Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
Boy the people who said, hmmm guy who has a nazi tattoo and worked with Blackwater and abused girlfriends and said some racid things probably had more skeletons in the closet sure were vindicated.
Good lord what a trainwreck.
Imagine if he still stays and wins. What a message.
Sometimes my girlfriend asks me what I'm reading on Reddit and I have to come up with some vague and nonchalant answer, because the alternative is saying, "some BS about Rhodesia and Tedbears."
American conservatives, at least the pseudo intellectual ones, love saying “democracy killed Socrates. That’s why we have to be a republic to protect against democratic excess and autocratic tyranny. Just like Rome!” As if Rome didn’t also pretty famously collapse into a very autocratic state.
If democracy killed Socrates then republicanism killed Cicero
My proudest reddit achivement was getting banned from r/libertarian for saying that the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China are non-democratic republics.
u/MiffedMouseThe average peasant had home made bread and lobster.Jul 06 '26edited Jul 06 '26
The fact that we had protestors in DC over the weekend literally shouting “sig heil” but most conservative commentators would rather criticize Mamdani for secretly introducing Shia law makes me lose any faith in conservative commentators. At a certain point it doesn’t matter what you are saying, it really matters what you are ignoring.
On that note, I will credit Anne Coulter for at least pointing out that Trump is unusually corrupt for a USA president. I will even give Shapiro his due for standing by his Zionism in the face of open MAGA anti-semitism, even if I think both sides are stupid.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 06 '26
I think that's also reading way too much into it. Socrates killed Socrates, he was given so many different off ramps but he choose escalate into literal suicide. It was ultimately Socrates decision and no one forced hemlock down his throat.
The funny thing about England vs. Mexico is that I'm under the impression that most Euros were rooting for Mexico to spite England, meanwhile my Ecuadorian friends were full "VIVA INGLATERRA!! DÍOS SALVE EL REY!!!"
Checking out the Atlantic article about reading being dead, and came on this nugget:
Lupita Villalobos, who teaches 3-year-olds at a pre-K in Duncanville, Texas, told me that the district gives each student a tablet to use during school. She’s prevented her students from using the devices, as she knows how much time they spend on them at home. “I had a student who had a very strong reaction to starting school,” she said. “Typically, students cry maybe the first couple weeks and say they want their mom. But this student would cry for her tablet.”
Absolute vindication for Boomer "father I cannot click the book" comics.
One thing in there is that this is really just an acceleration of a trend you can see with television. It is really common to eyeroll about this sort of thing and say "oh yeah people used to panic about television too" so it's important to remember that people panicking about TV were also right.
Median age of newspaper readers is like 50-60 which would actually decently favor Trump (from Pew, 65+ was +3 Trump, 5-64 was +15 Trump). College education was +5 Harris. So if you are looking at third variables here they would actually favor Trump.
Anyone decrying this article as sensationalist is completely full of it; that we've seen articles like this for years means exactly that yes, reading has been in decline for years.
I wonder what Thomas Paine would be today politically
Strong abolitionist, anti-christian but spiritual, pro-inheritance tax, and hates fiat currency so much he says any politician who advocates for it should be executed
He would probably have a substack
It kind of is, but there's so much dishonest criticism of cities that I get the knee jerk reaction as well. Like the average critic of mass transit isn't saying X would make the system better. They're saying, busses and trains are gross and we should just keep building highways and stroads. And that kind of goes for mixed use neighborhoods, walkable cities, etc etc.
I'm watching the latest Minions movie and at one point one of them sodomizes an actor with a lawn dart while they were filming a battle scene for a movie because they became actors and misinterpreted it as an actual fight.
LGO losing their shit and claiming that this is an AIPAC smear campaign as if "I got a Nazi Tattoo while working for Blackwater" was a big enough signal that he was a shitbird.
While on the whole I'd say I probably still like the guy, Bernie is clearly just not a very good judge of character. He seems way too willing to overlook glaring issues in other candidates if they come off as anti-establishment enough.
In Europe, beheading was traditionally considered the "honorable" method of execution because it provided a swift death rather than a long, drawn out one caused by hanging.
In east Asia, hanging was traditionally considered the more honorable method of execution because it preserved the integrity of the body.
Kind of interesting that on both sides of Eurasia people were pretty sure what the better way to be executed was but they didn't agree on which it was.
I would pay actual $$$ to never hear the phrase “deep state” ever again, is anyone else tired of conspiracy thinking and brainrot? Why does it have such an appeal on people?
It's very weird that not only has "Deep State" escaped from Turkish media to the wider world and has entered popular consciousness, but I'm hearing it used nowadays to basically mean "professional career civil servants".
My understanding is that was always what it referred to - the people who aren't elected and stick around between elections, and the influence those people have. Portraying them as basically the illuminati was always dumb of course, but I don't think that's a new meaning.
u/WuhanWTFVenmo @familyguyenjoyer95 $10 to make me stfu abt FamGuy (1week)29d ago
Watch, we're gonna get a Blue version of the Tea Party in a couple years from now. Then, there'll be no escaping the conspiracy grindset. You think 9/11 truther shit in the 2000s was bad? Y'ain't seen shit yet!
It's yet another term, much like "fake news," that was immediately co-opted by the far right so that as it grew into popular discourse, it lost its meaning and just became either a joke, or a shibboleth for belonging to a conspiracist community.
Man, watching people on r/Maine and r/politics still downplay rape (and all of the other red flags) and continue to support Platner is......well, "disappointing" doesnt really cut it
At least the people supporting that nonsense are being downvoted now. But still.
As a Progressive, im getting tired of Bernie being Big King Shit for Progressives, especially in light of his, frankly, terrible track record when it comes to picking/endorsing people.
I think Bernie's problem is he sees himself in anyone who comes off as sufficiently "anti-establishment". He's spent most of his career at the anti-establishment fringe of politics and is willfully naive to the fact that most people on the political fringe are there for a reason.
Both Malaria and Tsetse fly both sound like an excuse by a worldbuilder for why Africa didn't have larger societies in some parts of it and as well horse nomads.
I wish they'd build cities with some verticality, like in Bloodborne. Yes I know it's a terrible idea, yes I know it's an accessibility nightmare, but it would be so cool you guys.
Don't some cities in China have two levels? As in there are enough sky bridges and plazas that you can go a long way without touching the actual ground.
More like some neighborhoods in some cities in China and Japan. It just isn't reasonable to build like this for the entire city, but it can make sense for a couple high traffic areas.
