Several years ago, my brother thought is appropriate to send me a stupid little video about how many wars the US has been in. And the conclusion from this was that the US is a warmonger, of course. (There is a reason we don’t talk politics, yes.)
The fact that several of these wars were waged against the US (England, we’re looking at you) though the revolutionary war is a matter of opinion. I’m sure that Dan’s ancestors would say that England waged war on the colonies, which is why the colonies had to secede, but I understand Great Britain has a different opinion. OTOH it’s arrant nonsense to blame us for the wars we got involved in to save European butt (mostly against the Germans) or for defending allies during the cold war when the USSR went on the prowl.
Yes, we’ve been at war a lot, and I suspect there’s more wars ahead. Part of this is that we fit uncomfortably in the world and that for some reason we haven’t responded to provocations harshly enough that people leave us alone. Also that as the single hegemon we’re going to have a lot of countries taking pot shots at us.
This does not mean we’re a war like country. Americans are the weirdest at war, because we keep trying not to hurt people. Which is of course stupid. And perhaps it’s time to realize that sometimes hurting a few people in a targeted way is the best way to avoid hurting a LOT of people over the long run. Yes, we have pride and a certain military attitude, and are the only country in the West that still knows how to fight. But we view it very much as “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
However Europeans have a big hole in their head. I know because I went to school there for… way too many years. On account of being born there/being one of them until 27. Which means that I heard the stories they tell themselves, in the classroom but also the media, fiction, etc.
They believe — no, listen — they believe two things cause war: nationalism and being prepared for war.
When they study the causes of WWI for instance it’s all flattened down to “The culture in Germany was so militaristic, and they were nationalists” when the fact is the main cause of WWI was internationalism: the empires and links between empires which would drag the whole world into war if the fuse went up. Also it was monarchy and family quarrels, but that’s something else.
It certainly had nothing to do with people waving the flag and the common man loving his country. Because I love America it doesn’t mean I want to go and pound Mexico or Canada. Even if Canada is doing its best to kill batchlots of their own population and sell out to Beijing. And yeah I’d prefer Mexico not export its narco-issues and half of its population to us. Yeah, the food is cool, but the intake of Marxist Koolaid is higher than in our college campus and the chip on the shoulder and culture make things difficult for us. I’m not saying a few of them can’t come over, but no more mass immigration. Oh, and I’m even less inclined to go off and stomp further distant countries.
Unless of course they are interfering with us.Which yes, Venezuela, Iran and of course China and arguably Russia were/are.
So us retaliating and slapping them so hard their great grandkids say ouch is justified. And it’s not because we’re patriots or “militaristic.” It’s because they’re screwing with us. (Don’t touch our boats. Or our citizens. Or our homeland. Or, really anything of ours. How hard is that to understand?)
The whole idea that patriotism and being armed CAUSE war is USSR propaganda, of course. No, seriously. They hated both people being attached to their own countries and being able to defend themselves. Mostly because international socialism, which flies under the flag of socialism/communism, only meant one thing: Russian nationalism. Russia puppeted the USSR as its ticket to conquer every country it considered a threat.
If you’ve studied Russian history you know that it considers every country a threat. So for Russia to feel safe, it needed a world empire. And it viewed communism as its ticket to such world empire.
Which means that it preached internationalism, because internationalism means you won’t fight back when they take your homeland. And it preached pacifism, because pacifists don’t fight back.
Its accusations against the US were always that it was militaristic and imperialistic and aggressive, which was projecting with an IMAX.
But you can’t argue with the logic that if other countries didn’t defend themselves militarily the world would be peaceful, peacefully living in squalor under the Soviet boot and sending the best of everything to Mother Russia….
But Sarah the USSR fell. Yes, it did, physically. It became unable to hold its empire because frankly socialism of any kind kills, fast or slow, but it always kills, and at some point it couldn’t occupy other countries and steal from them fast enough to keep its citizens even semi-contented.
However its ideological debris went on, in Western universities which it conquered and particularly in the upper class of the US where, thanks to decades of controlling the industrial-entertainment complex, it had become a positional good.
Which is why you see spectacularly and extensively maleducated leftists claim things like if you defund the police crime will stop. Or if we disarm no on one will attack us.
These are delusions that don’t survive kindergarten. Bullies don’t stop hitting you if you don’t hit back. Nor is life pleasant under their boot. But if you’re educated enough you can believe it. I suppose.
Will this debris survive? I don’t know. I always said that communism would have to die here, where it infiltrated our elites and academia. But at the same time, I very much wouldn’t like it to die in blood. Because that will change us in ways we won’t like. Maybe it needs to be. But I’d rather not.
I very much hope, though, that things change in such a way that we can indeed give peace a chance. And our only chance at peace is to smack those who disturb OUR peace hard enough to make them stop it. Then go away and come back if they do it again.
It certainly beats being the world’s social worker and (actually, in point of fact) funding communism by other names abroad. (Even in the weird format of transexual operas in Bolivia, yes, it’s Marxism if not actual communism at the heart of it. And I suspect anyway the money went directly to groups who hate us, rather than their stated purpose.)
Peace is possible: through superior firepower and willingness to use it in the most devastating and efficient (and sparing) way achievable.
We should try that.
*UPDATE: I think maybe I should let the regulars know that for the last 3 days this blog has been under continuous attempted DOS attack. I’m getting hits so massive that anything but my gold-plated hosting service would already have buckled. Truth is, so far the gold plated hosting service has paid for itself. But combined with very hostile uninformed and incoherent (not approved, natch) comments it makes me wonder HOW I pissed on their cheerios this time? Anyone have any idea? Just curious. The opinions of fools don’t interest me but sometimes they amuse me — SAH.*
According To Hoyt 
If the bully in second grade (really, it takes some time to develop the psychological difference between “spoiled brat” and “bully”) doesn’t quit messing with me, I’ll hit him with a #10 can of green peas.
I like it.
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Very true, bullies only stop when they are faced with resistance. We want to avoid wars if possible but sometimes it just isn’t. And, being Americans, we prefer short wars, stomp them flat and move on, don’t bother us again. Not the idiocy of the globalists with their non-working “nation building” schemes that simply don’t work and have too high a cost in lives.
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Ringo got into conspiracy theories as part of his current set of superhero conspiracy novels.
He says that some traffickers of children for sex were also making comic books in places like vietnam. Making comic books with USAID funding.
I’ve been sick in the head (sinus) this week, and there seems to have been some secondary infection and not purely allergies. Might not have made my thinking worse in the eyes of others, but there were points I noticed.
I would note that we put the cultural bits together differently from in Europe, and the result of this is that our sense of internal peace has not be as theirs is for over a hundred years.
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No Just ICE, no peas!!
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That headline takes me back to Missoula, MT, and a “mercantile,” there. I had already been to the local tea shop and walked out after seeing the, “Hate has no home here,” with the list of things they hated sign. The mercantile appeared to be run by a couple of female hippies, and they had a wall of loose-leaf teas. I knew I was in the right place when I saw the sign over the counter: “Visualize Whirled Peas.”
I need to find out if they still do mail order.
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I’ll suggest a fresh sign for the local tea shop: “Hate has no home here, but we let it visit whenever it wants to.”
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People with those signs seem to have no concept they might be offensive.
Though in at least two cases I know of the sign posters are progressive lesbians, so they’re convinced the Forces of Reaction are out to get them.
