This is when I knew Xi was going to take this babbling fool to the cleaners, and us in the process. The Golden Age of Dipshittery.

Important detail on Paramount's hostile takeover bid to buy WBD: Paramount's financing partners include Jared Kushner's private equity firm, plus Saudi Arabia's, Qatar's and Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth funds. Kushner's involvement was NOT publicized by Paramount. www.axios.com/2025/12/08/p...

Formally, he holds no position in his father’s administration, but he serves as a mouthpiece for the views and conversations of Trump’s inner circle.

He says it’s due to certain "economic phenomena." Oh? And what kind of phenomena would those be?

"We have growth everywhere, all of December — growth across all sectors. But not positive growth, negative growth." - Samara governor Fedorishchev carefully and thoroughly described the situation on the Russian market.

"Ukraine has no right under its Constitution, international law, or moral law to give up its territories." - Zelensky.

Putin has signed a document calling up reservists in Russia for military training next year. But the Americans will still insist that he definitely wants peace.

Make America Healthy Again my ass.

yet the rich get richer.

Regime that created the 🧑‍🌾 crisis with an unnecessary trade war (again) now want you to believe it’s someone else’s fault

Oh, look, just like Nixon’s enemies list from his "Political Enemies Project." They're lack of original ideas is astounding. I guess they're coming for all of us now.

RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW! RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW! RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW! RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW! RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW! RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW! RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW! RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW!

FOX: Interim U.S. Attorney for the state of New Jersey, Alina Habba has resigned. Attorney General Pam Bondi says she accepted the resignation after a court's decision disqualifying Habba from serving.

♥️ “ICE looked at that school, saw a community standing up for families, and decided it wasn’t worth it.”

If you'll never actually WIN the Nobel Peace Prize, then have a sycophantic "best friend" make one up for you 🤣😂 Way to lower the bar, FIFA, now you ARE the biggest loser!!

Tell Congress it's time to evict Kristi Noem.

The world knows they have them; release the Epstein files now.

He's flat out saying that he's giving farmers a bailout because they vote for him, not because Americans can't afford food.

Were pike formations not used much against cavalry like at Bannockburn or is it too early for that?

Ah bloody hell, I wish I had thought of this before. Well, do let me know if I can help you in any way!

I do, in fact, have War Sails! I'm enjoying it. Will probably write about it in the new year.

Hey Bret, I happen to be Bannerlord’s PR manager and I‘m facepalming myself wondering how I didn’t think you might like it. If you haven’t got War Sails yet let me know and I’ll send you a key.

Reading this thread, all I can think of is the overly-long list of various polearms in earlier editions of D&D, probably because somewhere in there is medieval war gaming nerds arguing over which one was the best.

Anyway, just interesting to see how in some cases the design of quasi-historical units in Bannerlord ends up 'boxed in' by fan expectations about things like how lethal archers are or how common polearms are (and what they're used for).

(Ironically, my Nord character, who started basically as a pirate, has ended up a vassal of Vlandia with Orysia and Lageta as fiefs, so my front line mixes Huscarls and Legionaries in front and Skjalds in back - I make regular 'recruiting trips' up North because the point was a viking playthrough).

In the game, the solution is to mix your unit types - level your noble line into Huscarls, back them up with the two-handers (Skjaldbrestir) and you start to get the performance out of your melee line that you expect. Or, you know, just spam legionaries and win all the time.

So for instance currently if you go all-shield-wall with the Nords (Huscarls and Berserkir) you will get rolled over by Voulgiers and Falxmen, which seems odd for the all-infantry-faction, but it is because one-handed melee troops fair pretty poorly in straight melee fights.

In part, it creates an oddity where poelarm troops in moderately open ('line') order wreck house on shield-troops in either close ('shield wall') or moderately close ('line') order, when in practice we know that in the close press, long-reach weapons are sometimes not ideal; pikemen drew swords.

So instead the balance is for shield troops as defensive (especially against those over-lethal arrows) but with polearm troops being massively more lethal in close combat (encouraging players to mix the types). Which, like, neat, but not really how the inspiration-cultures here fought.

Two-handed polearms beyond pikes are generally a response to pretty heavy-armor environments and while Bannerlord does its best in what is basically a Late Antique / Early Medieval equipment environment to imply ultra-heavy armored troops, the technology is for the most part not there.

Further odd Bannerlord thoughts: the other balance distortion the game has to contend with is that the fans expect troop types wielding big two-handed melee weapons (beyond just pikes) but unlike Warband, Bannerlord occurs in a technological environment where such weapons were - with reason - rare.

Bring back those jobs Bankrupting those farmers Rolling back citizen protections from polluters Taking away citizten rights War Crimes Concentration camps Back to splitting up families only inland this time Yea, how fast can he wreck it?

Don't leave them anything: Trump says younger generations don't deserve their inheritance during tired televised meeting President Donald Trump claimed that younger generations in America 'don't deserve' their inheritance during a public meeting with farmers today. Bone spurs decides who deserves

Remember the campaign We'll torture the shit out of them, we'll bring black site techniques to the homeland and go to work on farm hands, we'll treat them like animals, and give no quarter, and those who stand against us will be deemed "Enemies of the State" www.forever-wars.com/torture-tech...

The only "Animals" among us, are those that are so indifferent, they will war crime, human traffic, grab cooks, farm hands, roofers, and people going to court, while totally laughing about it as fun time for them breaking up families. They are the fkn animals, that show no respect to anybody else.

He looks terrible. You’d think after all the Biden health accusations, the GOP would want to know what was wrong with Trump. But nah, crickets.

Executed after being found guilty at Nuremberg.

They're just getting started

Hauntingly similar to ICE Kidnapping Citizens and minorities - holding them incommunicado without due process, then making them disappear.

Families and the population at large were never informed of the prisoners’ fate or whereabouts. The goal was to create a climate of fear to keep the population in German-occupied territories in Western Europe under control. Victims of the program were typically never heard from again. /4

About 7,000 people were captured, interrogated and often tortured under the Night and Fog decree. The special courts frequently handed down death sentences. Those who were acquitted or completed their prison sentences were usually turned over to the Gestapo for transfer to concentration camps. /3

Prisoners had been handled according to international protocols, but Hitler and his high-level staff decided to abandon all rules of “chivalry towards the opponent,” which they deemed unnecessary. Opponents of the Nazi regime were to be brought to Germany “by night and fog” for summary trial. /2

#ResistanceRoots Today in History, 1941: Hitler issues his “Night and Fog” (Nacht und Nebel) decree, ordering that members of the resistance working to undermine the Nazi military be arrested and brought for trial by special courts, circumventing conventions governing the treatment of prisoners. /1

Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, issued a directive explaining Hitler’s orders: “Efficient and enduring intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminals do not know the fate of the criminal.” /end

Seasonally appropriate:

Historian here OTD a day that will live in infamy we need to point out that the reconstruction of Japan and Germany proved to be successful after WWII but the Reconstruction of the misbegotten Confederacy was brutally overthrown. We still live with the legacy of that history in the United States.

Oh, neat, so you can tell us the exact names of all eleven people on the boat by, say, tomorrow morning, right? Because you have a list. You can do that, right away. No reason to delay, their buddies know they got blown up. So let's see that list. (Also doesn't make this legal)

Especially when your equipment is obsolete & overhyped, your leadership is incompetent, & your main criteria for recruiting pilots is nepotism.