the covered up windows, no loitering signs and security cameras are all really welcoming
In the Soviet State of Michigan, it no one is allowed to stop walking when outdoors. You are constantly monitored by the police and if you stop walking, you are arrested and beaten. In order to cover up these abuses, the state has made windows illegal.
Every six months, we get a new line about how the tide is turning and Ukraine will win in the end.
First, we got an earful about taking back Crimea. Then, it was The Winter War 2 and Greater Finland. Now I'm seeing folks unironically insist Moscow will fall at any moment. There's more and more noise about how a nuclear war would be winnable. The degree to which :LIB: s have bazinga-brained themselves is incredible. And these people are going to be the ones riding Harris's coattails into the White House.
Was waiting for "A full 7% of respondents suspect outside interference from Russia, China, and other Rogue States."
Also, plus, bonus, too, "Hamas" and "Hezbollah" are interesting ways to spell "Palestine" and "Lebanon".
Wormtongue Energy
Has conscription ever not been a total racket?
How is India comsequential?
The country with 1/6th the world's population, located at the center of the largest continent and playing host to both enormous technological and manufacturing logistical hubs?
The nuclear armed power that put a probe on Mars for $75M? The ultra-national religious wedge between the Islamic states and China?
Can't think of any reasons.
covered the SR-17 in their episode on stealth jets, and they noted how the vehicle has to undergo such a profound physical change at supersonic speed that it's basically falling apart on the runway when it's parked.
This is just the reality of making a plane fly very fast. When they're not moving very fast, they start to fall apart.
Franco was in power until the 1970's
He was fighting insurgencies well into the 1960s. Then he passed a civil war in Basque Country to his successors, who fought insurrections into 2011. Spain is a fractured mess of competing local interests. It isn't a globe-spanning empire run out of a state department in Madrid.
It's one of the most fascist and racist countries in the entirety of the West.
Its one of the least consequential European states, in large part because of how internally divided it continues to be. There are definitely fascists in Spain and quite a few of them are in high office. But is your average Spanish fascist more consequential than Erdogan in Turkey or Trudeau in Canada or Modi in India or Yoon Suk Yeol in South Korea? More consequential than the Mayor of New York? Not even close.
Since 1990, you'd be hard pressed to name a PM in Spain half as fascist as Tony Blair.
why Spain gets a pass, every single fucking time in the eyes of the West
The Spanish Empire was functionally kaput at the end of the 19th century. The US/UK take more of the blame because they gobbled up the territories that Spain used to hold. It's the same reason why the US takes more flack for our involvement in Vietnam than the French. Just a game of hot potato. You get the blame for being the last guy to hold the bag.
I don't think anyone is suggesting the Conquistadors are somehow absolved of blame. But Spain, as an institution, hasn't been a global player in nearly a century.
They don’t even have the excuse of being precious little Italy
That's exactly the excuse they have, practically speaking. And Italy gets tons of shit for being a hotbed of vile Catholicism.
That's dated. Like pointing to the Romanovs and complaining about the dark legacy of Russian imperialism.
The Spanish Civil War, combined with the Catalonian independence struggle, has turned Spanish politics on its head over the last century. They're much better today than the Brits (who cling desperately to their imperial legacy) or the French (who keep trying to reinvent the Bourbon Dynasty) simply by virtue of not being a country full of fucking Monarchists.
Reminds me of Christopher Hitchens. A man who made a living on the talk show circuit by tweaking people's noses and saying "Are you mad? Are you mad, yet?"
All fun and games when the people getting tweaked were self-important holy rollers. But as soon as he saw a payday in pissing on anti-war protesters by calling them Islamists, the man was urinating like a fucking fire hose.
Dawkins is just a lower-rent Hitchens.
I'm reminded of the TrashFuture episode intro where they had ChatGPT write dialogue based on ingesting fifty prior transcripts and coming up with a unique ten minute dialogue. Absolute fucking gibberish, but it did have a handful of riffs that you'd see pop up consistently between episodes.
Excited for all written works to be transformed in this novel and value-adding way.