Messages

46

Off Topic / Re: what changes as you grow older?

« on: November 17, 2022, 07:49:29 PM »

is something that has NEVER changed in my lifetime

47

Off Topic / Re: what changes as you grow older?

« on: November 17, 2022, 07:48:29 PM »

I am the most important person in the world

48

Off Topic / Re: do u ever explain this stuff to anyone?

« on: August 28, 2022, 09:23:45 AM »

you’re an idiot

49

Off Topic / Re: do u ever explain this stuff to anyone?

« on: August 27, 2022, 06:42:16 PM »

Surreee...

different person

50

Off Topic / Re: blf might outlast kiwi farms lmao

« on: August 27, 2022, 06:41:30 PM »

child enthusiast gets owned. make it a national holiday in new zealand

51

Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Left threaten to EXECUTE Annoying Orange.

« on: August 27, 2022, 06:40:09 PM »

not to butt into the conversation since i currently haven't read the discourse between you two, but i am interested: whats your take on this, strategically? do you see it as justified or no? im of the mindset it was a necessary evil and was softened by Americas immediate relief efforts to build back Japan. i can understand that being seen as either a good or bad thing, since the reasoning could be debated that it was because even America was surprised by their own destruction, or because they saw it as an opportunity to shoe horn in their western hegemony, it still seems like it was a wildly successful effort as Japan was flourishing by the 80s per my understanding. they definitely had Americas youth by the balls with their own cultural influence. IDK, just kinda interested on your thoughts there.

there is no better case study on it than this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go it is long but worth the watch, it sheds thoroughly so much light on the total ineptitude and carelessness of every world government at that time, with primary sources cited constantly.

for a sneak-peak preview, the reason kyoto wasn't targeted is because one of the white house executives took a vacation there with his wife once and "thought it was nice". truman didn't even legally authorize the second strike. japan offered a conditional surrender, whereby the only condition would be that the emperor were preserved, but the US responded that they wanted an unconditional surrender. japan gave this unconditional surrender after the bombs were dropped, and the US preserved the emperor anyway. (the US then gave japan's collaborationist regime administrative power over newly-partitioned south korea, where this same government had killed 500,000 civilians just 1 year prior)

52

Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Left threaten to EXECUTE Annoying Orange.

« on: August 27, 2022, 06:28:26 PM »

i agree with your opinion on the outcomes of armed conflict, but i disagree on the reasons. armies tend to bring their most expensive ordinance and the most well-funded operators of said ordinance. however, moving expensive people and weapons through a warzone is a logistics  nightmare, and keeping them operational and combat-effective is difficult. the drone strikes we hear the most about in the US are the ones that target high-value leaders and end up killing civilians, but the ones that occur most frequently are supporting strikes and strafing runs for ground troops under fire.

during an exchange of combat, the situation may rapidly deteriorate. if soldiers are unable to maintain fire superiority and begin taking excessive casualties, air support and artillery become necessary. this is the main application of our drone program and also where the most civilian casualties end up being caused by. every second troops are on the ground and in the air, they risk dying at any moment. the air force is especially vulnerable, and portable air-to-surface missiles (even small arms fire) can destroy million dollar drones and choppers flying lower to the ground. under these stuffty conditions, soldiers' decision-making skills are disrupted, and the chances of civilian casualties climb by the second.

none of this makes it right, and there is no real excuse for civilian death. it also raises the important point that nobody would have to die if the army wasn't there in the first place. once an armed force arrives, the question is no longer 'why are we here' but 'how can we achieve our objective as fast as possible with as little casualties to our men, our enemies and civilians as possible.' this is where it helps to have a dedicated plan to minimizing losses of everyone involved.

the US certainly isn't the beacon of peace when it comes to warfare. after all, the country remains the only one in the world to have used nuclear weapons against human targets, not just once but twice. operation desert storm was a hugely successful operation compared to the nuclear bombings and the korean and vietnam wars, and the decision to knock out iraq's air superiority and comms from day one likely prevented millions of people from dying. an unsuccessful first strike would've meant that coalition troops would have to bring heavier armor into the cities and more civilians would've been displaced and killed. the decision to stay in the middle east and maintain a presence is what cost the people of iraq many more lives than necessary, and is where the US begins to look like an incompetent russia-like invader. many of the problems that remain today are directly the result of US intervention, but these losses would've been much greater had the show of force invasion failed.

more iraqi civilians died because of desert storm than any amount of people have died due to warfare since vietnam-- topped only by the rwandan genocide only a few years later-- not even to include the US's role on both sides of the iran-iraq war. you are horribly mistaken with these bloomberg takes

53

Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Left threaten to EXECUTE Annoying Orange.

« on: August 24, 2022, 03:39:25 PM »

joe biden can’t cancel all student debt because then the democratic party might start winning more elections

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Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Left threaten to EXECUTE Annoying Orange.

