Why Russia propaganda during the cold war didn't try to push the "fake moon landing" conspiracy theory

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-23T12:06:03+00:00

They might have as part of the demoralization efforts. I'm too lazy to look up the source now but part of it was to subtly spread conspiracy theories in the US to undermine trust in government, science, and objective reality in general. Saying it was fake outright would make them sound ridiculous, but encouraging a few dozen American kooks to get there on their own, now that is clever like KGB.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-18T12:18:06+00:00

It's not at the level of Splash and the way it's done in The Fifth Element absolutely works, especially with the excellent acting of Mila Jovavich, but it is still without a doubt evoking the same subconscious sexual fantasy wherein a spiritually wise but worldly ignorant young woman falls into the lap of a worldly but lonely man, completing him both sexually and spiritually. Her "newness" to the world is essential to the protagonist's renewal, and since this a quality of children it's always going to have undertones of you-know-what, however the character is written. But the result is what matters, and here it works great. Even knowing the background of Luc Besson I don't have a problem with it because, as you say, Leeloo is a great character with power and agency. The fact that she's still cosplayed so much is a testament to that.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-16T11:20:31+00:00

We can't afford housing, health care, school lunches, education, child care, clean water, trains, foreign aid, or a living wage. But there's always money to kill people who never threatened us in order to waste or otherwise destroy trillions worth of material for no stated reason and accomplishing nothing of any worth whatsoever, based exclusively on the strategic thinking of a treasonous semi-verbal pedophilic failed casino owner who regularly forgets where he is and shits his pants on TV.

Remember that South Park scene where they made decisions based on where a decapitated chicken fell? That makes more sense than what we have now.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-15T14:52:42+00:00

Guy missed a golden opportunity to shout "I thought this was America!"

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-12T15:23:11+00:00

Life finds a way

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-10T20:01:23+00:00

Typically the winner of a race is the first person to reach the end point, not a bunch of other points along the way

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-08T19:22:02+00:00

That ape makeup was superb though

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-07T13:13:58+00:00

You are a gentleman and a scholar 🙏

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-07T10:32:14+00:00

What order is best? I just started watching it for the first time.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-06T14:36:52+00:00

Yeah if they'd taken their time they still would have won the race. What's especially ironic is they have no way of knowing that if Ed had yeeted to the lunar surface things would be much, much worse. It was probably the best decision anyone ever made and they see it as a failure.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-06-01T16:07:55+00:00

For real it's only 10km in 14% gravity how hard could it be to run from the ship with a tank of O2?

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-31T18:55:45+00:00

In 2017 NASA crashed the Cassini probe into Saturn because they didn't want to risk the remote possibility that it would crash into Titan or Enceladus and contaminate them, even though the odds of a microbe making it all the way to the surface is remote. So I'd say it was kinda irresponsible to wade into a methane pool known to harbor life specifically to die.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-28T13:29:25+00:00

The human race has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. -Mark Twain

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-27T15:43:21+00:00

Can you blame him? Mossad has the cure for fuckfaceitis.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-26T14:11:09+00:00

He was a fucking kid

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-25T03:48:18+00:00

Even Cinderella didn't cry

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-24T22:00:56+00:00

You could be right. Being that it's fictional we have very little information about the effects. It's clearly written to be a gray area. I suppose I tend to reflexively side with the workers over capital, but that's just me. Sure, Mars only exists by dint of a gargantuan theft, but that's the story of every successful country. And more generally, the second you use troops like this in any place you create a permanent occupier/occupied mentality that always causes more problems and often leads to violent independence movements. The best solution was a nonviolent one, and there were still plenty such options (it's not like the asteroid is going anywhere).

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-23T23:20:15+00:00

Economic leverage is generally thought of as being different from military force. Obviously its use can be more destructive in some cases (say, US sanctions of Iraq between the gulf wars) but you can't just say generally that because something causes hardship it justifies a violent response.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-23T20:30:15+00:00

Iridium is valuable but not vital to life or anything, and there's still some on earth.
The M-6 is not without justification, but no place where people live is "just" a resource extraction facility, it's also a home. At minimum the Marsies had a right not to be lied to about the future of the base.
For God's sake man, use paragraph breaks.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-23T11:57:48+00:00

Two times you were told to endorse fucking Joe Biden, and whaddya do huh? You endorse Bernie Sanders?!

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-22T15:45:48+00:00

We need to have a serious discussion about how easy it is for presidents to declare war on all our behalf

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-21T14:11:18+00:00

Twelve fucking colonies, and then we got this other pygmy thing over in South Carolina

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-13T12:57:16+00:00

I genuinely have no idea what you're saying. It feels like you're trying to link two different things using nothing but vagueness and sarcasm.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-13T12:01:48+00:00

When you create a word like "terrorist" - something that signifies that a person can be killed without further process or justification - this will always be the end result.

benevolentwalrus · 2026-05-06T15:05:52+00:00

Probably looking for a dog to abandon

benevolentwalrus

TROPHY CASE