Russian is acquiring territory at a rate of 100 dead/km². Another 50 million dead, and they'll control all of Ukraine.

There are more than 50 million Russians, so it's doable.

So smart.

Yet he forgets that Ukraine is about to mobilise their 18 years old. And that Russian captured in 2024 more than in 2023 and all their big gains happened the last 3 months.

Why look at those facts if it will make things look bad for Ukraine ? I mean Ukraine is going to win any moment they get the game changer… wait he ain't talking about Ukrainian victory, what happened ?

Area taken really doesn't show the full picture. You could probably calculate that it would take something like 100 years for Russia to take the whole of Ukraine. However neither Russia or Ukraine can't keep this level of warfare up more than a few years at most. One of them will eventually collapse either from lack of manpower/equipment or due to economy.

Shut up stupid Redditor

This. One of them is going to give up because both are really, really struggling. Both are running out if people. Both are irritating their allies. Both are getting increasingly desperate.

Exactly

The difference is that Russia is running on volunteers while Ukraine is conscription. Most of those volunteers come from the most impoverished areas of Russia and even from foreign countries. Russia can keep the war going much longer than Ukraine

Shut up no truth Russian soldiers having low moral

https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1fng9wy/russian_morale_is_collapsing_now_is_the_time_to/

Well, this ignores the fact that Russia is losing its position in the world (like in Syria) and that its economy is increasingly in trouble. It also misses the fact that the motivations are dramatically different. The Ukrainians are fighting for their very survival, they have very little incentive to surrender. The Russians are fighting for pride and money, which means they just want it all to wrap up quickly. The Ukrainians are far more committed to their fight than the Russians who are just there for a paycheck.

Exactly !

Ukrainian Journ*list Yuriy Butusov confirmed that 1,700 soldiers from 155th mechanized brigade "Anna Kyivska", which was trained in France and sent to Pokrovsk deserted before the first battle. He added that the brigade commander was dismissed immediately after the battle, and…

— AMK Mapping 🇺🇦🇳🇿 (@AMK_Mapping_) January 1, 2025

Ukrainian so motivated that after half year training in France they run away from their first battle. Not the second or third but first

Majority of Ukrainian dislike Zelenskyy, don't want 18 year old mobilised are ready to give up the territory

Burgers cuts the nafo budget and all the "combat Russian misinformation" budget. Media starts painting digits that tell majority of European now want it all just end

Ahmad Al Sharaa said in an interview with Saudi Arabian state-owned news outlet Al Arabiya this weekend. "We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way that some wish."

Al Sharaa, still better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad Al Jolani (and other simply just as Jolani), is head of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the rebel coalition that deposed Assad.

"All of Syria's arms are of Russian origin, and many power plants are managed by Russian experts," Al Sharaa further told Al Arabiya, while also highlighting the "deep strategic interests" of what he described as the "second most powerful country in the world."

@DaddyReagan

Was insisting to me that Russian run away from that base like almost a month ago. Except Ukraine and EU (that ain't even part of that Syrian party) ain't interested in Russian leaving Syria. Redditors are too stupid to understand Israel, US, Turkey and the new Syrian gov won't benefit from Russian leaving.

"That isn't entirely true Russia forces are actually expanding And that has been noted on many occasions by NATO generals 1- https://www.businessinsider.com/top-us-general-russia-growing-back-pre-war-military-strength-2024-4

2- Atlantic council talking about how Russia military is expanding and it might reach peak military production in 2025 -2026 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/nato-russia-dynamics-prospects-for-reconstitution-of-russian-military-power/

3- https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4589095-russian-army-grown-ukraine-war-us-general/

4- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-16/putin-says-russia-recruited-more-than-430-000-to-army-this-year

Since start of the war Russia conducted a semi mobilization for reserves

Meanwhile ukraine conducted six mobilization efforts in 2014 and 2015 Since the start of the war Ukraine have conducted countless mobilization and Ukraine has been snatching people from streets for year and half now

Antony blinken said in interview that Ukraine Basically has more equipment than troops at this point of time and they need to mobilize fast and also No increase in equipments will save them

Stupid Redditor making sense

With Trump as president, Ukraine will fall. It's a sad reality but we need to start admitting it.

This is smart Redditor, despite Ukraine last victory was on October 3rd 2022 so more than 50% of Biden presidency was without Ukrainian victories. So next years you will hear from them that Ukraine lost because of Trump

Because if Biden had won then Ukrainian demographics would been fixed. Can you argue with it ? You can't because you ain't multiverse creature that can test it

russia will collapse in 2025

— HotSotin 🇫🇮🇺🇦🇮🇱🇹🇼🇺🇸 NAFO (@HotSotin) December 31, 2024

That what I am talking about ! Oh wait it's not Ukraine going to win it's Russia going to collapse because subliminally they know Ukraine ain't going to win so they are coping with Russia will callabse

My fav prokhohol last year was this guy

Two things can be true at the same time.

Russia is advancing south of Pokrovsk, at huge sacrifice. Taking monstrous casualties and capturing a very small amount of land.

Ukrainian forces there are overwhelmingly outnumbered and feel hopeless as a result.

Both are true.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 10, 2024

It actually isn’t a good result for Russia to shove a division into a fight with a few battalions and end up taking catastrophic casualties while capturing not much land. No matter how hopeless and overwhelmed the defenders feel.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 10, 2024

I know a lot of people are currently obsessed with Russia’s advances in Ukraine, but I personally see these advances as largely a failure of the Russian military. They are dumping entire Divisions directly into combat and advancing a few km while sustaining absolutely…

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 7, 2024

Writes billions words in early December about Russian are now slowing down, Russian in December 2024 had best month since March 2022. Slowing down baby

Ukraine has two extremely toxic problems that should have been addressed a long time ago, but never were.

First, there is this pervasive idea that being mobilized into the military is basically a death sentence. Which is entirely untrue.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 11, 2024

First, there is this pervasive idea that being mobilized into the military is basically a death sentence. Which is entirely untrue.

Ukraine literally didn't had any demobilisation the only way you get delisted from army in Ukraine is if you lose combat capability

Second, there is this idea that once mobilized, you can no longer contribute to the economy. This is asinine. Of course they can. There are many models of mobilization that allow people to keep their jobs and continue working while also being trained.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 11, 2024

There are many models of mobilization that allow people to keep their jobs and continue working while also being trained

Ukraine has shortened the training requirements and so did eu for Ukrainian

So this homo suggest that Ukraine that is short on men power and has hard time replacing loses will just for lol train some guy to send him back to his regular job ?

This homo banned me but you can see he is genius. He believes that Ukraine has 6-12 months training and will do it 2 times Ukraine officially has 8 weeks training and in reality 2-3 and he talks about 100 weeks training

Then he finish of with this

Russian government: we have manpower problems
Russian military: we have manpower problems
Russian soldiers: we have manpower problems

People on twitter: RUSSIA HAS INFINITE MANPOWER AND WILL LAST FOREVER

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 14, 2024

And blocks comments because he wants to believe Russian having as much problems as Russian

I mean legendary frog brigade proved this point

Remember they haven't even really mobilized yet.

— Tom Neznamy (@Tom_Neznamy) December 14, 2024

So back to the front lines

Russian forces have completed the capture of Kurakhove. pic.twitter.com/tYSzMlLmzD

— KalibratedMaps (@Kalibrated_Maps) December 31, 2024

Kurakhove has fully been captured so now Ukraine will lose whole lower half of Donetsk and fight will start in Dniper region

As one Redditor wrote in og post

Once prokovsk is taken there is only fields till Dnipro, so loosing the Donbas would lose Ukraine the war. Taking the Donbas is by far the hardest part. Just look at WW 2 mr super military genius

Donbas is the most defensible part of that whole region of Ukraine / Russia, as you said first the Germans had trouble going through it and then Soviets too when they were retaking land. The guy calling this advancement against 2014 super entrenched defensive lines insignificant just outed himself as knowing nothing about the war

Ukrainian mappers of course don't report it

Since admitting Kurakhove has fully Ben lost is admitting that black line territory will be soon lost and chances are for truth Sirsky is going to mobilise then as he did with deepstatemap

Many people have high hopes with Trump that he will come and end it all.

And I have a good news, he won't

2025 will be year of legal battle. They talking about peace deal but what peace deal if nether Russia nor Ukraine are fighting each others ?

For a peace deal there must be a legal conflict and there just no conflict on paper. Russia wants that Ukraine side says that those 5 oblast are Russian territory. That something Ukraine side won't do since its defacto killing Ukraine, they of course don't have power to recapture it but they need cope that one day they will be able to do it. US offers no nato for Ukraine for 20 years. So every side wants to come out as victorious. But what West and Ukraine is offering Russia is just a draw and not fixing the reasons why Russia invaded. Why would Russia accept it after it survived all the giga western weapons. Aid for Ukraine is now around 500 billions that's inflation adjusted is 3 times more than lend lease to Soviet Union. And Biden created lend lease for Ukraine but never used it, you wonder why ? Because he was giving everything for free to Ukraine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Democracy_Defense_Lend-Lease_Act_of_2022

Lend lease was such pathos moment

So after all the epic pathos moment how Russia will be defeated by united west

The scary tanks and long range missiles, Ukrainian are on their back foot without any ability to regain balance, west is offering Russian a draw

So you see it's ether Ukraine recognise that those 5 oblast are Russian or the grind will go on

As I mentioned before Zelenskyy is dead if he recognises those 5 oblast as Russian and he already against elections since now even republicans ask it and he still says no

So don't worry bros Slavshit won't end in 2025

Have a good year, see you again around February, need to study, will have exams about how bad and evil Trump is. Had to listen like 2 hours about how Trump is facist but you can't call him facist

the dejenerate podcast- it time for hotdogs 16:10

• Drinks something that looks like a shot & vapes & sings some shit song in a mumbling fashion & shot & chaser & vape

• 0:40 The problem- the b-words at steam haven't replied to his email sent at 1pm (it is now midnight). They changed the account password associated with it, but that wasn't him. It was a trailer monkey based in North Carolina!

• Takes another shot

• 1:50 the first account was the r*pe of his steam account, so he can't play EU or Crusader Kings or either fallout. The other r*pe was his windows on his computer closing by itself without him doing it; his computer has been taken over because he doesn't have anti-virus because he refuses to pay 60 fricking zogbucks for that.

• 3:00 shot & chaser

• 3:10 He also has hot dogs that need to be used up, hacks like a smoker. He also has candy. He needs steam to email him back. Chews

• 4:00 He missed getting tickets to a concert because he wasn't notified before it was sold out. They are to blame. Shot. Right.

• 4:40 He's like that b-word Elizabeth Smart. Everything is fricked and is going to heck, but he's looking forward to those hot dogs though.

• 5:10 He had Christmas dinner at jinxmother's house and stayed the night on the bottom bunk. The pillows were too thin, like in prison, and he didn't have a proper duvet.

• 5:55 He sees something on the floor. Looks like a fricking spidey(?)

• 6:00 Dinner was good though. He didn't get his mom PJs because he has no money. Another shot/vape.

• 6:30 The Betrayal- Jinxbrother has his own TV and he WAS WATCHING ANIME in front of jinxthinker. It was fricked up and shit.

• 6:55 He, jinxmother, and one jinxsister (other jinxsister lives too far away) were watching a film with an Asian in it. Jinxmother didn't want to watch it if everyone in it was emo, because she thinks all Chinese people are emo.

• 7:40 Another shot

• 8:00 He's going to test drive his NEW GEORGE FORMAN GRILL later on his hot dogs

• 8:30 He also got an e-mail from united health nation or some bullshit. Oral B toothbrush right is bullshit or something. Jinxthinker is a manual toothbrush chad; electric toothbrushes are scams.

• 9:15 He's down to 2 Monsters, he will need to acquire more. He wishes he had them concert tickets, right. He also got some new coffees

• 10:10 All George Forman grills are banging, but his new one is bigger; frick frying pans- george forman is a real butt neighbor.

• 10:50 When he lived with Jinxgrandma (I believe this is the first mention of jinxgrandma or a living with grandma arc) he bought a George Forman grill, but it eventually became busted.

• 11:10 He saw someone smoking a cigarette when he went to the shop, like okay that's normal...

• 11:30 How did they steal the steam account though?

• 12:15 Basically he's going to make the hot dogs. He gets 10 hot dogs per pack, but 6 buns per pack. So he's going to have to do some advanced math to fit all the dogs in the buns available.

• 12:50 Calls steam support stupid

• 13:00 He got a new 2025 calendar

• 13:20 Shot. Spits it out into a coffee mug

• 13:45 Let's do some singing because it's Singing O' Clock. Starts some even more shit song. 15:05 Su I sIIIII^IIIIIIIIIIDe

!jinxthinkers Can Jinxbrother be reformed?

Duet

A unscheduled spaceship asks for docking permission at DS9 and, in what seems to me a massively wasteful use of resources, Kira (second in command of the station remember) deals with the request. This is how she hears that the ship has an emergency case of Space AIDS (not really, obviously, but I just got done in the last post claiming that a 1970s British multi-instrumentalist and songwriter was murdering people in space so you'll forgive my lack of exact details). Only survivors of one of Cardassia's most awful mines during the occupation (which we will hitherto call Michigan Mine cos apparently the air quality was so bad it gave everyone AIDS). Kira skips down to the infirmary to greet a brave survivor of the occupation to be greeted by this cheeky chappie:

He's obviously one of the guards from the camp and, as Kira tearfully explains to Sisko, those guys did a few too many of the old Nanjing Massacre recreation activities during their time in Michigan. This one is called Maritza and is played by Harris Yulin, an incredibly prolific character actor- if you don't recognise the name you'd recognise his face from one of his many, many movie roles. I've always remembered him best for his role as the corrupt pig in Scarface who was cocky enough to think Tony Montana wouldn't shoot him:

Although Maritza claims to have a different sickness, Bashir confirms it's definitely Michigan AIDS and Kira goes all Simon Weistental in her quest to see him hang. Sisko's reluctance to bend the law in order to hold the man on circumstantial evidence threatens to cause a diplomatic incident with both the Bajorans and the Cardassians and he's forced to give Kira 26 hours (one Bajor day, remember) to wring a confession out of the guy.

Sisko gets a call from his predecessor Gul Dukat...

Remember him? Yeah this is only the second time he's appeared in the series, believe it or not. Season 2 will see him appear far more prominently but, until now, he really hasn't played a large role.

Now, the rest of the episode is basically a series of one-on-one interrogations where Kira tries to prove that Maritza was actually the commander of the camp and was therefore responsible for everything that happened there and Martiza both denies it openly but also implies she's right and mocks her for not being able to prove it. These scenes are largely played straight without much in the way of special effects, location changes or other cast getting in the way- hence 'Duet'.

It's very strong stuff and gives Nana Visitor a lot of chances to prove her acting chops (which are considerable- everyone's just going to have to accept that I am going to simp hard for Visitor from now on because she's hot and talented AND I LIKE HER HAIR OK? I have been traumatised in recent years by the genocide of tomboys and I like to return to the 90s when boyish girls were loved and cherished and not hoodwinked into cutting their tits off*).

This episode reminds me of TNG's 'The Measure of a Man' in as much as it's a strong script presented plainly with very strong performances without needing a bunch of expensive vidual effects or the fricking camera rolling around on a fricking skateboard like modern Trek. The ending is a bit contrived (Maritza turns out to be the camp clerk who was too scared to stop the atrocities and wants to set himself up as a great villain to provide the Bajorans with a sense of justice and to publicize the massacre across the quadrant to stop the Carsassian revisionist history from burying it- Kira goes from hating him to feeling pity for him) but the road there is well worth travelling and it does a lot to explore the Bajoran and Cardassian attitude to the occupation and their relationship with each other. Having established that he's actually innocent- and a Bajoran sympathiser to boot- Kira escorts Maritza to his ship but, along the way he is attacked and killed by a Bajoran- not because he was a war criminal but simply because he was a Cardassian.

Ahhhhhhh

No seriously- it's good. Just falls apart a bit at the end.

*This was a sperg out and I'm sorry. I'm going to remember that obssessing about trains helped elect Dumpf and his gaggle of neo-lib Jeet-entusiasts.

In the Hands of the Prophets

So last episode re-introduced Gul Dukat. Lets meet another one of the DS9 rogues' gallery for the finalé of Season 1...

Vedek Winn is a religious fundamentalist and one of two Vedeks (like bishops) in line to become the next Kai (like the pope). Literally the first thing she does upon arriving on the station is shut Keiko the frick up and shut down her stupid school.

So far she's a very sympathetic villain. Winn's issue with the school is that it's teaching the kids, specifically the Bajoran kids, that the Celestial Temple is just an artificial wormhole and the Prophets are merely aliens.

Now this is some real Star Trek shit. The general disdain for religion and the repeated debunking of supposed "Gods" has been a cornerstone of this show from it's earliest days.

DS9 would tackle things differently- the Prophets are, essentially, just very advanced aliens... one theory posits them as what the Bajorans will eventually become although this idea has some issues and also it's a rip-off of the ultimate fate of humanity in Babylon 5...

...but since when has DS9 ripping-off Babylon 5 ever been something new?

Anyway, as I was saying- although the Prophets are just aliens to the Federation, DS9's writers never undermine the religious beliefs of the Bajorans: they are gods to them and they literally do all the god shit that gods are supposed to do. Similarly, just because Winn is an extremist that doesn't mean her religion is entirely bad or wrong.

To compound Keiko's problems, Miles is finding himself quite enamoured of his Bajoran assistant. She has actually been in a couple of episodes before this one but here she's given a lot more to say and do- she's smart, competent and she keeps sticking her tits in his face all the time.

Anyway, after all the shit Winn's been stirring, someone bombs the ( by luck, empty) school...

Remember how I said Winn was one of the Vedeks in the running to be the next Kai? The other one is Vedek Bariel.

You may recognise Robert Anglim as the younger priest guy (who wasn't Richard Chamberlain) from The Thorn Birds. Maybe you don't- he was later in the series after Rachel Ward and Brian Brown weren't in it. Bariel is the moderate candidate and Sisko tries topersuade him to come to the station to try and offset the violence.

He eventually agrees and arranges a photo-op with Winn- "let us stand together against this violence" he says- when Tits McWrinklenose tries to shoot him but is intercepted by Sisko doing a slow motion dive. He even gives us a slow motion "NOOOOOOOOO!" when he does it which is pretty funny. I actually don't want to undermine this scene- it's a heck of a climax.

Ahhhhhhh

Note the Bajoran special-needs clapping as Bariel does his rock-star priest act.

OK straight off- Louise Fletcher as Winn is fricking amazing. The passive aggressive shit she pulled as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Works even better here where she ties it to smiley insincere religious doubletalk. I know the Oscars is bullshit, and I guess some of the schizo dramatards think the Academy a cabal of old libertarian Jews handing out awards for whatever shit they think will most destabilise the midwest, but Fletcher's Oscar deserves to be celebrated and is a badge of her talent. Let's just have a bit of that now...

Yeah, that's Brad Dourif- voice of Chucky and another Star Trek alumni.

Bajoran extremist shenanigans will kick off season 2 and Winn will be back in action, this time allying herself with multiple Tony Award winner Frank Langella (The Tony's are the stage Oscars but even more gay).

DS9 will return... maybe even in the new SciFi hole, who knows?

Dirt

If you buy ground coffee, Congratulations!!!! You are buying dirt!!!!!

Don't buy pre ground coffee ever. Coffee grounds go stale within hours after being ground. When you buy coffee grounds from the store, the coffee is already stale and has been for probably multiple weeks already.

Seriously, that shit is stale before it even reaches the stores shelf.

Bugs

Coffee beans are a little better, not as stale as ground coffee but there are other worries.

Quality control is terrible, with the amount of contaminants very high for coffee beans.

The FDA limits contamination at 10% of the total coffee beans count are insect-infested or insect-damaged.

So yeah, ignore my advice, and keep eating the bugs like a good little NPC.

The other issue is how old the coffee beans are will heavily affect taste quality. Too fresh, and the taste will be too bland, to old and the beans will go stale. Expiration dates aren't accurate methods of determining roast date, so honedtly you are spinning a wheel whenever you buy.

How to Do Coffee Right

The only acceptable form of coffee making is the use of GREEN COFFEE BEANS. Green Coffee Beans go stale as well, but if kept in an airtight container will be good for a good 3-6 months.

Then you roast as much a you need for a week period. There is an art to coffee roasting which I am not going to explain but YOU WILL NEED TO RESEARCH. Also don't start a fire by cooking them too long lol. After roasting, you should put the coffee grounds in airtight container and wait generally between 2 days to 2 weeks lafter roasting. This highly depends on roast and what type of taste you prefer. So play around with it a bit. I personally prefer waiting a shorter amount of time, around 3-4 days.

The before you make your coffee you grind the amount of beans you need for the amount you will drink (obviously). Don't grind all at once. This ensures coffee grounds are fresh for each cup of joe.

