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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Reminds me of the old (apocryphal) story of Stalin, FDR, and Churchill debating what to do with the Nazi officers’ corps after their defeat.

    "The German General Staff, [Stalin] said, must be liquidated. The whole force of Hitler’s mighty armies depended upon about 50,000 officers and technicians. If these were rounded up and shot at the end of the war, German military strength would be extirpated.” When Churchill angrily declared he would be no party to such mass retribution, the President quipped that he would act as mediator, and suggested the compromise of shooting only 49,000. In heat, Churchill left the room. Stalin himself fetched him back, assuring him it was all a jest.

    The tendency to treat enemy soldiers as honorable adversaries while foreign civilians are resources to be exploited or speed bumps to be flattened is extremely fascist.

    What separates Hitler and Hegseth isn’t their army’s treatment of survivors of a military operation, but their view of their targets as military or civilian. Hegseth knows he’s targeting civilians and treats them just like a German military commander would treat other civilians.











  • “How likely are you to recommend putting your hand up to the elbow in this wood chipper?”

    Like, if you’re in the business of building PCs? I definitely understand swapping build tips with friends and colleagues. Even strictly within the “No Linux Allowed” space, there’s no shortage of online tutorials and consultants recommending this or that version of Microsoft.

    But Win10 is going away and Win11 is so fucking bad…



  • NDAA authorizing almost a trillion dollars to the military industrial complex

    Congress authorizes it. I guess you could just put “Congress” on the list. Or maybe “The Pentagon”.

    Hundreds of thousands of civilians have died by US bombing in the last fifty years.

    With Iran, Syria, and Yemen you could probably get to 100k in one or two years.

    Nevermind our airstrikes across Latin America, the various African states, and our collaborations with Israel in Gaza.

    Hell, the US can take credit for quite a few kills in Ukraine thanks to our long standing policy of playing both ends against the middle.

    But you don’t get all that out of “The NDAA exists”. We’ve been passing NDAAs since The Korean War without hitting this level of mass slaughter.