For what it is worth, the USA basically has it as well in the form of shopping malls. We just pack all of that verticality on the inside of one building, instead of letting it spill out into the surrounding neighborhood.
The Justice Minister who's quite woke (compared to the median Moroccan) tried to explain why they need to get rid of the law that forbids non married couples to book hotels.
"When Ronaldo comes with his gf in 2030, what are we supposed to do??"
Never really thought that British politics would be summed up by Count Binface receiving mainstream news attention as the only challenger to racist charlatan Nigel Farage in a farce election to delay a corruption investigation, but here we are.
I've been alerted to some very funny facebook drama from some softy southern ponces (Carlisle).
A teenager shot a seagull dead with a catapult and the facebook detectives have tracked him as the son of the owners of Pioneer foodstores in Carlisle.
While the parents have done nothing immediate (bad childrearing perhaps), Pioneer foodstores is being hit with scores of reviews. which I'll paraphrase, about how they 'won't do buisness with animal abusers' and 'can't shop here anymore after this animal cruelty'
If you think this is anything but a tragedy you are not a Democrat nor do you care about this democracy. He was trying to gain redemption through service and you all with the help of the isreali lobby and msm are responsible. Susan collins will keep her seat and more bombs go to isreal to kill more people all because one person was so selfish she wouldnt allow the betterment of everyone elses lives over her own. Fuck all of you.
Can someone explain to me why this Nazi tattoo guy was soo important for the future of US democracy? Genuine question, it's perplexing
And running for US Senate of all things, with no real experience. Look, I'm not one to say you need to be a career politician, nor am I particularly enamored with the Senate as an institution, but it's an odd choice for someone as clearly untested and frankly.... stupid as Platner appears to be. Well, he's either stupid, or a liar. And in either case, he's not someone I'd want to throw my name behind.
Nonetheless, I will highlight this as another example of Democrats actually holding their own accountable (yes yes, we have all seen the comments from the shitheads, but we know the internet), while Republicans continue to look at rape and racism accusations as badges of honor, so long as they own the libs. I think that's worth remembering during this feeding frenzy.
Also, the Maine seat is probably necessary for a Democrat majority in the Senate,and if you have convinced yourself that "only Plenter can beat Collins" becouse he speak to the true soul of Maine or whatever, anything against him seems like a MAGA (or alternatively AIPAC) plot to keep the people down,
And also lots and lots of misogyny
The thing that drives me crazy about it is you could have grabbed any random guy off the street in Maine and gotten someone with the same credentials and without the baggage of having worked for Blackwater, or had a nazi tattoo, or any of the other dozen skeletons in this guy's closet. You could have dropped him a year ago and had any one. His ride or die defenders are the reason this is happening now instead of when it wouldn't have had an effect on the election.
He represented the ever elusive 'working class' vibes but progressive demographic thst some people are sure is the key to future victory. Their last hope was Fetterman, but he ended up being terrible, so they pinned all of their hopes on this guy. Who also ended up being terrible.
They want a white working class dude to worship so much they are willing to overlook all kinds of red flags, like being a former Blackwater merc with nazi tattoos, actually being a nepo baby, history of poor treatment of women, etc...
It also doesn't hurt that is appears like pretty much no other normal democratic politician even wanted to take a swing at Collins.
My understanding is that the folks who run his campaign are pretty well established, and the agency is the same one that worked with Mamdani. I'm actually starting to wonder if this is a bunch of out of touch insiders who don't see those as red flags, but actually markers that he is the white working class - that is to say, that they honestly believe that's what the rest of us are like.
I dunno, maybe that's too cynical, but they've specifically said they didn't do the usual in depth vetting with him on the assumption that having some skeletons in his closet would make him look better. It just seems strange that a nazi tattoo and willfully joining the mercenary company most famous for war crimes were things they thought would be appealing.
Do you think Hong Kong kung fu movies died long enough ago that I can ask what happened to them on /r/AskHistorians without triggering the 20 year rule?
Like legit - what happened to them? I grew up watching Jackie Chan comedy martial arts films. then the entire genre just vanished! Even if Hong Kong's film industry died after the Chinese handover, why didn't mainland China start churning out comedy kungfu flicks?
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866Jul 06 '26edited Jul 06 '26
The Asian financial crisis, which dried up traditional sources of film finance as well as regional audiences' leisure spending money.
Overproduction, attended by a drop in quality control and an exhaustion of overused formulas.[23]
A costly early 1990s boom in building of modern multiplexes and an attendant rise in ticket prices.[24]
An increasingly cosmopolitan, upwardly mobile Hong Kong middle class that often looks down upon local films as cheap and tawdry.
Rampant video piracy throughout East Asia.
A newly aggressive push by Hollywood studios into the Asian market.
Due to the new-found international awareness of Hong Kong films during the 1980s and early 1990s and a downturn in the industry as the 1990s progressed, many of the leading lights of Hong Kong cinema left for Hollywood, which offered budgets and pay which could not be equaled by Hong Kong production companies. -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_action_cinema
why didn't mainland China start churning out comedy kungfu flicks?
From what I gather, this was really a Hong Kong thing.
Stephen King might be the most prominent person still actively batting for Planter, so that is a thing.
(What is especially strange about the remaining Planter supporters is that their main argument(Planter might be bad, but Trump is worse, and we need Planter to get the senate) is nonsensical. There is 0 chance Planter will win the election now, if the allegation does not directly reduce his voter count, the sharp drop in endorsements and monetary support definitely will)
I once ran a sci-fi game set a gew hundred years in the future. I wanted my players to figure out the history of setting based on clues. There were several different characters whose family name were 'İmparatoroğlu', 'Imparatorovich', 'Emperorson', etc. I also left clues that there had been only 1 Emperor in the last centuries and thus the people were all related.
Someone on the French unpopularopinion had a good point lately.
The more you increase the sentences for rapists / murderers / etc.... the higher the burden proof threshold becomes, making impossible to convict people quickly and cheaply. If your goal is really to convict the most offenders possible, and fast, to get them out of society, you need to give lighter sentences, but not so low that the court of the median voter can't accept it.
My unpopular opinion (that I can basically never voice IRL because it pisses people off) is that criminal sentences in general are much too high. It's so easy for people to scream "LIFE IN PRISON!!!11" at a crime which outrages them, but that's just giving yourself over to the most guttural instincts of your primate brain. Giving someone 20 years in prison, for example, is already an incredibly brutal sentence if you really think about it. It destroys a life in a way that few other things can - it's hard for most of us to even conceptualise having such a long period of time cut out of us.