Machine and Method

Espresso machines are best (if you can find a good one which is hard). You want to get an all metal inside one though, which honedtly can be difficult to find and expensive. Like $2000 expensive. There are ones with plastic internals that pull amazing shots but you should obviously not do that unless u like consuming microplastics. The espresso machine imaged above is really good, great workhorse, finicky, but a classic. Rancillio Silvia, is its model. This is one of the few espresso machines I still have, since I adore it, but its plastic water reserviir so I would recommend no. Just let me be nostalgic though about pulling a better shot thab you have ever tasted on a $400 machine.

This one is all metal, but obviously, doesm't have as much capabilities:

Europiccola 8, cost around $600-1000 depending on if you know how to find used stuff.

Europiccola is the other espresso machine I currently own and is good. If you are on a microplastic free diet but still like machine precise espresso, this would be good pick up.

Pulling a good shot cna be difficult. Measure out grounds and learn the right pressure ti press the grounds into the thingy (cant remember name).

Depending on machine you might want to learn how to temperature surf. This might be outdated, since newer models might just be better at getting right temp. I had Rancillio I can't remember model, but it was like a classic. Plastic internals, but pulled amazing shots. Had to temperature surf though to get it right.

Crema

Crema is the easiest test to figure out if you pulled a good shot. Crema is layer of golden brown foam on top of the black espresso, that forms NATURALLY.

More Crema = More Swag.

Less Crema = More Strag.

No Crema = You have not only failed at making espresso, but you are also probably r-slurred.

Note on Cappuccino

If you add sugar or anything else to a Cappuccino besides frothed milk and espresso then exit my post immediately. You are a cute twink who I will slam head first into a brick wall.

Cappuccino is amazing. You need a steam wand, bezt ones come attachrd to Cappuccino/espresso machine. Don't use one of those terrible handheld frothers.

You want the container you put the milk into, to be solid metam and it should be in freezer before hand, so its icy cold. Pour milk into container froth, starting at botton then rising to top to create the froth.

Top: Froth

Bottom: Steamed Milk.

You want about 50% froth and 50% steamed milk by volume.

Then you tilt espresso cup slightly like 45° with espresso already made JUST BEFORE!!!! and you pour in while tilting espresso cup back to facing up.

Cappuccino Art

Cappuccino art is created with how you pour the frothed/steamed milk into te espresso.

Using a stencil, using some sort of cinammon, or whatever isn't acceptable.

Cappuccino art is ONLY achieved through the pour, using additional instruments or methods is not only cheating but also is the equivalent of sucking a peepee.

If you see some fancy desig with a logo or whatever on Cappuccino art, then that person kust used some stencil thing and I give you permission to beat them bloody.

i am not amazing at Cappuccino art, but I am much better than you will ever be. I am not going to share my secrets either. Continue to next section.

Not Espresso

Nowadays I don't even bother and only make Pourover or Mocha Pot for Espresso (rare). Too many iszues finding an all metal espresso machine under 2k so it is what it is. That being said you can pull great shots with Mocha Pot, like Italians do all the time. You just have to he an OG artist not a scientist. You knowimsayingneighbor.

Pour over is an art as well, don't listen to the cute twinks talking about temperature with therm and measuring out yada yada yah. Its an art. You use your intuition. You won't make good coffee this way if you are a nerd.

Speaking of which.

Coffee isn't for Nerds

If you want to measure out evrrything and tempetature whatever, die. That isn't coffee. Italians (the inventors if coffee), pretty much just grab the beans roast them in the oven and grind with simple grinder amd use Mocha Pots. They pull better shots than 99% of coffee shops in America.

Nerds require fancy equipment. If you are an artist, you will require less and less fancy equipment until you can pull a great shot with a handful of green coffee beans, a handgrinder, and a stove.

Alternative to Roasting

You can buy from Coffee Roaster directly and they usually (should) in most cases roast the coffee well and deliver freshly roasted coffee.

I will be honest, this is gay. Straight men don't let other men roast their beans. So if you are gay, this might be good option. If not, stick to roasting yourself.

What Coffee Roaster to Use

While you can roast Green Coffee Beans in the oven, you absolutely shouldn't for many reasons I am not going to get into here.

What you need is a good coffee roaster. These can be expensive, bunch of different types and I don't feel like explaining. Do your own research idiot. Expect to pay at least $200 for a good one though. I have a decent drum roller type one that cost like $300, but there are even better types of coffee roasters some being $600 ones all the way up to like $20,000. Obviously thise ones that aren't drum rollers, can't remember what they are called, but they are OG as shit. You probably don't need one of those though.

Look here for Drum Rollers (my preference):

https://www.sweetmarias.com/roasting/drum-roasters.html

There are other types of coffee roasters, but yeah.

Grinder

Probably most important after roaster. Get the best one you can afford, or learn how to hand grind like a true Italian. Probably cost around 400+ for a decent one.

i have a $500 (?) roaster, pictured above. That model is outdated, but I recommend since its served me well for past 10 years and alnost as good as the Italian hands grinds.

Italy

Most importantly, to make good coffee you will need to go to Italy. If you haven't been to Italy, Congratulations!!!! Your coffee is almost guranteed to be shit.

Putting this one last, since I know this is the biggest barrier to entry and want people to read through thinking they are gonna make some good joe, then realize they can't visit Italy so they juzt wasted their entire time reading a straggy article abiut coffee making.

Import Info on Italy

When I refer to Italy, I am referring to Southern Italy.

"Northern Italy" isn't Italy, its basically Brussells + France + Amsterdam if they were black. North "Italians" can't make Coffee.

Africa isn't exactly known as an intellectual hub, though the continent has produced several successful academics. For anyone interested in receiving the best education possible on the continent, South Africa is the ideal destination. This has been both positive and negative. On the plus side, immigration into the country for academic purposes has allowed the country to attract some of the best talent on the continent. On the downside, it makes entry into university tougher, as it means you're competing with the entire continent for limited spots.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/best-universities-africa

When looking at the best universities on the continent, you'll notice that it is dominated by South African universities, with the University of Cape Town consistently taking the top spot. Over the course of my academic career, I've interacted with a few of the top universities and I'd like to share the most entertaining controversies that have emerged from them.

Some of you don't like suspense, so I'll list the three universities I'll be discussing before I begin. I hope you enjoy the read.

3. Rhodes University - #RUReferencelist

2. Stellenbosch University - Pissgate

1. University of Cape Town - Decolonsation

With each university, I'll be asking you a key question. I'm writing this after taking some promethazine pills so I'm feeling warmly sedated. Consequently, this is the theme song for the longpost:

Rhodes University - #RUReferencelist

As I've mentioned in passing a few times on the site, I attended Rhodes University for most of my academic life. I was attracted to the university because it's located in a small town and it has a reputation for being a liberal university with a notorious party scene.

You'll notice that Rhodes University isn't on the list of top African universities, and there's a reason for that - Rhodes does not partake in any ranking system. The university is quite smug about it, and it claims that it has influenced other universities from around the world to do the same.

https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews/adecadelaterrhodesuniversitysayswetoldyousoonrankingsobsession.html

In reality, from going to a few universities in SA and spending plenty of time at Rhodes, it's pretty obvious that current year Rhodes is easily trounced by most other universities. The school and the town it's in have been on a steep decline in the last few years and it shows no signs of slowing.

But I'm not here to rag on Rhodes. I'm here to discuss #rureferencelist. I've mentioned this movement in passing in other longposts, but I'll outline it again. As you know, South Africa has a r*pe epidemic, and academic settings aren't immune to this plague. During the 2010s, many female students at Rhodes complained about being r*ped by men, and the university not doing anything about it. I don't doubt that this is the case, as there were a few times dudes in my residence would tell me about their sexual escapades and sometimes, what they described was r*pe. In my opinion, a lot of men commit r*pe without knowing it. Some of it is a product of just being ignorant about consent and boundaries. S*x is a social act, and the skills to partake in the activity in a harmonious way with others requires learning and experience.

In 2016, the women of Rhodes decided they had had enough. Anonymously, a post was made on the popular Facebook group RU Queer Confessions, Questions and Crushes. The post featured a list of about a dozen male students accusing them of r*pe and domestic violence. Women then gathered in a humungous mob and went to various male residencess to find those accussed of r*pe. On that night, I was in my residence room (it was a single room I had to myself) and I was hitting my bong. This was when marijuana was still illegal (it was decriminalised in 2018), so I had to be careful about it. Imagine my shock when stoned me suddenly heard loud banging on the residence building's front door and I peered out the window to find an angry mob of women. For some reason, the weed had me paranoid and I thought they were coming to get me for smoking weed! Fortunately, I wasn't their target, but there were 3 men in my residence who were.

They managed to kidnap some of the men on the list and I'm not quite sure what they did to them, but I'm sure it was unpleasant. The university condemned the protestors, claiming that it was wrong to publish the reference list and accuse men of r*pe publicly when they hadn't been tried legally. The women did not like that, and they continued to protest. On one day they took their shirts off. I'm not sure what the logic for the shirtlessness was. Sorry I can't provide more clearer pictures. I used to have them all on an SSD but I lost it and the images seem to have been pretty much scrubbed off the internet.

The #rureferencelist received international attention, but the university which, as I've said, has a liberal persona, surprisingly stook to its unpopular decision to condemn the protests and the reference list. An interdict was obtained to put a stop to the protest which, of course, meant the use of police force. Following this, the university took disciplinary action against the girls, resulting in many of them leaving the university.

One of the people who was punished was Yolanda Dyantyi, who was found guilty of kidnapping, insubordination, and defamation. She was excluded from the university, which is a big deal because that goes on the record, making it next to impossible to find enrolment in a different university. When this happened she went on social media to complain and claim victimhood. I googled her to see what she's up to these days, and holy heck she's STILL going on about it, like literally hours ago.

https://x.com/YoliShade

Big Question: How do you interpret the shirtless protesting?

Stellenbosch University - Pissgate

So I'm currently studying at Stellenbosch University where I'm completing my PhD. I'm enjoying the university and I think it has very, very competent educators and the academia standards are much higher than at Rhodes.

In truth, these two universities are pretty much the complete opposite of each other. While Rhodes has a liberal persona, Stellenbosch takes a more conservative approach. This is in part due to the fact that it has lectures in both English and Afrikaans. This has made it quite the popular school among Afrikaaners, which is a conservative segment of the population. The school also has a reputation for being racist. When I was a wee young high school student choosing what university I wanted to go to (this would have been in 2012), I didn't even consider Stellenbosch because of its reputation.

I'm studying remotely, so I've never spent significant time physically at the university. Consequently, I can't say whether the claims are true or not. However, I haven't experienced anything remotely approaching racism in my interactions with the university. If anything, they seem to take the "colour-blind" approach instead of focusing on identity politics. This is quite different to Rhodes where identity politics is the be-all end-all.

One event that stirred up discussions about racism at Stellenbosch in recent years is #pissgate. This story involves two main characters: Babalo Ndwayana (a BIPOC) and Theuns du Toit (a mayo, I'm guessing Boer considering that last name). After a night of heavy drinking, Theuns returns to the residence and enters the room of Babalo where he proceeds to urinate over his laptop and study material. Babalo records the incident on his phone, and on the video, you can tell Theuns is quite wasted.

The video was distributed, resulting in widespread condemnation and protests. I mentioned race previously because this was interpreted as a racist incident. Theuns was expelled from the university, and Babalo pressed charges against him. Don't take this mean that Babalo was out for blood, as he was actually quite sympathetic towards Theuns.

>In an interview with News24 on 17 May, Ndwanyana said: "I would forgive him, because he is, like, also traumatised enough now …. My father said I must make criminal charges but I said to him it is already enough now. We must also think he is someone's child." 

On Reddit, you can see the heavy debates on Reddit over whether the incident was racist.

Big Question: is Theuns a racist?

University of Cape Town - Decolonsation

Technically, I did attend UCT but it was not for a degree. I just did a short course and obtained a qualification in copywriting. I do wish I had attended UCT instead of Rhodes. I have a cousin who went there and it's clear that she benefitted greatly from going to such a prestigious university. It's bullshit that 17yos have to make big decisions like picking a university when they're so young. I didn't consider shit about rankings, just "muh artsy school good!". Seventeen-year-old me was dumb. That promethazine got me drowsy as heck now, but we're going to fight through until the end. We're almost at the finish line.

A topic that has frequently arisen in recent years in the South African academic scene is the concept of decolonisation. The argument is that we have an education system shaped by the West and its worldview and ideals, to the exclusion of indigenous knowledge. This is a product of colonialism. Hence, to truly be a decolonised State, one must restructure the education system and implement one that better suits the needs of all identities, especially those BIPOCs.

Personal thoughts? Well, they're not wrong in their assessment. However, this becomes problematic once you take it to the STEM side of things. How does one decolonise mathematics or physics? Well, some have tried, as you'll soon learn.

In 2016, a discussion panel on decolonisation was held among students. In the video, we see a woman passionately talking about how necessary it is to decolonise the school. She argues that to do this, we need to completely do away with science and start from scratch. She states that among those who practice witchcraft in Black culture, they believe it is possible to send lightning to strike someone. How could science possibly explain this?! It can't and that is because science doesn't take into account Black perspectives. Not everyone in the room agreed with her, with one man stating "it's not true!". The boy was scolded by the leader of the panel and she made him apologise. I beg of you, please watch the video. It's got absolute bangers in there.

The video clip went viral, leading to many laughing and making especially fun of the idea of abolishing it. Of course went viral on Reddit and it was used as proof that woke nonsense had infiltrated everything (I don't remember whether "woke" was the word used in 2016). It got so big that even Thunderf00t dived in!

Big Question: Is science denialism for brainlets, midwits, or geniuses?

Conclusion

Darn, a BIPOC about to dose off. I'm outchea nodding like a mfer, fr fr. I can't think of much to close off. Thanks to whoever recommended that I play The Stanley Principle. It's a great game, so unique, and I'm thoroughly enjoying. I'm going to wait before I dive into The Beginner's Guide because I want to do it while on LSD, which I'll do at the end of January 2025.

Tune in next time when I attempt to define postmodernism.

The Nagus

The cold open drops more foreshadowing than sunshine on my butt: Sisko wants go to Bajor with Jake- he plans to visit The Fire Caverns (later revealed to be home to the Pah-Wraiths and they will be the site of Sisko's last confrontation with Dukat in the final episode)- Rom is acting like Rom and he quotes our first ever Rule of Acquisition (Number One, no less- "Once you've got their money, never give it back". As the episode progresses we get the sixth rule too- "Never allow family to stand in the way of opporunity")- we see Grand Nagus Zek, his weird staff and his huge manservant Maihardu. Loads of important shit gets shown for the first time this episode (EDIT NB: Because some r-slurs need it spelling out- the writers did not preplan anything in DS9 and merely returned to these ideas later on). This is also the first proper "Ferengi Episode"- a controversial concept as a lot of people don't like them. Although there were some rotten Ferengi episodes, there were plenty of good ones and I've always had a soft spot for them because they show a slice of Star Trek life from a different cultural perspective- a window into another way of thinking and existing within a setting we've only seen from one perspective in the past. Also, they're kind of like Fiddler on the Roof in space.

The Nagus has arrived on DS9, apparently on a cooming expedition. He intends to indulge in five of Quark's most popular holoporn programs. They would tone down the gooning implications in later seasons (and the holosuite would be used more for recreations of the Battle of Britain, somewhat-self-indulgent Rat Pack knock-offs and copyright infringing James Bond parodies- no seriously... Paramount got threatened with legal action by MGM after 'Our Man Bashir' in Season 5. How New Line's Austin Powers avoided this I don't know) but here in season 1, the message is clear as to what people are paying for in the holosuite:

_{They were together in real life btw: deal with it...}

_{At least he's not really a Jeet}

Zek invites himself to dinner at Quark's apartment. Side note- Ferengi use chopsticks and a lazy susan. There he explains his real reasons for the visit: he plans to use Quark's bar to host a biznez meeting to discuss Ferengi biznez, especially Gamma Quadrant biznez. He's chosen Quark's bar because apparently only Quark can arrange some uncomfortable-looking Ikea furniture in a room for short men with big ears to sit on. During the dinner Zek expresses disdain for BIPOC attending the hoo-man school so Rom tells BIPOC not to go there any more. BIPOC is less than happy about this and matters are not made better because Chief Obrien is currently teaching classes because the casting budget for this episode was already stretched by the Ferengi characters & would not cover Rosalind Chao's fee while Keiko is on holiday. This is the same Chief Obrien who literally had to fix every replicator on the station a few weeks back- now his wife's away he suddenly has all the time in the world to moonlight as a teachercel.

Getting back to the meeting: Nagus Zek explains that it's important that the Ferengi expand into the Gamma Quadrant so as to exploit a market where the unfounded reputation they have in the Merchant-phobic Alpha Quadrant can't ruin their chances.

Everyone agrees that this is an unreasonable goyim misrepresentation of a simple hard-working people.

But Zek feels he's too old to lead his people into this new frontier and he announces that he will now appoint a successor... Quark.

Nobody's impressed and spend the next few days low key threatening Quark- someone even tries to assassinate him. Compounding his woes, Zek suddenly dies leaving Quark without any support. Odo suggests doing an autopsy but everyone laughs as Zek's body is already gone- upon their deaths Ferengi are vacuum dessicated and the dishes of their remains auctioned off. One piece of Zek is worth 20 bars of gold-pressed latinum and is expected to double in value by the following year.

I'm not sure what Ferengi do with these powdered remains but those of great men like Zek sell for a high price and generally increase in value over time.

Quark tries to play it tough and act like he knows what he's doing which leads to this bizarre scene:

Turns out the bomb was Rom and Zek's useless son. They then try and blow Quark out of an airlock- something they're only prevented from doing by the reappearance of Zek who faked his death to test his useless son. A test his son failed uselessly. So Zek must remain Nagus and exploit the Gamma Quadrant personally, a task which will have huge implications in season 2. Far from being angry at his brother, Quark is just pleased he's not a complete failure as a Ferengi. For some reason Rom does not face charges for attempted murder.

There's a B plot about Jake teaching BIPOC to read which isn't worth getting into except for this bit where they goon over a hot Vulcan girl:

The first true Ferengi episode is... fine.

It lays the foundations for a lot of future Ferengi culture- their society is not one of true capitalism and free markets but rather a rigidly hierarchical one based on monopolies and price-fixing with the Nagus sitting at the center dictating everything and taking a cut of it all. Later we will learn of the Ferengi Commerce Authority which creates an impossible web of red tape in the Alliance which can only be navigated via extortionate bribes. This is why Ferengi have to gouge the life out of any non-Ferengi they do business with: their margins are so narrow due to all the bureaucracy and corruption.

Quick note on gold-pressed latinum: it's not a currency- it's a commodity and therefore it's price presumably fluctuates. Latinum is a metal, liquid at room temperature, which cannot be synthesised or replicated- hence it's intrinsic value. The latinum is traditionally pressed into sleeves of gold (which can be replicated and therefore has no real value besides looking nice) which are shaped as slips, strips and bars. Although the value of latinum fluctuates 100 slips make a strip and 20 strips make a bar. There are also bricks which are massively expensive but I don't know how many bars make a brick. I think that if you consider a slip to be worth about $1 you are in the right ball park. Other non-replicatable materials include dilithium crystals and possibly uridium (a fictional metal, originally invented for the 1980s vidya of the same name, from which starship sensor arrays are made) because the whole reason for the Cardassian occupation of Bajor was to strip-mine the planet for uridium. I suppose it's possible that different materials use different amounts of energy to replicate and it might just be more energy efficient for the Cardassians to mine the stuff. I suppose it's also possible that Cardassian replicators (which the show has established already as being a bit shit) can't do it but Federation ones can. Anyway...

Vortex

Jeff Lynne from ELO (or an alien who looks a lot like him) comes aboard DS9 and gets involved in some plot to rip off a Faberge egg thing Quark's trying to sell to a pair of twins (it is never explained why Jeff's involved in this). In the ensuing fight Jeff shoots and kills one of the twins and is arrested on suspicion of murder (although the twins fired first, it was Jeff who pulled a gun on them) while the surviving brother swears revenge.

I do wonder how they cast these twins and who got the decision on which one lives (and gets most of the speaking lines) and which one dies. Did they share both salaries equally? After all- they wouldn't have gotten the gig unless there was two of them.

Anyway, Jeff is one of those tricksy types who gaslamps Odo into believing he can lead the constable to his people- as proof he shows him a shapechanging butt-plug thing he keeps in a locket (why the heck was he allowed to keep this in his cell?).

Sisko and Dax go to Jeff's home planet and find them to be authoritarian buttholes but this week's interpretation of the Prime Directive demands that Jeff is returned to be executed without trial. Odo gets the gig to take him but re-routes to a nebula where Jeff says Odo might find his people. Of course he can't and it's just a stasis pod where Jeff has stashed his daughter (how did he get it here?). The shapechanging butt-plug is a key. He's a dissident, you see and was just trying to protect his daughter (from what? Are they a persecuted minority? We never find out).