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TBF on occasion this force of reaction is out to b*tch slap them. Though mostly the idiot writers who put them in stories. “Lesbianism is neither cool nor shocking, stop shoveling it in. And stop making the introverted smart chick a lesbian. It wasn’t funny when they did it to Willow, and it’s less funny now.” Same goes for making the sensitive guy gay.
As people who went through school with our classmates thinking we played for the other team, the mathematician and I implore you to QUIT.
In other news, the Little Pickle is over packaging orders for shipping. I’d give her a talking to about being in bed, but she’ll point out how many times she’s done that to me. Sigh.
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In both cases the women are indie dyers and they do really good work. One pair is also friendly and don’t rub your face in their gayness (aside from the, “You can feel safe here,” sign). The other pair lives in Washington state, so they’re in a bubble. Neither knows I buy from them despite their politics, not because of them.
Yeah, when I was 12 I had a couple of guys decide I must be “a queer,” and proceed to make my life miserable. At that point, pre-puberty, I was more or less asexual and had absolutely no idea what they meant. If they’d said I was “queer,” I would have figured it was just more of the usual. And the only teacher who knew of my troubles was in a bad auto accident and likely never came back to school. Fortunately we moved to Florida. But the stress probably explains why, when the local Mean Girl tried to pick on me, I snapped and chased her around the yard with a hose. I had no idea scalp wounds bled like that.
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I lived in a state of “snap” for various reasons. I’m so much calmer now it’s not even funny.
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Remind her that if she does too much, too fast, she’ll have a relapse and have to go through it all again.
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Tell her, from lived experience, that pushing yourself means the wall hits you in the face that much quicker. It’s not fun.
On a personal note, do you know how many times you can relapse when you have mono? A lot. It cost me six months, about 30 years ago.
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If there is no ground, no idea, no people you are willing to defend with lethal force…
If you’ve no willingness to say NO and the balls to make it stick…
If there is no point past which you would fight, viscerally, violently, viciously fight…
You stand for nothing. You are worth nothing. You own nothing. You cannot protect anything.
Violence is the way of humanity. Abstain from it too long, and you have to do a bloody lot of violence later on.
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This is why Europe is dying.
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Sadly, yes. Slow suffocation.
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Call me a globohomo neocon if you will, but Iran is also about narcotrafficking and narcoterrorism in the Americas.
This has actually gone unmentioned, because the saner people realize that we also have a ton of other reasons that persuade sane Americans, because the narcotics doesn’t persuade anyone that the other arguments do not, and because we’ve already talked a lot about narcotics recently anyway.
Call me a globohomo neocon if you will, but the bandit regime of West Taiwan and the CCP is also about narcotrafficking and narcoterrorism in the Americas.
Trump’s foreign policy is calculated, appropriate, and restrained.
Trump acts where we had Casus Belli and is proportionate to the level of breakdown or dissent from peace by the other actors. He is fully justified by Jacksonian sensibilities.
The CCP never had the mandate of heaven, Trump is restoring order and suppressing banditry.
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Narcotrafficking and narcoterrorism for sure.
My memory also nags me that Ryan Routh reportedly had connections in Iran (and there was the other alleged team of assassins during the ’24 campaign that SecWar Hegseth mentioned)….
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One of whom was convicted yesterday by a New York City jury in just two hours. Mind you, he told them all about it on the witness stand, but I think the conviction was a good sign.
BTW, his suggested MO, from his Iranian handler, was to go to a rally, get up on a roof, shoot Trump and “vanish in the confusion.” Apparently he told them he thought Cooks (the Butler shooter) was another Iranian agent.
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How is beloved doing? He remains in our prayers.
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“…the bandit regime of West Taiwan…”
Bwaha, that’s a great one!
Kind of a shame to bring Taiwan’s name into it though, it isn’t like they’re dumping Fentanyl on the Vancouver docks by the container full. That’s alllll Chicom. And so typical of the way they fight, too. The poisoned dagger in the back. Disgraceful.
That’s why I love this ‘warheads on foreheads!’ campaign #Donny is pursuing. It’s so American. Freakin’ High Noon, with the tumbleweed rolling by…
The evil leadership of West Taiwan can’t sleep lately, thinking about the chances of them being Maduroed right out of their f-ing bedrooms. Or a Ninja Missile through their bathroom window some fine morning. Fat guy #WinnieThePooh is definitely thinking about that today, and he’s also thinking about the cheering crowds that’ll be burning his picture in the streets.
So much to like there.
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Someone on Twitter was suggesing Xi’s generals were explaining, as if he was five, that if we want to hit the Three Gorges Dam we can and there’s nothing they can do to stop us.
The comments….oh, the comments. Not all were leftist, but enough were. They varied from, “That would be a war crime!” to (my favorite) “You don’t understand. The dam is made of huge blocks of concrete, perfectly fitten together. It cannot be destroyed.”
Uh huh. Right.
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“Challenge accepted”. -US Army Corps of Engineers, likely.
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Old science or engineering.
In WWII, they worked out that the best place for an explosion is at the bottom of the dam, inside the reservoir. Hydrostatics 101, at equilibrium, the pressure is biggest at that lowest submerged elevation. (Explosions are not equilibrium, but it was good enough to understand the dam designs back then.)
Star Wars is literally a result of copying the movie adaptation of this.
But, three gorges is reported to be slowly failing away, so a shock anywhere with much energy might finish it.
Army Corp does structures and dams, the combat engineers are explosives specialists, the Air Force and Navy have air to ground weaponeers, and the national labs may have just a few interested physicists.
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It’d be an awful lot of collateral damage, but if we wanted to make a point… yeah.
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Wuhan is downstream.
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OTOH things going ‘splodey sounds fair in that vicinity….
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(Spent over a month just trying to breathe each night on the first round of the Crud. I have opinions. I admit it.)
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Blowing up Three Gorges Dam might have been a topic briefly discussed in an undergraduate course with a Chinese born instructor decades ago.
I actually personally don’t favor it, because it feels fairly indiscriminate, and that is a lot of dead people to maybe breed disease.
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Point them at “The Dam Busters”, then casually remind them “that was done with CONVENTIONAL explosives; the term “backpack nuke” comes when we decided in the Cold War to equip our SpecOps with NUCLEAR demolition charges; we can do much better than the RAF.”
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I think that one may have been a Chinese bot.
My beloved (still in the hospital, $%*@, hopefully out tomorrow) thinks we won’t have to blow the dam-the Taiwanese will take care of it.
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“You don’t understand. The dam is made of huge blocks of concrete, perfectly fitten together. It cannot be destroyed.”
That thing is going to breach all on it’s own without any help from the Dam Busters. The only thing that held it together this year is that they let all the freaking water out and flooded the whole industrial heartland of China for weeks.
There will most likely come a rainy season where they can’t let the water out fast enough, or possibly Comrade General SumDumGai is too stupid to give the order soon enough. “The dam is strong! It cannot be destroyed!!!”
And then it’ll be on like Donkey Kong.
Personally I think blowing up the dam would be historically stupid. Particularly when they can probably snatch any Chicom big guy they want, any time they want, and perp-walk him in an orange jumpsuit. Same anti-aircraft batteries as Maduro…
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Actually, it might be better to attack the bank alongside the dam. Take out the earth that restrains the river and the stored water will do the rest of the job.
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Calling China West Taiwan suggests that they are part of Taiwan rather than the other way around, which is an insult worthy of the Han.
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“I’d like ‘One China Policy’ for $800, Alex!”
