#brinksmanship

[trikerpoet]

BRINKSMANSHIP for what?

To be honest though the ridicolusly dangerous and misguided brinksmanship that Biden, the Tories and sadly Von Starmerführer have been playing for the last few years is only to make weapons profitable again. Having a cold war stance means more national budgets can go into munitions and arms. They can increase their own security and tie the hands of their own citizens with tales of fear.Sadly…

[mikeo56]

Nuclear war is a topic few care to think about. We sometimes call it unthinkable. But we need to think carefully, and to talk—particularly with high-ranking foreign officials whose motives we may have reason to distrust, just as they distrust ours—about how we can collectively avoid launching a weapon that would end our civilization.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s timely new book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, is a lightning-fast read intended to put the nuclear threat squarely back on everyone’s radar. Her narrative thread, as the title suggests, is a fact-based (though thankfully fictional) scenario that shows how a nuclear launch can escalate into World War III at dizzying speed.

[qqueenofhades]

Two genuine questions: was it REALLY necessary to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and were those two cities European ones (read: full of white people) do you think we still would've made the decision to bomb them?

People have been arguing from the moment it happened whether it was necessary, justifiable, or in any way required, when the war was almost over and Japan was going to lose anyway. My personal view is that it is and remains a completely indefensible action, especially since a) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively unimportant civilian cities with only some military infrastructure, b) Japan was already under heavy conventional bombing that had devastated the mainland, and c) there was no way, ever, that the west was going to drop a nuclear bomb on mainland Europe. So yes, Japan's geographical distance and non-whiteness played pivotal roles in this, especially after American propaganda stereotyped Japanese people as wild yellow savages and, let us not forget, put Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps for the duration of the war. You can read the Wikipedia page about the post-1945 debate here.

[maridiayachtclub]

i just ran the most dogshit session of pathfinder ever and need the reassurance provided by the comforting embrace of uhhhhhh (performs incredibly detailed mental calculations to determine optimum levels of bisexuality, horniness, and balance between exotic and mainstream appeal) an androgynous 40 year old minotaur with a well-paying blue collar job

[cleo-fox]

Technically, you don’t need to be in Congress to be the Speaker of the House, so if they can’t agree on someone in 72 hours, I think they should let me try it as a treat.

[recursive360]

ICBM

ICBM, in full Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, Land-based, nuclear-armed ballistic missile with a range of more than 3,500 miles (5,600 km). Only the United States, Russia, and China field land-based missiles of this range. The first ICBMs were deployed by the Soviet Union in 1958; the United States followed the next year and China some 20 years later. The principal U.S. ICBM is the silo-launched Minuteman missile. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with ranges comparable to ICBMs include the Trident missile, deployed by the United States and Britain, and several systems deployed by Russia, China, and France.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/technology/ICBM

Revelations 8:10–11

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

I know it's all reactionary empire politics "scratch a liberal a fascist bleeds" and all of that but it's so mind-meltingly insane to keep seeing liberal/"leftist" intelligentsia and media ghouls increasingly frame not just anti-imperialism but anti-aggressive militarization, anti-Cold War posturing, and anti-nuclear brinksmanship as being "right-wing"/"authoritarian"/"tankie" ideas. Like straight up saying shit like "acshully sweaty the real anti-imperialism is having nukes in Guam so we can fight the Chinese." We live in insane and dangerous times.

[artbyblastweave]

In order for me to take your assessment of the politics of The Dark Knight Returns seriously, your assessment needs to take into account both the right-wing powertrip fantasy of infinite no-holds-barred violence against street gangs and petty criminals and the fact that Bruce ends the book in a state of guerilla warfare against a third-term Reagan administration whose cold war brinksmanship and imperialism has recently incited a potentially famine-inducing nuclear exchange

[mutfruit-salad]

i find the way fans are already shipping cooper with lucy over her black love interest very telling of the clueless white supremacy and media illiteracy in the fandom. coop and lucy are obviously being setup as a father-daughter duo who need to learn caution/kindness from each other to survive, but these weirdos can’t have their white-man fave without a self-insert stand-in for 1 season. and the way people are glorifying cooper’s character is a load of bs - a morally greg white guy who realises he endorsed and was sympathetic to a massive war crime/political injustice… so he goes on to indiscriminately kill/hurt more people who have no idea of, nor say in the bigger picture that he was complicit in… is sooo boring and nothing new. also, giving him a biracial daughter as an accessory to show he’s Not Racist isn’t something we’ve seen half of a million fuckin times before 🤪 the way the show back-tracked on fallout’s message of blind american nationalism and militarism being a problem to It’s All Capitalism’s Fault, seemingly in reaction to the US currently endorsing and aiding in foreign war crimes, and past ones becoming common-knowledge, is horseshit on a platter.