The twin shows up in a sharp pointy-looking starship (must be a nightmare to dock) and there's a bit of action which, I'll grant you, does look nice...

...but this whole story makes no sense and Jeff's bullshit about the Changelings (this is the first time we ever hear Odo's people referred to as such) just feels like the episode itself bullpooping the audience into wasting our time watching this because we thought something important might occur. You might also notice a lot of "never explained" and "for some reason" bits in this review- that's never a good sign. There's also this bit where a rock falls on Odo's head and knocks him out- how the frick does that work? He doesn't have a brain.

It's all so disappointing.

Dramatis Personae

Another alien mind-virus has everybody on the station acting weird except for Odo. It was brought on board by a Klingon ship which asplodes after coming through the wormhole after cutting short their planetary survey mission into the Gamma Quadrant. I can't help but wonder how a Vor'cha class battlecruiser can blow into pieces right next to a busy star port and yet not cause any damage to any other vessels or the station itself.

One Klingon is successfully beamed over before his ship asplodes and mumbles one word before he dies; "victory". He carries his own personal logs which have suffered enough damage as to take a while to decipher (or maybe they got the logs from the cruiser wreckage, I can't remember). While this is happening Odo has a massive spazz in Quarks...

...but quickly recovers. This is never explained but is clearly his reaction to the virus. Quark also doesn't seem affected but his usefulness is restricted for reasons you'll see in a minute. Everybody else starts acting paranoid and weird and turns on each other forming into two groups- one loyal to Sisko and the other seeking to overthrow him, led by Kira. The Klingon logs eventually show that the exact same pattern of events occured aboard their cruiser but the significance of this is downplayed by Obrien (acting as Sisko's enforcer while Sisko hides insolently in his office and DNGAF) who, correctly, points out that Kingons tend to get promoted by assassinating their commanders. How the frick things like a Gamma Quadrant planetary survey mission get done under these conditions is unfathomable. The Klingons found some kind of ancient alien historical archive and it somehow causes people to reenact ancient historical events, presumably this was supposed to happen under more controlled circumstances than we see happening here.

There are two good things about this episode: the first is the subtle way the characters are afffected by the archive- they retain their sense of selves and their motivations seem consistent with their previously established characters. Kira's initial reasons for toppling Sisko is that she thinks he and the Federation are a threat to Bajor, Dax is an old man who is full of reminiscences and Obrien is a chippy and bad tempered Irish shit. The second reason is Kira being crazy hot. I never remember finding Nana Visitor this attractive before but, God-she is sexy AF and some of her antics in this episode are particularly coom-worthy.

God I wish I was Quark right here...

Avery Brooks is quite good doing Sisko's Nero act in this episode (Brooks was always better playing bad guys) and it causes him to make a strange alien clock instead of playing a fiddle. the clock was a really nice prop and we often see it in the background in his office during subsequent episodes:

Possibility of making a Starshit hole

I'm thinking we need to have a hole dedicated to SciFi TV and movies- particularly shows like old school Star Trek, Stargate etc. I'd be willing to put 50,000 DC towards it if other people could help raise the other half of the cost. I also have no ability with CSS or banner creation. IDK, what do you think?

(Reply to this post)

@Redactor0 grandpa confirm what I got wrong

Nothing fam. Just like I expect from you. Let's see if there's a few points I can elaborate on slightly.

USA Navy forces were not immediately aware of the ramifications the Battle of Midway would have upon the momentum of the Pacific Theatre

Keep in mind that both sides didn't even know how what ships the other had. They were getting bullshit intelligence from their own pilots all the time, so for example the Japanese were overestimating how many carriers they had sunk and had no idea we still had 3 left in the Pacific at that time.

the sheer dominant magnitude of the influence an aircraft carrier would as a weapons platform would supercede even the wildest prewar speculations

I gotta push back on this just slightly. Battleships were going obsolete but it wasn't completely over quite yet. Notice how important they were at Leyte Gulf on both sides and that was near the end of the war. This is one thing where I actually got some insight from computer games. Like so often, that comes in the form of actually getting the geometry involved. A battleship at flank speed could get about as far overnight as a carrier-based plane could fly (I'm oversimplifying here, but you get it). So you could actually dash in and catch them with a little luck. Especially if there were a few clouds out.

But it was really marginal. At the end of the war the proximity fuze for AA shells came out which helped the battleships a lot but also jet engines and guided bombs. And just planes that could fly farther. So it was really obvious by 1945 that within a few years they would be totally useless for fighting other ships.

the Royal Palace in hue

The bastards got there before Old Man Redactor could take pictures of it. But there was a lot of beautiful stuff left in Hue even after the battle.

this upcoming deafeat would be the greatest blow dealt to the US for the entire war

That's a really good way of putting it. You must have some angloid DNA.

It was the single greatest massacre of VC forces to the extent that they literally ceased to fricking be a political power within the communist sphere in Vietnam entire and Cambodia. From then on the North Vietnamese had near absolute control of military operations.

The VC were never really an independent force. At least not at the top level. There were lots of commies in South Vietnam at the beginning of the war of course, but the leadership was always directed from Hanoi. What was really changed by Tet is that all these low-level commies native to the South got killed off. After that, there was no longer any pretense that this was a guerilla war. By the time the old man got there (I think 1970) it was completely a conventional war between the North and the South fought with advanced high-tech weapons. He wasn't hauling an M-16 around when he was on his photography trips to old historical buildings in Hue because there weren't any guerillas to be scared of. Those people were all dead.

The Phoenix Program was also very helpful here. Just using basic 1960s police and office work they rooted out the commies in the villages. This was basically just turning the tables on them. Going after everyone who is on the enemy side. Except we didn't use terrorism the way the VC did, chopping off the head of the mayor's kid and shit like that. The cops just arrested people in 90% of cases. (Statistics on the Phoenix Program are quite interesting, something to go into more detail about someday.)

The US and ARVn performance was absolutely spectacular, perhaps one of history's great battles like fricking Cannae or Waterloo or something

Let's not suck our peepees too hard here. Old Man tells me a story second hand of a guy who had been in some big base around Saigon during Tet. He complained that he never got to shoot anybody because they were all slaughtered by .50 cal machineguns before they even got close enough. This wasn't Hannibal or Wellington we were dealing with.

us Air Cavalry (helicopter troops)

My dad will swear up and down that he hated everything about the Army but this is exactly the kind of comment that would draw him out. The 101st was airborne, it was NOT cavalry!

the lies and deception of the military a and 2 administrations about how good the war went

That's what the real crisis was. If it wasn't Tet it would have been something else to trigger it. They kept saying the war is about to end and they were clearly lying. This is a generation that wasn't beyond sacrifices. Everyone's parents had been in WW2 in some shit job sweeping asbestos off the floor of a shipyard or on the side of the world fighting. A lot of them never came back. But there was a purpose. People will sacrifice a lot for a purpose, but if they're getting jerked around, they notice real fast.

Old Man's story about this is listening to the radio where Nixon is saying that we're not bombing Laos and he's looking up in the sky and there's planes above him heading west. It didn't take fricking Descartes to guess where they were going.

unexpectedly brought low USA civilian morale to continue to send their sons overseas into the meatgrinder

A lot of the conventional wisdom about this isn't always right. We had something like half our casualties after Tet. (One third, I dunno.) And popular support for the war wasn't really eroded all that much if you look at the polling data.

Keep in mind that there's a certain class of people who dominate the discussion of the Vietnam War. Specifically: Guys who dodged the draft so they didn't have to go there and know anything about it. There's an extreme level of self-serving bullshit they claim. Like that the "Anti-War Movement" (lol you sure cared about the Vietnam-Cambodia war) had any impact at all on anything other than being so disgusting they helped get Nixon elected in 1968. These are the last fricking people on Earth you should ever believe. I trust the guys fighting on the other side 1000x more than them.

By the time 2023 arrived the most critical munitions would be basic artillery shells

So my two things I was saying going into this is ATGMs are gonna be important (because of experience in the Middle East in previous decades) and basic b-word artillery shells. There was this cult of precision munitions from Desert Storm. The thing I never heard anybody explain is: What if you don't know exactly where the enemy is tho?

Unironic WW1 bunkers and trenches also came to dominate the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine from Donbass to Crimea, with static artillery war and massed charges for both sides being the most popular strategy, on a grinding stalemate similar as to the ending phase of 1952s Korea War.

The last full-scale war we had between two opponents that was a fair fight was the Iran-Iraq War and it was a heck of a lot like this. I keep telling everyone, but nobody believes little old Redactor. I guess I gotta post more Chronicles of Victory.

!historychads !anticommunists

Although it's technically a holiday in Hong Kong I am in the office, albiet with nothing to do so I have been watching DS9. Here are my thoughts...

Emissary

The best Star Trek pilot, both in terms of entertainment and setting the scene and establishing the main characters for the subsequent series. Quark and Odo aren't given much to do but nevertheless we get an impression of who they are and their relationship to one another- Quark's nephew BIPOC is presented here as more of a hardened delinquent rather than the naughty kid he would later appear as and BIPOC's father Rom only appears in the background. Kira is pretty annoying tbh and it took most of season 1 to let her calm down and stop being angry and unhinged about literally everything. Everyone else is pretty much as they would be throughout the show, including Gul Dukat who has a brief appearance.

The story revolves around the immediate aftermath of the Cardassian withdrawl from their 50-year occupation of Bajor and the uneasy new alliance between the Bajorans and the Federation, who the Bajorans fear might just be a new occupation force. The Bajoran gods, the Prophets, are revealed to be aliens who exist outside of time and space in an artificial wormhole which connects the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants of our galaxy. By the end of the episode the Prophets have agreed to allow transit to the new frontier through their wormhole after a lengthy extrapolation between themselves and DS9 commander Sisko on the nature of linear time.

This focusses on why Sisko- who insists we temporal beings are always moving forward- continues to dwell on the death of his wife during the Borg invasion, rather than moving on which he has argued is what we do. This is very smart writing- taking the very out-there concept of aliens who exist at every point in time simultaneously and linking it to the very relatable experience of grief. It would have been better without Avery Brooks' profoundly uneven performance. I think he is capable of acting some scenes very well- the relationship between Sisko and his son Jake is one of the best father-son combos in tv history- but he cannot play strong emotions and resorts to this odd staccato shouting which just seems weird.

Why exactly the Prophets- who experience past, present and future as one- would seem surprised or even threatened by Sisko deserves some exploration. Especially so since later seasons will reveal he has a very close relationship to one of them. I hypothesise that they are, to some extent, playing along with the scene but, at the same time, this actually is the beginning of a linear cause and effect series of events for them. They use Sisko's description of linear events as a template to create their own, deciding to interract more closely with the temporal universe beyond their own wormhole- that these events occur in the past from our perspective is irrelevant as the Prophets can leave their own dimension at any point along the timeline. From their perspective the line of cause and effect is- meet with Sisko, realise he's 'one of them'; send one of their own to create him; take a greater interest in Bajor and the greater galaxy (including abducting an ancient religious extremist to act as an alternative emissary- a wake-up call to goad Sisko into taking his role as emissary seriously, and saving the Alpha Quadrant from a Dominion fleet); and latterly suffering a schism among their ranks which creates the Pah-Wraiths. This happens all over our timeline but is a series of one-after-the-other events to them and is their exploration of linear existence. Of course, to some extent, they always knew they would do this as they always had knowledge of past, present and future as one- in the words of Dr. Manhattan; "We're all puppets, but some of us can see the strings".

Past Prologue

The first regular episode of DS9 introduces possibly the greatest reoccuring character in Star Trek history- challenged only by his fellow Cardassian Gul Dukat- Elim Garak (or "plain simple Garak" as he prefers). He is the only Cardassian to remain on the station and is suspected of being a spy, which is half true (but of course, the truth is just an excuse for a poor imagination). Andrew J. Robinson (who also played the Scorpio in Dirty Harry- he was wrong to feel lucky- and the heavy-bleeding father in the original Hellraiser) plays Garak a little too creepy and gay and apparently Rick Berman told him to cut that shit out, so Garak straightens out quite a lot in subsequent appearances. Garak is the best part of the episode, the rest of it is some guff about Bajoran extremists- whom we never hear from again- and another appearance by the utterly tiresome House of Duras in the form of the sisters Lursa and B'Etor (in their defence, they do seem to have nice tits) who are smuggling bomb parts for the extremists. Lets just remind ourselves of what eventually happened to them:

Anyway, none of this goes anywhere and Kira ends up looking like a bit of an idiot for initially supporting the nice-haired extremist leader- to be fair she does redeem herself towards the end. All anyone cares about in this episode is Garak and it's worth watching for him.

A Man Alone

Cut to: Bashir and Quark lusting after Dax (Jeets and Jews being notorious for this kind of shit). Everyone assumes that Sisko is going to feed her a length but he insists they're just old friends. For some reason I startrd imagining the noises Avery Brooks makes when fricking while writing this.

Anyway- none of this is the point of the episode and Odo harrumpfing and admitting to being a vocel before jumping up and slugging a guy at the dabo table and telling him he's got 26 hours (one Bajor day) to get off the station cues us to the focus of this episode. The guy he hit was some kind of smuggler but not the good kind- he let a kid die cos her family couldn't pay for the medicine she needed. He then killed a Cardassian for which Odo arrested and charged him. Later on he's seen getting a massage by a web-fingered holo-whore when's he's stabbed in the back and killed.

The tale requires us to go along with the notion that Odo might actually be the killer- after all, we don't know him that well. However Rene Aberjoniois is a fully paid up regular cast member contracted until at least the end of the season. I suppose, back in the 90s, there were still a lot of people watching who didn't understand how TV gets made but the whole thing never gets resolved and a bunch of threads get left hanging- most notably the motivations of Chudd McWrinklenose...

...who leads the witch hunt against Quark when he gets relieved of duty. I'm going to spoil the ending cos it's not very interesting. The suggler guy cloned himself and then killed his clone. Bashir demonstrates this by growing a clone of the guy revealing that, when it's grown, it will be allowed to leave medbay and go have a life- Odo states that "killing your clone is still murder". Now, I grant you that this might just be Bajoran law but lets just recall how Riker and the awful Pulaski reacted when someone cloned them:

The B-plot is about the O'Briens and Keiko being unhappy with nothing to do on the station. The woman was a botanist on the Enterprise (I assume she and a bunch of other civilians worked in specialist jobs like than somewhere among the huge and echoingly- empty halls of that ship- seriously, the Enterprise-D had a compliment of less than a thousand people -including civilians- and had literally millions of square feet of floorspace- place must've been empty as frick) and now she's sat at home with the kid. So she decides to become a schoolteacher because, when all other career choices dry up, that's what you do. She goes to persuade Rom to send his son to the school. Rom is... very different to how he'll be later. Of course,nobody likes Keiko so anything about her is unpopular. A lot of this is for the same reasons that nobody liked Skylar in Breaking Bad- male writers project onto wife characters and make them drag-wheels for the male protagonists... their feelings and ideas an obstacle to be overcome. Nevertheless, here's a compilation of Keiko being an annoying ladygarden:

In summary: meh.

I really want to know why Odo doesn't just turn his arms into tentacles and wrap up perps when arresting them or why he grunts and gasps while he's fighting considering he's a changeling who doesn't breathe.

Babel

Cold open on something I've never seen before: a hard working Irishman. Potatoneighbors usually only put the effort into three things- drunkeness, spousal abuse and the glorification of heinous acts of terrorism. But Chief Miles O'Brien will do anything to avoid having to go home and talk to his wife so he's personally taking charge of literally every actof maintenence on the station. DS9 was a shoddy rush-job, it seems and Cardassian technology is a bit shit compared to the Federation stuff. After fixing yet another anus-juice-producing replicator we see a mysterious object within release a strange gas...

The station becomes Wuhan to an aphasia virus which makes people spount gibberish. This is never funnier than when it's O'Brien- Colm Meany (an actually legitimately great actor) delivers this stuff wonderfully and it's an incredible shame that he's removed from the episode so soon. I could watch this shit for 40 minutes no trouble:

This episode is actually quite good and benefits from having no real b-plot. The closest you get is that Quark inadvertently spreads the virus further by breaking into the crew quarters on the command decks to use the replicators after the ones in his bar break and O'Brien's too busy having his spazz to fix them. Now this begs a question: what the frick are people paying Quark for if he's just using the same ship replicators as everyone else to make his food and drink? Is it ambience? I considered the idea that maybe Quark has licences to replicate stuff you can't get at home but then how's he doing it from a crew replicator? Maybe everyone only gets a certain ration of replicator credits and Quark's takes latinum for more but then that really raises the idea that his patrons are gluttons. I suppose the gambling and holo-whoring is something you can't do in your quarters but everyone acts like the food and drink is something special too.

Quark and Odo are the only two main cast members who don't get affected by the virus by the end of the episode which actually makes a lot of sense as Odo's a changeling and numerous TNG episodes established that Ferenghi brains don't work like goyim brains do.

Anyway- first objectively good regular episode of season 1. The next episode will be even better...

Previous posts on this subject, even if you don't want to read the whole thing you should check the description of the candidates and parties involved from the first link because I'll use the same marseys to represent them for a easier reading

https://rdrama.net/post/323123/marseyflagromania-a-literal-political-thriller-movie

https://rdrama.net/post/323407/marseyflagromania-romanian-elections-drama-continues-elections

https://rdrama.net/post/323949/marseyflagromania-our-spy-political-thriller-goes

Political rivals

• This was annoying to write because I don't know what details are actually relevant enough, I don't want to make this too boring A little backtrack first. I focused a lot of Georgescu in the previous posts but now the parties and the relations between them are more important for the drama. PSD and USR really don't get along. The old guard wants any new person entering politics to follow their orders while is formed from politicians who want to dethrone them and form their own political 'dyasty'. So they really hate each other. As I said in the previous post, the parties are too new to really have clear love or hate relations with either side in this conflict.

• So, when the Constitutional Court (controlled by ) demanded recounts for the first round of the presidential election, USR were naturally suspicious. PSD would never do something in their favor after all. Then the recounts happened and nothing changed, and ok, if these buttholes aren't trying to frick us over then what was the point? But they still remained tense, because while this move was weird and useless, it's a clear warning that are preparing to mess with the elections. And it turns out they were right to be worried

• After the elections were cancelled people were expecting, you know, stuff like explanations, accountability, arrests, plans to guard against similar shit in the future and other stuff that competent countries do At the beginning things were fine, some heads of the nazi and other far right organizations that threatened with violent riots were arrested, members had their homes searched, and our authorities were working with NATO and EU over the election interferences. For some reason, Georgescu was left alone. But hey, we're still in the early stages of the investigation, we just uncovered this whole russian plot, his time will come right?

• That planned riot was a failure, people didn't show up, some literal nazis were caught trying to enter Bucharest with weapons hidden in their cars, lots of funny shit. The guys were jailed Later released Then grabbed by the police again ...then released for good and allowed to frick out of the country This is some shit, isn't it? Aside from a few r-slurs threatening violence and screaming about the jews on the internet that were fined no one faced any punishment for the whole thing. And no one bothered Georgescu Add the fact that we still don't have any extra information on what happened during the elections and it's once again starting to look like this bullshit is just our own politicians doing stupid shit. But the question is, are they working with Russia or is this whole Russia story just a lie?

• Since they were already paranoid, USR saw the writing on the wall and accused PSD of trying to steal the elections as soon as the presidential ones were cancelled. After all, they were battling Georgescu for the president position, so the cancellation affected them just as much as it affected him. Besides, if the elections were cancelled because of Russian interference, then both the presidential and the parliamentary elections should be cancelled, since Georgescu's unofficial party POT won seats through the same TikTok strategy, but only the elections that PSD lost are being remade. But since they spent so much time during the elections screaming about how dangerous Russia and Georgescu were they now came out looking like hypocrites and were criticised for siding with the far right just to keep their political power.

Trying to form a government - new alliances and betrayals

• Since no faction won a majority for the parliament, our politicians are now stuck trying to make coalitions together. As the parties were branded as traitors the most obvious solution is for and to form a pro-NATO/EU coalition and leave the anti-NATO/EU parties in opposition, right? Too bad they hate each other's guts

• So, the first tentative alliance was formed. PSD + PNL + USR + UDMR UDMR is the party of our hungarian minority and they are big enough to make a difference in the parliamentary negotiations so despite being hated by everyone they are accepted into every single coalition ever. They are the single biggest whores in out politics, but then again I already said they are hungarians

• are starting to accuse our president of being an illegitimate president, since he only kept his position because our Constitutional Court refused to allow a new one to be elected. They said that if he doesn't step down after his term is over on December 22nd he's an unelected dictator. USR agreed with them. Once again, they were criticised for preferring to side with the extremists over working with their political rivals.

