Prelude to the Apocalypse

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Iran War. When.

2021
3
5%
2022-2025
17
28%
2026-2030
8
13%
2031-2040
5
8%
2041-2050
0
No votes
Never
28
46%
 
Total votes: 61

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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

Sengoku Strider wrote: Mon Oct 28, 2024 1:56 pm Just a quick Monday morning Elon Musk update:

Image
Looks like an African illegal to me.
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brokenhalo
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by brokenhalo »

Elons idiocy knows no bounds. Hoping his rumored ties to Putin are being investigated, and he winds up in prison and loses SpaceX at the bare minimum.
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To Far Away Times
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by To Far Away Times »

Trump held the second most racist rally at Madison Square Garden where self proclaimed white nationalist leader and Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon dropped a racist tirade, Tucker Carlson talked about his White Replacement Theory, and Hulk Hogan said republicans aren’t really nazis and domestic terrorists.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Bezos blocked the Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, causing the paper to lose 8% of its subscribers. He then wrote a condescending tone deaf letter defending his actions today.

Just a normal week in America.
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sima Tuna »

Second most racist? Small dick energy! Bring the big package racism or get the fuck out!
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BulletMagnet
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BulletMagnet »

To Far Away Times wrote: Tue Oct 29, 2024 2:44 amMeanwhile, Jeffrey Bezos blocked the Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, causing the paper to lose 8% of its subscribers.
I honestly couldn't have come up with a better parable for the Harris campaign: spend every drop of your political capital telling your base to go to hell, all in the name of trying to appease an insufferable cadre that will never, ever be appeased, then act surprised when your numbers drop off a goddamn cliff.

On the bright side, I did get a laugh out of this.
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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

WaPo smeared Sanders and I'll never forgive them. They can go get fucked. I hope they lose a third of their subscribers and sink.
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

Ana Kasparian deciding this is the year to become a nazi sure is.... a choice. A little Johnny-come-lately to get on the gravy trough, but here we are.

I even felt bad when I called her a 'garbage person' back in an 'ole tussle with Mischief. Specifically because I didn't feel like I had done enough due diligence on her to be able to make a call like that. She's an extremely minor person in the grand scheme of things so I didn't and won't do any research on her like I did with Elizabeth Warren. I was just going off on vibes - she seemed like an extremely superficial person. But just because I wouldn't want to be friends with her didn't mean she was evil or anything.

One commentator noted recently that she never seemed to be happy, which resonated with me. She can get her expensive house, her dope wheels, her cute poolboy, and she'll still be absolutely miserable. Ladder mentality does that to people - that if only you climbed a little bit higher your life would somehow change magically.

It's not really any different than those Elliot Rodger types who think having sex would change anything. It's a mindset completely focused on external symbols and trophies.

---

As for the election, the no toss-up maps say Trump will win. But the margins are narrow enough within the margin of error that I think it might be slightly in Kam's favor. The enthusiasm gap does seem to be favoring that direction; maybe Strider's right about people growing sick of the guy. Or the last four years of electorate churn caused him to dip off the map.

I suppose any election rigging will fix that, though. Reminder Ken Paxton took credit for tanking votes that would have put Texas more into play.

God knows they've gone to a dark place that I don't want the rest of us to follow. I don't want Elon Musk in charge of government cuts and firings. I don't want to revive 1700's laws that'll let the gestapo throw me in a concentration camp. I'm already on at least five different lists for saying I think people should have healthcare and that giving kids free meals is a better thing to spend our tax money on than most shit we spend it on.

Dictator Trump's robot army would do far more than merely check people's toilet licenses when they need to take a dump, or block people whenever they try to masturbate...

... reality is seriously morphing toward those final Matt Bors comics he made before retiring. The wasteland ones with cyborgs n' shit.

BulletMagnet wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2024 12:07 amI did get a laugh out of this.

The cops fleeing a school shooting got a smile out of me. The Onion's had a rough decade lately.

I got around to finally watching their classic autistic reporter series - I deeply regret skipping it back in the day. They're SS+ tier bits, and it's a crime that there aren't more of them.
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To Far Away Times
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by To Far Away Times »

Dems have overperformed in the mid terms (at a time where the opposition party usually makes big gains) due to the the Supreme Court’s regression on women’s reproductive autonomy. It turns out people really don’t like losing human rights.

