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atomheartbevo

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by atomheartbevo

  1. That was harsh, but when I heard they were trying to do a full-on near-identical remake with CGI dwarves, I assumed the dwarves and Snow White would look like ass.
  2. Yep, of course I stopped whoring myself out in the 90s while you became an attorney.
  3. It's an accountant's/auditor's wet dream is what it is. Educated guesses for how many vehicles the Russians are producing per quarter mapped against what they have in storage, what they have deployed, and what they are losing. Lots of references to satellite photos, and lots of references to visually confirmed losses. He's mapping the various types of vehicles being lost by Russia, how they are being used, etc. It's dry as hell to listen to, but can be listened to as an audio podcast. Stuff like how you can build new BTR-82s or convert/upgrade BTR-80s to BTR-82s (you can't tell the difference between the two), and what the pool of BTR-80s that can be converted, what's seen on the battlefield, what's seen in repair yards, storage yards, etc. And the Russians are horrible about storing vehicles out in the open in shitty weather for decades.
  4. Somebody asked me to put the speed in which this all happened within context. The whole "it happened slowly until it didn't" thing. We had the 13 years of civil war, and then in 10 days they went from moving towards Aleppo to occupying Damascus. That is actually pretty wild. So I told this person it was like when I was in my early 20s and I was going to be late with my rent, I found myself having to bang the 50-something landlord while wearing a wig of dark hair and letting her call me by her dead husband's name, all the while her dipshit 25 year-old son was playing on his Playstation in the next room. He had the sound cranked up probably because he was trying to drown out the sound of his mom banging a guy younger than him, and with her loudly calling me by his dead dad's name, it was a bit hard for me to concentrate and satisfy her/finish. It felt like I had been banging her for years, and she straight up asked if I was planning on finishing, and then before I could say anything, she became the first woman to shove a finger up my ass. All of the sudden I was finishing inside her within seconds and I felt like.... After that brilliant analogy, my mom still didn't understand how everything was going slowly until it wasn't.
  5. Yeah, he's an Australian, and I think he actually works in the Australian defense industry - a bean counter who loves statistics (probably why he was running a gaming channel as well).
  6. Arthur Dent or Arthur Weasley? Either way, sign me up.
  7. Yeah, ISIS was never able to take a major country over like this - they could not form a coalition. The fact that HTS were able to bring a lot of groups together in Syria, some of which hated each other, is problematic - it puts them in the same league as the Taliban in terms of being able to govern. Taliban governs out of fear - HTS seems to be doing it out of mutual goals/cooperation, which is arguably harder than what the Taliban did. It's interesting that the HTS head had led a group that broke from being allied with Al Qaeda because he had a different "strategic" direction he wanted to go versus Al Qaeda, but Al Qaeda later partnered with him under HTS.
  8. The guy who is the public face of HTS headed up the Nursah Front or whatever for a while before HTS, and they were allied with Al Qaeda for years (they split, but then he has been working with them since as the HTS head), so yeah, he was affiliated with Al Qaeda - not good, Bob, not good. On paper the Syrians should have defeated them (they should have outnumbered them well over 10:1), but there were a shitload of Syrian defections either to what became HTS or to their own militia groups or they just quit and went home, and Assad apparently couldn't deploy certain troops to certain areas because of loyalty issues. Hell, Syria has several thousand armored vehicles and an Air Force, but still couldn't defend their cities when the time came. Okay, now look at Iraq - on paper they have close to 180,000 active duty troops, which means *probably* around 30,000 actual combat troops/infantry, give or take a few thousand. Iraq is a big country and those troops are spread out, and plenty are going to be on the Iranian border trying to stop weapons/personnel going through there to Syria and elsewhere and plenty are going to be on the Syrian border for the same reasons (but then a bunch of Syrian troops defected to Iraq in the last week or two). They (HTS) are very good at exploiting divisions between various religious groups and/or bringing together disparate groups and recruiting local groups, and they are very good at mobile warfare. HST spent a few years really training and transforming how they fight, and I doubt the Iraqis are on their level, or at the least aren't nearly as motivated and mobile. These things happen slowly until they don't. If they move on Western Iraq unopposed outside of Iraq, and take it quickly, there are going to be Iraqis and others from outside of Iraq who are drawn to it, who are going to support them. Once they get setup in Iraq, they will pull in plenty of local Iraqi groups who have a beef with the Iraqi government, Iraqi Shiites, etc. What happens if they take Baghdad? All of the sudden, they arguably have their caliphate, that just so happens to be sitting on the border of Saudi Arabia/Kuwait, and stretches from Lebanon/Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. That's scary for the Middle East and for the West. The only good news is if they want to rule/occupy the areas they've taken, they have to tie at least some of their troops down to fixed locations.
