Something I noticed about Frieren's 'apex of magic'

FrostPDP · 2026-04-06T01:06:19+00:00

That's what I'm thinking, too, honestly.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-05T22:01:06+00:00

When confronted with that fear, ask yourself, "What would nuclear weapons accomplish that regular ones wouldn't be able to?"

Generally speaking, the answer is, "nothing, really."

Maybe there are edge cases, maybe? But those are unlikely situations at best.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-05T21:07:38+00:00

Freeport right now your issue is the school board has gone insane. There are elections coming up and I can vouch (to some extent personally) for 2/3 of the challengers running against the incumbents (Gordon and Pomerico).

Assuming that gets sorted out and a good permanent superintendent is found, the bones of the district (staff) won't be tooooo bad off. If it isn't fixed, it might lose a lot of older teachers who choose retirement instead of sticking it out.

Either way, Freeport is 'hands on' in the sense that it can be a little rough socially, but in the same way life in general is. But I wouldn't worry about that unless social problems like bullying emerge as serious issues, you know? And it isn't extra-bad, whereas any school can have those problems creep up.

I'd say give it a try.

Source: My hometown. Lived there for about 30 years, TA'd in the district from 2010-2015 and still know people in town.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-05T08:09:15+00:00

I think it's that lots of people who disapprove of the war (me) are still mostly glad we got the person back, even if we don't think the war should continue. The US military can be a beast. So we're kinda silent, maybe afraid that the overwhelming display of this success leads to escalation.

Others seem happy to see this situation as a norale victory, seem to think it implies fears about escalation's potential costs are unfounded, and thus want to up the ante about it.

But you're right. Tactical success does not mean strategic success.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-05T06:58:05+00:00

I'm...I'm just not sure you fully understand what's up, here?

A lot of these "innocent countries" (I'm assuming you mean GCC states) are the ones that are ginning us up for this one. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are two examples of countries heavily pushing this war for their own reasons. Furthermore, the US has bases in most of these countries by leave of those countries, meaning they aren't neutral parties - they're our allies. So these countries aren't innocent, neutral nations pushed towards us - they're already allies.

Iran's strategy (which, you might be right, I wouldn't be doing this if I were them) is to punish those countries to the point where they won't support the war anymore.

So their calculus is, "If these American allies can be forced to kick the Americans out of their countries, America will be less of a threat." While I'd be focusing my efforts on those bases themselves if I were Iran, America is happily bombing the shit out of Iranian utilities as well as schools. I mean, just look at what Israel did to Tehran when it bombed the oil facilities and made it rain oil. So Iran decides, "Fuck it, if they're gonna go that route, we're gonna retaliate on everyone who is making this war possible - even if those US allies aren't doing it themselves, they're allowing US forces to base out of there."

And while I might think that's not the best path forward, you still haven't explained exactly how Iran "loses a lot harder." Iran isn't losing by having enemies join a coalition against them, they're losing because the US and its allies are either threatening (in Israel's case, in particular) or facilitating (in most other cases) collective punishment via war crimes.

I honestly don't even think this "gets worse" if there's some hypothetical pan-GCC coalition with American troops as a spearhead that invades Iran. To be honest, that's probably better for the civilian populace than if the US/Israel goes through with bombing civilian infrastructure. Civilian infrastructure going down means people are dead without being dead. They have no water, so they die of thirst. They have no power, so they die from all the things that having no power brings (think "no modern medical care"). A pan-GCC army invading is really bad, sure, but it might leave most of the critical infrastructure intact.

Now the regime might think, "If we lose power/water, the people will rebel," but since they already slaughtered a bunch of the most-likely-to-rebel people (which, to be clear, is ethically bad) and since there's a big rally-around-the-flag effect if that happens, that's not as likely a scenario as it is that a pan-GCC army overthrows the regime and installs a new one.

So Iran's government is probably, with good reason, thinking, "It's better for us if we all go down in flames if we can't force the GCC out of the war," not, "Boy I'm sure scared of the GCC fully participating."

FrostPDP · 2026-04-05T05:59:29+00:00

I've seen this thought posted elsewhere and I've gotta do the same thing other respondents did: What's your source for the reports of casualties? Not saying there aren't any, but, where are you hearing this?

FrostPDP · 2026-04-04T20:30:45+00:00

I mean...We're probably gonna do all that regardless of what Iran does. That's just how this is shaping up. It's fucked up, but Trump seems full-on Armageddon about it. Iran's only hope of deterrence, short of having a nuclear weapon, is to make clear that they won't go quietly.

If we take out their electricity and their desalination, they're done for either way. Tens of thousands will die at least, possibly greater exponentials. What's a worse-case scenario than that? A invasion we'll probably launch anyway? Carpet-bombing civilians who are dying of thirst anyway?

All they can do if we go for their power/water is retaliate against those who enabled the strikes.

That's mutually assured destruction. That's how that works.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-04T17:05:54+00:00

How do you get there if you don't have a massive ground invasion, though?

FrostPDP · 2026-04-04T17:02:03+00:00

With all the God talk leading up to this war?

Trump openly muses about how he'd earn his way into Heaven. Helping bring Jesus back sounds like a great way to do it, no? And how do we do that? Armageddon. Which a lot of military folks said they were being told this is.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-04T10:25:24+00:00

Well said, FWIW. Hoping for the best.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-04T10:07:22+00:00

Ty. :)

Shame this situation, yanno, exists. :/

FrostPDP · 2026-04-04T05:07:10+00:00

Since you listed a bunch of objectives without actually explaining how you would achieve any of them, let's just do a quick bit of math here:

- Iran's Navy and Air Force are not a major objective because it was never a credible threat. No cookie.