• Multiple embarrassing slapfights happened while all parties were trying to negotiate their coalition. USR came with an 8 point political reform program and said that if it's not accepted in full they will abandon the coalition and join the in the opposition. While their plan was good, their unwillingness to negotiate it while they were already hated by the were obviously not in their favor. Ciolacu, leader of PSD , insisted on being named prime minister, but PNL told him that his embarrassing failure in the elections (couldn't even enter the second round) alongside his disastrous economical policies during his last term made him unfit to be placed in the same position again So PSD decided to grab their toys and go home and told everyone that they'll join the parties coalition. This was a problem since they are the biggest party in the parliament so them joining means that they can form the government together. They said that they will make sure to only vote pro- NATO/EU proposals but no one trusts them, so... shit

• PNL decided that if their brother party isn't in the coalition then they'll back off too and soon after UDMR threw in the towel too. So, that will leave only USR and some minority parties in the coalition or what? In the mean time USR went to the president to complain about his unconstitutional mandate extension. They refused to stand up when he joined the meeting room, he didn't shake their hands, they told him to resign, he said no, and the whole thing lasted three minutes in total. Meeting ended after

• But plot twist! Not even a day after 'resigning' PSD told everyone that they were joking and that they'll still form a pro-EU/NATO coalition and invited all the other parties to negotiation again... aside from USR who were thus officially kicked out of the coalition. PSD + PNL + UDMR can form a majority together, a barely there majority true, but still a majority.

• USR threatened to not vote the new government, probably hoping that the in-party rivalries will destroy the barely there majority and will force the other parties to re-invite them in the coalition. Instead, convinced 20 parliamentarians from AUR to vote for them, and now we finally have a government!

• Ciolacu was named prime minister again, and with USR out of the picture PSD controls most of the country again.

Lmao wtf is going on?

• After this childish political battle more and more people started to accept that the real coup was done by PSD Again. EU, confused that there is evidence that Russia messed around our elections but also sniffing bullshit, keeps harassing TikTok for investigations. In the meantime America praises our decision to cancel the election every few days. At least someone is happy with the situation?

• Obviously now, when things started to calm down, it's the perfect time for another bombshell to drop! A journo group announced that they have proof that PNL paid for Georgescu's campaign! At this point people weren't even shocked just exasperated and done with the whole circus PNL denied it and said that they paid a firm to promote their campaign and that their money was instead funnelled into Georgescu's campaign. Really?

• Still, things don't make sense Georgescu's campaign was massive, with millions of bots and dozens of sites involved, the cost alone must have been way past what PNL paid, and multiple countries confirmed Russia's involvement. We're still missing a few things here

• Trying to patch all the information... PSD wanted to promote AUR to split USR's anti-establishment votes and lower their winning chances. Realizing this, PNL then decided to promote Georgescu as a way of splitting AUR's far-right votes so that PSD's plan will fail. But at some point Russia decided to promote Georgescu too to stir chaos and/or coup us and massively blew up his popularity. PSD was too busy with their schemes to notice anything and gave some of their votes to AUR in the first round, accidentally kicking themselves out of the second round. Georgescu and Lasconi won the first elections because these two r-slurs were too busy fighting each other. That's why our secret services and didn't react to Georgescu's raise in popularity, they were involved in the whole mess too and now they didn't know how to swipe everything under the rug as much as possible.

• Still, Georgescu was a problem and something had to be done, so they had to sound the alarm and call NATO's help. Russia's plans were stopped PSD , until now disappointed that they lost the presidency and their hold on the parliament was severely diluted, realized that they now have an excuse to steal the elections and get their control over the country back. They couldn't do any bullshit with all the NATO/EU eyes on them so Russia's interference was like a gift send from God Himself into their laps. So they talked with the Constitutional Court to annul the elections, all with our allies panicked blessing, kicking Georgescu out of his top position for now, caused one heck of the mess during the coalition negotiations, and managed to kick out USR too PNL just shrugged and went back into allying with them, while and parties were left defeated and screaming in the dust

• Another theory here is that, after messing up and accidentally promoting Georgescu on top on the race with Russia's help, parties wanted to let him win the presidency and join forces to control the parliament and block any dumb shit he wants to do. Especially since he has some ideas similar to Trump, so maybe they'll get along or something. But Biden's cabinet insisted that we do something about it so the elections were cancelled. Unfortunately, now people around Trump, like his son and Musk, are bitching about Soros and democracy, so what do we do? America might still get pissed at us Now wait, we have an idea! We'll just do nothing against Georgescu himself, we'll postpone the new elections and any investigation until Trump steps into the White House and if he still wants Georgescu as president we'll just let him candidate like nothing happened while blaming everything on Biden and his people and things will be fine

Current situation

• So, right now we still don't know what exactly is with Georgescu He seems to be both with our glowies and with Russia. Mostly probably PSD will try to negotiate with him until the new presidential elections (somewhere in spring most lkely) and if he seems like he can be reasoned with (read, he'll listen to their orders - and ) he'll be allowed to run, if not they'll just get some institution to forbid him from running again PDS has not only gotten more power, but will also get bolder in their bullshit next elections since the population didn't react to them stealing the elections in any way, so why not do it again?

• Out of all the parties, AUR started to work with PSD the most. It's expected that the rest of them will be pushed out of politics one way or another until AUR will become the far-right controlled opposition to PSD. A few parliamentarians from the other parties are already two steps away from getting kicked out of their new positions because of different cases opened against them in the past (corruption, defamation, antisemitism, and other shit). USR is marginalised ever further, and seems like they'll even lose their anti status-quo party to AUR

• parties and their supporters are still screaming about how the government is illegitimate and try to get people to protest them, but since it's cold and most of us are doing the last minute preparations for Christmas they don't have much any success

• But there's still time for other plot twists to happen, so who knows what the future will bring?

The (second) revolution that never was

• Quick funny thing that didn't fit in the main post So, two weeks after the elections were cancelled, Georgescu's voters finally realized that they were dunked on by the establishment and decided to actually carry out a violent revolution We're serious this time guys, we swear! So they threatened to gather in the streets with axes and bats if the president doesn't step down after his mandate expires on December 22 Like with all of the shit that happened until now, this was massively promoted on TikTok

• In the mean time, in order to calm down the far right rumours that EU couped us in order to force Romania to enter the war alongside Ukraine, our (old) government used it's last days in office to approve two laws: one where Romania can now down foreign drones flying over our airspace, which could be used as a potential escalation against Russia, and anther one where foreign generals from allied countries can take command over our army. Yeah, totally not suspicious at all and will definitely calm everyone down (Last one should be called the 'America take the wheel' law tbh )

• To prove to everyone that they are hardcore patriots willing to die for their country at any time, our brave revolutionaries panicked that our new NATO army will break their bones if they start shit and stayed at home. No one turned out to even protest peacefully So that embarrassing episode ended without any bloodshed

All right, last two things:

• our diplomat in America said at some point that our secret services work hard to gather data for CIA, fifth largest contributors actually. This will totally calm down all those conspiracy theories about glowies and us being a NATO colony

• First shit our prime minister said after taking his role was that we are ready to fully support Trump's peace plan for Ukraine, so if at any point EU plans to keep supporting Zelensky after America bows out of the conflict they should start planning on how to do it without us

On tonight's episode:

We begin the NewJeans Saga. Join us for a brief look at the history of the major players in the scandal, as well as the opening volleys of a feud that could alter the landscape of pretty ricefoids shaking their hips on stage for ever.

Who is MHJ?

What exactly is, a NewJeans?

Why do I keep using Twice for the OP?

Find the answers to all of this and more, right after these messages from our sponsor:

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programing.

Christmas Thread Theme

Introduction

On the morning of November 28th, 2024, an official representative of the superstar Kpop group NewJeans announced that the members would be holding a press conference to address the ongoing dispute with their record label, ADOR. Two weeks prior, on November 13th, the group sent a letter notifying ADOR of numerous issues that they considered to be breaches of their contract. Per a (standard) clause in the contract, ADOR had 14 days to respond to and ameliorate these breaches. If it failed to do so, NewJeans would have the option to terminate their exclusive contract, without penalty. With the 14 day deadline set to pass at 12:00 AM KST, November 29th, it seemed premature to call a press conference. However, the group was planning to board a plane to Japan in preparation for promotional activities later that evening, and expressed their wish to update their fans on the situation before ADOR could take advantage of their travel to control the media narrative.

They know what they did

And so, at 8:30 PM, the members of NewJeans and a PR representative met with the press to announce their response to ADOR's failure to rectify the alleged contract breaches. What followed was a bizzare press conference that saw members claim their contract was terminated and that they:

• were no longer under contract with ADOR after midnight

• would not need to pay a termination penalty

• would begin seeking other oppurtunities while finishing scheduled events with ADOR

And the really bizarre part...

• would not seek to confirm the termination of their contract via legal action.

This, of course, raised numerous questions amongst the entertainment reporters present who have a solid grasp on how contract terminations work. I'm sure the dramatards in the audience who understand contract law, or are capable of tying their own shoes, have many of the same questions. Thankfully, the girls took some time to take questions from the press.

An excerpt from the press conference. Did you understand?

Always a good idea to check the specifics after terminating the contract

Leaving the world with more questions than answers, the members of NewJeans boarded a plane to Japan to resume promotional activities, setting the internet ablaze with discussion of what was in the future for NewJeans. Well, in order to predict the future, one must first understand the past.

And that past can only be found...

...In the K-Hole.

The Main Players

HYBE

The illegitimate love child of Kim Jong-Un and Xi Jinping Bang Si-Hyuk

HYBE Corporation, initially founded by Bang Si-hyuk in 2005 as Big Hit Entertainment, is the largest of the big 4 record companies in Kpop, with a market capitalization almost 4x greater than that of their next largest competitor, JYP Entertainment. Their success is directly tied to that of their most popular group, BTS, who during their heyday, generated more GDP for South Korea than the Korean domestic airline industry. This great financial success provided Big Hit Entertainment with the opportunity to acquire numerous smaller record labels including Source Music, which would later go on to debut the girl group Le Sserafim, in 2019 and Pledis Entertainment (Seventeen and Formis9) in 2020

With these new labels under their belt, Big Hit Entertainment restructured itself as HYBE Corporation in 2021, structuring all of their various sub-labels underneath the new Hybe Label division. During the years proceeding the re-structuring, HYBE developed plans to debut numerous gril groups, and leading these plans was the former Visual Director for SM Entertainment, Min Hee-jin (MHJ).

Min Hee-Jin

Born in 1979, MHJ began her career in Kpop as a graphic designer for SM Entertainment (one of the other big 4 companies in Kpop) in 2003. Eventually she was promoted to creative director, where she oversaw all visual branding for a number of SM's gril groups, including Girls Generation, Red Velvet, and f(x). Her impact on the industry in this role was massive, as she shifted artistic direction within the industry towards the idea of more experimental "concepts".

You can think of a group's concept as the overarching theme of the group, impacting everything from album art, photoshoots, music videos, and costumes to public behavior and even the type of music the group produces. The concept of an artist can remain static for years on end (think of how Motley Crue have always been party boy rockstars), or change over time (compare the early music and style of The Beatles to their later work.)

Leaving SM in 2018 due to burnout, it wasn't long before she found herself hired by Big Hit Entertainment to oversee the rebranding to HYBE Corporation. It was also announced that MHJ would be the creative lead for multiple new girl groups, as well as the producer for a label that HYBE would launch in the next few years. MHJ took part in initial planning for a new girl group with Source Music, but in 2021 HYBE established the ADOR sub label and named her as the CEO. The first act to debut under ADOR would be the girl group MHJ had begun developing with Source Music, NewJeans.

NewJeans

Upcoming January 2025 Vogue Korea cover featuring NewJeans

Auditions for Mhj's new girl group began in 2019 under Source Music. Initially planning to debut in 2021, this was pushed back to 2022, ostentibly due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Officially debuting on July 22nd of 2022, NewJeans quickly became one of the biggest acts in all of Kpop. Their achievements speak for themselves:

• First idol group in history to occupy the #1, #2 and #3 spot on every chart in Korea for 3 consecutive months with Ditto, OMG, and Hype Boy

• NewJeans surpassed 5 billion total points on Circle Digital Chart in only 64 weeks, second only to BTS (53 weeks)

• First girl group to ever chart 5 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 in the same calendar year in K-Pop history

• Set a Guinness record for fastest artist to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify and also became the fastest Korean act in history to reach 3 billion streams

Newjeans debut single and MV, Hype Boy, released July 22nd, 2022.

This groups massive success on the charts led them to become one of the most sought after brand endorsements in the advertising industry , with them eventually going on to work with Nike, Coca- Cola, McDonald's, Apple, Levi's, and Calvin Klein. NewJeans was so successful on this front that In April 2024, Forbes Korea reported that the group had earned ₩30 billion (~$20 million) in advertising in the course of a single year. to put this in perspective, Patrick Mahomes had total estimated off-the-field earnings of $25 million in 2024.

You know you've made it big when even your slop meal gets to go on tour.

Hanni

The Vietnamese-Australian member of a Korean girl group's English male name is Harry.

Born to Vietnamese parents in Melbourne, Australia, Phạm Ngọc Hân's (20) first experience in the entertainment industry was as a member of the Australian kpop dance cover group AEMINA. In late 2019, she was the only person to pass the Plus Global Auditions, the first set of auditions for the girl group that would become NewJeans. Hanni is widely considered to be the best vocalist in the group

Minji

Marcus the Cleanup Queen

Born in Chuncheon, South Korea in 2004, Kim Min-ji began training with Source Music in 2017. She was likely the first member selected for NewJeans, as she was the anonymous face of the Plus Global Auditions that selected Hanni. Often acting as the de facto leader, Minji is the oldest member and one of the best dancers in the group.

Dani

Her male English name is Demitree.

In 2005, Danielle Marsh was born to an Australian father and Korean mother in Newcastle, Australia. Moving back and forth between Australia and South Korea as a child, Dani's first experience in show business was as a child actor in South Korea. She began her kpop career as a trainee at YG Entertainment ( the last of the big four Kpop companies), leaving the company and joining Source Music in July 2020. Probably the most popular member internationally, Dani is a talented vocalist who provided the Korean dub of Ariel for the live action Little Mermaid movie.

Haerin

This Kang's name is Stephen

Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Kang Hae-rin dropped out of middle school in 2020 at the age of 13 to begin training with Source Music, later earning her GED. A taleented singer and dancer, Haerin is also a global ambassador for Dior.

Hyein

(Male name) Collin is the reason we need pedobear.

Lee Hye-in was born in Incheon, South Korea in 2008, making her the youngest member, or maknae, of NewJeans. Getting her start as a child model, she also was a member of a kid's group called U.SSO Girl from 2017-2018. She later went on to star on a YouTube children's channel called PocketTV. She eventually joined ADOR as a trainee in 2021. Despite being the youngest member of the group, Hyein has the most showbiz experience in the group.

Now that we've had a chance to meet the stars of our story, we are finally able to see where the NewJeans/ADOR drama truly began. But first, it's time for a...

Cookie Break

After the success of their debut single Hype Boy, NewJeans quickly followed up with the lead single of their self-titled debut EP, Cookie. As @0BS3SS10N mentioned in the comments of our previous episode, there was something a little off about this song.

With most of the song in Korean, the lyrics, once translated into English, are something else:

Now, these lyrics wouldn't be too bad in and of themselves, at least compared to western music, save for one small problem; the majority of the group was underage when the song was released. At the time of release, Dani and Hanni were 17, Haerin was 16, and Hyein was 14(!). Only Minji was over the age of 18 at the time. This generated a great deal of controversy in western markets due to the sexual tone of the lyrics.

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/wdclrx/newjeans_cookie/

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpopthoughts/comments/wdd6bg/new_jeans_just_officially_debut_with_the_release/

Link

A solid summary of the drama

As @ftincel touched on above, the scandal was complicated by a report of a pattern of weird, borderline pedophilic behavior surrounding MHJ. She had numerous pictures of underage girls and a 15 year old Brooke Shields on her Instagram, and had also been accused of over sexualizing underage idols while at SM Entertainment.

Link

HYBE, ADOR, and NewJeans themselves argued the song was actually about burning a CD for someone (to bake a CD is a euphemism for burning a CD in Korea) and that the translator who worked on the MV above had mistranslated the lyrics. Most Westerners didn't buy this, pointing out that two of the people in the group (Dani and Hanni) were native English speakers. However, as is common with scandals related to Kpop idols, there were plenty of fans who were ready to eat up the cover story.

Link

https://old.reddit.com/r/unpopularkpopopinions/comments/wrsspn/cookie_by_new_jeans_isnt_as_sexual_as_people_make/

https://old.reddit.com/r/NewJeans/comments/wkle0q/serious_discussion_thread_the_cookie_and_min/

Let's see what /mu/ had to say at the time:

You know it's bad when even 4chan thinks you've gone too far

I think this is a compilation of translated comments from Korean sites. If not, someone needs to investigate this guy.

With all of that background info and the Cookie drama out of the way, we can begin our story in earnest.

The Beginning of the End

The Audit

On April 22nd, 2024, bombshell news dropped that HYBE would be launching an internal audit of ADOR and it's executives, due to concerns that MHJ was trying to attract investors to take the label independent. At the time, HYBE owned about 80% of ADOR, with the remaining 20% being held by ADOR executives, predominantly MHJ.

HYBE alleged that MHJ and a VP at ADOR, identified only as Mr. L, were working in collaboration to "free" ADOR from HYBE. The scheme included Mr. L passing classified info about HYBE to MHJ. Mr. L had previously worked with HYBE, most relevantly during its IPO, before being transferred by the company to ADOR. Once HYBE became aware of the plan, the audit was triggered, executives electronics were examined, and plans to remove MHJ as CEO of ADOR were initiated.

Illit

For her part, MHJ released a statement alleging that the audit was an illegal attempt to oust her as CEO In retaliation for her accusing Illit, a new Kpop group under HYBE's sub-label, Belift Labs, and their producers of "copying" NewJeans.

https://www.koreaboo.com/news/min-hee-jin-official-statement/

April 23rd and 24th

The next day, April 23rd, HYBE responded that it had clear evidence that MHJ had been planning to take ADOR independent long before Illit had debuted. The main piece of evidence for this was an unreleased internal document detailing MHJ's plans.

https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20240423006400315

On the 24th, various ADOR executives tried to distance MHJ from the discovered internal document, but a report from Dispatch (basically the Korean TMZ) revealed that she had almost $73 million in put options on HYBE.

Link

April 25th

The Next day, April 25th, HYBE made public it's initial findings from the audit and stated it's intention to report MHJ to the police.

A leaked conversation between MHJ and another ADOR executive, A

In response MHJ called her own press conference that day, which ran for almost 2 hours.

the entire press conference summed up by mhj lawyers pic.twitter.com/3qrfngiz3H

— 𝓪⁷ (@JlNSONYEONDAN) April 25, 2024

During this press conference MHJ touched on a number of topics, including:

• Reiterating that the only cause of the audit was an internal complaint she filed over Illit's "plaigerism"

• Complaining that her shareholders agreement that she signed with HYBE was unfair and currently being renegotiated.

• Alleging that she was promised NewJeans would be the first of HYBE's new girl groups to debut. Instead Le Sserafim was allowed to debut first. (Remember this one, it will be important later on)

• Claiming that she would take legal action against HYBE for seizing her and other executive's electronics

• Stating that all of ADOR's internal discussions about seeking outside investors and breaking away from HYBE were merely jokes

• Tacitly admitting that she would consult a Korean Shaman to help make business decisions (again, more on this at a later date)

The entire press conference is a trip, and this all is just a snippet. We'll do a deep dive into the press conference and it's after effects next week, but for now, let's see how the internet reacted:

Reddit Reacts

Warning:: May contain spoilers for future parts of the saga.

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/1ca2gc4/hybe_launched_audit_into_ceo_of_newjeans_agency/

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop_uncensored/comments/1ccn2j5/my_takes_from_the_min_heejin_press_conference/

https://old.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/1ca90ty/hybe_initiates_audit_of_adors_management/

https://old.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/1ca90ty/hybe_initiates_audit_of_adors_management/

/mu/ Reacts

That's all the time we have for this week, but I hope that I was able to whet your whistle for the drama we have ahead, because theres quite a bit of it.

On next week's "In the K-Hole"

• A deep dive into MHJ's April 25th press conference and auxiliary accusations!

• The parents of NewJeans speak up!

• New legal challenges!

• And much, much more, all next week!

I hope you enjoyed this episode, as well as your upcoming holidays. A very merry Christmas to you all and yours...

... From the bottom...

... Of the K-Hole.

This is an absolutely bombshell: the story about the cancelled elections in Romania is even far more sinister than previously thought.

A new report from investigative outlet https://t.co/b0c4sv4Xj3 (https://t.co/j2gt54H0F0) reveals that the TikTok campaign which was cited in the… https://t.co/ztQTGLRd5s

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) December 22, 2024

A month ago, November 24th, Romania held a presidential election.

The main parties running were the National Liberal Party (PNL) of Klaus Iohanis and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Marcel Ciolacu. Both Europhile, bureaucratic centrists. One slightly more pro-gibs. Imagine democrats and pre-Trump republicans but even more corrupt, stupid and incompetent. There were also other parties, some woke, others !chuds, but all tiny and boring.