I find the complete lack of a character for his daughter really horrifying- how she only exists to die dramatically for the sake of his sadness. It's odd because his wife is a well-established important character, yet their daughter is not allowed to be a person.

Fallout, in general, has had a habit of completely ignoring racism- presenting the prewar world as some fully integrated post racism utopia. Which is weird when the games regularly display overt anti Chinese (and broader anti Asian) sentiments in prewar logs and ads. This is a problem both the classic games AND the bethesda games have- racism has always been a touchy subject to the devs of the series and it seems like every game they've been content to ignore it, occasionally invoking it for horror or stumbling headlong into depicting it without realizing.

The way Ghoulgins regrets his past and just takes it out on everyone around him is absurd and plays into a lot of very hostile ideas the character peddles.

People shipping Ghoulgins with Lucy is baffling to me also considering he spends the entire series physically abusing her. People just don't want to acknowledge Max's existence, I have noticed. I know her and Ghoulgins get closer by the end, but it's after he's done just unspeakably cruel things to her- and you're right that it is absolutely framed as a father/daughter relationship.

I would also like to point out that the series has always criticized capitalism as well- but would generally frame it as sort of tangled up in American imperial ambition- with one feeding into the other. They were two halves of the same coin.

Vault Tec's entire existence in the classic games was selling smoke- profiting off of the extreme tension and stress of US military buildup- a process which would always inevitably end in disaster: either with Vault Tec going under or brinksmanship coming to its inevitable end.

Vault Tec (and the entire idea of luxury bunkers as a whole) WAS a critique of capitalism, and how it goes hand-in-hand with the American military industrial complex. It was selling the fear of annihilation to the populace. They didn't need to be some secretive controlling force to achieve any of this.

Making Vault Tec the sole antagonist, and the driving force of the apocalypse, is both deeply conspiratorial AND undermines the Cold War roots the series has always had- replacing the fear of American military buildup with a sort of hateful simplicity.

[flyingpurplepeopleprogrammer]

Look, I'm probably a bad person for enjoying this but every now and again a particular kind of vaguely bratty, eager subbyject will ask me to explain an aspect of their behaviour or their kink with an "I just don't know why I do that!"

So I'll look. And I'll tell them that - well, really, I wouldn't know the inside of their head and it's probably better to talk about things than to play guessing games do they really want to solicit my opinion and it's always that little bit if brinksmanship like it's a challenge to see if I've actually been listening to them during our talks.

And then I'll tell them what I see and they'll just break.

Like full on "I - uhhh - I need a moment" stunned silence interspersed with occasional strings of profanity and "Really?!"

See, I probably shouldn't enjoy that. But it's awfully fun.

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

So I've talked about this, I think at live shows. I don't know if I've ever talked about it on the podcast, but, you know, Ben's humor is so based on audio and like, and quality of words and the sounds and and sound effects and like, sort of how people say things. And, and he would get locked into in jokes. He would always have in jokes with literally every single person, every crew member, every cast. He would have one word that he would say that the way he said it would make you lose it. And it was always just one of the funniest things. And Ben and I, over the years, built up a pantheon of these references and repertoire. Oh my God. And this was one of the most legendary. So, and now I see why it's so great, because this what we real, so what he's doing here, and he doesn't actually do it, but what he had been doing all week, he barely does it. But what he had been doing all week was he, Ben used to take the tonal interpretation of lines in movies that we knew and insert the reading into a different line that we actually had to say on the script. So let me explain what I mean. So in the movie, Teen Wolf we talk, and the reason we were doing Teen Wolf was because Jerry. So we had been obviously talking Teen Wolf nonstop. And so there's a character in Teen Wolf is a coach, or the, the drama teacher. And the drama teacher has this amazing line where Michael J. Fox walks on. He's refusing to be the werewolf near the end of the movie when he is decided to embrace his humanity. And the, the, the, the drama teacher is gonna kick him outta the show. And he goes, how do I put this? No, no, no wolf. No wolf. No wolf, no part. And we always just thought it was so brilliant because the guy, he swallows it. And the way he sort of like, you know, 'cause the way it's written is like no wolf, no part kid. And he decides to like, make it this like very, and Ben and I would quote it and thought it was hysterical. So then Ben started saying, whatever this line is, I, God, I should have written it down. -Rider

