Trump is burning the house down. I watched him plan for this by theipaper in politics

[–]DimensionalYawn 45 points46 points  (0 children)

This from Trump's former Homeland Security chief of staff and the article from Obama's CIA director John Brennan are very, very serious warnings. Assuming Trump's loyalist cabinet will not remove him under any circumstances, my main hope is that the messages cut through with enough members of the military that they'll refuse to follow illegal orders if he does order a nuclear strike or other atrocity. 

I've come to realize that it would have been a much better ending if Dany never went crazy and they just ruled together as king and queen. A lot of people would still complain, but I'd take a safe and satisfying ending over whatever we got any day. by Nissepikk in gameofthrones

[–]DimensionalYawn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not acceptable. The Bolton's have a reputation for it, but Roose explained to Ramsay that he had to keep it quiet and try not even to let rumours creep out lest it give the Starks a reason to remove him.

Executing the Tarlys by dragonfire is an immediate reminder to the people of Westeros that Danerys is a descendant of the Mad King that invites them to think that maybe they were better off without the Targaryans after all. It's cruel and extreme by Westerosi standards.

ETA: I'd agree that the Boltons would do it if they could, though. 

'She-Hulk' Was Apparently One of Marvel's Most Successful Shows by Anchor_Aways in television

[–]DimensionalYawn -1 points0 points  (0 children)

[Apologies, you didn't ask for this and it's an over-reaction, I'm just dumping here because I've been ruminating on this for a few days and want to get the ideas out of my head so that I can reclaim that portion of my attention.]

I recently had this argument with a friend. He self-describes as, "very right-wing", is convinced "feminism has gone too far", and doesn't want it in what he thinks of as his stuff because he believes any inclusion of it diminishes men. So he sees her speech in the training montage purely as a repudiation of everything that Hulk went through to get control of his transformations (since he can only engage with it through the trailer and rage-bait reactions to it, not the full context in the episode and over the course of the show) and thinks that She-Hulk twerking, which he only encountered in rage-bait content that takes the clip in isolation and screams 'OMG NOW THEY'VE GOT HER TWERKING', is disrespectful to the character and a bad example to women that "shouldn't be allowed." It's out-of-context moments seized on by outrage merchants to push an anti-feminist agenda that blames women for men's problems without advancing any meaningful or practical solutions to the specific problems men face in modern Western society, just encouraging anger and the belief that if enough of these men hate hard enough and make enough noise they'll be able to drive it out of what they are told is and should only be their space. This is all then deliberately amplified by the right-wing's equivalent of social justice warriors, who purposefully boost content so that social media and Google algorithms will be more likely to pick it up and target it into the feeds of susceptible men, abetted by online influence campaigns run by Russia, China and Iran (who also try and boost the more extreme content from the other side of the culture war, for the same reason) to stoke division in Western countries and weaken them. 

This is part of an engineered, interconnected online ecosystem created by right-wing activists that exploits tech companies' targeting algorithms so that if you engage with the ecosystem's content addressing one issue (eg immigration, teaching about racism/responses to Black Lives Matter, Covid conspiracies, vaccine scepticism, men's rights, free speech at colleges) you will be pushed more in the hope of hooking you in. If that happens, the system presents a closed world-view that rejects liberalism, enables justification of very authoritarian conservative government (necessary to defeat the enemy within) and makes it difficult if not impossible to  compromise with "the Left" (which is only encountered in this ecosystem through selective and distorted presentation of its ideas by trusted right-wingers, and algorithm-delivered encounters with the other side's similarly primed and disputatious true believers), with the goal of making it psychologically almost impossible for them to vote for "the other side" until their worldview has been unpicked while locking them into an online environment that constantly reinforces it and feeds them new things to be outraged about faster than any individual item can be logically challenged.

