Me communicating with the new Japanese users.

This gets absurdly specific, too. Like, when buying training swords for HEMA, I always measure blade length for one-handed swords in inches and two-handed swords in centimeters. I *think* this is because it used to be easier to source two-handed swords from Europe and one-handed swords from the US.

People like to say that the system of measurements they grew up using is "intuitive." It probably feels that way to you, but this is because of your familiarity with it, not because of any objective property of the measuring system. I know this b/c the "system" below feels totally intuitive to me.

If it were possible to wish warships into existence long before the necessary technology existed, I think it would be pretty lame to waste that kind of magic on this piece of shit.

welcome to the Second Annual Bluesky Christmas Eve Snowball Fight! please drop a take in the replies and I or someone else will be along to belligerently interpret whatever you said in the worst possible light

"It is logically impossible to simultaneously be evil, corrupt, and incompetent" is an absolutely amazing take to have in the year of 2025

I'm sure OKU's academic integrity standards are totally fine with long passages of text that quote the work of biblical scholars* without citations or attribution. *as filtered through right wing blogs

I'm settling on a belief that small-c conservativism is usually a sound political instinct - change isn't always good and most radical ideas are terrible - but that internalizing it as a guiding principle all but guarantees that you will lose every major cultural argument forever.

It's amazing both how much the Trump administration depends on people taking personal initiative to defend them at great personal risk, and how little effort they put into inspiring or rewarding this kind of loyalty.

"If you acknowledge that the US has any decent cultural output, you have to deny that Canada has any and also support my bid to become the 51st state. My name is J.J. McCullough and I am a serious journalist."

Probably also worth keeping speculation over what someone feels in their hearts separate from the things they say and do. I suspect Vance, a well-educated man married to a brown woman, is *capable* of realizing the things he says are wrong. I also can't help but notice that he keeps saying them.

Yes, it’s entirely true that many of the migrants who came under the Biden admin did not have housing arranged for them when they arrived and so ended up in homeless shelters at first, at times for months, while they got on their feet. This is 100% true, not an anti-immigrant gotcha, just the facts.

It is an unfortunate fact that you actually need to do a bit of work to accommodate immigrants, and that things will go poorly if you don't. If you invite four people over for a sleepover but only have one spare bed, there will not be enough beds. This doesn't mean you shouldn't have sleepovers.

My first reaction was to think this was a risky move on Venezuela's part. Their navy is small and not very capable - they lost a fight with a cruise ship five years ago. An isolated Venezuelan OPV might be a tempting target given that Trump is talking openly of regime change.

Lengthy Thread (1/xxx) 🧵 It's time to retire "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as a phrase.

NSF is about to dismantle NCAR at Russell Vought's direction to protect the fossil fuel industry. It's hard to communicate just how much NCAR does, so let's take a look: I've never worked at NCAR, and I've worked with NCAR researchers once ever. What scientific discoveries has NCAR made possible? 👇

I don't know how much faith to put in Susie Wiles' words. But if Trump really believes that Maduro would surrender to save the lives of random fisherman, he is the dumbest motherfucker to every try his hand at war, and that includes Caligula telling the Roman Army to hit the ocean with their swords.

Somewhat related, but I find the tankie rhetorical tic of citing the weight of bombs dropped during a war to be sort of interesting. You hear it for US operations in Korea and Vietnam, but for some strange reason you won't hear it for US wars from the 1980s or later. Why could this be?

You'll never guess what this is about

US service members absolutely *should* at minimum lawyer up, ensure they have clear instructions in writing and ask numerous follow-up questions before following any orders from the Trump administration. This will also make it really frustrating for the Trump admin to make the military do anything.

Nuzzi should really be the nickname of the NSDAP in an alternate timeline where Hitler got deported in 1927 and had to enact his plans for a thousand year Reich from Austria.

Not enough people know that when the US was doing island hoping as its business, they looked at taiwan and went "fuck this"

This is either really dumb or a great set up for a follow-up cover showing them all falling from the beam after the AI bubble bursts

I tried to warn you

I find it hard to relate to conspiracy theories related to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. You've probably heard the type; "the US had prior intelligence of the Japanese attack but didn't act on it. Therefore, Roosevelt let it happen On Purpose!!!"

As best I can tell, this ideological tendency can trace its origins to the fact that - in some cases - US forces in Vietnam operated under rules of engagement that did not properly reflect the technological or diplomatic realities of the time. But it has long since outgrown these humble roots.

TV plot where the protagonist pretends to have telekinetic powers, while desperately working to hide the fact that the only objects he can manipulate this way are toasters. "Help! I'm trapped under a burning car! Please use your powers to lift it off." *Throws toaster through window* "On it!"

If you see this, qt with your model of positive masculinity

The Jeff Wayne musical version from 1978 goes extremely hard, however. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RRe...

POV: u posted a little joke on blue sky. com

"Stay vigilant, patriots! The Deep State is going behind Trump's back and using immigration raids as cover to take your guns."

I have grown increasingly impressed by H.G. Wells' original War of the Worlds as a parable for colonization, personally. I find it much more grounded in what colonial expansion was actually like than modern adaptations, and really quite good at anticipating modern warfare.

As a true enlightened centrist, I prefer Jordan: moderately evil, moderately good at fighting

Now, wait till you find out about the shaheed:

The Argentinian grasp of history is only exceeded by their grasp of economics

It would genuinely work better to clamp down so hard on venereal disease to the point where condoms were broadly seen as unnecessary, then just hope teenage girls in China are as forgetful about pills as Richard Hammond

I hadn't previously realized how willing Argentina was to hire absolute dog fuckers to write online content for official websites, lmao

This, basically. If you find minors in their late teens attractive, it's probably because they look like adults. So, I think there's an obvious solution here: date adults.

Roses are red We're at a curious juncture

Hegseth is very transparently blaming a Navy admiral for his own decision. Let this be a lesson for every other military officer: The Trump administration will issue unlawful orders, then blame you for following them.

Anazing. T••••‘s so useless he‘s failing at America’s core competency, Latin Am coups

Is the US actually going to invade Venezuela, or is Trump going to order the US military to fly around and blow up random fishermen while he sends Maduro a series of increasingly desperate and pleading requests for Venezuela to surrender?

It must be real difficult to keep track of all the things he doesn't know about

My grandma "accidentally" set the oven to clean when my mom (her daughter) was making her "famous" meatloaf and we were forced to go out to eat instead. Years later I asked her if she did it on purpose and she said "You've had your mother's cooking. What do you think"

It also seems -based on known military movements - like the US invasion plan relies pretty heavily on Maduro either giving up or losing control over the Venezuelan military and getting deposed. Which certainly *could* happen, but a plan that *requires* it is off to a pretty bad start.

This post - from a great thread - makes an important point: Effective propaganda is usually a matter of interpretation rather than fabrication. You *could* completely invent a story to support a narrative, but it's easier to find something that actually happened and lie about the broader context.

1/ What a Russian breaking of the ceasefire will look like, step by step. There are far better experts on this, but I was an Australian diplomat in Ukraine in 2014 so I've seen this play out up close. So join me, brothers and sisters, as we count down to a fullscale re-invasion.

It's wild that Star is getting so much hate for this because we can look back into the distant past of ~2014-2024 to see if the two parties behaved differently towards Venezuela, and it turns out they did. For one thing, Trump already made a (hilariously bungled) attempt at regime change in 2020.