« on: August 24, 2022, 03:33:38 PM »

off topic a little bit, but there’s been an extremely annoying trend lately where pundits and ‘brown townysts’ in news agencies with a billion-sized following are able to label people as purveyors of “misinformation” without interrogating or providing a single example of this occurring. the worst offender is the daily beast, who exists solely as a hitman for intelligence agencies, but it’s very prominent in the guardian and nyt as well (the rest of them typically just pretend alternative views simply do not exist). one of my old professors randomly got hit with one of these after a piece he wrote got picked up by an alternative news site, now he’s “under review” with the school.

he probably won’t be laid off or anything on its account, but it’s extraordinary how much this has ramped up since covid and ukraine. at least with covid ‘disinformation’ their reasoning was that it would “save lives” to censor it, nothing like this is the case with ukraine however and social media are simply acting as fact-checkers now except without having to provide any supporting arguments for it. you get banned for posting NPR or DW articles about ukraine from 2015 lmfao, the only rationale they have this time is that “it’s misinformation because your beliefs are wrong”. it’s insane so few people are talking about this and instead babbling about transgenders or ‘putler’

55

Drama / Re: The posse of Kiwifarms tryhard edgelords

« on: August 24, 2022, 03:24:49 PM »

you have to admit, that it is usually pretty funny

56

Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Left threaten to EXECUTE Annoying Orange.

« on: August 24, 2022, 03:20:34 PM »

i agree with this. a unique perspective perhaps, i believe strongly in the idea that invaders have a moral obligation to execute the fastest and most effective invasion possible in order to limit loss of civilian and military life.

the strength and finality of a first strike largely determines how many people will die in the future of the conflict. i like to look at the iraq invasion as one of the strongest shows of force followed by the weakest outreach and de-escalation efforts possible. a cohesive modern military force can execute a strong strike that knocks out most of a country's comms and air support, but the large size of an army leads to logistics and communication errors. these errors stack up leading to underequipped, outnumbered squads of soldiers prone to perpetrating war crimes. coalition soldiers quickly lost the support and positive perception of the local population, and most/all attempts to outreach and establish infrastructure with local tribes ended in civilian deaths as well as ambushes against coalition soldiers. not unlike them, russia will also be faced with a population of people who hate them and reject their presence if they do succeed at their invasion.

all invaders should have a strong and determined strike plan followed by a stronger, kinder humanitarian effort. however, most armies lack the latter and end up leaving countries in failed state status. failed states are exceptionally prone to insurgencies and terror, and fighting against these forces is arguably more complicated and resource and time consuming than planning an invasion. insult to injury, guerilla/asymmetrical warfare has never been studied well and we (the world) have very few examples from which to study. most written documents on asymmetrical warfare and counterinsurgency were written during and after the 1930s, as the gap in combat effectiveness between armies began to increase drastically with new weaponry. ironically, i live in a country founded on independence, militia and insurgency that actively tries to prevent other countries from reaching the same goal. you think with a history so embedded in asymmetrical warfare, the government would plan counterinsurgencies that were more effective and less detrimental to civilian life. instead, Americans are generally remembered in most parts of the middle east and south america as imperialistic invaders and not freedom fighters.

in the coming years, invasions around the pacific are highly likely. hoping for permanent peace is unrealistic and naive, instead i hope for competent invaders that bring not just armor and soldiers, but doctors, translators, humanitarian corridors ready to salvage and preserve whatever human life, property and society survives combat.

this has nothing to do with what I told you. not only is it wrong to “hope for competent invaders” when there are maybe 10 countries in the world who have put armies into foreign countries since 1993, but the US is not a “competent invader”. the fact that you quoted the drone program as some sort of tactical success for minimizing civilian casualties (see daniel hale’s drone papers) demonstrates your lack of understanding of american warfare and, more importantly, diplomacy. you said that the drone strikes are good but there’s not enough intelligence around it to confirm the target is an “unlawful enemy combatant” (lol) beforehand and afterwards, my answer is that this is by design because there is zero incentive for them to actually do this when terrorism (unlawful attacks on civilians) creates more people to spend money to kill. it’s like when an IT guy unplugs the server and plugs it back in so that he can make sure his boss doesn’t fire him because there aren’t any IT problems going on at the time he can actually fix.

US intelligence released a story the other day that russia might start striking more civilian infrastructure, which is hilarious because striking civilian infrastructure and utilities is the first thing that the US does in a war. in yugoslavia, close to 8 thousand serbs died from the bombings— most of them because there wasn’t running water, power, gas, or food supply chains in lieu of the embargo.

you said that, in iraq, the US’s problem was that they didn’t ‘follow through’ to create a stable country after the war (officially) ended. this is of course true, iraq is a stuffhole now and never recovered from what the US did; however, I’m telling you this is intentional. iraq is something of a cliche for criticism of American foreign policy, but that’s only because it is the perfect example. saddam hussein would not exist without the US backing he had; Kurdish uprisings which led to the anfal genocide were a direct result of the US lying to them; 1 million iraqis and kurds and syrians in iraq, mostly children, starved because of oil for food, most of them dying before they even knew they were iraqi, but the only reason cited being that they were iraqis. saddam’s domestic intelligence network wouldn’t exist without the US sanctions. al qaeda, backed by iraqi islamists, wouldn’t exist without the US. the poverty in iraq now, and subsequently CIA, wouldn’t exist without the US’s approval of it.