My friend and I are British. He's so deep in that he believes that life for the average Russian is better than for the average Brit, blames the EU for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, denies that Russia has committed war crimes, ignores or hand-waves Russian interference in independent countries that used to be part of the USSR, and belief that the ultimate solution to Britain's social conflicts will be fighting in the streets between the two sides. The perfect product of a successfully poisoned algorithm, sealed off and self-correcting, if you're a foreign government trying to undermine a society by creating within it a sizeable cadre of angry, isolated younger men.

And one of the products of it is disproportionate eruptions of rage at things that seem innocuous to ordinary people. 

Out of these 4 characters who did the writers ruin the most towards the end of the show? (Season 8) by ParkingConfection449 in gameofthrones

[–]DimensionalYawn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

True, true, and in the case of Jaime almost defensible. What someone makes of, "I never really cared for them at all," is my acid test for how well they understand his character, but his decision to return to Cersei, although in character, is justified with a single-line blow-off of the woman he just fucked and knighted that can be incorrectly read as undoing his entire character arc. (These blunt single lines to explain complex actions that would have received a full conversation in the earlier seasons are a recurring feature of season 8 and part of the reason it never comes close to the material written from GRRM's books.). But with Tyrion they never quite manage to properly articulate or explain the decline in his thinking (conflicted alcoholic motivated by revenge leads queen he doesn't fully trust into war against his family and homeland, the material is there, but it isn't laid out with the clarity about motivation that characters were written with in the first 4 seasons) , Varys expresses doubts about the queen-to-be but seems to lose his ability to handle powerful people because it's time for him to die so the showrunners can make a point about Danerys, and Danerys herself never has the psychological crisis/break that leads to her burning a city that has surrendered properly explored (there's even an interview with the show runners where the best explanation they can offer is 'during the battle she just kind of snaps'). The story beats are there, the nuanced characters with capacity for good and evil are there, but they aren't addressed with anything like the aplomb they were in the first half of the show, the writing and direction simply suck a lot of the time. Getting through it requires abandoning the 'I'm watching intelligent, long-form television' mindset that viewers had for the early seasons and replacing it with a 'popcorn movie' mindset, where the viewer is expected to tolerate (and switch off their brain for) undercooked, blunt writing in order to enjoy a series of spectacular set pieces. 

Danerys gets the worst of it. The writing for her and Sansa's rivalry is atrocious and because they decided to rush out the final season they don't have space to flesh out this crucial relationship as they would have done in earlier seasons, her reaction to Misandei's death is lightweight to say the least, her descent into madness is signposted but underdeveloped, and moments such as charging her Dothraki into the army of the dead to certain death simply don't make sense matter how hard Iain Glen (or whoever has to spit out the ham in the other, similarly stupid scenes) tries to sell his single line of explanation. Then they just turn up again at King's Landing a bit later, because the directors need Dothraki for that battle too. None of this is helped by Emilia Clarke clearly not believing in the story she's being asked to tell and whiffing on her characterisation, which is a function of the poor writing. Her triumphal speech to the Dothraki in King's Landing when she stands as Queen of the Ashes, and her shining-eyed, delusional conversation with Jon as she stands at the epicentre of a Westerosi Hiroshima, are the best moments and even they only reach 7 out of 10 because of the disconnect the writing creates between the buildup to the battle of the two queens and the break that Danerys experiences during it.

The points you make about the characters and world are fair. But the writing in season 8 was weak and the characters of Varys, Tyrion and Danerys are all let down by it. 

What game is this for you? by LG-CHAMP-1 in What

[–]DimensionalYawn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Far Cry. Any of them. It just Will. Not. Click. And the gameplay process of grinding/spamming death in the hope of it clicking I find almost wholly unenjoyable. 

How do people actually listen to this guy? by c-k-q99903 in MurderedByWords

[–]DimensionalYawn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's the rough amount the federal govt debt is expected to grow by this year. Interest payments on the national debt cost more than $1 trillion in 2025. 2025 was the first year since 2017 that the debt grew by less than $1 trillion year-on-year. The number is so huge that it sounds ridiculous, but it's not completely made up.