Do note that Red China has *always* asserted this…
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No, they have always asserted that Taiwan is part of China, not that China is part of Taiwan.
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In a sane world (heh) the argument that we are simply finally agreeing with what the mullahs have been emphatically and repeatedly asserting for 47 years, that they are now and have been at war with the U.S., should fully suffice. As corroboration one can point to their actions matching their words right from the beginning, racking up a very significant U.S. citizen body count over those years.
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From what I’ve heard, China reportedly views narco-trafficking against the US as revenge for the opium trade, and how the First Opium War led into the Century of Humiliation. The narrative in China is that Opium is what weakened China to the point where the “eastern barbarians” (their term for the Europeans, since the ports they arrived in were on the eastern side of the country) could basically run wild in China. The CCP hopes that the narco-trade will cause the same to the West, particularly the US.
In reality, while the opium didn’t help, it also wasn’t the ultimate cause. It was likely the usual Chinese corruption among the bureaucrats and officialdom that kept China weak.
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The Opium war was the English, not us.
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We’re still “Eastern Barbarians” and likely the Chinese don’t care about the difference between the US and the UK.
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this, tbh
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I gotta agree here.
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As I understand it, China launched an exploratory maritime fleet in the early 1400s that dwarfed anything of Europe’s. They found the outside world to be full of smelly barbarians–potential disruptors of their Confucian “stability”.
They didn’t want change, and they thought the barbarians wouldn’t change either. So they burned their fleet and turned inward.
They’ve been determined to fix that mistake ever since.
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Maintaining the fleet was reportedly incredibly expensive. Thus the reason why they got rid of it. It just cost too much money to maintain, and they didn’t find any countries that justified the expense.
Letting solo explorers go out and explore wasn’t something that happened by and large. The novel “The Journey to the West” depicts a monk (and his escorts) traveling to India, which we would consider not all that far away (even with China’s contracted borders of the time), and the journey is considered a huge deal. The only other notable Chinese explorer that we know about was a bureaucrat who was sent by the Han Dynasty to visit Rome (there were goods going back and forth between the two empires via intermediary merchants, and the empires were aware of each other). According to the information that we have, after traveling for quite some time, some sailors at a port that he visited convinced him that he still had a long way to go before he reached Rome. He became disheartened, and returned home. The irony is that he was actually quite close to Rome at that point (the sailors were apparently engaged in some bald-faced lying), and would have reached his destination if he’d just pressed on a little further.
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As is the Sailor’s natural right ashore…..
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_poseidon.htm
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My beloved bought a book, 1421, about the expedition. He claimed one factor was a terrific thunderstorm over the Forbidden City just after the expedition returned, which convinced the emperor Heaven did not,approve.
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Also see ‘The saga of the Storm and the Spanish Armada’…
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Admiral Zheng He was the eunuch (captured as a boy, eunuch-ized, and impressed into the Chinese military’s in the final defeat of the last Muslim Mongol-ruled chunk of China, then rose through the ranks) in charge of the missions of exploration. They sailed seven times as far as the coast of Africa, and contacted a number of polities (one mission brought back 30 ambassadors). But after the emperor who appointed him to build and command that exploration fleet died, with his successor changing Imperial priorities, and then the Admiral himself expiring during what turned out to be the final voyage, there was no longer support nor constituency for continuing missions in the Imperial Court and the fleet was left to rot at anchor.
Thus anything along the lines of the Apollo Program is a historically proven way to halt space missions.
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we weren’t part of the Opium War, but we were part of the opium trade. JOhn Forbes Kerry and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, owe their middle names to ancestors who restored their decayed family fortunes by dealing in opium.
That said, China wasn’t weak because of opium, rather opium was a symptom of their weakness, but then again, the Chinese wanted silver for their tea and wouldn’t buy anything else but opium from the west so shipping opium from India trading it for silver in Macau then using the silver for tea In Canton was a solution to a problem.
The only other thing was gold since China valued silver versus gold more than the west did so one could ship Opium as above or American silver to China, trade it for gold and make the cost of the voyage and profit. Most of what we know about arbitrage arose from that trade. It was a huge disparity at times with silver being twice the value in China than in Europe. Japan did the same thing later and the trade went on for years.
I had ancestors who fought in the opium wars and ancestors involved in the China trade. I don’t think they were drug runners, but they might have been, at least I a small way, since everyone did it.
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Not all merchants engaged in the opium trade (some morally disagreed with it, and the merchants that shipped the stuff tended to get sick; presumably being on the same ship as the stuff for long periods of time had a negative effect on a person’s health). But for the reasons you describe, every country relied on it. The irony is that China also relied heavily on its exports to the outside countries, to the point where the trade with the UK was considered critical to the well-being of the country (Brits and their tea…). And yet China’s trade policies in effect meant that eventually its trade partners would run out of silver, and then be unable to buy the goods from China.
There’s another reason why the Chinese hated the opium trade, which I’m sure you’ll enjoy. At the time, China had two currencies – silver, and copper. China only accepted silver coins from the Westerners, and the silver coins that the Europeans gave the Chinese were to be limited to the trade with the Europeans. If the Chinese merchants in Canton had to buy something from the Europeans, they paid using the coins that they had received from the Europeans in earlier transactions. By and large the coins didn’t not go into wider circulation within the Empire.
Because of this, when the Europeans sold opium to the Chinese, they insisted on being paid in Chinese silver currency (taels). But they couldn’t use the taels in transactions with the Chinese merchants in Canton because no one was supposed to be using them in transactions with the Europeans. Offering to buy goods with taels would lead to questions being asked by the Chinese about where the taels had come from. So the taels were melted down and reminted as European coinage. This meant that when they were used to buy Chinese goods in the China trade, the Canton merchants were the only ones allowed to touch them, and by and large they couldn’t be distributed through the rest of the country (presumably some of the coinage was melted down and turned into taels, but apparently much of it wasn’t).
As mentioned above, China had two currencies – silver, and copper. The approximate amount of silver currency in circulation was known, and the approximate amount of copper currency in circulation was known. This meant that appropriate exchange rates could be determined by the Imperial government that would keep the two currencies at a relatively “fair” ratio to each other. And then the opium smugglers turned up, only accepted payment in silver, and effectively removed the silver from circulation with each transaction. This threw off the value of copper and silver currency in relation to each other, and caused havoc with pricing and the internal economy of the country.
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Contact high for the length of the voyage, probably.
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Growing up on the west coast, it still hits funny that China blames “The West” for…the opium dens that they ran?
0.o
How the hey are you a poor innocent victim of the nasty drugs when you’re doing the whole organized crime and slavery thing into an entirely different country?!
(yes I have an idea of their view of it, and several different angles, your “the only thing they were buying was opium” thing is the best distillation I’ve seen, but it still sounds so very weird)
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We also had ginseng. The Manchu disapproved of it as not being right and proper ginseng, but we traded a lot of it, and it was rather more harmless.
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The British fought it, but merchants from a number of countries – including the US – were in the opium trade. It wasn’t just the British selling the stuff.
During the ensuing “Century of Humiliation” (as the Chinese call it), pretty much every Western nation attacked the Qing Dynasty at one point or another after the First Opium War exposed China’s weakness. The US is notable in that it only got involved militarily a couple of times, and both incidents (minor battles participating alongside other Europeans) were among the few Chinese victories afaik. But the initial treaty that the Chinese negotiated with the British stipulated that if one “eastern barbarian” country got an advantage as a result of a treaty, all of the other countries would get the same advantage. So the US still got the treaty ports, and a consignment in Shanghai, as the other nations did.