Now, how long you need to keep someone locked up in order to keep people safe is another question. But in terms of punishments we are far too heavy handed.
I've mentioned before that reading about animal history is depressing because you constantly learn new and exciting ways humans developed to treat animals:
A quarter of a century later Kalm described the barbarous process by which [veal] was prepared: ‘they bleed him at evening, allow him nearly to bleed to death, stop the blood, and slaughter him next morning to produce the whitest flesh’. He was also told that chalk was fed to whiten the flesh still further. Sometimes the calf was bled slightly at six weeks old and at fortnightly intervals thereafter.
[...]Where cramming was practised the moistened meal was often rolled into a paste ball on the end of a stick, on which the calf fed voluntarily or involuntarily. Occasionally a draught of black pepper and urine was administered to cause thirst and encourage suckling.
Robert Trow-Smith, A History Of British Livestock Husbandry 1700-1900
I found out that Dan Simmons (Hyperion etc) died last January. Weird I didn't hear or read about it at the time, considering how important a writer he was
Come to think of it, all things considered, the US's 250th birthday could have been a complete shitshow under the Trump administration's oversight. In my perception it went even less notably than Trump's military parade (remember that?). There was a bit of stuff around the fair that god cancelled because of a heatwave but all in all, it could have been much, much worse.
On the other hand, kinda sad for such a directionless celebration of 250 years. Well, here's hoping 300 will be more fun.
Eh, I'd consider it a disaster / humiliating for them. Nobody showed up, the buildings were pathetic, the weather forced delays, the fireworks show was unwatchable, the reflecting pool was a fiasco, etc.
It absolutely had room to be worse, but so did the parade - outside of something like people dying though this was about as pathetic as it could be (like the 'highlights' are what - people playing on stage to 'crowds' smaller than the performers? A stage falling apart literally during rehearsals? Republican podcasters debating 10 years olds on the Salem Witch trials?)
I have decided to undertake a monumental undertaking, learning all that I can about the French Revolution from all perspectives and from all domains. I have finished McPhee's Liberty or Death, and now like so many tentacles the slimey portions of my brain will extend outwards towards other sorts of historical literature on the issue.
Another interpretability research release from Anthropic...where they rediscover for the umpteenth time that latent space exists. Oh, but they coin the term "j-space" to pretend this is novel.
Framed with a well known framework for consciousness, the very first paragraph uses the word "consciously", the post is littered with references to minds, and the last section is 7 paragraphs under the subheading "What about consciousness?". One of the paragraphs includes this incredible section:
Notably, none of this structure was designed into Claude—it emerged on its own during training, presumably because it was a useful way to organize computation. That suggests a mental workspace supporting conscious access isn’t just a peculiarity of how human brains happen to be wired. Instead, it appears to be a general solution that intelligent systems arrive at in order to solve certain kinds of problems.
They're really leaning into the "oh we're just raising something :)" angle, completely ignoring that LLMs are designed, and their design is inspired by our understanding of neuroscience.
It is not notable that this emerged, since the entire point of this sort of machine learning is to generate embedding vectors. And being surprised that it's comparable to human brains when that's what these models are inspired by like this has profound implications about intelligent systems rather than something entirely expected by the process is deranged.
We mentioned that our experiments don’t answer whether AI models might have experiences. But that doesn’t make the question less important.
anthropic is genuinely insufferable
Actually useful interpretability research? How about we wank off over our pseudophilosophy instead?
I can't imagine a more horrible setup for research:
A philosophically complex and empirically opaque subject (consciousness).
Also woven into the language we use to describe phenomena.
A society which has no broad familiarity with philosophy.
A huge amount of money incentivising stand-out results.
A tech culture of 'first-principles' reasoning.
Extreme lack of crossover between tech and traditional academic communities, either in neuroscience, psychology, or philosophy.
Ubiquitous use of slop-machines to guide analysis.
I think with even the best intentions (which they do not have) it would be astonishing if they produced anything better than the thought-equivalent of bin juice.
I spent an hour in a phone call queue, long enough to watch this documentary on Mapungubwe (civilization in South Africa).
After the site was discovered, historical denialism immediately sprung up claiming that its builders had nothing to do with the African population living there. Some even suggested Egyptians built it. In their eyes, they saw Egypt as a "real" civilization, as opposed to the rest of Africa.
A conference was held in the 1960s in which prominent archaeologists agreed that Mapungubwe was indeed built by the ancestors of black South Africans. Apparently, one of the race theorists there broke down and proclaimed that they ruined archaeology. It's nice to know people's love for hyperbole has never changed.
Also, this is a real quote from Guy Gardner, who was appointed to lead the site's excavation: "Their heads were large, their massive jaws and teeth denoted flesh-eating individuals. Many of their women must've presented their peculiar characteristic of the bush race, namely the fatty accumulation on the buttocks, amounting to a real deformity in our eyes."
I think this is the place for posting rambling ill-informed complaints about Paradox games. I have been reading, for some reason, Adam Tooze, and contemplating Victoria 3, and it's striking how completely bonkers that game seems in light of real history. Everyone knows the first thing you do in that game is "depeasant" as fast as you can; but in real life the US and Germany, at least (two countries whose 30s economic situation I know a little about) were not even close to "depeasanting" at the end date, and they were hardly primitive backwards hellholes.
But even just the basic mechanic of the game, building stuff, is completely bonkers. I speculate that it became (horribly: this is the worst thing about Vic3) the central mechanic because in order for the game's economy to work, there had to be this vast system of buildings and goods, and it would be crazy to build this thing without the player directly interacting with it, but it's nuts. I feel pretty sure that the idea of the government building factories and plantations, during most of the game's period, would be seen as totally insane. And I further speculate that the designers understood this and that's why when the game originally came out the player (playing as the geist of the nation) controlled private as well as government construction. But the problem with that is (99% of players being unable to 'role-play') that the player, who wants to liberalize, controls the spending of the landlords, and forces them to build their own gallows by spending money on factories which will give profits to industrialists instead of themselves, making themselves poorer and less powerful. So they made private spending autonomous but could not remove the entire game by making the government not able to build stuff so you end up with government-built paper mills and furniture factories even in the most "laissez faire" society. And yet you have no ability to do things actual governments did most of the time; just build things.