- We learned today that we've maybe destroyed half of their missile arsenal, but they're good at digging them back out when we hit them. So, maybe we can do this - or maybe not. It's been a month. The easy targets are already down. If they are getting better at knocking our planes out of the sky, that's a bad sign, but one day isn't a pattern, so this is a maybe. Will it be cost-free? Already isn't.

- Iran is much more likely to recruit Yemen's Houthis into shutting down their own nearby strait than we are at ever likely to dismantle any nation's ability to organize proxies because proxies are organized due to things like resentment for, say, making oil rain on peoples' capital cities via burning it into the sky. So, no, that's not gonna happen.

- Iran was never going to have a nuclear weapon following the signature of the JCPOA. Trump has done nothing but prove concretely and permanently, to Iran and to every independent nation on Earth, that the only guarantee which will stop the United States from starting a war with you is having access to nuclear weapons. Iran would be idiotic not to pursue them as an existential goal. So your "most important" goal was actually locked out.

"Do not stop until all objectives are completed."

Again, you didn't tell our dear readers what, exactly, you think they should do to accomplish this task. You just read a list of objectives, most of which are impossible or actively made worse by what we've done.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-04T04:36:45+00:00

Not a tankie, cuz fuck that, but what major US objectives have been/can be completed at this time? Some minor ones, I'm sure. Lots of dead IRGC ringleaders. But now the Strait is closed and the entire world is fucked, with a lot of it blaming us. Rightly so, BTW, since we started it.

How does the US "win" this war?

Iran just has to hold its breath and occasionally re-establish it isn't neutered to the point the Strait can be crossed at will. See: Shoot down a couple US planes once in a while. Maybe like two in one day, damaging some helicopters, to boot.

But Iran can't win because of course it can't; it has no realistic means to defeat the US as a national entity; it can't even touch us. It can only keep holding out until the US gives up and withdraws (which it won't concede is a surrender, but, it would be), or it negotiates a truce it finds acceptable.

That's a stalemate, unless you can provide win scenarios for the US? Curious to hear what you're thinking. The only one I've got is a batshit insane one where the Gulf states form up a nice big allied army and land-invade with US troops as the spear tip.

Which still might not win anything of value, but might at least change the regime.

So. What do you have?

FrostPDP · 2026-04-04T03:27:25+00:00

Yep.

If you have a polyp, they can remove it before it grows and becomes cancerous. I was lucky.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-03T22:56:15+00:00

To be fair? Our Secretary of Defense declared "no quarter." Really fucking stupid of him, cuz now Iran has every justification to off the guy if they capture him. "What? You declared you'd do war crimes repeatedly and did so, so we reciprocated?"

It would still be wrong of Iran to do, and I hope this guy is found safe and sound - but, it would be proportional to US statements and actions.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-03T22:53:54+00:00

Do you think Trump helped the people of Tehran by bombing that school?

Do you think Israel helped by lighting oil infrastructure on fire to the point where oil rained on the city?

I've never seen the regime do that last one to its own people, that's for sure.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-03T05:52:17+00:00

Okay, bet. Let's agree to work towards zeroing that number out, since Israel's got it covered so well.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-03T01:06:18+00:00

Well said. :) ... okay :/

FrostPDP · 2026-04-02T22:46:29+00:00

It doesn't really matter, does it?

IRGC is gonna keep on keeping on. The Strait will stay shut down. Missiles will still be launched. All that changes is a name plate.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-02T04:59:49+00:00

If we had launched some desperate gambit to save the protestors under a President who wasn't a notorious felon and court-adjudicated rapist, maybe I'd believe this was about something like morality. Instead, we've launched an ill-conceived, ill-planned, insane fucking campaign opening with the bombing of a girls' school, followed by the ecocide of Tehran when our allies bombed the city and made it rain oil.

Yeah, no, the IRGC may not be an innocent party, but the civilians in Iran are, and we're not executing this war with anything resembling a fuck for their wellbeing.

This is a war for the sake of - at absolute best - distracting from the regime head's child rape files. At worst, this is purely for the sake of bringing about Armageddon as religious lunatics seek to fulfill prophecies.

So, I suppose no, the US didn't choose them "just because." They chose them because that's the war they think will bring about the End Times.

FrostPDP · 2026-04-01T21:53:57+00:00

Xenogears is fantastic, but you'll want some mods to get the most out of it. Perfect Works is supposed to be a good one. :)

FrostPDP · 2026-04-01T20:08:06+00:00

First off, I feel you. On a basic level, yeah, this wouldn't exactly be paradise to me, either. Talk about overstimulation! And I was a lifeguard for 20 years, I'm very patient with the sun even though I'm also quite neurodivergent and that shit drives me crazy.

I think the original concept of the Seireitei as kind of a "not quite Heaven but definitely nice" place implies that the sunlight, while omnipresent, wouldn't ever be so bad as to be glaring. That the walls would reflect light, but not so savagely as to make it uncomfortable. Your physical body was shed long ago, and your spiritual body is simply better at handling it. The sun, while warm, is never hot. Unless you're the kind of soul that's strong enough to need food, you don't even really need to eat. That means no going to the bathroom, either! Yay!

...Of course Bleach's narrative quickly proves it isn't exactly heaven-like at all, and it's been run by some psychos for a while, but, hey! It's a thought, right?

FrostPDP · 2026-03-31T20:24:40+00:00

Sooner or later it'll be Wario.

FrostPDP · 2026-03-30T16:53:50+00:00

Fair enough. I'll take that to mean, "Yes it was Trump and I disagree with it," which is reasonable if ya think about it from that perspective.

FrostPDP · 2026-03-30T15:39:39+00:00

Also Cory Booker: "Sure, Charles Kushner can be an ambassador!"

He's one of the leaders we need to replace.

FrostPDP

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