In this recurring dream. What happens next? Shawn recalls, I'm left alone with this beautiful sorority girl who just got dumped, who just got dumped by her boyfriend. She's not too fond of men at the moment. So she wreaks havoc on me emotionally and physically. -Danielle

And then what does Ben's, what does Cory say then? -Rider

Cory, tell Shawn there's something that's not quite meshing with. -Danielle

That's, it was mesh. It was mesh. Mesh. Mesh. So he all week long would say, Shawn, Shawn, there's something that's not quite um mesh. Meshing. Meshing. And he would, so he inserted and it was something he would do at run throughs. He would do it in front. And nobody knew what he was doing. But he's signaling to me. Except for me. So I would be losing. So you can see in anticipation of this moment coming, and I'm sitting here basically daring him. You're not gonna do it while the cameras are rolling. I know. He already had, which is why I was already losing it. 'cause this is probably take two. So yes, this is the brinksmanship of me and Ben trying to make each other laugh. And they left it, they left. 'Cause there probably wasn't a take where we are not losing it. So yes, this is Ben Savage doing his Teen Wolf tone line insertion on our dialogue to just mesh. make each other laugh. And they left it, they left. 'cause there probably wasn't a take where we are not losing it. So yes, this is Ben Savage doing his teen wolf tone line insertion on our diet dialogue to just mesh. Mesh. Meh. Oh, there's so many instances of this throughout our history. But this was like the, I mean, yeah, I'll never forget it. And when I saw me start to laugh, that's all I remembered about this episode. That's all I remembered. Man, that makes me miss it so much. -Rider 

[wumblr]

we have 10 years before the nuclear arsenal is refreshed. i know this is a topic no one else will touch, and i am struggling to communicate just how many sudden changes have occurred in uranium mining, production, processing, and refinement this year, or this week.

a floodgate has been opened, pouring billions in funding towards producing the new sentinel ICBM warheads. i have been trying to warn you about this since ground was broken on northrop headquarters for the missile launch system, back when the bomb-in-development was called the GBSD.

the time to prevent this was yesterday, and nobody listened to me. every day that passes creates a new barrier to prevention of brinksmanship. every additional day you waste makes the solution more difficult.

[gorillaxyz]

if i have to write abt macarthur i will kms

[ladyaislinn]

Oct 24, 2024

>> video

Rufus Sewell talks ‘The Diplomat’ Season 2, playing villains

Actor Rufus Sewell visits TODAY to discuss Season 2 of “The Diplomat,” premiering on Netflix on Oct. 31. He also shares his experience playing villains and offers insights into starting filming for the third season of “The Diplomat.”

Rufus Sewell learned the ending of Season 2 of "The Diplomat" before nearly anyone else.

“I thought the ending of Season 1 was a big shock. I really wasn’t expecting that,” he tells TODAY.com. “The ending of this season, no one could anticipate.”

He and co-star Keri Russell, who play a married pair of ambassadors forever entangled in their own games of brinksmanship, were the only members of the cast to get the final scripts ahead of time. Other cast members' finale scripts had redacted portions until the final read-through.

"It was on the day of the read-through people were getting to that page. You could see, as they turned that page, reactions popping like a line of explosions across the read-through tables. And people going, 'No!' It was a very good, exciting kind of clue as to what the public reaction will be like," he says.

While Season 2 of "The Diplomat" premiered Oct. 31, Sewell says he's "stuck" in Season 3, which is currently filming.

"It's dangerous," he says. "There are things that I cannot say that are old news for us that nobody knows yet."

He admits he "kind of likes" the feeling of having secrets. "Luckily, I'm so forgetful I can't remember most," he quips.

In that respect, he says he's much different from his character on "The Diplomat." Hal Wyler is the husband of the U.S. ambassador to the U.K., Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), and also an ambassador himself. He is a freewheeling rogue-meets-foreign policy genius.

"You need killers on the side of good. He is one of those people," Sewell says. "He says, 'OK, this needs to happen. I've got to go in here. I've got to do something drastic.' Unfortunately, the consequences of that are unforeseeable."

What happens at the end of Season 2 of "The Diplomat" — and what does his character have to do with it? Read below to find out.

What happens at the end of ‘The Diplomat’ Season 2?