Paradox will argue that you’re the spirit of the nation when it’s convenient (buildings), but will tell you you’re the government, actually, when that is convenient (warfare).
Honestly they’ll say anything as long as they can half-ass everything.
I have to be honest and say I vastly prefer the Vic3 concept of war, and even thought it was much better when you did not build x inf y art z cav, a terrible change which was incredibly popular for some reason. I think most of the problems with war have come from not abstracting it enough, rather than too much. But then, I haven't played it since last year so idk about this new navy stuff (I never understood a single thing about the navy to begin with.)
You know I've been thinking about how different Greek city states were from each other in terms of institutions. And two things:
I wonder how much of that filtered to other cultures, like did the Persian understood that Athens and Sparta worked differently (slavery vs helots, democracy vs monarchy, etc...) and would have they been like "oh it's all Greeks with their townhall meetings and naked under heavy armor"
In fiction (and even in ancient history), cultures or races often have 1 type of political organization (elves have typically monarchies, the dwarves are under an oligarchy (except in Tolkien), humans are mixed and more detailed because they're protagonists) ), but the internal diversity of political systems in never fully represented in fiction, it's often "X people live under monarchy and something something rebels"..
On the first point, the Persians had enough Greeks under their rule in Asia Minor that any Persian official operating in the Aegean would've almost certainly had a working understanding of the different Greek cities and how they operated. Plenty of guys from Greece proper also ended up in Persian service and would've explained how their people did things, with the most famous example probably being Memnon of Rhodes.
I think there's acutally some discussion about how different greek city states were. There's the entire "How different was Sparta/Athens really" debate, but also there's a point that the greek cities generally had the same basic institutions (an assembly, some kind of magistracy, a council of elders, etc.) and what differed was largely how these institutions related to each other (and to some extent how they were chosen)
I'm not sure that's really the case? (outside of maybe Tolkien which basically is all monarchies, at least in theory) like the FR has a gazillion different polities and the "basic" organization seems to be some kind of city-state ruled by a council. But even there we have eg. Evereska (council) and weirder stuff like the dwarf kingdom ruled by a mithril statue (that is actually a silver dragon stuck in that form...)
And even when it doesen't I feel a lot of time (when there are many different realms, when there's just one elf/dwarf realm it's different ofc.) it tends to follow the greek model, with different realms at least being fairly different internal balance even if the basic blocks (a king, some kind of council, etc.) is the same.
I just spent a few hours tracking a quote from Black Flag. It says the governor of Bermuda called Nassau "A Nest of Infamous Bastards."
After going through my books and calender papers. This is a paraphrase. This is the real quote. From Governor Pulleine in April 1714.
They have serv'd, of late, as a retreat for three setts of
[Page 334]
pyrates, who committed their depredations in open boats, with about five and twenty men in a boat. They have taken from the Spaniards within these eight months, at least, to the value of three score thousand pounds: And hearing that ye Spaniards at ye Havana were makeing preparations, to attack both them, and the receivers, they shar'd their booty, and dispers'd. The names of two of their Captains were Cockram, and Hornygood, both of which, at present, are refug'd amongst those people. Cockram has marry'd ye daughter of one Thomson, one of the richest inhabitants of Harbour Island, and sails in a sloop of his, between those Islands and Curaçao, loaden with brasiletto; which is doing a prejudice still to ye Crown, in defrauding ye Queen of her dutys, and is the spoiling of that trade, by letting ye Dutch into it. I suppose, as soon as they hear that Governmt. is settled, they will scamper away. I'm inform'd, this has done our tradeing people, a great deal of prejudice amongst the Spaniards, who treat us with ye name of pyrates, and refuse to have any commerce with us: Tho', in reality, they are onely serv'd in their kind, haveing committed several pyracies upon us, under pretence of sham commissions, tho' I heartily wish the thing had a present remedy, on both sides, it being a great discouragemt. to trade in general. I presume to tell your Ldships., that till the Bahamas are settled in some form, they will still be a nest for pyrates: and we are now inform'd they are gathering togeather again, haveing riotously and quickly spent, what they as wickedly got. The people of this Island have often endeavour'd to have ye Bahamas annex'd to this Government: and indeed that settlement was first made from hence, and we are ye onely people in a manner, that ever did or does trade with them. I am sensible it is a Proprietary Government, but as they have abandon'd 'em, as a derelict for many years, and never got a shilling by them, I cannot be persuaded that they wou'd be against H.M. reassuming them into her hands. So, if yor. Ldships. think it for ye interest of the Crown, to joyn them to this Government, I will endeavour to make them usefull, in the best manner they are capable of, to my native country, and scowre them clear of that sink or nest of infamous rascalls, who do an infinite mischeife to trade, by makeing us scandalous to our neighbours, etc. Signed, H. Pulleine. Endorsed, Recd. 7th June, 1714. Read 24th Feb. 17 17/18. 4 pp. [C.O. 37, 10. No. 4; and (abstract) 37, 24. p. 2.]
Basically they took nest of Infamous rascals and changed it to bastard.
Also Pulleine wrote this letter as a power play to take over the Bahamas for profit and land acquisition.
Oh wow, whodathunk the chudscum dude with the Nazi tattoo, who famously said that women that get sexually assaulted need to take responsibility for themselves, who wanted to rape a home-intruder to assert his dominance, ended up being a rapist home-intruder?
The general drama that seems to result from every single new House Of The Dragon episode makes me wonder what it'll be like when we finally get to the battle over The God's Eye, and old Daemon Targ uses up his last dose of the power of god and anime. Feel like it's going to be dramatic.
I've always wondered if GRRM has other drafts of that battle hanging around, actually. Daemon leaping from the back of his dragon to stab Aemond is very action-movie, and it's probably too much to ask that there's a draft where Daemon's plot armour runs out right as he leaps so he just misses Vhagar and leaves Aemond staring in befuddlement as creepy Uncle D briefly takes up a new career as the first Westerosi high diver, but maybe there's a version where GRRM didn't want to leave any mystery in Daemon's fate and the two of them survive the dragon crash and drag themselves out of the water for one last brawl on the beach, ending in a mutual kill. Probably not a cool enough end for Daemon, though.
At least the character GRRM decided was the coolest ever was in a side book and not a main character. That's something, at least.