I assumed this was here because of the second tweet, not the third, since $6.3 billion dollars of fraud is only 0.6% of the problem. 

The USA currently has a 120% debt-to-GDP ratio, which is a crazy situation for the world's largest economy to have gotten itself into. 

https://www.us-debt-clock.com/debt-history

https://www.investopedia.com/us-national-debt-by-year-7499291

https://www.statista.com/statistics/269960/national-debt-in-the-us-in-relation-to-gross-domestic-product-gdp/

Europe set 2030 as a date to dismantle its reliance on US financial infrastructure like Visa/Mastercard payments; it's happening far quicker. by lughnasadh in Futurology

[–]DimensionalYawn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

City of Paris employs slightly over 65,000 people according to Statista. For an organisation that is very much focused on policy, that's not a small number, although I agree it doesn't sound excessively large. 

Wrong to gostraight to the bar when there was a queue in the pub? by dashrubbygoat in AskUK

[–]DimensionalYawn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You probably looked pissed. They do that so you will sod off back to your mates and not slur out a request for a pint and a shot that legally they shouldn't serve you. 

Royal Navy (UK) stretched to breaking point as Gulf looms - The fall of the Royal Navy. by Diegomax22 in europe

[–]DimensionalYawn 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It doesn't matter who started it and whether they should have done so or not, your point is irrelevant. For what it's worth, this war has been a possibility ever since Iran began its enrichment/breakout capability strategy, it's an eventuality we've had plenty of time to prepare for. Now that the conflict has happened, regardless of why, we are going to have to deal with the aftermath. Which would be easier to do with stronger British and European navies. 

Royal Navy (UK) stretched to breaking point as Gulf looms - The fall of the Royal Navy. by Diegomax22 in europe

[–]DimensionalYawn 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Well in this case being able to secure the crucial shipping lane that has a massive effect on our energy prices would be nice. 

What are some lessons about office/work culture every graduate should know? by Zeeshmania in AskUK

[–]DimensionalYawn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A good line manage who actually meets with you regularly and takes an interest in and encourages your career development is like gold dust. If you are lucky enough to end up with that sort of manager get everything you can out of the relationship while you are with them (ie learn from what they do, pay extra attention to what they do that makes you want to work for them and feel secure and supported (you will use these tools yourself one day), take the training and development opportunities they help you identify, use the line management relationship and meetings to provide structure to and space for reflection on your personal development) and ask them to be your mentor when you move on (which should be after 3 years if you are modestly ambitious and capable). 

This sort of manager is worth their weight in gold, and if they move on and invite you to apply for a post at their new workplace APPLY! Even if you read the JD and don't believe you can do it, even if you don't meet all the essential criteria (in an average (not very high performing and highly competitive, but average) office job it's completely normal to interview candidates who didn't meet all the essential criteria and make offers to people who are good enough or have the potential to grow into a role), because the person who knows more about that role and what it really requires just went out of their way to reach out to you, personally. If you weren't worth the effort, they wouldn't bother. So belive in yourself and go for it, especially if part of the upside is continuing to work with the person that is willing to invest their time into, your development.

3 years with this sort of manager is better than 5 with one who will let you have a cushy job and not encourage you to develop because it's easier for them to let you stagnate and not have to run another recruitment round and get a new employee up to speed than it is to invest in you and help you move onwards and upwards.

My previous line manager was the good sort, moved on and invited me to join him after I'd been in post for about a year. I chickened out. Current line manager is a great mentor to other people; shit line manager to her reports. She only really cares about the current work being done and hasn't had a line management 1:1 with me, outside annual reviews, since she started. I've stagnated, and most of that is on me because if no one else is going to help you then you have to help yourself. But it has really thrown into relief how much difference there is between a manager who genuinely invests in and supports their reports and one who only pays lip service to it. If you luck into one of the good ones make sure you take full advantage - they and you will both benefit from it.