  9. Depends on if they grow fat dining at the trough. Now that they are tied down to geography they are arguably easier to control in our eyes. I think Western Iraq is the first outside play, and probably happens next year. If they get no pushback from the US and the West, then things get scary.
  10. Fuck it, if Disney wants to do more live-action remakes, give us Treasure Planet, and the two Atlantis movies.
  11. Maybe a smart move. If they cast a white guy, he’d be endlessly compared to Alan Rickman (and would be seen as lacking even if he was the resurrected corpse of Laurence Fucking Olivier). Gets the incels and others who get angry over race fixated on that guy and not the fact that the movie cast will never be surpassed. I get why they are doing a series, but given who is running the DiscoveryTrueHBOMaxChipandJoanna network, I will be surprised if we go past the second season, and maybe not even the first season.
  12. This is why you can’t trust short people. Their insecurities get the better of them and eventually they try to take over whatever they can. See Napoleon, Putin, Tom Cruise, Mussolini, Tito (both the Yugoslavian dictator and the Jackson brother), Josef Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Emperor Hirohito, Francisco Franco and Kim Jong-Il (and his dad).
  13. They will most likely leave the Russians and us and the Kurds alone for the time being while they consolidate their gains and run the capitol and try to gain international legitimacy (gonna be hard, some of those guys have huge bounties on their heads). They also can’t mess with the Kurdish areas because there are oil fields there and it’s a good way to bring the West down on their heads, They also have to deal with the fact that they are an umbrella group and the Peoples Front of Syria will soon be at odds with the Syrian Peoples Front and so on down the line. The one thing that will bring them into conflict with us is that they will eventually be eyeing the neighbors if they can somehow remain united. Iraq is the most tempting and easiest target obviously. Regardless, a lot of these guys are Al Qaeda/ISIS types and national borders are just a man-made construct that aren’t in the Koran. But it all comes down to whether the guys in charge just want to run a country for a while, or if they are True Believers who are going to eventually export their brand of Islam outside of Syria.
  14. Plus other despots need to see that Putin has their back if things go south. If Putin kills him, not many countries would want anything to do with him.
  15. it means he thinks James Bond is a real person or position.
  16. So you’re saying she could mount Pike’s peak?
  17. Anybody else getting spammed on twitter with ads like this: —— Go ad-free with Premium+ Upgrade for a completely ad-free, smoother experience on X. --------- Travel in Style with This Must-Have Tote! "This tote is my travel go-to! Lightweight, spacious, and perfect for fitting under airplane seats. So many great color options! " ------ "London-trained ophthalmologist with executive experience looking for new opportunity. Speaks fluent English and Arabic, some Russian and a little Farsi. Can be reached via local Russian consulate" --- Bay Smokes Giveaway! We’re giving away FREE 1/8ths! Ready to get yours? Head to http://BaySmokes.com now and don’t miss out!
  18. I'm leaning towards Russia or Iran (or a coastal area). His wife and kids are supposedly still in Moscow (never left after last week), but his wife has family in the UAE. I have a hard time believing he's ballsy enough to stick around until he's literally taking the last flight out of Damascus. Them closing in on cutting off Damascus from the coast should have been the last trigger for him if he was really still in Damascus, and that would have been hours before the IL-76 we are talking about. As for the 4th Division, either they were the troops fleeing to exile in Iraq (with the permission of the Iraqis) or they are the ones fleeing to the coast.
  19. Everyday, it's a-gettin' closer Goin' faster than a roller coaster Missiles like yours will surely come my way A-sad, A-sad Assad Every day, it's a-gettin' faster Everyone said, "Turn off your transponder" Missiles like yours will surely come my way A-sad, A-sad Assad In response to this (this person has their BlueSky stuff turned off for external sites quoting them) "I was gonna log out this weekend but DID ASSAD JUST GET BUDDY HOLLY-ED???
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