wuffah

And then, he fucked that cat.

Some context from the end of the article:

But Matthew Buckley, a former U.S. Naval aviator who spent considerable time serving in the Middle East region in the 1990s, told The Independent that the U.S. air campaign against Iran is likely executing long-held plans that would negate the need for the minesweepers by eliminating Iran’s ability to lay mines.

“When I was flying combat sorties off to Abraham Lincoln in the mid 90s, you know, we were doing operation Southern Watch no fly zone missions over Iraq. And guess what we were doing during our downtime? We were strike planning Iran … and one of my big strikes that I had planned was against an Iranian mine facility deep in the middle of Iran,” he said.

He added that the Avenger-class ships would not necessarily be readily available to clear any mines that might be laid because they’re “not built for a dynamic environment.”

“Obviously the LCS does have its issues, but it does have a lot of weapons on board, and it is more designed for actual combat and littoral … mine sweeping,” he said.

The mine sweepers in question are four decommissioned wood and fiberglass vessels from the Desert Storm era whose capabilities are being replaced by littoral (giggity) combat ships.

It’s hard for me to believe that this operation wouldn’t include priority strikes on sea mine facilities. Just the specter of mines in the strait is enough to make shipping insurance infeasible. If Iran is successfully mining, what happened? Was this war so hastily planned that this was overlooked? If the strait is so vital to shipping, you’d think they would want every minesweeper available.

If the US military (who are acutely aware of Trump’s openly hostile disrespect towards service members by the way) are actually listening to Trump’s logistical advice, he’s going to run them into the ground faster than his Vegas casinos.

Shitposting out of the penis

deleted by creator

They are completely different colors, however. 🤔

Remember when banks found out that mortgage backed securities were toxic because they gave loans to millions of people without applying basic home loan finance vetting, and they knew the CDO bubble was about to burst but they accelerated their purchasing of toxic assets anyways because they were still making money, and then the banks went bankrupt from holding billions in now worthless assets, and then got the government to bail out their corporations with billions of OUR tax payer dollars?

Part of lending is taking the calculated risk that you might not get paid back. The other side of “too big to fail” is that the rest of us are “too small to succeed.”

Hooo boy, that’s a long story.

Generally, I think it’s a discomfort with what is less commonly experienced and accepted, and an inability to integrate other valid experiences and ways of living into more rigid modes of thought. A lack of self-reflection tends to reduce empathy and acceptance.

Economically, reproduction is the traditional way that communities grow and produce labor. Sexuality becomes a means to this end, with love and pleasure being secondary to child-producing couples. Value is determined by how many people you can add to the community, and individual rights are devalued in this sense.

Socially, the LGBT space occupies its own paradigm of culture. Humans organize around shared interest and bond through shared experience, and the LGBT experience is seen as different enough to produce a foreign competitor.

Spiritually, the fear of offending a cosmic being is compelling enough to simply write off the consideration of integrating other views, especially those surrounding sexuality, gender, and relationships, into an ingrained belief structure. It’s simply too much of a cost in mental work or spiritual reflection to risk even when faced with the cognitive dissonance of supporting togetherness while rejecting the other.

Sexually, there is an intense level of projection surrounding attraction. See: the ongoing and vicious debate surrounding pineapple on pizza. People in general get weird about something that is so deeply ingrained as sexuality, and conservative religions tend to push for what grows the religion and enforces compliance. Sex is a primary control mechanism, and LGBT sexuality falls outside that regime of power.

Why is it stupid and petty and myopic? Because humans are diverse, adaptable, social, and capable. The human rights of everyone should be elevated above having babies, sexual control, and base emotional projection when determining how societies should be organized and laws are written. There is no God judging how we have sex, it’s just other people ascribing astrological power to their feelings so that they can seem more important than they really are. If one does ascribe to a religion, sexuality, or whatever mode of being, they should be free to practice it for themselves, but not to legislate it.

In the end, ordering the removal of a flag at a small monument for LGBT history is about as petty as it gets in my mind. All things considered, I suppose we should be glad that is the level of effectiveness they’ve been reduced to.

I think I’m at the point where I can finally understand why they view us as such a threat, but I’ll never be able to respect it. It’s just so fucking dumb, small, myopic, and petty.

Mulder: “Scully, the physical boundaries of potato are virtually limitless, you have to admit that science has only touched the surface of our understanding of potato. This could be a new beginning for expanding the psychodynamics of potato.

Scully: “Mulder, my initial physiological examination of potato reveals nothing supernatural of the sort. The legumiophysical characteristics of potato denote the standard vegitological implications of this investigation.

Potato: P O T A T O

FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner: “You two have reached the limits of your investigation into potato. You have 36 hours to get potato back or you’re suspended.

Smoking Man: chain smoking 500 cigarettes “Project potato is go. Shut down the X-files.”

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Chris Carter

“Parking: $80 daily maximum”

Wow, good thing we have a safe and effective vaccine for that disease!

I have to be careful not to slap my forehead when reading headlines like this because it would be so hard that my head would fly off, and blood would shower the room Tarantino-style.

Accusation in a mirror

Why does everyone like giant, awkwardly shaped, gawdy, hand wash only in lukewarm water, non-microwave, non-dishwasher safe mugs that start peeling after 3 months? Is your talking pikachu mug with a speaker and light up tail really worth all that effort when it winds up in the back of the top shelf of the cupboard and you go back to white ceramic after 3 weeks? How many Looney Tunes mugs from Six Flags can one person reasonably store in their home before exceeding the legal limit for dissolved lead concentration?

Why would we invent a machine that cleans the dishes just to invent dishes that the machine cannot clean? What are we DOING with our LIVES??

Make sure you yank the emergency brake as hard as you’ll can so that the car stops nice and quick.

Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride is a neat little documentary that discusses the history of the Bay Area’s train system. One of the striking things an interview mentions is how a project of this size and complexity was extremely difficult to complete even in the less developed and less crowded Bay Area of the 70’s, and would be nigh on impossible today. The original design took 8 years of planning and cost 1.6 billion in 1970’s dollars. If built today, it’s estimated it could take over 12 billion just for the original layout without even accounting for the land required to snake all that track through dense urban sprawl.

CA’s high speed rail system was approved in 2008 and currently estimated for completion by 2031 at the earliest and estimated at 36.7 billion dollars for just 35% of the layout. If it ever begins reliable service it would be an incredible achievement of engineering, economics, and cooperation among all levels of government.

The Trump administration’s decision to cut funding to a technology that most other nations have long since achieved and mastered is telling of their corrupt stance on the American people and their lack of understanding of the benefits of this technology. We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard. We work and invest taxes towards an expensive and grandiose vision of the future because of the possibilities and the promise it offers. Today, it is hard to imagine the Bay Area without BART. I imagine the same for a high speed rail system of the future. They think we can’t do it, but we will do it despite them because we must.

If only that baby were armed, it could have returned fire and everything would have been okay. More guns is the solution!

C O N C E N T R A T I O N C A M P S

It’s YOU. YOU are the “terrorist”. They are going to exterminate dissenters.

What a colossal waste of time and energy this is.