Also that the market forces of counterinsurgency, from defense contractors to how it inflected firearms marketing and culture in the US, had to go SOMEWHERE after the GWOT, even beyond 1033

This is why I called in an expert

@phirmth.bsky.social I need you to weigh in with options

Reign of Fire is a terrible movie that would be much better served by an anime adaptation

It is, but an obsession with opsec is a real hindrance for activists. If you're out there confronting ICE, I assure you they can figure out who you are if they really wanted. The key is to not do anything illegal (taking or sharing video is not) and to understand there's safety in numbers.

If anyone ever crows to you about ruby ridge or waco again but doesn't include this moment you can tell them to get all the way bent

Lotr is fascinating because it's a beloved piece of fiction with an adaptation so successful that studios seem to loathe its existence because people don't really want or need anything else out of it

A whole game structured around the bit of reminding you the ravens are bad

This is what got me through the book and, to my own surprise, left a lingering interest in potential sequels or spin-offs (she's alluded to the possibility of the latter iirc). I think understanding it as YA helps better calibrate your expectations.

Boards are where every ounce of the action is my friends. Do you know who's on your board? What "expertise" do they bring to the institution? What conflicts of interest do they and their partner have? What litmus test does the political appointing body use to select new members?

I mean the goal is to starve parks of tourism so they can justify selling them off for development, no? I fucking, fucking hate these people.

The whole popular conservative project is this type of re-enchantment, all of it. Conducting obvious power grabs by pretending they're uncovering some hidden, deeper truth of the world.

And to me this is also Karp's thing with raving about "ontology." It's the assumption that tech has found a way to pierce the veil and therefore has absolute authority to manipulate a reality only it sees clearly.