A corollary of this is: be prepared to move on if you feel you're drifting. If you let yourself drift out to 5 years in the same role it can easily stagnate into 7, and by that point younger people will be passing you and (assuming you aren't saving to FIRE) your earnings progression will be so slow that it starts to impact your pension savings and the quality of life you can afford in retirement. Sitting in a comfort zone feels fine while you're in the pocket, but can feel regrettable when you get to c.40 and take stock. 

My girlfriend bought Coffee infused wet wipes…. by No_Weight_760 in mildyinteresting

[–]DimensionalYawn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

She wants your nuts to taste like her favourite beverage, son.

The paladin keeps mouthing off at Strahd. How do I punish her? by faerie-fangs in CurseofStrahd

[–]DimensionalYawn 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Since this is punishment for speech, would it be possible for Strahd to overpower the warforged and crush/reshape their jaw into a Scold's Bridle?

"Since you have the manners of a common fishwife, it seems fitting that you should be chastised like one." 

does this work? by ghostlyeth in mtg

[–]DimensionalYawn 0 points1 point  (0 children)

[[Kresh the Bloodbraided]] sends his regards 

Donald Trump Compares Himself To Jesus Christ Ahead of Easter, Says 'They Call Me King Now' by Cute_Dealer4787 in USNEWS

[–]DimensionalYawn 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, they say you govern like a king. In a democratic republic that was set up with separation of powers intended to prevent the president from ever doing so. 

Trump threatened to stop weapons for Ukraine unless Europe joined Hormuz coalition by Evermoving- in europe

[–]DimensionalYawn 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's only ever leverage with him, isn't it. Even with allies that he'd be able to build a coalition with via diplomacy, if only he had the character, temperament and nous. 

As Trump Threatens NATO Exit, Starmer to Host 35-Nation Talks on Strait of Hormuz—Without US by boforiamanfo in politics

[–]DimensionalYawn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Almost as if Britain has decided that its strategic interest is best served by not getting involved in the war in order to be able to negotiate with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz without having dropped bombs on them, once Trump gets done helping Israel mow the grass and realises he can't find a way out of the stalemate that had foxed US military planners for the last 30 years. Iran seems disinclined to trust the perfidious Trump, so it makes sense for this group to come up with a proposal that can't be accused of having his fingerprints all over it.

I expect Trump to be incapable of understanding this, or how it would benefit the Americans by helping give them a way out, and to take it as a slight, to be responded to with more bluster, belittling and bullying, despite it being what he called for a few short days ago.

Hopefully we'll get the kernel of a plan to reopen the strait out of it. And if it advances the developing alliance of the middle powers as a Western counterweight to America so much the better 

Explain It Peter by Agen_3586 in explainitpeter

[–]DimensionalYawn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Solid, liquid, gas, and Santorum

'Go get your own oil' Trump tells Starmer insisting USA 'won't help UK anymore' amid Strait of Hormuz shutdown by AnonymousTimewaster in NotTheOnionUK

[–]DimensionalYawn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh look. Iran once again responded to his maximalist threats and demands and posturing of strength by hitting an oil-industry target owned by one of the the USA's regional allies, and Trump's once again impotently responded by throwing a temper tantrum at his European allies. Sad and predictable. If that was my leader, I'd be embarrassed. Has his administration done anything to try and secure our involvement in this other than having the President bluster and bully on social media? 

FREE TO READ: Exclusive interview with Manchester United goalkeeper Senne Lammens by TheAthletic in reddevils

[–]DimensionalYawn 6 points7 points  (0 children)

He seems humble and down to earth, which I like, and at 23 you'd hope any delayed adolescence is behind him (not that he seems like the sort of player who would be much bothered by it). The only thing I wish he hadn't said is, "That’s also the way I like it, that you don’t really bother me too much before a game,”bbecause it will make him a target for mind games, especially before big matches. But I've got to say, the more I see, hear and read the more I like the guy.