- @KapteinB
That scene sure was something.
He cites George Bush Sr’s “Chicken Kiev” speech in 1991, when the president urged Ukraine not to pursue independence,
Huh, don't remember hearing about that before. I'd argue things are different now though. That was an unknown breaking away from what appeared to be a democratic country, while now we're talking about unknowns breaking away from an authoritarian nation.
There is the nuclear arsenal to consider though. I don't know much about how the nukes are distributed through the country, but it's likely some of them would end up in these new unknowns.
I never liked multiverses.
For one; they don't make any sense at all, though that may be a moot point when discussing superhero stories, which tend to make very little sense in general.
And for two; they function as a get-out-of-jail-free card for writers, who no longer need to care about consistency or logic, since anything can be explained away with some hand-wavey multiverse nonsense.
That doesn't mean I dislike all multiverse stories. Rick and Morty is loads of fun, but that's mostly because their multiverse episodes are completely taking the piss out of all the multiverse tropes. I also really enjoyed Into the Spider-Verse, which didn't take itself too seriously. But I think ours would be a brighter timeline if Spider-Verse had flopped, because I think its success led directly to the awful No Way Home (which probably has the highest fan-service to content ratio of any film I've ever seen in the theatre), and to Multiverse of Madness (which is possibly the worst film in the MCU, but it's so bad it's good, so it kinda works anyway).
I haven't seen Everything Everywhere All at Once yet. From what I hear, it's amazing, but that's also what I heard about No Way Home (from Spider-Man fans, who completely ate up all the fan-service). Now that I know it's about multiverses, not sure if I'll ever summon the energy to watch it. I'll probably watch Spider-Verse 2, since I liked the first one so much, so let's hope they don't start playing it straight in that franchise too.
If all of these pass, it's going to be a pretty crazy political platform, both by US and international standards, but ... anyone else think Texas seceding from the USA might be the best for (nearly) everyone?
When confronted with how he could possibly still support another Trump presidency during his book promotion tour earlier this year, Barr replied: “Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party.” There it is: after everything we have been through, conservatives still see the Democrats (or progressives, or liberals, or the left – they see them as interchangeable) as the biggest threat.
Hmm...
Well, I guess a fascist dictatorship isn't necessarily a threat to "the country". Just to everyone in it and every other country.
This article explains the history of how Germany got into its current situation of energy dependency of Russia, which was very interesting reading, but it paints a picture of German Ostpolitik as largely a failure, and I'm not so sure I agree with that. The article reminds us that Ostpolitik didn't stop Russia from invading Georgia in 2008 or Ukraine in 2014 (and again this year), but the article also claims it had little to do with the dissolution of the USSR.
German journalist Thomas Urban, author of a new book critiquing Ostpolitik, believes its role in the fall of the wall and German reunification has been exaggerated: “It was military buildup by Reagan and the flooding of the market with cheap oil that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union,” he told me. The Russian government budget had grown so dependent on energy for its revenue, he said, that when the price of oil plummeted in the mid-1980s, Russia’s lifeline to external capital dried up. “Gorbachev could no longer fund the overseas wars and the Soviet Republics,” he said. “But this argument was entirely missing in the German debate, especially on the left.”
Well how did the USSR become so very vulnerable to falling energy prices? Largely because it was exporting so much gas and oil to Western Europe, especially Germany! Let's not overcorrect an oversimplification by oversimplifying too far in the other direction. In addition, (as the article just briefly mentions,) Ostpolitic helped secure cheap energy for German industry, helping make the country the industrial powerhouse it is today.
Gazprom would also take over Germany’s gas storage business, thereby handing control of German energy reserves to a foreign power.
Now this, however, seems like a major blunder, and I wish the article would have gone into detail about it. I have problems imagining that the German state or industry would hand Gazprom such control easily, especially after the 2009 gas disputes with Ukraine. Surely they must have realised this would make the country a lot more vulnerable to Putin's whims.
Not going to lie; there's a very good chance I would have joined in on the cheating if I was in that WhatApp group. At least for the quizes, maybe not for the midterms.
Will you be using the new or the old name?
This article created some discussion over at Tildes. I'm curious what Readers will make of it.
An update on the Axie Infinity hack. Apparently it was North Korea.
“This NFT is not just a tweet, this is the Mona Lisa of the digital world,” he said.
I'm sorry, what? Is he trolling, or is he serious? I really can't tell. This timeline is getting dumber by the minute.
I still haven't watched Fantastic Beasts 2, even though I really liked the first one. The trailer and the poor reviews kinda turned me off, and I stopped following the franchise. I'm still hoping they choose to finish the quintology. Maybe as slightly lower budget (and thus lower risk) direct to streaming films. It's always a bummer when a series never reaches its natural conclusion.
This is my favourite article about animal genitalia.
I can't tell if this is satire or not.
This is of course terrible, but we all knew it was coming. Not just since the leaked draft, but ever since Ginsburg died, this was the most likely outcome.