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We all look alike to them.
Still shaking my head at the commercial where a Chinese girl and a black young man are doing laundry and she throws him into the washer with the Chinese detergent. He comes out Chinese.
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That is bizarre….
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Only to us, I fear. Remember, ‘the Middle Kingdom’ is really ‘the Kingdom at the Center of Everything’ (and don’t you ever forget it, uncouth barbarians!). So, commercial says, happy ending for all!
Meantime, all o’ us unrepentant colonial-scum Yankee Doodles — still just don’t care.
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The way I heard it, the “Middle” Kingdom was the halfway point between Heaven and the dirty earth.
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I’ve read a question about a Chinese work wherein America forces the entire population of China and America to change places, taking all the Chinese artifacts in American museums with them to China, and not even letting children bring grass.
Apparently the nefarious plot was to break China’s history as the only way to break its power. (Why we would haul those stick-in-the-muds out of the mud if we didn’t want them to move — would require more theory of mind than the writer or censor or someone had.)
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Well, we do. I’ve heard of a white woman who lived for China for many years and lost the ability to tell white people apart. It is perfectly normal to be unable to distinguish members of another race when you are not familiar with that race.
Our very own C. Chancy, in The Words Of the Night, had two character exploit that in an alternate history 17th century Korea, where one American poses as the paternal uncle of an American girl because they look so much everyone will believe it.
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bingo
‘historical’ narrative begetting historic ‘forecast’ begetting perceived strategic opportunity
we shall see
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Excellent post. Hope there’s a BIG BOLD CAPS link on IP. (I haven’t trolled there yet today)
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Tonight. Not yet.
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Rather impressively on-topic, and apparently (& officially) just out:
https://x.com/i/status/2029932875781656607
“There will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender!”
Presently Visualizing Whirled Peas about as hard as I can…
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Back in WuFlu time, I guest posted a note about how oil prices work, the front contract was negative then, and talked about contango and backwardation. Right now, the “front contract “ is surging up to $88 per barrel, which implies US Gasoline at $3.80 per gallon. Markets and headlines are, of course, epic. However, you can buy a contract for oil delivered a year from now at $67 per barrel. That’s backwardation, where the futures price is below the current price. What it indicates is that the oil market, people who buy and sell the stuff for a living, the big producers, the professionals, are still looking at a short term, temporary interruption lasting days or weeks. That could change, and Trump talking unconditional surrender doesn’t help, but for now it’s all just noise.
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TWo tankers passed Hormuz overnight one was Chinese. THe other not. I was going to post it earlier but wanted to confirm. That’s a big deal
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But but… I don’t like peas!!!!!! [Very Big Crazy Grin]
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The only caveat I’d make is that the USA’s trying to fight war without killing people is a Vietnam and post Vietnam development. Everywhere nations go to war they dehumanize the enemy. You can see it in WWII cartoons with exaggerated racial caricatures of Japanese and Germans. You can read any Palestinian or radical Muslim propaganda where Jews and Christians and USAins are dehumanized to a disgusting degree to make it ok to kill them. The Gulf Wars were the first I’ve ever heard of where one side bent over backwards to humanize the enemy, people who would hide in and shoot from schools and hospitals and strap bombs on little kids.
Trump is making innovative use of our technology advantage to try to conduct a war killing only the leaders of the enemy rather than work our way up through the population. Time will tell if it works.
Meanwhile, as van Helsing learned in the novel Dracula, true religion, not modernism, is what is needed to put the stake in the heart of Communism https://youtu.be/A-9vA3ZCHbc?si=LHf0K292TszV-Z3g&t=397, and there are signs that is happening.
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Yes, of course. On the first.
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Which I like, both because it’s very American, and it’s very ethical.
Stop The Bad Guy with as little damage as possible– even to himself.
These guys love making it so you’re not allowed to hit them, just to hurt all the people they don’t care about.
There’s a lot of chaff being thrown up trying to claim that killing military leadership is “assassination” because… uh… um…. only shoot at drafted grunts, I guess? Who knows.
But the thing is that assassination requires treachery. They must have a reasonable expectation of not facing attack– such as speaking at a political event, or visiting under a banner of peace. “But I am [of protected group]!” is not sufficient, which can be seen by medics who take hostile action not being morally immune from being shot.
If anyone’s interested in reading about the history of “target the enemy leader” vs “no assassination,” this has a very nice, light overview:
https://lieber.westpoint.edu/assassination-law-of-war/
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Up until the last couple of decades, in order to “get to” the leaders you had to go through the grunts first, UNLESS you did the “assassination” thing. The world has changed, now the front lines are a lot closer now than ever before, and the leaders are often right there with the grunts. Which is both good and bad.
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Even that’s somewhat recent. Leaders used to lead from the front. Then snipers started to become a problem, and the leaders had to be hidden at the rear (or off the battlefield entirely).
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Tageting the leaders is the ONLY ethical way to conduct war. Instead of feeding a million otherwise innocent people into a meatgrinder, find the people who want to turn the crank and kill *them* instead. You kill vastly fewer people, and the ones you do kill are are so, so, so much more deserving. Not everybody has the ability to do this…thankfully, the USA now does.
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Can’t get behind that, especially not when voluntary forces exist, as well as just flat not trusting most of the world to accurately identify the “leaders” whose death will stop the crank.
America’s infamous issue with shooting our officers comes to mind.
I can see how the conclusion would be reached, though, since the vast majority of folks we are going against are not as ethical in war as the US.
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Everybody is welcome to object to it as they see fit, including objections from friends (they help keep us honest). Those who most richly deserve the targeting will probably object most strenuously, along with the soldiers who *wanted* to fight for those people. It’s not a perfect solution; there could be times when it makes things worse; calling it ethical is a stretch; and it can only be a defensible tactic if it’s exercised defensively against people who already have messed with you to the point where violence is necessary.
Personal story time: I went to middle-school in the early ’80s, in a place that you’d think would be very peaceful, but school was *brutal*. Fistfights everywhere, rampant bullying, etc. (I suffered some, but mostly stayed off the bullies’ radar, thankfully.) One of their favorite games was to sneak up and snatch something, then play keep-away until the victim dissolved in tears or just gave up. Sometimes they’d destroy the item at the end just for laughs. This absolutely infuriated me and was also a personal nightmare scenario.
So I came up with a plan, based on what was, in those insensitive times, called the “smear the queer” game. They could play keep-away, but instead of trying to grab the item when I ran at whoever had it, I’d hit that person as hard as I could. Maybe I’d never get my stuff back…there was probably no way to win…but they weren’t going to torment me for free. I planned to make them PAY. And oddly enough, nobody ever tried that on me. (Well, no, one stupid jerkwad tried it when I was in my 20s, and not even in school; it did not go well for him.) And as an oblivious nerd, you’d think I’d have been an inviting target. Was it luck, or did I somehow give off a “don’t effing try me” vibe? I dunno.
ANYWAY, I think our recent “get the leader first” tactics are maybe analogous to that. Don’t try to make us play your stupid violence and humiliation games, because we…do…not…play. Consequences will be visited directly on you, personally, not deferred or deflected onto a bunch of convenient stooges.
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I’m guessing you gave off “don’t start none, won’t be none” vibes without even realizing it. I’ve heard stories of people who, once they learn and become good at a martial art (pretty much any martial art), encounter a lot fewer dangerous situations on the street. Because they just give off a “I can handle myself” vibe, and would-be attackers can sense that this guy is dangerous, whereas before they used to give off a fearful vibe which said “easy target”.
