Ortiz said.

News of the SHiELD program's conclusion comes as the Defense Department seeks to bolster air defenses for U.S. troops deployed overseas as the threat of adversary missile attacks has grown.

Fucking jackasses, what are you gonna do, build nuclear reactors everywhere you invade so you can power your shitty flashlights?

Wait don't answer that

Iran conducted the largest ballistic missile attack on American forces abroad ever in January 2020 in response to the U.S. assassination of top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qasem Soleimani, resulting in traumatic brain injuries among at least 110 service members.

AND ZERO DEATHS BECAUSE IRAN WAS DEMONSTRATING IT CAN AND WILL BUTCHER OUR ENTIRE MILITARY PRESENCE ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST WITH EASE

Also your brain injuries are gonna be registered as non-service related, so get fucked troops.

In recent months, Iran-backed militias have been taking potshots at U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and at Navy warships in the Red Sea in response to Israel's military campaign in Gaza, resulting in even more TBI diagnoses among U.S. troops.

That can easily end as soon as the genocide ends. Blame Biden if you get blasted by Iran.

With drone and missile attacks on the rise, the Pentagon has increasingly eyed directed-energy weapons such as lasers and high-powered microwaves that, with a low cost-per-shot and a virtually unlimited magazine, could eventually provide efficient low-cost alternatives to existing -- and costly -- air defense systems such as the $125,000-a-pop Coyote interceptor or the $2 million-a-shot, ship-launched Standard Missile-2.

Except it's not low cost because no-fucking-where has the energy infrastructure or capacity to use the shit, not here at home and most sure as shit nowhere there's American boots on the ground.

To that end, the Army recently deployed a pair of ground-based laser weapons overseas to help counter incoming drones and is investing heavily in the development of more powerful systems designed to counter even fast-moving cruise missiles. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is spending around $1 billion per year on at least 31 directed-energy programs, according to C4ISRNet.

GRIFT GRIFT GRIFT GRIFT GRIFT

Deploying airborne laser weapons for missile defense has been a goal since the Air Force's Boeing 747-based YAL-1 Airborne Laser Test Bed knocked ballistic missiles out of the sky during testing in the 2000s.

SHITTY U.S MISSILES

Even before the uptick in missile attacks on U.S. troops, the Pentagon's 2019 Missile Defense Review suggested that "developing scalable, efficient, and compact high-energy laser technology holds the potential to provide a future cost-effective capability to destroy boosting missiles in the early part of the trajectory," and that mounting laser weapons aboard unmanned aerial vehicles could prove an effective countermeasure to ballistic missiles such as those in Russia and China's arsenals.

GRIFTERS

But developing effective and reliable airborne laser weapons has proven challenging compared to their ground vehicle- and warship-based counterparts, as former Pentagon research and engineering chief Mike Griffin detailed in 2020, according to Breaking Defense.

BECAUSE ITS FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE UNLESS YOU BUILD FLYING NUCLEAR REACTORS

The first problem is power generation. Lasers require a significant amount of power to produce their destructive beam, and generating that amount of power from a relatively small tactical aircraft is a major engineering challenge.

ITS NOT A CHALLENGE YOU FUCKING DINGUS

The second problem is the beam itself. Even if you generate enough power, the atmospheric turbulence involved with operating a fighter jet in combat makes it nearly impossible to maintain a coherent laser beam for long enough to successfully engage a ballistic missile in flight.

ERGO THE TERM "FUCKING FANCY FLASHLIGHTS ON SHITTY-ASS PLANES"

"I think it can be done as an experiment, but as a weapon system to equip an airplane with the kinds of lasers we think necessary -- in terms of their power level, and all their support requirements, getting the airplane to altitudes where atmospheric turbulence can be mitigated appropriately -- that combination of things doesn't go on one platform," as Griffin put it in a May 2020 conference call with reporters, according to Breaking Defense.

One month after Griffin's comments, then-Pentagon acquisition chief Will Roper said that the Air Force was rethinking the potential applications of the laser weapon technology developed through the SHiELD program beyond integrating the system into a tactical fighter jet, Defense News reported.

"What I've told that team is, 'Let's have a dialogue,'" Roper said in June 2020, per Defense News. "Let's understand the different power levels and what they should correspond to, and let's not make the highest power level that we can dream up and the mission that's the sexiest be the thing that drives us."

With the SHiELD program concluded and the AHEL defunct, the Defense Department's dream of airborne laser weapons seems as distant as ever. But as the Pentagon continues to invest in directed-energy programs to deal with the rising tide of adversary drone and missile attacks, chances are high that the Air Force's efforts in that arena are far from finished.

MORE MONEY TO BE SHOVELED INTO THE BURN PIT

"After many years of development, HEL weapons are now a battlefield reality," Ortiz said. "The game-changing features of HEL weapons -- deep magazine, scalable effects, and speed-of-light engagement -- combined with the potential logistics benefits of a weapon that effectively uses jet fuel for ammunition, make air platform integration a natural next step."

BATTLEFIELD VIRTUAL REALITY! GET FUCKED AND STAY FUCKED