I think Dems will walk away with this one, but I was wrong about 2016.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Just a quick Friday morning JP Morgan update:

World War III Has Already Begun, JP Morgan Boss Says
Newsweek wrote:The banking institution's CEO Jamie Dimon said in a recent speech at the Institute of International Finance that the current conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East has already begun a third world war.

Dimon previously called Russia, North Korea and Iran an "evil axis" that, alongside China, will hurt institutions like NATO. "And they're talking about doing it now," Dimon said at the event. "They're not talking about waiting 20 years. And so the risk of this is extraordinary if you read history."

"World War III has already begun. You already have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries," Dimon said.

Dimon went on to say that the United States needed to avoid being naive and allowing larger global events to play out without any intervention.

"What we should be thinking about is we can't take the chance this will resolve itself. We have to make sure that we are involved in doing the right things to get it resolved properly," he added.

"I talk about the risk to us if those things go south," Dimon said. "We run scenarios that would shock you. I don't even want to mention them."
The age of deterrence has become the age of control, all in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction. And he who controls the battlefield . . . controls history. War has changed. When the battlefield is under total control . . . war becomes routine.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

NBC wrote:As of Thursday evening, nearly 62 million early votes have been cast, with majority cast by women, 54 percent to 44 percent, according to NBC News' tracker
This might be a blowout.
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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

Sengoku Strider wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2024 8:58 pm
NBC wrote:As of Thursday evening, nearly 62 million early votes have been cast, with majority cast by women, 54 percent to 44 percent, according to NBC News' tracker
This might be a blowout.
Who's voting early? Trump won white women in 2020. Inconvenient, but true. White women chose Donald Trump. I'm a little tired of white women telling me they should run the world in their ladyboss pantsuits. They chose Trump. They're assholes. (Yes, when you vote for a crazy orange clown, I'm gonna call you an asshole. I'm not sorry.)

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/20 ... =serp_auto

If it's white women that have the time and mental capital to make an early voting effort, it may favor Trump. As an individual group, white women chose Trump: no man votes required or included. Inconvenient, huh?
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BryanM
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by BryanM »

I honestly have no idea either. Close to another damn coinflip. Anywhere to a 2008 'blowout' for team blue or another marginal loss. The talk of Iowa being in play bodes well, but well...

Anyway, some ads are getting pretty brutal. These independent organizations from outside the democratic party often actually understand human beings are made of flesh and blood, and you have to poke at our simple animal brains to move the needle.
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Lemnear
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Lemnear »

It seems that no one realizes the real danger of all of us ending up enslaved by communist dictatorships.
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sima Tuna »

Communist dictatorship vs Crony Corporatist dictatorship. The red menace scare was dead before I was born. Haven't seen any commie shithole yet that succeeded, so excuse me if I'm not very scared of them. Putin is hanging by a thread and China going to war with the USA would be a disaster for their economy.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sengoku Strider »

orange808 wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2024 10:36 pm Who's voting early?
Exit polls have had Kamala winning women by a significant margin, like 8%.
Lemnear wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 11:40 am It seems that no one realizes the real danger of all of us ending up enslaved by communist dictatorships.
There's no real danger of people in countries still run by communist parties getting actual communism, it's absolutely not happening in the West.
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Lemnear
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Lemnear »

Aah, so it's today? Who will win? Vote responsibly, fellow pilots!
Lemnear wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 11:40 am It seems that no one realizes the real danger of all of us ending up enslaved by communist dictatorships.
Sengoku Strider wrote: There's no real danger of people in countries still run by communist parties getting actual communism, it's absolutely not happening in the West.
Sometimes I have that innate fear of a global suicide attack, like "either the world is mine or we're all going to die".

Now I don't see an end to the madness
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Air Master Burst
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Air Master Burst »

Lemnear wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 11:23 pm
Sometimes I have that innate fear of a global suicide attack, like "either the world is mine or we're all going to die".

Now I don't see an end to the madness
Most people actually don't want to die, especially the greedy ones. Mutually assured destruction is far from ideal, but it's worked so far for that very reason.