Since Poomania has a multi-round election schema, the top candidates, Lasconi, Ciolacu, Simion, and Sosoaca, were angling for the top two spots and trying to kick their main rivals into third or fourth place.

Then election day came around and to everyone's chagrin all four got blown the frick out the water by a guy nobody'd ever heard of: Calin Georgescu, a far-right martial artist whose entire campaign was ran on tiktok. He would proceed to the second round and could potentially become the new leader of Romania (dubious honor)

This post is not about that.

After the election everyone panicked. Woke young romanians panicked because their favourite gibs and environmentalist causes were blown out the water. Geriatric bureaucrats panicked because the grift could end. Romania's European and American "allies" panicked because the last thing you want your puppets doing is voting in their best interest. In short, everyone chimped out and started flinging shit wherever they could to try to prevent Mr. Georgescu's further election.

The only people that didn't panic were the plurality of Romanians who'd voted for Mr. Georgescu. This is because they were too busy consooming tiktok reels.

On December 6nd, to nobody's surprise, a Constitutional Court made up of representatives of the loser parties overruled their earlier certification of the election because the Romanian president "declassified" some "information" that Calin Georgescu was - gasp -

A RUSSIAN AGENT

Somebody'd put together the equivalent of a Steele dossier "proving" that Tru- Georgescu was elected not thanks to savvy social media marketing and the stupidity, apathy and desire for change of Romanian voters, but LE HECKING EVIL RUSSARINOS

The EU, Western NGOs, CIA handlers etc. all hurriedly advised the immediate publication of this information and after some backroom political pressure the court made a mockery of the very concept of democracy by throwing out the election. NATO literally commanded them to do it, and the cucks complied, lmao. The only actual evidence was that Georgescu'd misreported his finances on some forms.

For comparison, the president elect of the United States misused or misappropriated over 500 times that in campaign funds. Nobody gives a shit because we're not kitties and no red-blooded American gives a shit about campaign finance contributions

Even in a shithole like Romania people mostly found the election annulment outrageous, except for this guy for some reason

Now the country will have a redo election in March or May or some shit and the Romanian glowies are busy raiding and harassing Georgescu so him and others like him will never again challenge the primacy of the unelected fаggots in charge of Draculand. No doubt they'll find he scratched his butt with his left hand instead of the right (contra EU directive 14[a]2.1) and needfully put him away for infinite lakh years.

This post is not about that.

@FourthEggnog's r-slurred gypsy butt made a couple of posts about these events swallowing the Russia hoax hook, line, and sinker.

This is because he, like every Romanian, is dumber than the darkest, stupidest !dixie swamp !BIPOCs

His hypothesis (to put it generously) was that Romania was not actually a failing regime of bean counters, incompetent narcissists, subverted and bribed traitors, etc. In fact, all of these were but a front for the actual power behind the throne, a shadowy decades-old cabal of commie spooks

This form of "reasoning" is common among the severely r-slurred. 310+ dramatards upmarseyd and presumably believed his schizophrenic ramblings, despite the fact they made no sense.

...

I was going to go through both posts and link all the shit he said that contradicted itself or was batshit r-slurred but it's literally both giant posts. Seriously, read them. They're entertaining (in the @kaamrev neurodivergent-on-amphetamines way) but 180 degrees diametric to the actual situation. It's insane that someone can have this tenuous a connection to reality while still being able to type.

BREAKING NEWS

Couple days ago a Romanian investigative outlet published a bombshell investigative report into who ACTUALLY funded Georgescu.

To the SHOCK of !nooticers it was... the ruling party itself

A new report from investigative outlet snoop.ro reveals that the TikTok campaign which was cited in the declassified Romanian intelligence documents (summarized in my post below 👇) as evidence of foreign interference - and used as grounds to cancel the presidential election - was actually paid for by the ruling National Liberal Party (PNL), the very party that supported cancelling the elections!

According to the investigation, the campaign called "#EchilibrușiVerticalitate" that the intelligence services claimed was "identical to Russian operations in Ukraine" was organized by a marketing firm called Kensington Communication, hired by PNL (the ruling party), who paid Kensington over 1 million RON for it (about $210,000). Kensington then used a platform called FameUp to coordinate 130 influencers with specific scripts and messaging guidelines.

This puts the declassified intelligence documents in an entirely new light. What they presented as evidence of foreign interference was actually a campaign paid for by the ruling party. The same party that then supported using these allegations of "foreign interference" to cancel an election they were losing.

Even more bizarrely, confronted by journ*lists, Kensington Communication initially denied using the hashtag but later admitted to creating the campaign for PNL, claiming it was meant to be called "#echilibrusiseriozitate" and was changed to "#echilibrusiverticalitate" without their knowledge. Yeah, right...

This means that either the Romanian intelligence services didn't know this was a PNL-funded campaign when they used it as evidence to cancel the election (which raises huge questions about their competence), or they did know and didn't disclose it (which raises even bigger questions about their integrity).

In any case, it seems to indicate that something extremely sinister happened in Romania: a ruling party used intelligence services to cancel an election based on "foreign interference" evidence that they themselves paid for!

Followup:

Also, interestingly, Politico is completely misrepresenting this bombshell investigation: Report ties Romanian liberals to TikTok campaign that fueled pro-Russia candidate

Let me show you how they're trying to spin it.

Politico claims that the investigation shows that "a campaign from a governing center-right party may have been hijacked to benefit far-right candidate." They're framing PNL as being a victim here, seeing their TikTok campaign "hijacked to benefit Georgescu".

But the snoop.ro investigation demolishes this narrative with hard evidence because they found Kensington's (PNL's contractor) original brief and proved influencers were following their exact scripts. The investigation shows exact matches between the script and influencer videos. How is that "hijacking" when the influencers were doing exactly what the brief told them to do?

Most importantly, Politico completely buries the lead: a ruling party paid for a social media campaign that was then used by intelligence services as evidence of 'foreign interference' to cancel an election. That's not a 'hijacking' - that's an explosive scandal about potential abuse of intelligence services for political purposes.

This isn't sloppy journ*lism - it's active misrepresentation. Politico has access to the same snoop.ro investigation we're reading. They chose to ignore the documented evidence of word-for-word script following and instead push this 'hijacking' narrative that the evidence explicitly contradicts.

Instead of investigating how a ruling party's campaign ended up being used as evidence to cancel a democratic election, Politico is helping construct a cover story. They're turning what appears to be potential intelligence service abuse into a story about campaign "hijacking".

Which means we potentially have another major scandal on our hands here: major EU media outlets - the same EU media outlets that regularly lecture about threats to democracy - appear to help obscure what might be the most serious abuse of intelligence services for political purposes in recent EU history.``

I called it as not being the Russians two fricking weeks ago

But this dumbass doubled down on the Russian collusion shit. Fricking tard.

HIs "explanation" goes on and on, increasingly unhinged. Blueanon on the Danube.

To conclude, I am now convinced - as you should be - that the Romanian Constitutional Court was correct in cancelling this election. Where it erred is in not cancelling every future election as well, as Romanians are too stupid to self-govern. Instead, American viceroys must be appointed, to guide the ignorant and wayward vlach peasant into a comfortable, pleasant and thought-free life licking NATO's taint while selling his country and resources to our benevolent corporations.

CSS osu!

Also posted on WPD

I made a simple version of the circle clicking game osu! with HTML and CSS. I was mostly finished with it around December 4. You can find it on @YourAlterEgo's profile. It's on the desktop site only. If you're using a laptop, using a mouse is recommended.

To play it, you click the circles when the ring (approach circle) gets close to the circle. The right time to click is around the time the ring turns white or when it almost reaches the circle. You can click earlier or later if you want. If the anthem starts at the same time you click the play button, it should somewhat sync with the song (it's not perfect).

Play here on @YourAlterEgo's profile (Desktop only)

If the anthem autoplays or the game lags, try it here:

https://reddreamer.nekoweb.org/cssosu/

The above site is a static web hosting site like Neocities or GitHub Pages.

Click here if you want to vote on polls asking whether you played and liked the game. They're in a comment because you can't have <details> and polls in the same post.

Comment what you think. If it glitches out or doesn't work, comment what went wrong and what browser you're using. If the anthem doesn't play, try closing other rDrama tabs that have audio playing.

Assets

rDrama version (Copy and paste it into your bio and profile CSS if you want)

• Bio Markdown
• CSS (rDrama version)
• Set this as your anthem

Non-rDrama version

I tried making a .zip, but Furryfox (Firefox) kept calling it a virus

https://files.catbox.moe/imovff.zip

• CSS (cssosu.css) (Mirror, name it cssosu.css)
• HTML (name it anything ending with .html)
• Song: lucky-nightcore.mp3 (Mirror, name it lucky-nightcore.mp3)
• Cursor: cursor.png (Mirror, name it cursor.png)
• Logo (used as an icon): cssosulogo.png (Mirror, name it cssosulogo.png)
• Background: background.jpg (Mirror, name it background.jpg)
• Background source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/adobetutorialz/4556724799/ (Median filter used to remove the patterns)

The song is a nightcore (sped-up) version of Lucky Twice - Lucky. I got it straight from an osu map (.osz file) with the same song and edited it to start shortly before the chorus.

Questions

If you have other questions, ask in the comments, and I might answer.

1. What is osu!?

It's a free-to-play weeb rhythm game where you click circles while listening to music. This is the game's website. You can try an unoffcial web demo like I did if you don't want to download it. On the actual game and the web version, you can use Z and X to click, which is easier than clicking with the mouse. They also have sliders and spinners, which aren't present in this CSS version.

2. What is CSS?

Cascading Style Sheets, a language used for styling webpages. You can use it to change the color of text, add shadows and glows, change the page's layout, add background images, add simple animations, and so on.

3. Is there an indicator for early and late hits?

No. I tried to track early hits by adding another <details> element that would be animated to toggle its visibility (and therefore clickability). There would be 2 <details> elements you could click, and clicking the one that appears earlier would mean you hit early. However, this caused issues with the circles not responding to clicks, so I gave up on it.

4. How does it work?

CSS animations, animation delays, CSS counters, and lots of <details> and <summary> elements

This uses a lot of <details> and <summary> elements. To make the circles and play button interactive on click, they needed to be interactive HTML elements. <details> and <summary> elements (normally used for showing more text on click, like a spoiler button) are allowed in rDrama bios (unlike checkboxes), so they were perfect for this. The <summary> is the actual clickable part, so that is the element that is styled into a circle or play button.

The following is what details and summary normally look like.

Try clicking me. This clickable text is the summary element inside the details element.

Hello! This is the hidden text!

<details>
<summary>Try clicking me. This clickable text is the <em>summary</em> element inside the <em>details</em> element.</summary>
Hello! :marseywave2: This is the hidden text!
</details>

The game screen is a <blockquote>. It has a play button at the start (<details> and <summary> elements), and there are 72 blockquotes containing other elements after the play button, one for each of the 72 circles. The bio looks something like the following.

<blockquote>
<details><summary></summary></details>
> <details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p>
> <details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p>
...
> <details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p>
#
> <details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p>
...
> <details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p>
</blockquote>

In HTML, it would be this.

<blockquote>
	<details><summary></summary></details>
	<blockquote><details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p></blockquote>
	<blockquote><details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p></blockquote>
	...
	<blockquote><details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p></blockquote>
	<h1></h1>
	<blockquote><details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p></blockquote>
	...
	<blockquote><details><summary></summary></details><h2>a</h2><p>a</p></blockquote>
</blockquote>

The blockquotes are absolutely positioned and placed around the screen. Inside the blockquotes are the circles (<details> and <summary> elements), the rings/approach circles (<p>), and miss indicators (<h2>). There are also a few <h1> elements between the blockquotes used to mark the start of each section with different colored circles.

<blockquote>
	<details>
		<summary></summary>
	</details>
	<h2>a</h2>
	<p>a</p>
</blockquote>

You might notice the <p> and <h2> elements have "a" written inside them. This is simply because rDrama did not allow empty <p> and <h2> elements.

The approach circles (rings), circles, and miss indicators were all animated with CSS animations. Because osu! has set timings, it's easy to simply add an animation delay to determine when circles should appear. For example, circle 1 fades in 1.13 second after you click the play button, and circle 72 appears 32.73s seconds in.

#profile--bio blockquote > blockquote:nth-of-type(1) {
	animation-delay: 1.13s;
}

The circles, rings/approach circles, and miss indicators inherit the timing from the containing blockquote.

#profile--bio blockquote > blockquote p,
#profile--bio blockquote > blockquote details,
#profile--bio blockquote > blockquote h2 {
	animation-delay:inherit !important;
}

The play button consists of <details> and <summary> elements. When you click the play button, the open attribute gets added to the <details> element, and the play button gets hidden. The game only starts playing the animations for the other elements when the play button has the open attribute. The CSS uses the sibling selector to use the play button to target the other elements.

#profile--bio details[open] ~ blockquote details {
	animation:1.5s fadecircle ease-out;
	animation-fill-mode:forwards;
}

The above means that the circle (the second details) should have an animation named "fadecircle" only after the play button (the first details) has been clicked. The details[open] means that the details element has the "open" attribute. This looks like <details open> or <details open=""> in the HTML. The ~ is a sibling selector. If you write details ~ blockquote, it targets all blockquotes that are siblings of a details element (having the same parent element) and come after it in the HTML.

The circles need to be clickable for a limited amount of time. The visibility attribute both can be animated and affects interactivity. A circle's visibility is toggled through a CSS animation to make it clickable only when it's on screen.

@keyframes fadecircle {
	0% {
		visibility:hidden;
		opacity:0;
	}
	10% {
		visibility:visible;
		opacity:1;
	}
	90% {
		opacity:1;
		visibility:visible;
	}
	100% {
		visibility:hidden;
		opacity:0;
	}
}

When you click on a circle, it hides both the approach circle and the miss indicator. The miss indicator only appears after the circle fades out, meaning that if you click the circle, the miss indicator will never appear. Clicking the circle also makes the circle play a different animation to fade out as a white glow. Like with the play button, the open attribute is used to determine whether a circle was hit.

Hide approach circle after the circle (the second details) has been hit ([open])

#profile--bio details[open] ~ blockquote details[open] ~ p {
	display:none;
}

Play a different animation after the circle has been hit

#profile--bio > blockquote > blockquote > details[open] summary {
	background:none;
	animation:0.15s hitcircle linear;
	animation-fill-mode:forwards;
	border-width:6px;
}

The numbers on the circles and the hit counter were made using the CSS counter feature. The CSS counter feature allows us to count elements matching a certain selector and display the current count using the content attribute. For example, you can make a counter to count the number of circles and display the current count on each circle. That way, the 1st circle will be labelled 1, the 2nd circle will be labelled 2, and so on.

The first rule initializes 3 different counters to zero. The second adds 1 to two of the counters at every one of the 72 blockquotes inside the game. The third displays the current count of the counter circlenumbers on the circles.

#profile--bio {
	counter-reset:circlenumbers hitcircles totalcircles;
}

#profile--bio blockquote > blockquote {
	...
	counter-increment:circlenumbers totalcircles;
	...
}

#profile--bio > blockquote > blockquote > details > summary::before{
	content:counter(circlenumbers);
	...
}

There are different sections with different colors, and the circles in each section are numbered up starting from 1. To determine when each section starts, there are <h1> elements between the blockquotes. This allows us to use the sibling selector to target the blockquotes after each nth <h1> and change the circles' colors. The counter on the circles is also reset to 1 at each <h1>.

#profile--bio h1 {
	counter-set:circlenumbers 0;
	...
}

The default circle color is red. The circles in the first section use that color. The rules below override the colors of the circles after the first <h1> and the second <h1> with pink and purple respectively.

#profile--bio h1:first-of-type ~ blockquote summary {
	background-color:var(--pink-transparent);
}

#profile--bio h1:nth-of-type(2) ~ blockquote summary {
	background-color:var(--purple-transparent);
}

The hit counter counts the number of circles with the open attribute and is placed on the ::after pseudoelement attached to the outer container blockquote (the game screen). The element displaying this counter needs to be placed after all of the circles in order to count them all, and this meets the requirement.

#profile--bio > blockquote > blockquote details[open] {
	counter-increment:hitcircles;
}

#profile--bio > blockquote::after {
	content:"Total circles: " counter(totalcircles) " | Circles clicked: " counter(hitcircles);
	...
}

The timer was made using ::before and ::after pseudoelements with an animated content property. I found out this was possible from @iheartrdrama's former WPD CSS!

#profile--bio > blockquote details[open] ~ h1:nth-of-type(4)::before {
	content:"0:00";
	left:20px;
	animation:36s timer linear, 0.25s timerFade;
	animation-delay:0s, 36s;
	animation-fill-mode:forwards;
}

The other timer uses the same animation but in a reverse direction.

animation:36s timer linear, 0.25s timerFade;
animation-direction:reverse, normal;

Animation

@keyframes timer {
	0% {
		content:"0:00";
	}
	2.78% {
		content:"0:01";
	}
	...
	97.22% {
		content:"0:35";
	}
	100% {
		content:"0:36";
	}
}

Thanks for reading if you read this post, and thanks for playing if you played the game.

I know I keep saying I'm going to leave but I just have to write this piece because I was inspired by @kaamrev's post about the closing of the Rapport. The truth is I have a shitload to say about journ*lism in general and the South African journ*lism scene but some of it would result in me doxxing myself, and quite honestly, most of it isn't interesting if you've never been in the space. I also have a funny story of how I fricked up so badly I almost caused a long-running newspaper publication to close down permanently, but I'd rather push that memory back to the dark recesses of my psyche.

With that said, I never fricked up as badly as the who we'll be discussing today - Verashni Pillay. This is pretty much South Africa's version of G*mergate, and it caused waves internationally. My post will be organised as such:

1. What is Huffpost?

2. Who is Verashni Pillay?

3. Verashni does a hate speech

4. Verashni is in trouble

5. Conclusion

What is Huffington Post

If you're familiar with online journ*lism, you'll have come across Huffpost. It is a left-leaning publication that aims to be hip and trendy while delivering the news. Not all their content is "news" and it also features a lot of clickbait pop culture slop. It's really a terrible site. The site almost died but it was purchased by Buzzfeed in 2020. It was during this time that the site experienced mass layoffs and the Canadian arm of the business was closed down.

Go on the front page right now and see the slop they post. From experience in the media industry, I can easily tell that it is a content mill that you shouldn't trust at all. I can spot the SEO tricks and the common tactics used to increase engagement and exploit the writers. Take a random article on the front page:

The headline is stuffed full of trending keywords. They had to fit in "elon musk" and "obama" to improve SEO on Google. Secondly, the writer never had to leave their desk to write the article. It's literally a longpost based on a Tweet by Elon Musk. All it does is report on the Tweet and the responses to the Tweet. I can promise you @kaamrev puts more effort into his posts than the writer of this article did.

You can also tell it's a content mill by looking at the writer's profile page.

This is someone pooping out three articles a fricking day. 100% he has a quota to meet and he's grinding away trying to achieve it. There is no way you're going to deliver quality journ*lism when you've got to write three fricking articles every day. The only way you achieve that is by writing slop.

The worst part of Huffpost is the writing. They've been bought by Buzzfeed, as I've mentioned, and they write in that "BuzzFeed" voice. You know exactly what I'm talking about. They use Black People Twitter slang and it's incredibly cringy when you see the author is a generic white dude.

Elon Musk is getting cooked on social media for equating the policies of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party to the U.S. Democratic Party at the start of Barack Obama's presidency, after Musk recently pointed to the AfD as Germany's only hope.

Yasss! Elon Musk is cooked! Fricking kill me.

Who is Verashni Pillay

For some reason, a lot of young people in South Africa want to become journ*lists. It's mostly young people who know nothing about the job market, are probably above average writers, and are highly opinionated. The truth is that once you're in the business, it's all about SEO and meeting quotas, and most importantly, YOU DON'T NEED A FRICKING JOURN*LISM DEGREE TO DO JOURN*LISM. So many idiots get scammed into a journ*lism degree that is utterly useless when all that matters is your portfolio. Instead of going into debt paying university fees, you're better off freelance writing and building up a portfolio to work your way to a permanent position (jk those don't exist anymore it's freelancers all the way down, journos don't get permanent jobs lol).

If you're in South Africa, for a long time, Rhodes University was THE place to go to study journ*lism. It had a very, very strong reputation for being a good journ*lism university and for anyone who wanted to become a journ*list it was assumed you'd be going to Rhodes.

+++++

Quick Notes from Holly!

So I attended Rhodes University, got my Masters Degree in English there and also wasted 3 years trying to get my PhD only to fail (I'm currently doing my PhD at a different university while working). I was fricked over by my supervisor majorly and I had a lecturer bully me so hard I attempted suicide, but that's a story for another day. Rhodes used to be a fun university. I arrived in 2014, which was right around the decline of the university.