I suspect that your plan would have been even more effective, had you ever been targeted, with a quiet word or two. “Give it back or you’ll regret it”, then when he doesn’t give it back, charge at him and hit him. He has, of course, passed it off to the next guy. Whom you then look at and say, with the same quiet tone, “Give it back or you’ll regret it”. After the second or third, most bullies would clue in. (And if they destroy the item for spite, then they did not give it back and therefore they will regret it).
The guy who, in the face of provocation, remains quiet and calm, is a clue that he’s extremely dangerous and you do NOT want to target him.
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That’s almost exactly how it went when the one guy did try it. Former high-school jock, didn’t have any accomplices, just got a kick out of taking something from his coworkers and making them eventually beg to get it back. They’d appeal to a sense of decency or maturity, but he had none. Snatched my pen out of my hand. I told him to give it back. He laughed. I said, “I’m not playing that effing game. Give it back.” He laughed again. He found himself pinned to the wall with his collar twisted up in my hand and my fist at his throat, and I said, “Give. It. Back.” He gave it back. I didn’t even have to hit anybody. :)
And I didn’t see him trying it on any of my coworkers after that, either. (Dude was a real prick, though; played mean-girl games after that, and was probably responsible for events that turned the manager against me and led me to leave that job, but I got a much better one only a week later.)
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I’ve played that card a few times myself since Junior High — “middle-school” my Aunt Fanny! — and a few weeks ago a friggin’ MOUSE played it on me. The little bass-turd climbed right up onto the couch with me, in easy reach (had it even entered my mind to try), looked me dead in the eye, and might as well have said it out loud: “…Well?“
“What the bleep kind of mind-controlling parasite are you trying to give me, ya little bleep? SCRAM!!!“
He didn’t even twitch.
He held eye contact few more seconds, then turned around and walked — not “scurried” or “scampered” or anything that reassuring — just climbed back down and walked away. Toward the kitchen.
True of mice and men and middle-schoolers and weird old dudes: Anything that oughta be intimidated, and Just. Flat. Ain’t?
THAT’S intimidating.
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Mice can be cheeky little b*stards if they want. We have a large whirlpool tub in one of our bathrooms (Not my idea, previous owner was clearly a player, until he married girlfriend while building the house mid 80’s, so it has a whirlpool tub and had LOTS of Laura Ashely wallpaper). Anyways somehow a Mouse got himself (Or herself didn’t ask for pronouns) stuck in the tub.
Our then three cats noted this. The 15 year old elder statescat, Tyger sat on the rim and was directing two not quite year old cats (Hiccup and Stoick) in removing said mouse. They were NOT succeeding as when they approached said mouse it would charge at them and make a noise I can only describe as screaming. I guess it figured it was going to go down fighting, tough little SOB. The two juvenile cats immediately backed away not quite understanding prey that was fighting back. Tyger continued to sit on the rim, and if cats could roll their eyes, he would have. This action was repeated several times.
Elder Daughter came in to find me convulsed in suppressed laughter. She immediately went and found some cardboard and a large SOLO cup, and trapped the mouse. It was delivered next door to the UCC church and informed that it was no longer a house mouse but henceforth and forevermore a church mouse and it had better not darken our doorstep or tub again.
Whether it did return or not, I do not know. I do know those kittens are now 10 years old themselves and have presented us with several expired mice, so they have gotten over their musophobia.
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Yep. Even a mouse can command respect. To be honest, I’m a little scared of mine.
When I first noticed they’d moved in, I bought a bag of those blue bait-balls. They worked for a few months–one by one, maybe half a dozen corpses turned up (in plain sight in the middle of various rooms, convenient for pickup and disposal). Then that stopped. The bait kept vanishing, but no more bodies.
They and Darwin had ganged up on me.
So I got a few old-school snapper traps, baited with–they shouldn’t be a total loss–those “bait” balls, wired to the trigger. I got a couple more that way.
Then–I solemnly affirm that this is true–they took one of the traps away!
I thought the same as you: that an injured mouse had staggered off with it still attached. But I looked ALL OVER for it. Nothing.
I don’t really believe they took it away for study, but I can’t really rule it out.
After that, bait began disappearing from the traps. Some had been triggered, some not–I’d been just lashing the bait to the trigger, and they had learned to take it without setting off the traps! (It was about that time that Mitkey Mouse climbed the couch and stared me down.)
So I put a loop of bait-affixing wire between the trigger and its retaining bar–think of holding a loop against a wall with your elbow–and I got ONE more mouse.
Well, two. Again, this is pure truth: a few inches away from the deader in the trap, another one was just… there. As if sitting shiva.
I buried them together, and I mourned.
From then on, and ever since, they ignore the traps entirely. I have left one trap, baited but un-set, waiting to see what, when, if. It’s been untouched about a month now.
Yeah. I’m a little scared.
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People are freaking out about AI, but this…man, this is true horror. I hope you come out okay. I hope *we* come out okay. There’s no telling what havoc intelligent mice could wreak as a species, and they’ve got every reason to hold a grudge.
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“The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!!!“
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We were warned…… Oh, you said intelligent mice…..
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I have been cleaning up after the latest infestation (when I figured out what they were eating and removed it, they started eating the CARPET) and found their collection of trophy-traps under the washer.
I am currently replacing the baseboards in kitchen, laundry room and bathrooms, behind all appliances, with tile.
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Anchor your mouse traps (and rat traps, definitely rat traps) with a length of steel wire or chain attached to something solid. The little vermin can’t gnaw through steel.
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I hope they don’t hold grudges! I definitely got off on the wrong foot with the local Peromyscus sonoriensis paenesapiens, if such they be. OTOH, being hospitable could go just as badly wrong the other way. Anybody remember Willard?
I anchored all subsequent traps after the first one walked. (Either they didn’t outsmart that, or they only needed one.) If that missing trap ever turns up, I fervently pray that there’s a mummified mouse in it.
They say that the silver lining of mouse* infestations is that it’s proof you don’t have rats.
*Regular mice, anyway. Rats are real bright themselves, but near-sapient mice might be able to stand them off. Or even join forces with them against the Muricidal Giant.
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See =Small Problems= by Jim Butcher, collected in =The Monster Hunter Files= by Correia and Schmidt.
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I’m a mom; it’s literally my job to eyeball theories that are currently functional enough and see how they’ll turn around and bite us.
That said, taking your stuff and tossing it to the next is an act of aggression; so that person is a licit target for mud-hole stomping.
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Problem with targeting US leaders, in the field or at home, under US voluntary armed services, and political bodies, is “anyone” can be a leader. May not want to. But can. The PTB elsewhere should have (not saying they did, “should have”) learned that during WW2. Reinforced every conflict since. I do not think that is true elsewhere.
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And I just spent a … nice?… chunk of time considering how much you DO NOT want someone who DOES NOT WANT to be a leader deciding that they need to do it…..
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Whoo, SO much THIS! The ones who Just Wanted To Be Left Alone, who finally accept that that’s Just Not Going To Happen…
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Agree.
Given I’m one of those who gets forced to step up.
No. Nope. Don’t wanna.