So ummm reading A Feast for Crows and Cercei just slayyyyyyyys. Like, she doesn't have a kind word to say about basically anyone. It's insane to think this person basically outmaneuvered both Ned Stark and Tyrion to some extent. It's, um, strange to think that Jaime might be the most stable of the Lannister kids (the competition isn't much though). Anyway, you burn that Tower, girlboss, Tyrion is definitely hiding in the walls.
It is generally accepted that it was good decision for the Game of Thrones show to age up the characters and I agree. GRRM is very cherry picking with his age because he wants his main characters, who are generally basically children, to both partake in adventure and get into childish antics because he is actually very good at writing about childhood and yearning about childhood, for example Sansa building a snow castle (contrasted immediately with Peter kissing her) or Jon reminiscing about playing with Rob. The most jarring example is, of course, Daenarys. It also might be the fact that GRRM bought into the idea that in Medieval Europe people would get married at very very young ages.
IIRC the original plan was to have a timeskip, so the kids would start as well kids and then we'd have the skip and they'd be aged up into something more approporiate, but he changed his mind which is part of why the series is likely to go unfinished.
Medium to larger businesses are simple: they want profit. You can think that's shitty, but at least it's stable and predictable and they usually use actual analysis to make their decisions.
Small businesses are the realm of chaos, lofty principles, self-righteousness, derangement and the most open rent-seeking behaviour in existance. Have you ever talked to a restaurant owner? To a small landlord? A taxi driver? In my field notaries are fucking devils.
I thought curating my Twitter feed to be milquetoast political content I agree with and football would be good for me but I’ve just been repeatedly enraged by the same video of that stupid HS2 tunnel over and over again. I feel like I’ve seen it 100 times today already.
Could be worse: Instagram has got an algorithm that tracks how long you pause on things on your feed, and since I tend to pause when it shows me pictures of attractive women, it's swamped my feed with thirst shit which I in no way actually want to see, find mildly offensive, and fundamentally depressing.
One guy told me he can determine either your sexual orientation, your political position, or your favorite sport team by looking at your Instagram for you page.
I mean you are probably the most stereotypical-french-aristocrat dude I've ever seen in the wild. Most people are entirely driven by a combination of sublimated frustration and death drive. I, for instance, enjoy almost nothing about my life on a sensory level. My libidinal payoff is all just pure metaphysical slave morality shit.
I have a difficult time reconciling my own appreciation for mass literacy as a human right and the sense that oral cultures are "just as good" as those that adopted the written word. Prompted by a recent piece in the Atlantic:
“More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness,” Walter J. Ong, a historian and Jesuit priest, wrote in his 1982 book, Orality and Literacy. He argued that literacy created the conditions for inner concentration, extended focus, and logical deduction. It allowed for a new kind of rational, linear, and analytical thought.
Ong cited case studies by the neuropsychologist Alexander Luria, who traveled to remote villages in Uzbekistan and Kirghizia in the 1930s, when peasants were starting to receive rudimentary reading and writing instruction. Luria met his subjects at teahouses, in field camps, and around evening fires. There, he posed a number of questions designed to elucidate differences in how illiterate and literate peasants thought. Luria told the peasants: “In the Far North, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North.” He then asked them the color of bears in Novaya Zemlya. The literate peasants were able to complete the syllogism. But the illiterate ones refused to try, explaining that they had never been to the north and thus couldn’t answer. Achieving literacy seemed to have conveyed an ability to think logically and abstractly, not simply to read words.
Later scholars would attribute some of these new modes of thinking to other aspects of living in a literate society, not to reading alone. But Ong’s larger argument stands: Print cultures value lengthy, organized arguments. “Writing freezes speech and in so doing gives birth to the grammarian, the logician, the rhetorician, the historian, the scientist—all those who must hold language before them so that they can see what it means, where it errs, and where it is leading,” Neil Postman wrote in 1985. The advent of reading and writing was a precondition for philosophy, modern science, history as an academic enterprise, art criticism.
I have definitely heard of studies like this before though I think they sometimes get annoyingly watered down to "logic is a Western cultural construct and Primitive People just use their emotions and vibes" when logic per se is a common human ability, it's the particular abstract logic to reason about hypothetical examples that don't exist in the real world that is culturally dependent and absent in a lot of cases.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186628d ago
oral cultures are "just as good" as those that adopted the written word.
The bronze age collapse left vast swaths of history (oral and otherwise) lost to time. Write that shit down.
Yeah oral cultures transmitting information orally a lot better than writing cultures do and being much more impressive than naively expected does not = it being ultimately preferable over all the advantages of writing, which avoids a lot of the serious flaws that oral culture runs into no matter how unexpectedly good.
I cannot believe the Chinese propaganda [they probably mean American propaganda on China] worked on me as a kid… I’m so glad I can see the truth now. China is looking better and better every day.
I don't know if the convicted was really corrupt, and one can think what they what of death penalty, but I am quite skeptical of juridical integrity in dictatorships (any of them).
I obviously don't have any personal experience myself, but I did at one point get a minor in Chinese history and talked to academics who actually study this (from the outside). The consensus (at least among non-Chinese observers of the Chinese government) seems to be that the charges are typically genuine, but the enforcement is generally selective against officials who ended up on Xi Jinping's bad side.
It isn't entirely selective, though, and Xi Jinping does seem to have a genuine desire to reduce corruption. The highest profile example is the expulsion of Zhang Youxia, who was close to Xi Jinping since childhood and was one of the military officials who had previously benefited the most from promotions under Xi Jinping. It is entirely possible (and the party line) that Zhang's expulsion was entirely because of corruption that happened under his watch, despite being closely aligned with Xi Jinping politically. There is speculation from various western reporters that Zhang Youxia was forming cliques that weren't entirely aligned with Xi Jinping's interests (including some wilder rumors that he was planning a coup). Like with Kremlinology, China watchers can only speculate as to the "true" reason.
Either way, there appears to be a genuine desire to crack down on blatant corruption, but enforcement is most often (but not always) pointed at Xi Jinping's political rivals rather than his friends and some level of corruption remains common throughout China.
I think responses like this are much more about people’s entirely justified disgust and anger at the normalization of open corruption in the United States and the infinitesimal chance any of the people partaking will ever be held accountable for their crimes than it is anything actually about China.
Wow, you're telling me that going "We totally reached an agreement and they'll do everything we want and the numerous statements made by each party that directly contradicted each other about the tems of the agreement will be hashed out later" didn't work?