Rhodes has a reputation of being a bit of a party university, and it's extremely liberal. It is also known for the National Arts Festival which is held every year. The university is located in Grahamstown which is a small town almost entirely dependent on the university for its economy. I was in Grahamstown when COVID-19 hit. Students studied from home so the university was practically empty. As a result, several businesses shut down and the entire town was financially crippled.

Fortunately, I don't live there anymore because the town can't even provide water or electricity to its residents, resulting in mass protests. I mean, they literally go weeks without any water.

I would not recommend anyone go to Rhodes University these days. It's a dead university in a dead town. Also, due to Rhodes's liberal approach to academia, they allow you to mix and match your degree however you want, allowing you to create a custom degree of your choice. I know a couple of universities in the USA like Evergreen do this shit as well. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NEVER DO THIS. If you're going to university, get a degree with a set curriculum that allows you to specialize in a skill that is in demand. Nobody wants a generalist who majored in Psychology and History, or a weirdo who decided to major in Math and English. Anyone hiring is going to take one look, think "what the frick is this shit", and move on to someone who has clearly specialized in a specific task.

Dear lord if there's any advice I can give it's that university is not there for you to follow your passions. There is nothing passionate in a university setting. YOU'RE THERE TO SECURE THE BAG. Pick a degree that is in demand. If you want to go the artistic route, university is not the place to go. You're better off independently working on a portfolio.

Last point I want to make about Rhodes. The lecturers get paid SHIT. It's actually funny how poorly they are paid. Just look at this shit:

A fricking full-blown lecturer is only netting about $25K. Why the frick would you move to a town with no water to earn peanuts?!?!

+++++

Verashni Pillay attended Rhodes University where she earned her degree in Journ*lism. Verashni quickly proved herself to be quite the ambitious journ*list and she wrote for a number of popular South African publications including News24 and the Mail & Guardian. She has won a number of prestigious awards for her journ*lism. I'm not going to list them all because quite frankly I don't care. All that matters is that she was a journ*list of note in South Africa and she worked her way up to eventually become editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post in South Africa.

Verashni Does a Hate Speech

Verashni's woes began when she allowed a blog to be published titled "Could It Be Time To Deny White Men The Franchise?". You can still find the blog post online. The author's name is Shelley Garland and the author basically argues that white men should not be given the right to vote, and that their assets should be forcibly redistributed.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170414001415/www.huffingtonpost.co.za/shelley-garland/could-it-be-time-to-deny-white-men-the-franchise_a_22036640/

For the sake of stirring drama and outrage, I'll post a few choice quotes here

If white men no longer had the vote, the progressive cause would be strengthened. It would not be necessary to deny white men indefinitely – the denial of the vote to white men for 20 years (just less than a generation) would go some way to seeing a decline in the influence of reactionary and neo-liberal ideology in the world. The influence of reckless white males were one of the primary reasons that led to the Great Recession which began in 2008. This would also strike a blow against toxic white masculinity, one that is long needed.

A withholding of the franchise from white males, along with the passing of legislation in this period to redistribute some of their assets, will also, to a degree, act as the reparations for slavery, colonialism, and apartheid, which the world is crying out for to be paid.

Although this may seem unfair and unjust, allowing white males to continue to call the shots politically and economically, following their actions over the past 500 years, is the greater injustice.

Almost immediately, the article garnered widespread attention both locally and internationally. It got so big that fricking Jordan Peterson commented on it:

Locally, many groups cried racism and attacked Huffpost for publishing the piece. Afriforum, a group focused on the rights of Afrikaaners, accused Verashni Pillay and Huffpost of hate speech.

https://mg.co.za/article/2017-07-31-fake-huffpost-blog-could-see-white-men-pulled-out-of-voting-queues-afriforum/

This did not deter Verashni and amidst the controversy, she fully defended the piece. Thanks to the wayback machine, we still have access to the article.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170414225013/https://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/04/14/this-blog-on-white-men-is-going-viral-heres-our-response_a_22039753/

A few quotes from Verashni to make you seethe:

Garland's underlying analysis about the uneven distribution of wealth and power in the world is pretty standard for feminist theory. It has been espoused in many different ways by feminist writers and theorists for decades now. In that sense, there was nothing in the article that should have shocked or surprised anybody (or so we thought.)

It would appear that perhaps much of the outcry derives from a very poor reading of the article -- or perhaps none at all.

So in response she basically shits on her readers telling them denying white men the vote is pretty normal feminist theory.

Verashni is in trouble

Well, a big plot twist emerged. Shelley Garland does not exist! The whole thing was a fricking prank written by a white man! Not just a white man, but a fucing full-blooded Boer named fricking Marius Roodt. That's a peak mayo name! Roodt wrote the piece to prove that there was little fact-checking done in South African journ*lism and so he wrote a piece where he intentionally inserted errors and he got fricking published! He made an absolute fool of Huffpost, and he's not fricking sorry about it.

https://www.news24.com/news24/i-do-not-regret-it-huffpost-fake-blogger-20170525

Eventually, the backlash got so bad that the article was taken down and an apology was issued.

https://web.archive.org/web/20181205145757/https://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/04/14/this-blog-on-white-men-is-going-viral-heres-our-response_a_22039753/

But this wasn't just a thrashing on social media. There were legal consequences to face as well. The South Africa's Press Ombud found that the article amounted to hate speech, resulting in Verashni stepping down from her position as editor-in-chief.

Since the incident, Verashni has taken on the role of the victim and has framed herself as a victim of online hate mobs. This is ironic as she tried to stir hate mobs against white men. She is just getting what she tried to dish out to others. When speaking on the matter, Verashni brings up many of the criticisms of modern journ*lism that I've brought up and she confesses that the site is basically a clickbait content mill where writers are stretched to meet insane quotas.

"He targeted a stretched newsroom that was being asked to do way too much with too little resources: we were being asked to publish 30 unique pieces of content a day in addition to wire stories and international content from the other HuffPost sites. We had three junior reporters and were refused sub-editors, despite my warning that we would run into legal trouble given the rate at which we were publishing. In addition, the editorial team was under enormous pressure from management to produce traffic and clicks."

https://themediaonline.co.za/2017/08/verashni-pillay-opens-up-about-her-hate-speech-appeal-victory/

She has also released a Ted Talk about her experience and how she got shamed because of the piece.

Quite honestly, it's an annoying video to watch. She hides behind the fact that she is a female BIPOC and argues that her identity is the reason she was attacked, and not the fact that she published an anti-democratic article arguing that white men should not be allowed to vote.

Conclusion

Verashni was knocked down but she's not out for the count. She currently works at radio station POWER 98.7. I have no knowledge of the station or what it does, and I'm not in the mood to research it. Did she learn anything from the experience? In my opinion, no. I don't think she understands or accepts that she published disgusting hate speech. That blog post should have never been published and it was only possible because

a) THE EDITORS ACTUALLY WANT TO STRIP WHITE MEN OF THE RIGHT TO VOTE

b) Huffpost is a content mill that cares more about clicks than facts.

For this reason alone you should never read Huffpost. It's inaccurate garbage mass produced for clicks. So what do you think of Verashni's story? Do you think she got what she deserved? Or was she the victim of a mean prank?

The Rapport had been the premier Afriaans newspaper for over 50 years, but like so many physical media over the world, they've taken a nosedive when confronted with the competition of instant access digital media,

which could broadcast stories instantly, and for no physical printing costs. Newspapers all over the world have also struggled with the competition in terms of people having become used to "free" news sites (with banner ads) versus a weekly/daily paper's upfront cost.

Additionally a lot of faith have been lost in mainstream media, of all countries - where the predominant pattern appears to be that ground level plebs tend to be more conservative/right-wing than than the more liberally oriented Journ*list class which had some hand in influencing national or international conversations.

This divide between liberal journ*lists and more conservative/rightoid laymen is hilariously apparent for ALL the fricking races in Safrica, but not in the way you would expect, or as similar as you would think as in Burgerland lol

Examples:

For black peeps, like the Zulus especially ( the largest ethnic tribe/group of the country), there has been decisive differences in public perception between the everyman, and the more liberal Zulu Upper Class.

Foreigners would make the mistake that because of the dominacy of the ANC, that liberalism/leftism is the dominant train of thought amongst black peeps, when in reality the conservative Zulus and Xhosas only support these parties/policies because it benefits them personally, like land grabs and gins, and BEE affirmative action.

But liberal notions like pan+African racial unity gets thrown out of the window 🪟 when competition, when foreigners from middle Africa, like Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and Angolans are often frequently attacked by Zulus in xenophobic attacks, due to the desperation in a country where there's a near 30% unemployment since COVID.

The Zulu king got "in trouble" from the black national newspapers, because he had invited xenophobia and violence unto Zimbabwean refugees and migrants, yet the consensus amongst Zulus, those amongst the majority poor rural class shared in his opinion, stark contrast to the liberal journ*lists who condemned him.

https://www.npr.org/2015/04/26/402400958/south-africas-xenophobic-attacks-vile-says-zulu-king-accused-of-inciting-them

=====

For the just under 1 million Indians in SA, they are the most self-segregating and anti-black demographic, with their upfront racism towards blacks going relatively unnoticed because majority of social capital spent against whites

For reference, look at @Sneedman's recent sneed about Indian racism

https://rdrama.net/post/321001/south-africa-and-the-indian-question

Oh yes, in Safrica, Indians are upper middle class, and look down on black peeps, the way Canadians look on pajeets.

=====

For Boer whites you guys don't need introduction on how we are out of sync with the dominant global liberal orthodoxy, it's more Bongs in general whom are usually one standard deviation more liberal than average that's interesting 🤔

The fabled harmonious racially peace 🕊️ ✌️ ful Rainbow 🌈 nation of past Mandela's dream, has failed to realize these past 30 years, due to entrenched ANC corruption and even these Bongs on average are now much more right wing than the average than the usual English journ*list.

Additionally English journ*lists have themselves been in the forefront with exposing systemic government corruption

====

For coloureds, the coloured dominant Cape Town based media, like magazines and Newspapers, were utterly shocked this year's May 2024 election

When a monumental upset occured, with the ANC losing its supermajority, to the new Zulu Ultranationalist party MP, and the DA getting decent numbers, yet also being similarly cucked in the Cape Town municipality

By losing large blocs of coloured votes to the PA (Patriotic Alliance) a Coloured ethnic nationalist group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_African_general_election

Who felt that neither black nor white dominant parties of ANC/DA represented them. They often feel they were too brown for Apartheid and too light skinned for the ANC, as they get shafted by BEE - a legalized affirmative action legislation which can only exist in a nation state where one racial group vastly outnumbers the others.

The breaking and thus weakening of the DA caused intense sneed amongst coloured journ*lists who wanted a unified front against Anc corruption, and that they were surprised by those events are symptomatic of how out of sync their respective journos are with their ground level peeps.

====

Point is every conceivable demographic in SA is hilariously more chuddy in some unique fashion, than the journ*list class from that demographic in SA.

As is similar in Burgerland and Europe, but what has made the divide between the global modern liberal orthodoxy even more extreme has been social media, especially Facebook which dominated Southern Africa, compared to twitter in the West.

Many dramatards here are likely more Reddit addicts than Facebook, which has a more boomer/3rd world demographic

In Facebook, even with so much banning and censorship, chudthink rise to whatever counts as the front page, in spite of jannies or Facebook pajeet mods

In these insane slapfiights, with people often under their ACTUAL IRL identity 🆔, you'll find opinions which make 4chan and 9gag look meek ,and you'll find how decisively the everyman of Indians/coloureds/Boers/sothos/pedis/Khoisan/Zulus/Xhosas are all just one ragebait post away from chipping out and showing the veneer of civilization is a Journos fantasy 😇 😈

Thus trust in journ*lists/Media to represent the interests of every group appears to have eroded away the past decades, as social media proliferated along with cheaper internet and smartphones, allowing the bypass of media orthodoxy

During COVID the death knell of physical papers were sounded, as during lockdown people were prevented from going outside to buy their weekly papers, and even the technologically illiterate were pushed through boredom to buy large internet, fibre, or download news apps and join Facebook news groups

Many peeps were thus in a nation wide scale exposed to the convenience and ease of news on their smartphones or computers, and even when lockdowns lifted in 2021, sales never recovered across the industry.

Publications like News24 which jumped ahead with the rapidly changing events were the 1st to rapidly program the best apps and gained a large market share, and thus rode on fire chariots the change from physical to digital media, like Zoom became dominant instantly as the premier online meeting app/program for SA businesses.

Other papers like the Rapport reacted or realised too late the need to have a digital presence to survive in this new world and for the past 4 years have been chugging along on fumes.

The Rapport was hardest hit and most tragic, because it was considered the most impressive and prestigious newspaper in the country, even when democratisation in 1994, when English became the most common tongue, and 10 other languages because part of the recognized official languages.

The Rapport had the intergenerational experience, infrastructure and prestige.

Important world changing events were often sought after specifically in the Rapport, because the best journ*lists wrote there, even Bong journ*lists, because many SA Englishman can speak Afrikaans.

The weekly format actually gave the newspaper credence because unlike daily rags chasing the daily story to make ends meet ,the weekly format allowed the experienced Journos to really do their research and make higher calibre articles.

When the 9/11 attacks occurred the entire nation would wait for the Rapport to a make an extensive and in depth coverage of the events made understandable for plebse

Even English and Sotho newspapers would source or share the Rapport articles afterwards, due to it's influence.

Yet as the internet proliferated, the format of waiting a week to read substantial important news as much as a week later became untenable and unpopular

Independent online news publications became increasingly competitive and competent, and the BEE for forcing it's way into all institutions, meant that white new reporters would seek their fame online instead.

Worsening the cycle of decline was that the Rapport and other news papers became more expensive to make up for the decline in sales ,from 11rand to 20rand, to 30rand, to eventually 39rand, almost the price of a high grade magazine.

But worst of all was that the editors leadership went full r-slur, and began to focus on Daily Mail tier slop, the paper got a reputation as a gossip rag for SA celebrities, which even South Africa doesn't care about, when superior Bong/Burger musicians exist.

Thus the Uber prestigious reputation went to shit. There was a time when the Rapport had special editions with extensive and fabulous resourced articles, with sketches maps and diagrams.

Like their infamous coverage of the killing Saddam or Bin Laden, with extensive details about the special forces involved. Visiting yanks were so impressed, that they claimed the coverage of the events were better than American news networks which were sensational junk news, whilst the Rapport was measured and neutral.

By the time, 2020 pandemic arrived, there was no loyal reader based.

Now this doesn't mean that physical papers will forever be gone, perhaps only that weekly formats are likely in a permanent decline.

Additionally other papers are still going strong, and perhaps only because Afrikaans has declined as a language worthy of catering towards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_South_Africa

After all there's always gonna be peeps enjoying physical media, just like Kindles will never completely replace physical 📚📖📚📚📚📚 books

But the fact remains that physical media is deeply in distress and only continually declining for various complicated reasons.

https://dailyinvestor.com/business/54653/plan-to-close-beeld-and-rapport-newspapers-confirmed/

Earlier this year in June the news went under the radar and most didn't even believe it

https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/beeld-rapport-city-press-daily-sun-and-soccer-laduma-to-close-670291a

A shit load of publications are eating shit

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1033243152150182&id=100063935197932

So if you've been on the internet, you're used to those challenges that ask who would win between two animals e.g. bear vs lion, alligator vs polar bear. There's tons of YouTube channels dedicated to that shit. Today, I'd like to ask a different question - who would win in an all-out battle between the Hutus of Rwanda and the Zulus of South Africa. Let's take a look at their basic stats.

Hutus and the World's Greatest Manlet Uprising

My aim here isn't to provide a history lesson on the Rwandan genocide, but just to give an overview of the Hutus and what they're capable of. There had been tension between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes in Rwanda since colonial times. The colonisers saw the Tutsis as superior because they were taller and had slender noses unlike the shorter Hutus. Once Rwanda gained independence, many people and parties vied for power, but the Hutus won out, as they had greater numbers, and many Tutsis were driven out of the country. During this time of Hutu rule, Hutus were taught to hate Tutsis and see them as extremists and traitors.

In 1994, a plane carrying President Habyarimana and Burundi's President Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down, and the Tutsis were blamed for the attack. Almost immediately, the message was sent out to "cut the tall trees". This was a call for Hutus all over the country to begin slaughtering Tutsis. Over a hundred days, 800,000 Tutsi were subjected to r*pe and murder. It was a bloodbath, and everyone participated in it, including ordinary Hutus who had been led to believe Tutsis are the enemy.

Hutus had firearms, but ordinary citizens made use of machetes to kill Tutsis, and they killed their own co-workers neighbors, and local business owners. By the end of it over 40% of the population had been killed or had fled. This should serve as a stern warning - don't frick with manlets. When we rise up, we do so with much ferocity.

Zulus - Africa's Most Successful Tribe?

So this is the tribe I belong to. I've never taken a DNA test but my entire family is Zulu. The Zulu have a reputation for being fierce warriors and they've participated in more than a few genocides in addition to indulging in a bit of slavery. Zulu culture is very militaristic, and being a warrior is synonymous with being a man (Ndoda). When I turned 21, I was gifted a spear and animal-skin shield from my father as a sign that I had entered manhood.

Under the leadership of Shaka Zulu, the tribe expanded its territory. This period is known as the "Mfecane" and it is estimated that up to 2 million people were killed by Zulus. The tribe is also greatly respected by the British and the Zulu royalty famously has a close relationship with British royalty. This is in part because the Zulus are about the only African tribe that have ever beaten the British in a battle, specifically the Battle of Isandlwana in which the British were defeated by Zulus with inferior weaponry. It should be noted that while the Zulus won the battle, the British did win the Anglo-Zulu War.

Today, there are about 12 million Zulus with most of them concentrated in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Setting up the battleground

So, we want to make things a fair match-up between the two tribes. So let's imagine that the different tribes are unified (all 12 million Zulus working together, and all 11 million Hutus are working together). They are armed with their traditional weapons i.e. Hutus have their machetes and Zulus have their spears and shields.

Since the Zulus have 1 million more people, I'll give the Hutus an advantage and say that the battle takes place on their homeground - Rwanda. The Zulus have come around to seize territory and it is up to the Hutus to defend their country and their tribe.

Neither group may ask for outside help, and the West/UN cannot interfere.

A few things to consider

Hutus have a few advantages. They are on home ground, so they know the lay of the land. Secondly, the Rwandan genocide demonstrated that the Hutus are capable of swift and decisive genocide in a short period of time and can be ruthless. However, there are some disadvantages. While they can work in unison, they haven't demonstrated the kind of organised military that the Zulus have demonstrated they are capable of. Secondly, though Zulus won't be on home ground, this isn't something new and they are used to claiming uncharted territory. The Hutus, using machetes, have to get up close to murder while the Zulus can fling spears. However, throwing a spear makes it a single-use weapon, whereas a machete can be used to kill multiple people.

Personal thoughts

I'm betting my money on the Zulus. Don't get me wrong, I think it would be an epic battle and no side would get away without mass casualties. Additionally, I think the Hutus as a whole are more ruthless and violent, and they're more willing to use obscene methods of torture such as r*pe and cannibalism. However, I believe a well-organized Zulu army is going to trounce most African tribes, as it has in the past.

The forge was an influential rpg forum run by a weirdo pervert named Ron Edwards. He was a pretentious twat who said that vampire the masquarade caused brain damage.

https://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/marginalia/3777

Originally it was started in 1999 as Hephaestus's forge.

https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/ppmt00/tabletop_rpgs_the_fall_of_the_forge_how_a/

They discussed the design and making of tabletop rpgs and developed the gns theory or big model theory .

It's outlined here

https://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html

Forgeworld produced some great games like Apocalypse world and Dogs in the Vineyard which is Mormons fighting demons who want to molest children

https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/binarydoubts/dogs-in-the-vineyard/

https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/professorprof/dogs-in-the-vineyard/

but also bullshit like Bliss Stage which was made for demons who want to molest children

https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/purplexvi/bliss-stage/

https://systemmasterypodcast.com/2019/04/08/bliss-stage-system-mastery-145/

It was essentially Neon Genesis Evangelion but not the Neon Genesis Evangelion of the anime or manga adaptions but the Neon Genesis Evangelion of the pornographic doujins found at every Japanese con.

https://old.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/353js6/bliss_stage/

That is not a link for those. Look up your own "Shinji chad " or "Shinji cuck" porn ya sick frick.

The Forge defined all players as wanting one of three things: narrativist, which wanted story, simulationist, who wanted realism, and gamist, who wanted to have fun and play the game. They hated the latter two and worshipped narrativism as the one true god.