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In the Troy series John Ringo has the hostile awiens (Horvath) pursuing a decapitation strategy. Over and over. Every time they get a chance to launch at the Earth. So the U.S. adapts, with POTUS and on down working at job locations distributed around the country, and the “incoming missile” SOP being “get the protectee over uninhabited land ASAP so when they inevitably get hit, it’s just them and their aircrew”, and then the senior survivor in the succession chain just slots up. Practice makes perfect, and the repeated unvarying tactic just lets succession become routine.
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Most countries and organizations are so focused on consolidating power that the concept of a decentralized command structure isn’t even blasphemy. It’s never a consideration.
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–
May our troops continue to confound them.
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“There’s a lot of chaff being thrown up trying to claim that killing military leadership is “assassination” because… uh… um….”
Yeah, kind of like when #TheDonald took one in the ear? It’s so funny how none of these Lefties can seem to remember that.
I’d say it’s likely the intelligence weenies know who paid for that, so we may be looking at the payback chain being rolled up all the way back to the #PoohBear who wrote the check.
But also, why spend money on smoking a bunch of civilians when they’re not the ones pushing the war? In a “free” country (since Covid I have to put that in scare quotes) it is presumed to be the majority of the citizens who vote for things to be done. So if the USA is going to war against you, most of the citizens are at least willing to go along. Take out the leaders, and more will rise in their place. Worse ones.
But if Iran is going to war with you, one guy made that decision. Nobody cares what the citizens think, they get un-alived if they have an opinion. Therefore shooting that one guy and his posse is the best, cheapest, fastest way to victory. Destroying their military and their war material factories along with taking down the tyrant, that’s a win.
Best part, it puts all the other tyrants on notice that you can come for them if you want. That will make them much more cooperative. Or they’ll attack, and then you’ll smoke their army too.
What continues to disgust me is that Jimmy Carter could have done this 47 years ago, or any president since. #Barry actually gave them money.
My country of course continues to cover itself in glory, having no military to speak of but still speaking from both sides of its mouth anyway, praising and damning #TheDonald in the same breath. #CarkMarney was in Japan talking big this week, and this week the Japanese Ambassador to Canada was on CTV telling the news-babe that Canada is toast without a US trade deal. He just freaking said it. Straight up.
When was the last time anyone heard of an ambassador laying all his cards on the table like that? The Japanese ambassador at that?
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Perhaps for yours.
In the US, our issues were exactly that we are designed to be free- to go to hell in our own ways.
Texas with forced masking in the spring temps of over 100.
Iowa with “you explicitly have zero enforcement power, and we literally passed a law so you can’t be sued if you can point to any advice that you were following, here is what we would like you to do. Also, please go for long drives, getting out in the sunshine is good.”
Remember that both Sarah and I did trips across a lot of the country– and I cannot wear masks. I had a mosquito hat on, and the only confrontation I got was a central-casting angry middle-aged divorced guy who really wanted to attempt physical intimidation. As opposed to dozens of complements and requests on where I’d gotten the idea, especially after I gushed about how it stopped sneeze droplets without harboring bacteria.
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“Perhaps for yours.”
Canada is a highly disguised feudal state. It’s a tyranny in “Free Country” drag, and always has been. There are no limits on the power of the government -at all-.
Used to be they were pretty careful about keeping their “Free Country” makeup touched up, but I’m going to say since the 1990s they don’t even try anymore.
“I had a mosquito hat on…”
Which was genius, I must say. Here in Canuckistan I’d have gone to jail for wearing that, and we know this because some guys did get arrested. Violently in a few cases, despite medical deferral papers in their hands.
I went the other way, full Raccoon City respirator. Still got dirty looks and officials arguing with me that it wasn’t a “proper mask” but being me I only did it harder.
Did you know that a mosquito hat probably contains droplets better than the N-95 3M paint respirator? Respirators don’t filter the air going -out-. ~:D
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Ditto on Jimmah Peanut.
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There is some DemocRat lady all over social media today for saying the reason we’ve got the Iran War today is Peanut Jimmy and 47 years of DemocRat bullsh1t. It’s a -sweet- tirade delivered by one of their own.
Oh yeah. They are WEARING this one.
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They use bully logic.
The problem isn’t lying, it’s the person who doesn’t go along with the lies.
The problem isn’t a lack of evidence, it’s the person who says “wait, where’s the evidence.”
The problem isn’t the abuse, it’s the person who says “I am not going to take it anymore.”
That’s when the fight starts.
This is a very human failing– how often do you have to get someone to walk back something to where they first noticed there was a problem, and then ask “Alright, so you say that everything was fine until McGuffin went and ruined it all… if everything was fine, why did he do that?” Sure, sometimes it’s because he’s a jerk, but frequently it’s because “everything was fine” when they got all they wanted, and didn’t have to pay the bill.
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Sharing your comment as its own post over on FB, credited to “foxfier”.
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Thank you kindly. I hope it gets through to folks.
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“And our only chance at peace is to smack those who disturb OUR peace hard enough to make them stop it. Then go away and come back if they do it again.” I support this! I do worry that the temptation to play “nation building” will be too strong and we will end up with another Iraq or Afghanistan. Trump has already stated that he will be picking the next leader of Iran… who know if he means it…
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There are different ways to pick a leader. Sometimes it’s with a yoinking. Sometimes it’s warheads on foreheads veto’s. I prefer the ballot box method overall, but some folks just can not seem to get the message without a 2×4 between the eyes to get them focused.
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Yep – some sort of representative democracy is the least bad choice. I support the “2×4 between the eyes” to send the message “don’t mess with us”. I don’t support we’re going to run the place for the next 50 years. As long as they leave us alone I don’t care who runs Iran. They can continue their 2000 year tradition of killing on another as long as they keep to themselves…
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Yeah. Keep offing the Supreme Leader until they get one that isn’t a mullah who spent 30 years promising death to America.
Send him a note: “Don’t make us come back there.”
Then leave.
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two by four, targeted bomb. Whichever.
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Trump won’t be tempted, I think. Nation building requires decades of occupation and commitment to work, and our political establishment is no longer capable of convincing the voters to commit to an occupation for that long. Their grandfathers managed it, to fight Communism … but once the Soviets got nuclear weapons the long grind of building up allies and waiting for Communism to collapse due to its own flaws was the only strategy that could work. Without that strategic imperative the basic American distaste for getting bogged down in foreign politics makes conquest and occupation a hard sell.
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He means no more Ayatollahs. An American stooge? Maybe. Do I object? Not even a little. PROVIDED THEY LEAVE US THE EFFE ALONE.
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They chanted ‘deaf to ‘murica!” or something and did a bunch of violent idiot things. See what that kind of behavior got, however eventually? Bets on whether “next time” will be much, much closer at hand?
I am quite out of patience for those who encourage my death, thank ye very muchly. Keep your violent idiots in check, and we won’t have to.
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It looks like Trump is relying on neighboring countries to put boots on the ground. And, presumably, to get a government and police force set up.
It will be a real test of his ability to manipulate deal. If the solution holds, it will push him well past the “Jacksonian” label people are applying (Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian, Jacksonian, Wilsonian) and into a category with (perhaps?) the most effective empire-makers of history.
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Can one of the ATH guardians rescue my comment from WordPress hell? It’s a big fat one, and WP Delenda Est.
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Trump and Israel smacked Iran a year ago, it didn’t seem to take, came back and smacked them this year even harder. I think he is doing just what you all suggested he do, hopefully this works. There won’t be peace on this earth for a while, maybe never, but we can make the assholes regret it, and yes they are assholes no matter there ideology. Which always seems to boil down to I get what I want because I am special blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard it all before dressed in colorful metaphors and long winded speeches. Try doing the hard thing and live by words of what you preach then come to us with your bullshit and we’ll decide for ourselves.