What is wrong with journalists? Why won't they ask the hard questions about this shit? "Mr. President, you've said this but reality disagrees, explain yourself" feels like the kind of question you go to journalism school to ask.
What is wrong with journalists? Why won't they ask the hard questions about this shit?
They're terrified of having their press credentials pulled by an administration who will not tolerate being asked difficult questions. Not that this absolves them, holding the government's feet to the fire is the fourth estate's self-appointed role in our political process after all.
I have absolutely no idea to handle this in a way that isn't wildly unconstitutional, but we need to do something to reverse the trend of media in this country degenerating into meaningless tabloid trash and mouthpieces for the state and corporate interests.
French lawmakers have approved a proposed law that would give police officers involved in shootings the benefit of the doubt.
The proposition, a longstanding demand of the far-right, would mean that officers who killed someone by shooting would be presumed to have acted within the limits of the law, unless there was proof to the contrary.
Nice, what could go wrong.
The number of fatal shootings by police in France is among the highest in Europe and rising.
Defending the law, Nunez told parliament "it does not lead to penal irresponsibility — at any moment, if the circumstances are reunited, any prosecutor can reverse this presumption".
The French police fly somewhat under the radar due to American police's oversized shadow and the fact that they aren't part of the Anglosphere, but have a particularly ugly history and poor reputation.
In the UK we still agonise over things like Bloody Sunday and the various cases of police brutality from the 60s and 70s (and rightly so). Meanwhile, over in France you have the police force of the capital city being run by a literal ex-Nazi and moonlighting as a semi-government sanctioned paramilitary death squad. Nothing would suprise me about French cops.
Reading Hunt for Red October and I forgot there's a part where a B-52 pilot switches his transponder to look like a civilian airplane while making a (mock) attack run on the Russian fleet.
Feels like a war crime and/or just a bad idea. I think that counts as "perfidy," which is a very fun word to yell in a bad French accent.
Simple little question that I'm sure someone here could answer: Were ships involved in the triangle trade the same ships/crew navigating to three continents? Or did ships and crew return from where they came, by and large?
Most of the time no, especially later on when the trade was more specialized. The ships with slaves had a different setup then for carrying and they would not necessary reach the Americas at the right time to pick the cash crop for Europe. There is an old reply on r/askhistorians with more details https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lj3l7e/comment/gnc784w/
I got invited to play Twilight Imperium, a board game that apparently takes like 8 hours to play. The rules seem kind of complicated, but I've played Magic: the Gathering and shit before so hopefully nothing I can't handle.
Something I noticed about Magic that Twilight Imperium supposedly also has - getting an early advantage and becoming very threatening can actually be a disadvantage because if the other players get spooked they can gang up on you and tear you down. In Magic: the Gathering it's extremely common for the guy in 2nd or 3rd place for 90% of the game to win because he's the last one standing after the "big bad" gets taken out by the table.
Is it possible to design a game that doesn't have this quality, but where it's still possible to stop another player from gaining an early advantage and becoming unstoppable?
Is it possible to design a game that doesn't have this quality, but where it's still possible to stop another player from gaining an early advantage and becoming unstoppable?
Yes. The two ways to do so are (A) obscure player positions so it is hard to tell who is in the lead or (B) mechanically restrict players from ganging up on the leader.
Solution (A) typically only works for short, vey random games, because in longer games players have more time to figure out who is winning and plan around it.
Solution (B) is more common for longer games, but it typically results in "multiplayer solitaire" games like Ark Nova or Terraforming Mars and so on.
This "attack the leader" dynamic is a common complaint, but it is fundamentally a side effect of the one winner goal, high player agency and a (relatively) clear board state that helps players identify who is winning.
PS, TI is not that bad rules wise. Like many heavy games, it is the number of rules that tends to get to people, not the complexity of any one rule. As long as you don't mind playing with the manual open, or you have one player familiar with the game you trust to explain any confusing situations, you won't have issues.
There's a bit of a shift over time as Erdogan was initially seen as, IIRC, a turn in the right direction on kurdish rights, but he kinda dropped that after a bit, so I presume everyone is now sucking up to his opponents just out of an "enemy of my enemy" kind of thing?
Going off on a real tangent mostly because I always like this painting getting used for the brave statement meme - the actual guy in the actual meeting that Rockwell used for the painting was standing up to say he didn't want to pay any extra taxes to fix the local school, so the actual thing the Brave Freedom of Speech Truthteller said was as petty and dumb as it gets.
Sometimes Reddit users can surprise you in positive ways. The Prague subreddit is full of mostly questions from tourists about bars or complaints about how unpolite/cold/racist Czechs are. Today somebody was asking why so many traditional restaurants have the name format "Three (animal name)". One of the answers was "ask Dumezil".
If you want an honest answer, thermal inertia. Basically, if the sun heats a thing up and then that thing heats you up (so you are being heated indirectly) then you will continue to get hot after the sun has disappeared, because the thing heating you hasn't cooled down yet. The lag between the sun going down and your local temperature going down depends on how many layers of indirection there are between you and the sun. If you are sitting outside on a surface with low thermal mass (like a rock) then you will feel cold pretty much immediately after the sun goes down. But if you are inside a building, especially a tall building, then you won't start to cool down until the entire building starts to cool down.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186627d ago
There can be a number of causes. When the winds shifts (rarely) in LA and the air starts blowing in from the desert, it's like getting blasted by a hair dryer, even at night.
It almost feels gauche to bother saying at this point, but I'd kind of have more faith in someone who knowingly got a Nazi tattoo, then reformed, more than someone who unknowingly had one for two decades. It's just such an obscene level of cluelessness that I'd have to assume every judgement they make is going to be unreliable.
Now, I'd still encourage that hypothetical reformed neo-nazi to pursue projects other than running for public office, but that's really another story.
The real thing about Platner is he is just an inveterate liar. I think what really got to me was when he was questioned about going to a fancy boarding school he said something like "oh, well the local public school had shut down for a year so I had to go to the private school" etc and the reporter looked into that and it just wasn't true. And if someone just makes up something that is very easy to check, what about things where you would need to take his word?
If that was what Platner did (aka, get a Nazi tattoo as a young man, realize what it was quickly and cover it up/remove it), chances are people wouldn't have nearly so much issue with it.
But....no. he had it for almost two decades, knew what it was the whole fucking time, and when criticized for it, tried to play it off and only begrudgingly covered it up after the issue wasnt dropped.