Certain g*mers compared it to an evil cancer or a cult

https://verbus.livejournal.com/1649.html

The Forge was controversial even when it was still going

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads%2Ftell-me-about-the-forge.355613%2F

Here is the Forge in all its glory

https://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/20/

Osr or "old school roleplaying" is another weird rpf cult that is either diametrically opposed or partially overlapping with the Forge

https://livingmythrpg.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/rpg-theory-living-myth-vs-forge-theory/

Ron Edwards compared gms running railroady games to child abuse.

https://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=18707.0

The forge closed in 2010

https://stargazersworld.com/2010/11/03/the-end-of-the-forge/

Reaction was mixed

https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-is-the-forge.159851/

Ron Edwards claimed it had fulfilled its purpose.

https://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=25257.msg244501#msg244501

He was coping

Many fans and detractors still exist and still hate it

https://www.wizardthieffighter.com/2019/a-bad-turn-of-words-fantasy-heartbreaker/

https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/remembering-the-forge/

My own thoughts on their theory is that it's far too narrow. Every player has his own agenda that might include aspects of all three and other motives. It's a radical simplification of a hopelessly complicated muddle. Most of the forge alumni agree.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200118080825/http://www.story-games.com/forums/discussion/20273/the-big-model-rip

Also while Ron Edwards is an butt he's not a male feminist and didn't make a game for male feminists about playing a male feminist . Unlike Black Hat Matt Mcfarland and Beast the primordial. How can you hate Ron Edwards or Byron Hall, the author of fatal the worst rpg ever made,

https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/315746/fatal-and-kiwifarms-a-match-made

https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/169760/review-of-fatal-rpgnet-rpg-game

when neither of them are actual male feminists?

https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/314992/beast-the-primordial-good-lord-above

https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/273950/beast-the-primordial-is-the-game

https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/272482/reddit-dive-into-beast-the-primordial

https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/271029/what-did-people-actually-want-from

https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/223552/beast-the-primordial-is-a-bad

https://rdrama.net/post/109832/fresh-beast-the-primordial-on-tg

https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/200508/beast-the-primordial-or-trans-lives

https://rdrama.net/post/32502/4chan-daicusses-beast-the-primordial-the

The best link in this post is these two:

https://rdrama.net/post/23466/beast-the-primordial-is-terrible-or

https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/255495/fatal-friends-review-btp-books-whitewolfrpg

Live by social justice die by social justice

https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/lugcr3/tabletop_rpg_the_tragic_ballad_of_adam_koebel_the/

A forge alumni learned this lesson far too late.

Let that be a lesson to you all: be a chud.

"hey lois, this reminds me of that one time I fell asleep while jacking off in middle school and ended up butt-texting /h/pokeporn to half of my classmates and also my parents!" "the worst part is that you did it again literally the next night with /r/traphentai!" "hehehehe that's why they sent me to gay conversion camp and I've been really weird with my sexuality ever since, I'm not even an incel I'm just a gay furry whose buried too deep in the closet and is desperately trying to repress it even further!" ___________________________________________

▶︎ Thread Theme: https://youtu.be/KheI_qHGT1o?si=nhz4iS6_SySc1MkH 
ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧

___________________________________________ For those of you who aren't D&D nerds, for a bunch of D&D nerds to get together and do D&D, they need one of them to take the role of the "Dungeon Master" (no not that dungeon ) or "Game Master" if you play a hipster non-D&D game to come up with a setting and plot and adventures for the other D&D nerds to play with. This job is tedious as hell so the only reason anybody actually does it is to fulfill some fetish of theirs. That's why I like GMing Vampire: the Masquerade because vampires make my dick hard. Anyway, one heroic anon on /tg/ has been actually running D&D for his friends out of the kindness of his heart! Just kidding, he likes monster .

There's gonna be some /d/ shit in here, word of warning. I've been running various campaigns in this group for about 6 years, mostly doing a single homebrew West Marches-style campaign. I've more or less kept the same group of players for this time, which is surprising given I've mostly gone for a pretty edgy setting and campaign style, which is what they've come to expect.

Some translations into normalspeak: "Magical Realm" is /tg/ lingo for "fetish." "Homebrew" means the rules have been modified from the core rulebook. "West Marches" is a meaningless buzzword meaning open world but not open world but open world, it's dumb.

Here's where I fucked up. See, a good chunk of my setting I like to attribute to being inspired by stuff like Aliens, Berserk, Event Horizon, etc. In truth, I just really like monster . A good chunk of my setting involves monster , I just somehow managed to hide it by a combination of saying "oh it's like Goblin Slayer", by painting it in a horror lens, and by not focusing on it that much. Which seemed to be working out for me until just now, where I called one of them over to fix up my phone (he's a technician) and he accidentally found my emergency stash of monster porn/bestiality hentai/real /d/ shit in the process. I tried to play it off as "actually the horse was just a black guy at a weird angle" but I don't think he bought it. I know he's gonna tell everyone else and even if they don't doubt me they won't look at my campaign the same way again and they'll see it for the magical realm that it is.

Apparently this guy was able to sneak fetish shit past normies by saying "oh it's like Goblin Slayer." Have I mentioned yet that I hate anime so much it's unreal? Anime fans are such fucking they'll put up with anything if you compare it to anime.
Now, we can also see here that our narrator is a scrote. He thinks he can get away with monster "by painting it in a horror lens." Any true erotica enjoyers know that foids LOVE their horror porn. I guess I do too but I self-insert as the monster.

"Actually the horse was just a black guy at a weird angle."

Sincerely what the fuck do I do, /tg/?

Personally, I'd say to just your players IRL and call it LARPing, but let's see if /tg/ agrees with me or not.

FBPB.

OP never actually specified if he wants to be a monster or be d by monsters, so we don't know how well this solution would work!

OH SHIT!

It's a SUBPLOT!

Subplot A- "Why do you goon?

Between these two responses, we see the two types of 4chan users: s who cannot possibly conceive masturbation, and """self-aware""" porn addicts. "Erm they're both saying the same thing, there's no reason to have an emergency goon stash!" SHUT UP! Clearly the first poster has no idea why anyone would have an emergency goon stash, while the second knows exactly why one would have an emergency goon stash, and knows that "why" is a bad reason. "It wasn't right he got subjected to it" is a pussy take lmao, did people learn nothing from Hunter? If you don't want to see a man at his freakiest, maybe don't go snooping around his files? "I'm also a porn addict" lol it's literally November you just need to stop touching your dick. "The best thing you can do is get rid of it" I agree.

>Why do you have porn saved to your phone like a fucking idiot?

Did you learn nothing from Tumblr and Imgur?! Big Brother can and WILL take your porn away at any time without warning.

This anon is on to something but he fails to realize the power OP now has. He can innocuously bring in a big scary monster, knowing full well this player will be utterly terrified of being d by it.

not only was she looking up Geto x Gojo Yaoi on da clock, but it was MPreg AND Gojo was Bottoming. That's how you know she's the #RealDeal https://t.co/1PQtEojiqb

— Ash (@SantanaelChan) November 21, 2024

I love mpreg so much it's unreal. Not fond of Jujutsu Kaisen, however.

spoken like a true edgelord one day I'm going to purify those who wish to mock me by fumigating them with my rancid farts from my plant-free diet

I don't want to imagine what OP and his group most likely look like, then imagine them all jacking off under the table. Also consent takes all the fun out of monster sex. Have I told the story yet of how back in college when I ran D&D one of my players was a gay guy who really wanted to fuck my ass? I didn't let him, for the record, which took as me playing hard to get and ultimately started stalking me to try and learn where I lived.

goddamn normies with their normie ass monster fetishes, why can't we go back to the good old days of /tg/ where we were all into getting concrete shat into our rectums from the nipples of daemonettes? (this but unironically)

>Most people masturbate.

*most people who use 4chan

>most people have at least some strange kinks

*most people who use 4chan

there's no less than 5 erp/porn threads on /tg/ at any given time now, there's even an erp general, 15 years ago 1d4chan joked that /tg/ was just blue /d/ but they had no idea just how bad things would get.

SUBPLOT A RESUMES!

fuck bipox it's 2 am I'll finish this later

whoops it's been a week and I forgot about this and the thread died whoops

Um dia atrasado pq eu tomei um ban de 1 dia por postar mulheres com pinto

/r/Brasil

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/1hhapxv/d%C3%B3lar_dispara_e_fecha_a_r_626_maior_cota%C3%A7%C3%A3o_da/

Trancado pq estavam falando verdades inconvenientes demais, isso obviamente só pode ser obra de infiltrados fascistas de outros subs

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/1hh3gqy/eu_j%C3%A1_entendi_a_quest%C3%A3o_do_d%C3%B3lar_alto_por_que_ele/

Um monte de bosta sem sentido, os caras tão dando nó na própria fimose pra defender o governo. Eu não li mas eu imagino que seja mais do mesmo: mercado fascista malvadão etcetc

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/1hhc2o9/d%C3%B3lar_bateu_r_631/

O post não trancado mas altamente janniado

Olha só

antes

depois

KEK

Esquece, já trancaram

Vamos aos outros subs

/r/Brasilivre

Não li, mas imagino que seja tudo 'faz o L'

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hhb3y4/eita_poh/

Cagando na cabeça de um twitteiro r-slurado

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh7z0l/a_seita_ataca_novamente/

Cagando na cabeça daquelas jornalistas nojentas

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh2nmh/_/

Esse é pro @nuclearshill, tu que curte a argentina. viu que mataram um argentino no rio e o juiz não mandou prender?

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hgzlll/o_recado_no_finalzinho_%C3%A9_bem_importante/

Seria esse governo horroroso uma vingança do lula?

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh2lm4/mude_minha_opini%C3%A3o_lula_est%C3%A1_se_vingando_por_ter/

Já aproveitando a deixa, isso aqui foi engraçado, mas não tem a ver

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hg8xw9/universidades_p%C3%BAblicas_brasileiras_beiram_o/

https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh0jw5/discuss%C3%A3o_entre_jornalista_e_s%C3%A9rgio_sacani_sobre/

/r/Farialimabets -- era um sub de meme mas meio que virou um campo de batalha entre MAV do rBrasil e seres humanos

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh0y9h/compre_na_alta_e_venda_na_alta/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh80x6/estupidez_level_1000/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hhcejq/o_mundo_n%C3%A3o_%C3%A9_mais_o_mesmo/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hhf274/a_um_m%C3%AAs_atr%C3%A1s_algu%C3%A9m_comentou_aqui_no_sub_que/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh97a4/j%C3%A1_eras_sub_fomos_descobertos/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hhb8qe/partiu_aeroporto/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh9vc5/achei_o_tal_ataque_especulativo_do_cambio/

https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hgmj5o/em_quem_eu_acredito/

/r/Flanelaa (reduto de gente que quer xingar o /r/Brasil)

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hh0qxz/o_governo_lula_%C3%A9_um_fracasso/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hhcexl/update_senhores/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hhbn4e/n%C3%A3o_sou_nenhum_economista_mas_acho_que_est%C3%A1_na/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hgi10q/haddad_era_so_uma_ferramenta/

/r/investimentos -- Segura que agora vem pedrada

https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hgi10q/haddad_era_so_uma_ferramenta/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hh41ul/acho_que_n%C3%A3o_tenho_emocional_pra_bater_cabe%C3%A7a_com/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hha874/selic_negociada_na_curva_de_juros_est%C3%A1_acima_de/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhafgi/como_est%C3%A3o_protegendo_o_seu_patrim%C3%B4nio_desse/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hh16ru/vou_voltar_a_aportar_na_bolsa_brasileira/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhdfqu/ueee_come%C3%A7ou_a_terceira_guerra_mundial/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hh5810/acredito_que_o_d%C3%B3lar_vai_se_acomodar_afirma_haddad/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhcex4/s%C3%B3_pode_ser_piada_parte_2/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhcv2l/saiu_agora_18hs38min_18dez24_bc_anuncia_leil%C3%A3o_de/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhbd0h/onde_voc%C3%AAs_acham_que_vai_parar_essa_subida_do/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhd39r/histeria/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hh5g9i/d%C3%B3lar_alto_no_fim_do_ano_%C3%A9_o_pior_cen%C3%A1rio_que/

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hgl87e/cansei_n%C3%A3o_vou_deixar_1_centavo_do_meu_dinheiro/

E pra finalizar, você sabe o que realmente é brigading?

Quando um MAV do /r/Brasil vai em outro sub pra fazer post desonesto defendendo o governo.

https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hgg6a7/voc%C3%AAs_tem_no%C3%A7%C3%A3o_do_que_%C3%A9_um_ipca_7_at%C3%A9_2045_%C3%A9_uma/

not much drama at first

some actual flga strag discussion about colour theory or something

symbols used by evil people are OBJECTIVELY bad

the Orange in the Indian flag represents Bharat racism, except absolutely UNIRONICALLY

some brave chuds farm downmarseys

"Yes it is" "No it isn't"

https://old.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/1hdybyq/does_it_look_better/m1zqnja/?context=8

"Firstly I for one would compare the Apartheid flag to the confederate flag or Rhodesian flag neither of which are appropriate. Furthermore, both the Union Jack and rising flag should be seen as problematic and I'm glad you agree with that." "The BritBong flag is raping meeeeee"

miraculously even some circlejerk gets counterjerked against the usual Vexilloligy Intellectual shitlibs which equates symbolism of historically abhorrent regimes/nation-states/movements to be automatically abhorrent

https://old.reddit.com/r/vexillology/comments/1hdybyq/does_it_look_better/m1zpdij/?context=8

Anyways the weird things in all of these tiresome debates and slapfights, is that virtually zero safricans are ever involved with these flag MEDIA LITERACY and/or the denial of association with past atrocities/Apartheid connotations ect.

It's very difficult to explain, but trust me you can instantly pick up on the speaking patterns, lexicon and terminology with regards to how Safricans usually have internet slapfights - of of this shit you've seen is exclusively foreigners/westoids/yanks - be they performative shitlibs or Eurocuck Stormfronters utilizing Boers as a proxy for whatever pan-white racial international brotherhood whatever.

1st, actual Boers/Afrikaners, the actual turbo giga-chuds, would never ever utilize this

for pan-Afrikaans cultural celebration or whatever. The green Y symbol is already a racial-harmonious symbol in meaning, and the Black/Yellow stripe is explicitly african in connotation, as well as a call-back to the ANC (African National Congress) early symbolism. The Modern Safrica flag was explicitly chosen by the Mandela Administration to be a blending of previous Eueropean and african symbolism, whilst deliberately excluding symbolism of the Union of SA (the Apartheid State) flag characteristics.

Back in early 2000s internet, when the early web was not so sanitized, and linkrot would not claim like 75% of the internet, and old forums could still exist, including many many Stormfront and actual Boer supremacy sites - the vast majority despised the Y-green stripe symbolism, and conflated it to an Assegai (the signature short stabbing spear of Zulus/Xhosas/Swazi peeps) busy raping/stabbing the old Transvaal flag (which was the much more dominant between the two historic Boer republics)

https://zuluwarstore.com/en-za/products/iklwa-zulu-war-assegai

So that the modern flag was basically being R*PED by BBC Like i'm not joking or lying, this was the dominant discussion for afrikaans teenage white supremacists on the pre-4chan dustlands of the internet, as small as it was in the early 2000s, and would continue to do so.

Thus any replication of the modern by just replacing the colour from red to orange, would not have been done by boers, and was instead, strangely enough done by foreign Stormfronters, not grasping the already pan-racial unity symbolism of the rest of the flag.

Additionally there had been a few adult discussions for using the orange coded flag for afrikaans, but that was a great rarity

https://www.fotw.info/flags/za!afrik.html

like if you read the above fotw article, you'll be under the impression that this "Afrikaner" flag was a large movement, when in reality it was small, unpopular, and with even the majority of Boers being completely ambivalent. In reality it was some last ditch, Boer giga-boomer vexilloligy neurodivergents having a hobby thought experiment

Long boring point, there has never been a real threat of resurge of such symolism.... especially when the actual South African brainless white supremacists with no self-preservation would just fly or parade the Union flag as it was.

==========

On the opposite side, the shitlibs who foam at the mouth for evil WRONGTHINK racist symbology, you know the kind of fools who take 4chan bait of OK and milk drinking as fricking subterfuge attempts of conveying coded Mayo supremacy between racists, is a very Westoid yank shit type of purity secular type religiosity

similar to Christian Soccor moms, trying to out purity each other, by demonstrating how they got rid of Rock-and-Roll, Pokemon and Harry Potter from their household cuz that shit is Satanic - it's all very performative - to the extent that these progressives brainwash themselves into fricking believing the colour ORANGE is itself racist, not because of any local connections to their home country, but simply because their purity spiral on the /r/vexillology sub has reached it extreme conclusion, so that just because the Apartheid South African regime had orange within its flag, it automatically means frickin all orange colours on all flags must be associated with chuddery

========

Additionally the lexicon of of these obvious, white, western, upper-middle class is NOT that of black Safrican peeps, whom often do have real-world reasonable and unreasonable beef with white safricans, and especially afrikaners - the fact that many afrikaners racists do in fact try to find ways in which to transmit racism against blacks without being caught, such as in schoolyard poems, songs, jokes and lymrics. Many very unsubtle

The racial tension is also much so between black and white peeps in Safrica, that ill feeling in the air, in meetings can be cut with a butterknife. Uncomfortable associations like black manual labourers sitting behind a pick-up truck, while whites sit in front can lead to friction, regardless if there's cause for that. Example if i work on my father's farm, we are often so dirty that only the designated driver sits in front, because we've worked with pitch-coated wooden beams, and our hands are covered in sticky residue, and thus I and the black labourers in in the back, until we reach the tap and soaping point - but it often enough occurs that it's only my father (who has to do the driving), and the black men with their gloves sit in the back - a Speedcop/Traffic-cop might take out his ire on my father, replicating the behaviour of Apartheid era bosses, who never let 2nd -class blacks sit within, or the front for any reason, because of their inferior status.

Because of this, a large amount of racism afrikaans humour revolves around being in a superior/inferior status in life depending upon whether you sit in front or the back of the Bakkie - and blackcoloured peeps are certainly aware of such, there is no need for coded flags.

Additionally when black liberals talk about latent afrikner racism they don't talk like fricking redditors and call each other "Media illiterates", or use "context and connotation" or "inconvenient symbolism" - black liberals are much more blunt when they tend to describe safrican white racism, it's difficult to convey.

!africans

Overwhelmed. That's the only word that can describe how I feel right now. I'm drowning in emotions, thoughts, and ideas that I can barely function. Perhaps writing out the issue will provide some relief.

Physical Strife

I've returned to self-harming. I don't even need benzos or painkillers to do it anymore. I can slash myself to the white meat and just sit with the pain. It barely phases me. In fact, there's a part of it that feels deliciously good. It's an entire experience - the blood that drips, the sight of carved-out flesh, the sensation of being obliterated. It all comes together beautifully. I'm not even ashamed of my scars anymore. I think what I've done to myself is quite remarkable, and not many people could manage. If only I could challenge that willpower and dedication to something worthwhile, but I'm stupid as frick and all I can do is longpost and do drugs.

I tried to contact my psychiatrist but they're closed until January. I made an appointment with a GP for today but I don't really know what I'm going to do or say. Just tell them I've been self-harming and having panic attacks? I don't know what they can do for me. I doubt they'll be allowed to prescribe me anything, since I'm technically still supposed to have a supply of benzos for the month (I ate them all ages ago).

Should I go or should I just leave it? I think what I'm really looking for is just someone to talk to, though I don't know if a GP is the right person to be talking to.

As I write this, I'm listening to Nas Illmatic, and I'll say it's my top 5 most favorite albums of all time, and I'd argue it's the greatest hip hop album of all time. I think Life's a B-word is the greatest rap song of all time, and AZ absolutely kills it.

My favorite line is:

I switched my motto; instead of sayin', "Frick tomorrow!"

That buck that bought a bottle could've struck the lotto

I love how it encapsulates that "quiet violence of dreams". We have a vision of someone trying to escape the sins of their environment, but their most reliable means of escaping their heck is to win the fricking lotto. There's such a sense of futility and misery wrapped in these lines.

Social Strife

So it's clear I don't belong here. Everywhere I go I annoy people and make them angry. People have actively verbalized that they don't like me, and this recurring pattern is one that has characterized my life since childhood. It isn't a big problem - I'm a generally introverted person. However, I'm not schizoid and I do need some amount of love and acceptance. I fail to find these things and that makes me sad.

I'm so fricking depressed about being an incel. I'm 29, broke, no hope of GF, children or marriage. I can't even buy hookers because nobody's going to frick a dude with actively bleeding legs. I have literally permanently locked myself out of s*x for the rest of my life with my mental illness and self-harm. I do wonder, if I had the same personality, but I wasn't a 156cm ugly black man, would I still be an incel? These are questions we need quantum computers to answer.

I crave self-harm right now but my appointment is in three hours and I don't know if I can stop myself from cutting until then. And again, I'll probably be wasting my time and money going to a GP who is going to look at me and say "I didn't go to school to deal with schizos" and refer me to a psychiatrist which, as I have highlighted, is gone until January.

Conclusion

I don't know whether I should go to the doctor or not. Am I wasting my time? What am I hoping to achieve?

>Hey, you cute twink, you said you're leaving the site forever!