And if nothing else, a global nuclear event would absolutely be an end to the madness.
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lovecraft
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by lovecraft »

Crossing fingers for Trump's victory, he is the most reasonable candidate for the geopolitical balance in the world.
Harris, on the other hand, is the candidate of exacerbated wokism, which is a disaster for the West.
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Lord British »

lovecraft wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2024 6:20 am Crossing fingers for Trump's victory, he is the most reasonable candidate for the geopolitical balance in the world.
Harris, on the other hand, is the candidate of exacerbated wokism, which is a disaster for the West.
Looks like someone drank too much miskatonic
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by Sima Tuna »

Air Master Burst wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 11:59 pm
Lemnear wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2024 11:23 pm
Sometimes I have that innate fear of a global suicide attack, like "either the world is mine or we're all going to die".

Now I don't see an end to the madness
Most people actually don't want to die, especially the greedy ones. Mutually assured destruction is far from ideal, but it's worked so far for that very reason.

And if nothing else, a global nuclear event would absolutely be an end to the madness.
What people forget about those tinpot dictators is they are fucked the moment they unleash a nuke. Every other nuclear-capable launching site within range will fire off, hit them and their country will be gone. Just gone. North Korea? Smoking crater. Russia? Populated cities will be gone.

Ask yourself how many nukes each nasty little dictator has within range of countries they'd want to hit, right? Figure some amount of those will be shot down before they hit. The devastation against their "enemies" (most of the nuclear-armed world) will be less than total. Retaliation will be inevitable.

Now obviously, the devastation would be astronomical and so would be the loss of human life. But in terms of power, the dictator who fires the nukes knows he will not stay alive long after that. Either he will be hit with a retaliatory strike, assassinated by a Seal Team Six or hit by a drone. In addition, he can expect that most of his major population centers and conventional army will be destroyed by nuclear strikes. If nukes are on the menu then it'd be damn hard to mass an army any-fucking-where within range of a nuclear launching site. Nukes would drop on any major production centers too, grinding the economy to a complete halt.

The most effective use of nukes is to threaten to use them but never actually do so. Which is what Putin and other dictators have done, historically. Actually using a nuke would kick off a unified WW3 against the person who did it. The world is too small a place nowadays for the consequences of such an action to be escaped.

I do not think we will see any dictator drop a nuke unless or until they are truly desperate, in which case their ability to strike an important target may already be compromised.

Despite the horrific war crimes committed by the Japanese in World War II, even so many years later many feel that the United States was not justified in dropping the two atomic bombs that it did. Those nukes were many orders of magnitude smaller than what we have today, yet they are embedded in the racial memory of an entire culture. Stands to reason that a fool who drops a nuke in the current era does so as a prelude to fucking his own ass.
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orange808
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Re: Prelude to the Apocalypse

Post by orange808 »

If humanity had understood the science and consequences of nuclear weapons better, I am certain Japan would have surrendered. The circumstances prevented a proper warning or response.

Furthermore, Japan's initial refusal to surrender doesn't make sense. That decision wasn't in the best interests of Japanese people. (I'm ignoring the decision to join the Axis in the first place and considering their position on surrender as it happened. The war was already underway; what's done is done.) An invasion effort would have killed a lot of people on both sides and forced even more misery onto Japan. I wish they would have surrendered.

The only mercy was the decision not to strike a major city--and the fact that the Axis didn't get the bomb first. The Axis would have used the atomic bomb enthusiastically--starting with London. That gets left out of a lot of conversations--or erased with apologist lies like: "you don't know what they would have done" or "that's Hitler and Japan is super innocent and perfect". That's all bullshit. The Axis wanted to nuke London and that was just the beginning.

In the long run, the bombs served as a warning and case study for the horrors of nuclear weapons. Everyone understands how horrible nuclear weapons are now. It's one of the few things we can all agree on. It's a crying shame that knowledge cost so much.

The entire episode is a black eye for humanity, but it's not out of character for all of us homo sapiens. All things considered, the outcome was far short of our collective potential for destruction. We got lucky.

The most dangerous thing is people that aren't rational. They're out there and authoritarian government has no checks and balances. People can't be counted on to behave rationally. It's ridiculous that Americans understand why everyone shouldn't have nuclear bombs, but simultaneously believe everyone should have a gun. Same problem. Irrational and impulsive people are dangerous.

The idea that human rationality will keep us safe in a future world of uncontrollable nuclear proliferation is cold comfort. You might be ready to throw an easy sucker punch at America on the invention, but you forgot about the Axis. Funny how thet keeps happening in this discussion. The invention was inevitable.
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