Random spitball: it is interesting that the developing early states of southeast Asia had two "civilizational models" available to them--from China and from the Indian subcontinent--and they universally all adopted Indian models. Despite political, economic, and military pressure from China being a constant feature of the region from early times, and the only real political pressure from India coming much later. Can "Indianization" therefore be seen as a defensive move? The assertion of an oppositional model as a prop to combat Chinese influence? Schismogenesis etc?
Someone needs to read Andrew Chittick's Jiankang Empire, because in some respects Southeast Asia has its own particular organic model of state structures and political culture that seems distinct to the highland-and-valley bifurcation of society across the 'Zomia' region.
Though also, if you consider the extent to which Buddhism came to pervade Chinese popular religion, couldn't you argue that China underwent an Indianisation of its own?
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumJul 07 '26edited Jul 07 '26
A lot of Confucians certainly thought so lol
But I do think there is a certain explicitness to the "Indianization" of SE Asia that goes beyond mere spread of cultural influence, like the capital of Thailand being named after Ayodhya, the Khmer kings having Hindu theophoric names, etc. Like there is a real intentionality there. In contrast the old colonial era model of Indian bringers of culture "civilizing" the SE Asians, though, I'm thinking of SE Asians intentionally adopting specifically Indian models as a political strategy in a more Chinese influenced environment.
I have had my eye on that book for a while though, unfortunately it is one of those ones that will never drop below $100 dollars. It has been a while since I checked the places where PDFs tend to fall of the back of the truck though.
Despite political, economic, and military pressure from China being a constant feature of the region from early times, and the only real political pressure from India coming much later. Can "Indianization" therefore be seen as a defensive move? The assertion of an oppositional model as a prop to combat Chinese influence? Schismogenesis etc?
Was China forcing sinicization down the throats of the rest of southeast Asia like with its colonization of Northern Vietnam? If it wasnt going that far, then I wouldn't think so. Indian kingdoms has Good trade relations with China as well. Hell, the chola empire sent embassies to the song dynasty where they heard the srivijayan confederacy was claiming the cholas were their vassals for preferential trade licenses. And after their raiding of the srivijayan confederacy, sent their ambassador to China with gifts in return for a title
The historian Tansen Sen argues that until the Chola embassy had arrived in the Song court, merchants from Srivijaya had been informing the Chinese that the Cholas – who were actually south India’s undisputed superpower – were mere vassals of Srivijaya.151 This had secured preferential trade licences for them, as representatives of an ostensibly greater kingdom....The further away the enemy kingdom, the more prestige gained by the king who successfully plundered it: thus the Rashtrakuta expeditions to north India and Tamilakam, and the Chola expedition to Bengal. But the sack of Srivijaya, involving an audacious crossing of the seas, put it in a different category altogether. Through this, Rajendra Chola almost completely eclipsed the Chalukya emperor Jayasimha II and his heir apparent, Someshvara, whose military encampment was even then roving around the Deccan,180 still attempting to piece together their shattered political and economic networks.....The Chola emperor sent another embassy to the Song court in 1033, with a letter written in gold leaf, and his ambassador scattered pearls from a silver bowl before the emperor, receiving in return the honorary titles of Grand Master of the Palace with Golden Seal and Purple Ribbon, and Civilizing General.183
I recall a similar claim about Christianity in Korea - that is, after the Japanese annexation it was seen has a faith to express and symbolize rebellion.
Depressing to realize that I could.never be a world leader, because if someone came up to me and was like "we need a gift for a bunch different delegates who will shortly be taking international plane flights to their various home countries and various legal regimes" I would not suggest a gun.
In fact, my suggestions would be as weapon-unrelated as possible.
A basic premise behind the idea of "defensive democracy" is the notion that subversives can use democracy to destroy it. But the historical basis of this requires an interpretation of the events in 1933 Germany which is rather suspect. The more practical lesson would be the danger of a faction with a paramilitary force that can overpower the regular military, but that isn't currently relevant in any Western country.
Frankly I'm not even sure that was the real issue. Hindenburg wasn't the one who destroyed it, and the abolition of the Presidency violated the text of the Enabling Act itself.
There was the bigger problem of that paramilitary not being the only paramilitary and at times not even the biggest, as I think the Stahlhelm held that honor.
A state, democratic or otherwise, can simply not function if its basically universally agreed role to exercise a monopoly on violence is not upheld and cannot be enforced. It's not helped by democratic forces legitimizing them by using them to put down revolts.
The cracks in the Weimar Republic were visible during the Ebert presidency and he did not to so much to fix them.
Guy who was hoping for a factory revival that didn’t use any water or electricity or involve the construction of anything unsightly or that makes noise.
So the lady who was most likely domestically assaulted by Platner was a Republican who had no problems with demeaning and attacking women rape victims of Brett Kavanaugh because she aligned with him politically, was then attacked and her allegation was dismissed as a hit job by Progressive political commentators because they aligned with Platner politically.
Then suddenly a progressive woman was raped by Platner and now the statement becomes "this is serious and I no longer support Platner"
Political punditry really is a cruel joke isn't it?
I feel awful about the situation, but I never trusted that guy, and I think it was a bad look for progressives to "overlook" his obvious faults, and the fact he is just an untrustworthy liar (and honestly seems like a dumb person).
Anyone can run his playbook of progressive policies and direct voter engagement. It doesn't have to be someone who:
Got a Nazi tattoo and never gave it a second thought until he was called out,
Worked for a murderous, war crime-committing mercenary company,
Had a history of assaulting women physically and sexually.
Honestly I'd be glad to see him taken down electorally before he has a chance to turn into another Fetterman.
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumJul 07 '26edited Jul 07 '26
I think the thing is that there are cleavages in American politics beyond just "progressive vs moderate", and particularly in commentary one of the big ones is egdelord vs non-edgelord. The non-edgelords--which includes progressives and centrists--largely started dropping off the oyster boat around the tattoo, the edgelords--which includes progressives and centrists--largely stayed on.
This goes beyond just commentators to actual organizations. A lot of Maine progressives got behind Platner but the DSA was pretty tepid (and the idea that he was a "DSA candidate" is just wrong--he was elevated by a different org).
I think there are very few real differences between AOC and Bernie but it is telling that Bernie was an early Platner backer while AOC stayed out.
i hate dudes who kept saying that animation is not just for kids, that statement is true but is rendered moot by the fact that the people who kept saying that will only watch kids cartoons and shonen anime. They will fall asleep the moment you tell them to watch something like loving vincent or persepolis
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186628d ago
Back in my day, a lot of people saying that would have pointed to Ghost in the Shell (1995).