my point here is as follows: the US lies about the circumstances of a country to manufacture public disapproval. then, the US makes these circumstances a reality through sanctions, impoverishment. then, the US backs local separatist groups to create fear and report it as “tensions” or “civil war”. then, the US enters the conflict directly, using expensive bombs and some expensive troops to unstrategically inflate the conflict. then, the US enacts regime change in the country, backing a weak, corrupt, controllable administration who operates as a US puppet-state. finally, the US abandons the country while maintaining their hold on many of their possessions, such as oil or food or bank holdings. if you’re lucky like iraq you get to be invaded 2 more times due to other circumstances the US created

it has been like this since korea and the philippines at least, it has never changed, and it never will unless diplomacy is taken seriously by the public, and media and government are held accountable by the public. the US is THE MOST destructive and powerful country in the history of the world, it is not ‘strange’ to criticize it in the ukraine conflict, it is strange to NOT criticize it. US foreign policy exists to create ‘shocks’ to justify upward transfer of wealth, that is the simple reality, the group of people in power exist to serve themselves and not the public and not any moral higher power who saves foreigners

57

Off Topic / Re: discord sux

« on: August 18, 2022, 03:45:30 PM »

on the other hand discord is a fantastic tool to use as a free small file hosting cloud, I've probably wasted 500gb of their data for my own personal storage. one time my harddrive got fried and all my homework was there for me to re-download, very convenient and sortable

58

Off Topic / Re: discord sux

« on: August 18, 2022, 03:44:13 PM »

discord sucks but your complaint is just that you arent able to approve every conversation on a message board lol, just respect and ignore them the same way you would with friends-of-friends irl

anyway I've run a community with now 60k people for several years now, and at one point we had a controversial guest and a discord staffer hopped on and delisted us permanently from the "server search" feature, so despite still having net growth somehow (the retention is exceptional) the only growth we have is from friend invites and injections from the guests we invite. the monthly new users (not net) dropped immediately from like 8k to 300. I've emailed and called discord, the other server owners have emailed them, I've used twitter and server reports and even contacted junior staff I personally know. they have us on a loving blacklist for communication about anything lol, despite only having 3 strikes in 4 years of running this. big tech is noteworthy for being lazy and cutting corners on their content, but discord is probably the most lazily run social media app in history.

150 million people use this app and they employ like 200 people, for half of them their entire job is managerial and typically encompasses putting more beanbags in the office space, or networking to get loving danny devito to do a presentation on it. there is zero incentive for absolutely any of this to change and jason citron is a cuck

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Off Topic / Re: U.S.A. Politics Thread | Disgusting tricks the media will use to manipulate people.

« on: August 13, 2022, 05:01:59 PM »

most of the drone strikes armies authorize do not have reported civilians at the time of authorization. most drone collateral is caused by bad/incomplete communication between recon teams, drone operators, ordinance operators and the people above them in rank that authorize the attack.

leaders are in a unique position where they have the power to change the world but must also take responsibility for how it changes. however, presidents aren't the only people in an army with that power. even someone like putin, who most of the world hates right now, isn't directly responsible for the artillery strikes that killed civilians. the direct responsibility falls on the ground and air crews that misidentified civilians as military targets. someone like him is indirectly responsible for authorizing and publicizing the war, but war is war and once it's started it goes sideways fast. ground units get hit by accurate fire, call artillery assistance on the position they think they're taking fire from. these positions range over several km until they narrow their targets and score an accurate hit. civilians hiding in their homes, operating vehicles or carrying long items that can be misidentified as weapons tend to be killed before anyone even realizes they are civilians. these tough decisions become even tougher during asymmetrical warfare, as anyone driving a car or even walking could carry an IED or report your position to enemies.

obama authorized the use of thousands of hellfire missiles during the waning days of the war on terror. most of these quarter million dollar missiles were good hits on enemy armor and infantry. a few of them were bad hits on civilians, and at least three were friendly fire hits on US ground vehicles. he can't be directly responsible for the mistakes of ground crew with hundreds of ranks of separation between them, nor the gunner who launched the missile on bad information reported over their comms. however, these kinds of mistakes should be planned for and targets properly investigated before the strikes. leaving ground units to take fire and report incorrect coordinates under this intense fire is very irresponsible.

I wrote something long without holes a couple days ago but it logged me out when I tried to post it. RQed. maybe I'll dump the sources I linked

tldr of the main point-- if your government is showing a clear interest in the outcome of a foreign war, and your first response ISN'T to do some rigorous and intellectually honest investigation as to whether your government played a role in starting that war, then there's something wrong with your mind. something called a "war on terror" should elicit hysterical laughter if you have any critical thinking abilities

60

Drama / Re: Plastiware was arrested for child research

« on: August 12, 2022, 12:12:10 AM »

the only reason iban doesnt have his own kiwifarms thread is because he owns the site. he does the exact same stuff as everyone else who deserves a thread there

hes had several lol the whole community knows hes a lego game loser by now