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https://www.campusreform.org/article/oklahoma-bill-force-universities-leave-accreditors-required-dei-practices/29489
So the state of Oklahoma is potentially passing a law that might be broader then expected, depending on how one interprets it.
Have to leave accreditors that required DIE in the past five years.
Jacobson is interviewed in this, and agrees with the goal of promoting alternate accreditation, but has a quibble with the means.
Probably the largest possible impact on the University of Oklahoma is the Higher Learning Commission accreditation.
Which is on a ten year cycle, and the university may have renewed it five years ago. I understand that this is the accreditation that allows OU to do federal loans with students.
(Which arguably, via federal DoE, was a means of corrupting universities.)
The question is, did the HLC require DIE?
By the strict literal reading, maybe not.
The committee that might have been relevant was the one for deciding how to satisfy the ‘mission’ criteria. Which was about defining and recording the university’s goal.
Which should not be a real problem, unless those people said something stupid in their private communications, or something.
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Weirdly… I approve of the “if you required this in the last 5 years, you can’t be trusted here.”
It prevents the usual “we named it a new thing” bingo, and means that there is objective long-term damage to use to justify why someone isn’t doing it, especially when it’s a 10 year cycle.
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OT — note paragraph update on OP.
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My first guess would be that it was the meme posts.
Especially the “well, booger! We need to do ANOTHER meme post for the removal of a dictator, and it wasn’t on schedule? Oh, such is the life.”
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Several obvious possibilities.
One, the man is deathly afraid that people will joke about Rubio, who is the new Ayatollah Mojito, being appointed Supreme Leader of Iran by the Assembly of Experts on Truth Social TM.
Two, Iran was logistical support for Russia, and crude oil for the PRC and India. A lot of very bad men have maybe had pretenses of imperial force undermined, and are left with whatever water armies to play for time with. We are literally a freaking week in. Pretty much. And, three days may be when they figured out enough to prioritize you on whatever list. (Instapundit was down once today. I would guess that there is only a thirty percent chance that internet shenanigans are unrelated to whatever hypothetical potentially dying regimes.)
Three, suppose that there are like forty million Iranians, and four hundred million subjects of the PRC. If so, the imperial arrangment between Iran and the great china was maybe a significant chunk of Dr. Xi’s discount imperium. Dr. Xi may be deeply worried about his ponzi scheme or real estate fraud coming undone.
Four, US domestic politics is wild, man, wild. Three days, would not that be around the time that Crockett lost a primary, Chrenshaw lost a primary, and Herrara made it to a run off against Gonzales? (I was not even thinking about Texas. In general, the federal legislature is very interested in shaping operations for this november. Because, it is possible that quite a lot of Democrats may go to jail even if Trump does not want to send them there. The mid east conflcit involves people making payments here, which means possible intelligence windfalls.)
Anyway, you’ve been sick and all, but this has been a wild week, and it would maybe be more surprising not to have ‘to whom it may concern’ info war going on.
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Ayatollah Mojito… Bwahahahaha!!! :D
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There are some indications from the cybersecurity world that the Iranians’ cash is being spread around the dark web to the usual cybercrime suspects to cause western world internet mayhem. DOS attacks are pretty much the cheapest attack from the catalog of what one can buy there.
There are also fingers being pointed towards the middle kingdom cyber units and their leashed ball-gagged NORK cyber folks, with hints they have all been activated under central orders about one decision cycle after it was clear the coalition efforts would extend far past what the IAF did last round.
But as to getting the honor of being on their target lists, it’s probably not anything recent – they likely do as much monitoring and data basing as the Feds we get here, so it’s likely just cumulative.
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I’m rather impressed that I get let through, actually. I used to get a lot of websites saying “You’re coming from an IP address that looks suspicious”, and get handed a CAPTCHA to solve or something. But on your site? I get let through, no matter which IP address I’m coming from (home, office, or cell phone data plan), even though the country I’m in, I’m sure, has many IP addresses being puppeted as part of a DDOS network. (Care to guess why I bought a dumb TV secondhand, instead of a new TV from a local store? If you said not wanting ads on my TV home screen, you’d actually be correct: but not having my TV participate in DDOS attacks, and therefore having my personal IP address be “clean” and known to be NOT part of a DDOS attack, was a secondary benefit).
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Also not having your TV as an always-on bugging device….
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How fondly I remember the Good Old Days, when you had to be crazy to think household appliances WERE spying on you.
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There was an episode of the Max Headroom TV show where police were horrified to find a criminal had an… off switch on her TV.
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Instapundit has a link up to a DataRepublican post on X. Apparently she’s been talking to quite a few people in other countries (Romania in particular was mentioned) to get more info on the shenanigans and money trails of a number of bad actor NGOs.
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That girl is awesome. Go DataRepublican!
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Worth a hundred of us average Joes and Janes.
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A while ago, there was a question of the day on the break-room whiteboard at work, asking who your hero was. I wrote Jennica Pounds in great big red letters. That woman is a genius and a bona fide American hero.
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I will NOT “give peas a(nother) chance.” I prefer not to be ill and regretting things. If YUCK was a fundamental force (like electromagnetism) peas would be the exchange particle of it (like photons).
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Indeed. I would much prefer to give Pizza a chance, especially if it’s a stuffed crust meat lover’s. 🍕
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The only vegetable I hate worse than peas is lima beans. There is something about the texture of peas that always revolted me as a child. The smell doesn’t help either.
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I can take peas. I can even stand lima beans, now that my body is grown up. (I make no claims about my mind!) Avacado, on the other hand … the smell, the color, the taste, the texture … all resemble various products of sickness.
And it’s not even good for you.
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I do not like either, also. Exception is fresh in the pod sweet peas. There is no form of Lima Beans that are palatable.
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Peas presented honestly are okay. Really fresh they can be quite good.
But peas ground up and presented as faux guacamole are an abomination upon the plate and should be converted to plasma, along with the presenter.
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I used to be of that opinion too, when all I had ever had was canned peas. Mushy, tasteless things. Fresh peas are a completely different taste. And frozen peas from the right brand can be nearly as good as fresh. (From other brands, the frozen peas can taste like cardboard. We have found a local brand we like and we stick with it).
So if you’ve only ever had canned peas, then, well… all I am saying is, give peas a chance.
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Small round green vegetables in a blender …..
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Regarding the DOS attack you’re weathering, could it be that just sticking up for the USA as you’ve been doing the last couple of days is enough to infuriate certain bad actors?
Consider it another opportunity to wear the hatred of idiots as a badge of honor.
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The quality of our opposite number is low. So very, very low. I used to have that badge, too ({smaller one, though). It now supports a table that had a leg just about 3/16″ too short.
On the other gritty paw, if this is in some small way connected to the meme posts, well, the only solution is moar meme posts. Cope and seethe, ye ruddy nidiots. The memes shall flow. The Ayatollja Mojito is crispy. And His Orangeness the Trumpian in Chief is still my president and that of all Americans.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the country, the economy continues to improve. Babies are still being born, men and women still getting married, and folks are getting on with the business that is life outside the outrage cyclotron of doomy doomness. We’ve got better weather since the near flood level deluge last week. Folks are out enjoying it.