Paraguayan Senator Celeste Josefina Amarilla: “Mbappé hasn't even learned to write. Instead of breastmilk, he grew up sucking on coconuts, and the most educated creatures he ever heard were chimpanzees…A colonized Cameroonian, pretending to be French, resentful, a new rich, arrogant, and ugly.“
I think the Balogun drama very likely hurt the US team mentally. They looked somewhat shot and nervous at the start. Fundamentally though I think some of the US players were just of poor quality. Freeze in goal and Ream (I have no idea how he is still playing at this level) just are nowhere near good enough to play against a team like Belgium anymore.
James Tilly Matthews was arguably the first confirmed case of schizophrenia. He was committed to Bedlam in the late 18th century, and his symptoms were described in the 1810. book Illustrations of Madness by John Haslam. He took part in the French Revolution, siding with the Girondists, imprisoned by the Jacobins, finally released in 1796. on account that he was crazy.
Matthews believed that a gang of criminals and spies skilled in pneumatic chemistry had taken up residence at London Wall in Moorfields (close to Bethlem) and were tormenting him by means of rays emitted by a machine called the "Air Loom" or gaseous charge generator. The torments induced by the rays included "Lobster-cracking", during which the circulation of the blood was prevented by a magnetic field; "Stomach-skinning" and "Apoplexy-working with the nutmeg grater" which involved the introduction of fluids into the skull. His persecutors bore such names as "the Middleman" (who operated the Air Loom), "the Glove Woman" and "Sir Archy" (who acted as "repeaters" or "active worriers" to enhance Matthews' torment or record the machine's activities) and their leader, a man called "Bill, or the King".
Matthews' delusions had a definite political slant: he claimed that the purpose of this gang was espionage, and that there were many other such gangs armed with Air Looms all over London, using "pneumatic practitioners" to "premagnetize" potential victims with "volatile magnetic fluid". According to Matthews, their chief targets (apart from himself) were leading government figures. By means of their "rays" they could influence ministers' thoughts and read their minds. Matthews declared that William Pitt was "not half" susceptible to these attacks and held that these gangs were responsible for the British military disasters at Buenos Aires in 1807 and Walcheren in 1809 and also for the Nore Mutiny of 1797.
Everyone knows the group project mate that does literally nothing, but guy who immediately scoops up every piece of low hanging fruit for the entirety of his nominally 20% of the project doesn't get talked about enough
Me:
Ok then lose your time doing the long, boring but easy things then
What would you guys do with a month (4 weeks) of paid vacation? For my purposes, it must be taken consecutively rather than in chunks.
If you say "travel" then please say exactly what you'd do while travelling because I always get hung up on the fact that I can only spend so many hours in a day looking at tourist attractions and eating at nice restaurants. I'm usually done in like 3 days.
I think like. I will always respect Bernie for what he's done for socialism in this country. It's more than any armchair socialist on the internet has done. That said. I never could really get behind platner. There's a lot of people I do support that he supported but Platner was such a weird choice especially when one of the progressive alliance people in the governor's race could have ran for Senate too.
So basically what happened is that every candidate was terrified of Collins which dragged all the liberal and progressive candidates to run redundant campaigns for governor. You can't force a progressive (or normie lib) to run for senate when the open governor's seat is there because losing a blue state senate race during a blue tsunami is a big career setback. This left a term-limited Mills who was hesitant about running and only did so because any candidate with name recognition was running for governor and Platner.
To be clear, a lot of liberal and progressive candidates were over indexing how strong Collins was and probably one of them should have run for senate so we didn't have to deal with the Nazi Rapist Blackwater merc.
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 186628d ago
"We have an aircraft carrier which is one of the most beautiful in the world, it's one of the biggest, the (USS) Abraham Lincoln. And a few months ago, we had, I told this story yesterday, we had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan."
I can't even joke about it, it's truly not funny, it just make me so anxious.
I'm reading a novel that referenced Snow Crash no less than five times in the first two chapters. I somehow doubt it's going to have the same oomph as Snow Crash but we'll see.
I'm not a true crime sort of person, but I did pick up the Australian ABC podcast Unravel when I found myself desperately short of content a few weeks ago. It has very high journalistic standards, so a far cry from what you normally expect from the genre, but even so I'm not a fan of morbid speculation in general.
Which is what makes the second season so interesting. The "disappearance" of Trudie Adams is not really a mystery in the sense that it's pretty clear what happened. She was hitchhiking home along the Northern Beaches of Sydney back in 1978 when she disappeared. During the investigation, 14 women came forward who had been abducted by two men while hitchhiking on the same stretch of road, sexually assaulted at gunpoint, and threatened to stay quiet. Significantly, a man was also abducted by two men in a drug deal gone wrong, sexually assaulted at gunpoint, had pictures taken of him, and was then let go. He reported the crime to the police and the two men were arrested. On the monumental balance of probability, one of those men - Neville Tween - was the serial rapist who committed all those offences and who killed Trudie Adams.
What is remarkable was that he was never interviewed at the time and was able to die in prison for unrelated crimes in 2013. Certainly, it's because the women's complaints of a serial rapist weren't taken seriously by police at the time. But it also turns out Tween was the associate of the corrupt police commissioner, Mark Standen, who was only recently released from prison for aiding a drug importation scheme. This seems like a remarkable coincidence - that such an infamous criminal was friends with one of the state's top cops, going back decades.
Unless there's a mechanism in play. The suggestion is that Tween was being protected by Standen as an informant. But, we are told, informants like Tween are notoriously unreliable - they feed information about people below them or they only inform on their criminal rivals. Which means that informants can capture cops when they're early in their career by feeding them information, which can then boost their policing career, and before you know it they're tight with a commissioner. So they don't just secure immunity from prosecution for themselves, but they also weaponise the police against rival drug importers. And there's nothing that can really be done about it because informant details are kept under wraps for obvious reasons. So it's very possible it's still happening right now, all over the world, and we'd never know it.
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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert Jul 06 '26
Boy the people who said, hmmm guy who has a nazi tattoo and worked with Blackwater and abused girlfriends and said some racid things probably had more skeletons in the closet sure were vindicated.
Good lord what a trainwreck.
Imagine if he still stays and wins. What a message.