The final moments of "The Diplomat" Season 2 end with a shocking reveal: The president of the United States has died — seemingly of shock brought on following a phone call with Hal.

Over the course of the season, the Wylers unravel the conspiracy of who was behind the British warship attack in Season 1.

Turns out Grace Penn (Allison Janney), the vice president of the U.S., orchestrated it with the help of U.K. Prime Minister Nicol Trowbridge’s former adviser Margaret “Meg” Roylin (Celia Imrie).

Grace hired a mercenary to attack a British ship in an effort to give the United Kingdom something to unite over. She did this so that Scotland wouldn't vote yes for independence and the U.S. could keep control of a military base in Scotland. Nobody was supposed to get hurt, but there was a malfunction they couldn't have predicted, which led to people being where the missile hit, Trowbridge explained.

Kate and Hal go back and forth about what to do with the information. They settle on telling Miguel Ganon (Miguel Sandoval), the U.S. Secretary of State. But then, in classic Hal fashion, Hal goes rogue and calls the president instead.

The show skips over the phone call between Hal and the president and instead skips ahead to what he says on the phone to Kate.

Keep in mind that, at this moment, Kate has just gotten out of a tense conversation of her own with the VP, during which she confirmed she was coming for her job. (...)

What does Hal say on the phone to the president?

Sewell says more of the exact conversation will be revealed next season.

"I have to explain to people what happened. Why were you talking to him? What were you talking about? There's not much I can say, you know," he says.

Sewell understands Hal's decision to go rogue and call the president instead of the secretary of state; it was his original plan.

"The only way he could fully control the outcome was to tell the president directly. Going through anyone else, they could use it to their advantage and use gamesmanship against them," he says.

His intentions were in the right place, Sewell says — this was meant to be another Hal Wyler special.

"The fact is, what he's famous for and infamous is pulling off feats that no one else would have the bravery or the intellect to be able to work out," he says.

Hal, he says, is always aware of the risks, and moved forward anyway.

"Sometimes there are casualties. What we're doing is for the world and will benefit an enormous amount of people. But sometimes, if things go wrong, there can be bad results. This is one of those things. He was right to do it, right? Who was to have known that this might have happened?"

[loving-n0t-heyting]

A bunch of my mutuals evidently find it infuriating when activists appear ready and willing to tank electoral political coalitions (in particular around the presidency) on the basis of demands way way to the left of the overton window. I think i am usually midway between them and the activists being maligned, i have definitely been the one to advocate the reasonableness of eg vote boycotts under some circumstances. And if i lived in a country with actual parliamentary elections i would be even more congenial to this sort of political brinksmanship

Otoh when these same activists exhibit the same willingness to tank the labour movt over similarly politically infeasible demands i do start to go berserk

[seat-safety-switch]

War is bad. It imperils the existence of the human race, and throws away our most patriotic youth on the idiocy of political brinksmanship. To make things even worse, the salvage is mostly burned-out trucks and tanks, and none of those vehicles have parts that swap easily into my fleet of half-decrepit 1970s domestic automobiles.

There is so, so much salvage. Why? Think about it: if you’re Bob Warhaver, then you don’t want your war to get all fucked up because you ran out of tires for your trucks and one guy keeps getting flat tires. So you buy way more tires than you think you’re going to need. When the war is over, you don’t want to be paying expensive storage locker fees to store those tires: especially not at the U-Haul depot that keeps their lights on all the time, even with LEDs that shit has got to add up.

So there is a huge industry in getting those leftover tires from the place where the war was, and bringing them home to where the war currently is not. If you know where to look, you can buy all manner of taxpayer-funded excess, all for pennies on the dollar. Again, though, it doesn’t fit my car. Or does it?

Here’s another thing they sell: welders. It turns out that when you blow a hole in the side of a tank when a bunch of nineteen-year-olds hopped up on combat amphetamines try to drive through a former elementary school, you might want to patch that hole up. So they also have lots of surplus welders heading home for the holidays, and they go cheap. Unfortunately, it’s just the machines, and not the people who do the welding – the auction sites have a strict “no slavery” policy – but it’s hard to get the job done without a welder (the person) and impossible to get it done without a welder (the machine.)

All this is to say that while I don’t think a Volare with Unimog portal axles underneath it is particularly legal, they can’t exactly get mad at me. I’m really helping out Big Government, supporting the war effort, in the most patriotic way I can think of: spending a bunch of money and then not being able to break 25km/h on the highway.