So are the burbs. Neighborcat brought me a new one just today. You’d think they’d know better than to try and nest in Neighborcat’s favorite tree. Burbs. What ya gonna do?
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Find them and meme them till they bleed…
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Meme them until they cry. Then make memes about them crying.
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Also can be seen as a pretty-much straight up infrastructure attack. ‘Mainstream’ (cough!) media is apparently neutral to skeptical to hostile on the war; and given the amount of ‘build under, build over, build around’ embodied on just this one particular site — it might literally be something very close to generic. Just one more item on a long target list, of it’s-not-antiwar communications.
This hypothesis (or WAG) is at least slightly supported by it being a denial-of-service attack; which, by history and by its very nature, is one of the easiest and least-customized to mount.
“Just hand us your list, we’ll launch the packets.”
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Trying to take down Sarah’s blog is just proof of stupidity. There’s no money to be earned for it, unless some lefty millionaire hired someone to do so. (Not an impossibility since they also fund rent-a-protestor all the time.) Can’t be for hacking cred, because there are plenty of better places to demonstrate that. If they’re trying to silence you, then you are speaking truth. My only fear would be some psycho trying to Charlie Kirk Sarah at some event. Stay alert!
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I suspect that Sarah isn’t the only conservative being attacked right now.
Oh, as for it being “stupid” to attack AccordingToHoyt, why do you believe that Lefties are smart? [Big Crazy Grin]
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I maybe press Y to doubt that foreign info warriors have the cultural understanding to do good internet targeting of Americans without it being accidental.
In theory it should be possible for those people to come up with lists and plans.
In practice, even if we assume competent middle managers and implementation workers, I would expect their senior managers to mess things up.
Dunno. Holiday Inn Express. We shall see.
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Oh, I’m not saying lefties are smart. I just figure some of them are reading this looking for a reaction to the DOS attacks and I wanted to tweak their noses a bit.
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Speaking of bullies….. They’re after homeschoolers again.
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2026/03/06/outrage-over-conn-bill-that-targets-parents-who-pull-kids-from-public-school-2-1625968/
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Not surprised. Kids in seats = cash money, so of course they will make efforts to disincentivize or illegalize alternatives.
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Yep.
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Move from Coneeticult, there are saner places.
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Second that.
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The Reader is expecting this in Virginia any day now. Especially with this being pushed in the legislature as we speak. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-dem-bill-would-force-schools-label-jan-6-capitol-breach-violent-attack
Can’t have anyone not being indoctrinated, can we.
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Wow, they really ARE desperate to ‘protect’ THEIR version of ‘history’, aren’t they!
Can’t have any kids hearing anything approaching the TRUTH, now can we? I knew the new dictatorship in Virginia was turning out unusually harsh, but this is REALLY disgraceful. “Crime is GOOD, words are VIOLENCE, Peace is WAR!” All the good NewSpeak.
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”Breaking: IRGC Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani is confirmed safe in Israel”. Iran had announced his execution this morning. What an absolute sh-t show it has to be among their leadership.
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intelligence windfall…
Some twitter account was posting about him being arrested days (1) ago.
Another account, ‘Azaad Factcheck’ or some such, had announced in response that it was false, and that the first poster was from India.
But, yeah, this basically confirms that we have no idea what intelligence windfalls might come of this.
Yes, the Israelis have some idea how many people they have recruited, but it may be hard to estimate how many records eventually will become available.
Beyond, that, that this is actually true? Wow. I got nothing.
(1) Okay, my brain is cheese, and frankly I can’t tell the difference between this being thursday or tuesday.
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I checked Fox News and they didn’t have anything about him being in Israel.
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Yes, most of the reports have him dead. Could be fog of war or maskrova. Still, what a sh-t show when either Israel controlled your head of military intelligence and special forces or you just shot him incorrectly and now don’t have one.
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And nobody competent will want the job just to be shot.
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And don’t forget the Israelis hacking the entire network of facial recognition surveillance cameras. The Iranians had apparently decided that using facial recognition technology would be the easiest way to spot women who weren’t wearing hijabs. So they reached out to the Chinese, and set up a system similar to the one that the Chinese use for tracking the public in China.
And the Israelis hacked the network, and used it to track the movements of public officials. It’s always nice when the bad guys get bit by their own attempts to exercise control. ^_^
I would imagine that Beijing had a massive panic attack when they found out about it. If Iran’s cameras got hacked, then there’s a possibility that China’s have been hacked, as well. And the Chinese have cameras *everywhere*.
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And I reacted with a party emoji to the news that he’d been executed…I will gladly retract that opinion. Alive and talking to the Israelis is SO much better. Best of health to you, Esmail. :D
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So you are saying he gets the beach lounger next to the bearded guy who totally doesn’t look like J.Epstein, deceased?
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I say we keep taking out rulers of these countries who insist on being evil until we get to where they are having to pick random people from the proverbial phone book to run the country.
Using randos to run things is an intriguing proposal I have heard a time or two. Maybe now is our big chance to try it.
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In places like that, only the nomenklatura will have phones. Better to find a small business operator.
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Yes. Also see ‘white SIM cards’ to give the regime/regime-adjacent cellular and Internet access. (Everybody else uses something like the ‘Iran Android App’ which is like a super VPN.)
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A lot of pacifist or utopian religious movements among American settlers, so maybe it is not surprising that Americans try really hard to avoid having to use all their war talent and skill.
But we are awfully good at the task we want to avoid.
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We are only better at killing each other than we are at killing others. Civil War anyone? Still the bloodiest fighting of any war.
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NYTimes is reporting that Israel has called on residents to evacuate the area near Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility. An Iranian commentator remarked on the gap between Israel warning civilians to keep clear whilst the Islamic republic is launching indiscriminately against its neighbors. They keep saying there’s going to be a big splash and my prediction has been that they were going to blow up a mountain, like Moon is a Harsh Mistress en petite as it were, Fordow would do quite nicely.
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Bear in mind that this is in Florida “where woke goes to die”. Then ask yourself why we let bullies here at home get away with it.
https://www.nysun.com/article/florida-bar-denies-investigating-lindsey-halligan-as-trump-lawyer-comes-under-siege-after-rocky-prosecutions-of-james-comey
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So we can now dis-bar that judge?
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The fact that we’ve been to war isn’t the problem. The problem is that we’re good at it, and that we don’t curb-stomp our opponents is salt in the wound. It shows not only that we’re strong, but that we are stronger than they are. Strong enough to show some level of mercy even when they would rather we use the nuclear option.
They hate us because every move tells them we’re stronger than they are. It is the hallmark of evil that what is strong, or good, must be either owned or destroyed.
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fellow dudebros
I have figured out how to stop rhinovirus from spreading by aerosols.
Step one is a /submerged/ tunnel complex.
If all of your travel outside of your bunker is by scuba, traveling by underwater tunnel, then you can spread viral particles in water, but you cannot as easily aerosolize them by breathing.
#prepping
#wormholeXtreem
#WorkingClassProblemsWorkingClassSolutions
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Guys? Either Bob is off his meds, or the world has gone tiltawhirl again.
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A giant P-trap as a working-class airlock. Not bad! Chlorinate the crap out of that water and you’ll probably kill ‘most all the bugs that haven’t learned to pass through a critter’s stomach acid. A whole buncha UV-C LEDs might take care of the surviving tummybugs.
Scuba might work, if you can keep the regulator in your mouth (and the facemask over your eyes and nose) the whole time you’re outside the bunker. A full Diver Dan diving suit might be more comfortable.
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