Well Reddit is shit and I need something to do when I'm not playing RDR2 so I guess I'm stuck with you r-slurs. You people who will give me griefing awards, insult me, tell me to kms, and accuse me of using ChatGPT (an accusation which confuses me. There are tons of plagiarism detection sites online. Proving I use ChatGPT would be trivial, yet nobody does it).

I'm so fricking overwhelmingly sad I can't think straight. This was supposed to be a longpost about Eugene Terre'Blanche but I'm too sad to do it.

No it's not about ketamine.

Introduction

In the west, Kpop is typically derided. Oftentimes this is because it is creatively bankrupt and consists of cookie cutter songs and artists. Other times it is hated for the immaturity/insanity of its western fan base (teenage girls, trannies, and neets.) Still more people hate it because of the oppressive nature of its industry. Whatever your reason, it is clear that kpop is slop. Goyslop, if you will. However, it is Goyslop of the highest order. Made to be agreeable to the largest audience possible's most base instincts. This combined with the nature of the industry (more on this later), means that it is ripe for drama; and yet I very rarely see kpop drama on this site.

Typical kpop fans

Now I don't like Kpop, but the drama potential of kpop became apparent to me a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon the news of Newjeans trying to cancel their contract. I spent 3 days gorging myself upon the news and it's associated buildup. To be frank with you, I became addicted to kpop. Not the music of course, but the drama surrounding it. I had a desire to post about Newjeans and share that delicious drama with you all; However there was a massive amount of background information to sift through and organize. I realized the full deets would require a series, and when I realized that, well, I started seeing DC in my eyes.

However, I am lazy. I don't want start a full series if it won't pay off, so I figured I would create a prototype, a pilot episode if you will. If you all enjoy this post, and I get my goombling funds, then I'll begin work on the Newjeans saga in earnest (with a few filler episodes thrown in, of course)

First off, a few warnings and disclaimers:

1. A lot of kpop groups have minors in them. I will be posting images and videos of various kpop groups throughout this series. If you see next to an image or video, that means it contains someone who is CURRENTLY a minor. You have been warned.

2. Kpop sucks from a musical standpoint, but it has ear worms. I will link to songs, concert performances, and music videos as part of this series, but I would avoid listening to the music if possible. Otherwise you'll end up like me and have Crazy by Le Sserafim stuck in your head for two weeks, a fate worse than death. Songs that I think are a big risk for this will be marked with a next to the link.

An example of these two points:

these ones are all over 18, I just wanted to provide an example

(Pictured above: 5 Korean shaman perform a sissification ritual on their unsuspecting male audience)

(The shaman's evil chant)

3. As I said earlier, I just started my research about a month ago, so I'm very likely to get things wrong. This will be compounded by the fact that the really juicy shit is found on Korean sites and forums, so I will either use Google translate, or the translation of random freaks on the internet. if I do get something wrong, don't worry, it's working as intended

Without further adieu,..

...Let us go down...

... The K-hole

The Drama

If you've made it this far and know anything about kpop, I'm sure you're wondering why I used an image of Twice. It's because they tangentially relate to this story. How? Well to understand that you need to know who/what JYP is.

Background

Jin-Young Park

JYP stands for Jin-Young Park, a South Korean singer who rose to prominence in the 1990's and parlayed his success into his own media conglomerate, which he humbly named JYP Entertainment (hereafter JYPE). JYPE is one of the 4 major companies that dominate the South Korean music industry. Their most successful artists are Twice, Itzy, and NMIXX (no not the sex cult).

For years JYPE has tried to break into the American market, with only middling success. Their most recent attempt was actually about a week and a half ago when Twice released a comeback that featured Megan THEE Stallion on the title track. One of their recent schemes has been to launch Kpop style American groups under a brand new division, JYP USA.

Strategy - Twice feat. Megan Thee Stallion

Now something you need to understand about the kpop industry is that in a weird way, it's almost like professional sports, having the following things in common.

1. Opportunities and success are largely based on God given talent. (If you're not a slim rice foid who can dance/sing/rap better than everyone else you don't have a shot.)

2. The window of opportunity is very slim, If you don't make it big by 30 you probably never will.

3. At the highest levels, there is a LOT of money at stake. (For example, the exclusive contract Newjeans is trying to get out of likely has a penalty of $200-400 million.)

For these reasons, kpop idols go through a sort of training period before they actually are put into a group and debuted. The idols essentially drop out of school and join a training program, where they learn how to sing, dance, rap, and be charming in front of a camera. Just like young athletes and their coaches trying to make it big, these schools have a very "whatever needs to be done attitude" to training, with horror stories abounding. This is considered standard practice in the industry, meaning that almost every kpop groups you see was carefully planned out years in advance.

JYP USA planned to continue this proud gook tradition with their flagship girl group VCHA, a group formed in 2023 from the winners of a web show A2K (America2Korea) on youtube, where JYP himself selected members to form an American kpop group. However, they ran into one small problem: The breakable American spirit.

The Lawsuit

Kiera Grace Madder, 17, (stage name KG Crown) was one of the lucky girls who won A2K and had her dreams come true of becoming a pop star. At least, that is what she thought before entering into the Korean style training system. In May 2024, after enduring months of abuse, KG decided she couldn't take any more, and requested out of her contract. JYP USA refused, citing. that she owed them over $500,000 for training and production costs. Seeing no other option KG filed a lawsuit on December 7th in the state of California to terminate her contract. The complaints of abuse are summarized below:

Now the interesting thing here is that none of this is illegal in South Korea, where JYPE is based. A court there ruled that idols were contractors and not employees, meaning that they were not entitled to protections granted to employees under South Korean labor laws. However, VCHA was based in California, which not only has strict labor laws, but EXTREMELY strict child labor laws, due to the history of child actor abuse in Hollywood.

The general consensus online seems to be that most of the allegations of abuse will go nowhere, but the complaints regarding working hours, denial of profits, and the $500,000 debt are likely to be decided in KG's favor due to California Labor laws.

The Reaction

/r/kpop reacts

IG post

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/1h94lj7/vcha_kg_posts_an_instagram_story_update_regarding/

JYPE response

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/1h9w7w1/jyp_usa_issues_statement_regarding_the_lawsuit/

/r/kpop_uncensored reacts

IG post

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop_uncensored/comments/1h94n0n/kgs_instagram_story_reveals_she_has_filed_a/

Summary of legal complaint from KG

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop_uncensored/comments/1h94z98/summary_of_document_detailing_jypes_mistreatment/

JYPE response

https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop_uncensored/comments/1h9w3k1/statement_from_jyp_usa_on_vchas_twitter/

Random gook reaction (translated by /mu/, retrieved from desuarchive):

Twitter Reacts

Based Twice fans reacts to calls for a boycott, VCHAcels sneed

>No you HAVE to boycott!

to be clear we have been boycotting for months because jyp is a zionist and the company has continued to do collabs with zionists and are continuing to boycott now also because of the recent news with vcha and jype's mistreatment of its artists

— JYPE FILES 📌 (@jypefiles) December 9, 2024

>Kpop?

Outro

How this will all play out remains to be seen, the most likely course of action in that JYPE realizes that this whole thing is poison to any future attempts to gain a foothold in the American market and just cuts the mayofoid loose without retardedly trying to recoup its "debt".

If you enjoyed this post let me know and I will begin work on the Newjeans saga.

Whoever chose the title was doing a bit of trolling

Concord and implacability, name a more iconic duo

Episode opens with shitty pirate accent voice about Concord's lore. FTL travel exists but randomly kills people sometimes

TFW traveling through the limitless reaches of space at hyperlight speeds but you get sniped by a screw

Scene cuts to random woman(?) bound up

Dollar store Thanos confirms that the protag is a foid. Apparently she has some special chip that Thanos wants to extract.

We cut to a new character

He seems to be working with a grumpy

The two men spring into action, opening a door containing the Black lady. , , and a doctor all spring into action. They free the woman, smash a window, and try ziplining away. Thanos cuts the zipline Lots of MCU-style quips

There was also this character distracting some guards in the background. Apparently another member of the crew

The teletubby starts blasting Thanos with its finger guns. Teletubby gets shot in the head, but is revealed to be a talking fish.

Some trash mobs swarm the crew, I guess they're looking to another crew member for backup. "They say Julius is amazing. Always on, always ready..."

He wasn't actually ready lmfao!!!! Typical worthless tbh .

Sniper tells him they need to go so he closes the ramp and starts to leave . The rest of the crew make it half a second before the ship launches. The Captain(?) isn't seen reaching the ship. They bicker for a while, until a scary guard enters the room holding them at gunpoint. Surprise, it's actually the Black woman captain!!!

They for a bit about whether or not the captain has secured the valuable route through space. She did . Apparently the chip she had in her arm grants access to every single guild navigation route.

Cuts to the guild attacking the ship. The ship loses all of its fins(??) that allow it to steer. Julius starts to so takes back over on the ship.

Somehow, everyone randomly starts passing out

But wait! Julius is shown wearing a gas mask and walking away with a smug look. Is the blond white male a traitor?

Cut to waking up from the knockout gas. Julius and Thanos are chatting on Zoom. Thanos wants the chip and and promises to leave the rest of the crew alone. Surprisingly, the crew seems cool with this and asks for a bounty. The bounty is large

12,500,000 MONEYS!?!?!

gets up and challenges Julius to tie her down . He gets nervous and unfastens to back him up. But SURPRISE! is still loyal to the captain! He opens the airlock, killing Julius and nobody else.

gives a hand.

This gives an idea. She uploads the chip and its trade routes to the galactic internet

Thanos rages, the crew accelerate forward with their ship, heading straight into the big scary storm foreshadowed earlier.

There's a gay slowmo montage of them all nodding at each other as purple storm magic swirls around them. The bartender who has been telling this whole story reveals that they may have survived, because he has the funko pop that they brought onto that ship.

Final Rating: 3/10 . ChatGPT writes Guardians of the Galaxy fanfiction. I shouldn't have wasted my time watching and reviewing this garbage. I hope this post is long enough to count as an effortpost, but if it isn't, the least you can do is upmarsey me or donate some dramacoin for going to all this trouble and saving you from having to watch this terrible episode. Thanks!

Merry Christmas from the politics long post man! I bought a grass award and now I'm broke, so I'm "regifiting" something I wrote for thanksgiving! Happy holidays!

The White House is full of cheesy, sweet, mostly useless traditions done for fun. The Family Christmas cards , calling kids on Christmas , and my favourite trick and treating at the White House . But there's none as cheesy as the turkey pardon, where the President is given a turkey and grants it a pardon - so that first turkey goes back to a farm to be killed later, and the President eats a second turkey that's killed earlier. A pretty strange tradition when broken down like that (though what tradition isn't when broken down), it's history is disputed. Most attribute the start of the tradition Harry Truman being sent several turkeys, but I assure you that cheap bastard didn't pardon shit. And besides that, Presidents have been gifted turkeys before then - who started pardoning turkeys? And when did it become a tradition?

The First Turkey Gift

There are rumours that Lincoln was the first man to pardon a turkey, coming from an 1865 report about the President's actions in 1863. There seems to be some truth in the matter, but it was far from a tradition or spectacle - Lincoln's son Tad had grown attached to the bird, so Abe decided to spare it . Additionally, the tradition usually involves pardoning an animal sent to the President - that wasn't a tradition until 1873, when a rather intelligent poultry farmer figured out a trick.

Gifts to the President were nothing new. He's the most powerful man in one of the most powerful nations - if the President says he enjoys something, such as the product or service he had received as a pleasant gift, then you can be sure that will become a fashionable item.

The first noted turkey farmer to figure that out was Horace Vose (pictured above), the "Turkey King of Rhode Island" . Every year, the Turkey King would send a dressed turkey to the President. Cracks showed in Vose's final thanksgiving, when Representative South Trimble also sent President Wilson a turkey, certain that it would be better than the Turkey King's turkey (historical record as to which turkey was better doesn't exist, what a fricking oversight). When Vose passed away that December, offering the President turned into all out war - Warren Harding , for example, was sent turkeys every year - even in 1920 when he was both not President and not in America.

But a grand tradition was established that year. In addition to the turkeys Harding was swarmed with, he and President Wilson were both sent live turkeys from Texas - it's unknown what Harding did with the turkey, but Wilson ate the poor thing. Coolidge , the fun police, briefly stopped the practise because he opposed having wild animals in the White House. Thankfully, he was pressured into restoring the practise, and was sent just a bunch of wild animals as penance that year. One such animal was a raccoon. Rather then eat her, Grace Coolidge adopted her and named her Rebecca. And as you can see, she was just a sweet heart.

So for Roosevelt era, the tradition was that during Thanksgiving, the White House would be swarmed by animals in an attempt to get some national advertising or to show support. Things would change in Truman's day.

The First Presentation

In autumn 1947, Truman and the food administration called for "Poultryless Thursdays", a voluntary measure made to try and save food to give to the Europoors after WW1 Poultry farmers were fricking pissed - that year, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years all happened to take place on Thursday, so Truman's woke war on turkeys really fricked them over.

This led to the first public Turkey Presentation, where the turkey magnates made a big show of giving Truman a turkey which did lead to Truman taking Turkey off the "pls don't eat list".

This was the first time that the President being given a turkey was given attention with a show made out of it, and it was a lobbying effort, god bless America. The establishment of this tradition is likely why President Truman is credited with the other tradition, the pardon, but as the Truman library notes - this turkey was not at all spared. The guy was a massive cheapskate, he 100% ate that turkey

Instead, the first turkey spared was in 1963, when President Kennedy declined to have the turkey he was presented with on a whim.

On November the 19th, President Kennedy sarcastically said "We'll just let this one grow" (it was 55 lbs). Why he didn't want to eat this turkey isn't clear - he ate bacon every day and loved oysters, so it's not like he was a vegetarian. And he kind of died 10 days later, so we couldn't exactly ask him why he did this. Some have speculated that it was kind of power play over the more "macho" Lyndon Johnson , but he didn't have a problem with the 1961 or 1962 turkeys. More likely, in my opinion, is that Kenney was just feeling silly. He was prone to just doing silly, whimsical things - it was why the press liked him so much.

So, mystery solved. President Kennedy was the President that established the Turkey Pardon, and he did it for shits and giggles.

The issue with this is that it wasn't repeated for some time. LBJ did not fricking spare a single bird, if the press wasn't present in that photo he'd unhinge his jaw and eat that bird then and there, and Nixon ate a few birds - while he did send some Turkeys to a petting zoo (and the Carters sent every bird to a petting zoo), that wasn't part of the tradition at all. More critically, President Kennedy, Nixon and Carter didn't "pardon" the turkey. He just sent it back home, he didn't use his powers for it. So, when was the first time that a President pardoned a turkey?

The First Pardon

1987, Ronald Wilson Reagan's second to final year. His landslide victory in 1980 and 1984 may suggest that he's a massively popular and unifying president. And perhaps in 1984, he was.

But in truth, the Iran-Contra scandal is boiling Reagan's administration alive. More and more top officials are being exposed as committing high treason, illegally selling guns to Iran to illegally fund right wing counterrevolutionaries the Contras . While being grilled by the press on whether Reagan will pardon Oliver North, a lead architect behind the scheme, the gears in his addled mind turn. It's a difficult question to answer - so he won't answer it. Putting on his movie star grin and giving Charlie the turkey a pet, he smiles, ignores the question, and says he will indeed be pardoning this turkey.

Unlike Kennedy's clemency, Reagan's pardon wasn't spur of the moment. He had only had one turkey, in 1981, and had afterwards sent the birds to petting zoos as well. But this was the first time the idea of a pardon was introduced to a turkey presentation field. That's right, the first example of this silly show was covering up massive corruption at the very top of American power. God bless America!

Like Kennedy, this wasn't the start of a tradition for a reason - Reagan didn't do it again in 1988. Instead, the tradition was started in 1989, during the first Bushs' first year.

"Let me assure you, and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone's dinner table, not this guy. He's granted a presidential pardon as of right now."

For some reason, the President that oversaw an end to the Cold War didn't have why he pardoned turkeys a lot noted for history. It's like he had no idea what's important. It could be that he wanted to try and legitimise the first pardon, but after Reagan didn't have a pardon ceremony in 1989, that strikes me as unlikely. Bush wasn't exactly a vegetarian, so I can only arrive at the conclusion he thought he thought it was neat.

Or, rather his team thought it was neat. He didn't give a frick either way, saying of the affair "'Reprieve', 'keep him going', or 'pardon': it's all the same for the turkey, as long as he doesn't end up on the president's holiday table."

Nonetheless, it was a cute tradition established and actually followed up on, as Clinton pardoned his turkey - citing the tradition as going back to Lincoln and Truman, which is likely why there's some confusion. Slick Willie, you scamp!

Addendum - what happens to the turkeys after the pardon?

They die.

John Stossel did a report on it. The turkeys are bred to be eaten, not enjoy life. Fed a grain-heavy diet of fortified corn and soybeans to increase their size, what typically happens is that the flesh grows so fast that their bones and organs can't match the overgrown flesh, so they just die.

This isn't unique to the presidential turkeys - this applies to the vast majority of turkeys chosen to be slaughtered. The only difference between the presidential turkeys and normal turkeys is that the presidential turkeys are trained to handle crowds, before dying slowly from their forced mutations.

Yeah I ended the longpost with vegan propaganda. Deal with it cute twinks

It's always weird seeing seeing the takes of anti-g*mer gaters or progressives/liberals.

If I personally had made any sincere attempts to try and portray or dictate the events of GG neutrally, I'd attempt to recount that the initial events of the slut dev (forgot who) sleeping with reviewers for favourable reviews and preferential treatment.

By 2014 much of gaming had grown exponentially since 2004, blin terms of the amount of g*mers playing on earth, the size and scope and budgets of AAA publishers began to compete with Hollywood, and subsequently the opportunity for corruption along with it.

In South Africa, we had a magazine called NAG (New Age Gaming) which became the topmost gayming hardcopy magazine in the country ( and pretty much the entire Southern Africa)

For the entirety of my high school, NAG dominated and influenced gayming discussion, and the writers there were even names you'd recognize, perhaps less because of their quality and more so the poor and (technologically) behind nature of Safrica.

Yet by the time I graduated highschool in 2012, things would go bad for NAG, the internet and proliferation of independent websites and Content Creators, meant competition on a scale yet unheard of for journ*lism of all stripes

YouTube would balloon to become the premier video site on the planet, and every year internet 🛜🛜🛜 would become incrementally cheaper - to the point that fricking even the lowest poorest strata of society could afford/access the web from Phone plans/contracts

Thus the internet, and places which consumed large amounts of broadband, like YouTube, would become exponentially more accessible. This doesn't even talk of the proliferation of smartphones, and thus browsers into the hands of non PC tech nerds, as it was just 10 years earlier in 2004

As an example in 2012, when I began my studies at UCT, I was exposed to the shocking privilege of one whole fricking gigabyte of broadband per student! for non-university websites!!! The year before I had been still used to the moderate but expensive 650megabytes of internet at the expensive (for rural strags) R600 per month for our family computer 🖥️💻, shared for the whole family house, and in which I had often gotten into massive trouble cuz I had used up the family broadband for gayming torrents before the end of the month

By 2014, the average student had uncapped WiFi at UCT, though at slow speed, and by 2020 fiber internet trails were being laid into the ground of every major city of the country.

I recall back even in highschool, there had become less and less trust towards the writers of NAG magazine, there had been internet mailed, which the editor actually was brave enough to post in the Letters-from-readers pages, to defend his team back in 2010, when had had been accused of giving large games (the concept of AAA wasn't something I was familiar with at the time) preferential treatment,

By giving soft criticisms towards obvious junk (slop), whilst lesser gaming studios or publishers never got the same treatment. Even IRL discussions for me in high school there were shockingly mature in hindsight suspicions of the now largest and most established journ*lists publishings on earth like IGN and Eurog*mer, having had a "grassroots conspiracy" of brining indepenant journ*lists with vouchers/trips/holidays with the unspoken understanding that unfavorable reviews would not result in repetition of these gifts or even review copies.

There was all sorts of logical (as well as batshit) theorising of whether journ*lism was being infected with corruption and financial conspiracy.

I'm going on this MASSIVE tangent to demonstrate to you guys, that even in 3rd-Worldistan of Safrica, even before fricking 2010, and even for the fricking local national magazine there had started the embers of suspicions for Gaming Journ*lism having a lack of integrity!!!!

Because we started noticing CODslop and other AAA publisher titles gaining collectively more obvious preferential treatment, even though as far as my memory served COD as a franchise was still good? For as long as till like the mid 2010s.

Point being there was a definite feeling of distrust brewing between ground level poorcel g*mers, even in backwards places. And this was a a distrust completely entangled with regards to Journ*lists-and-Publishsher parasitic financial relationships exclusively! The very notion of American culture war being infused with distrust towards journ*lists would not begin until way after 2014

On the other hand, vast majority of gaymers are sheep who literally seldom question reviewers, let alone read beyond the review score, or are such Uber normies, they literally walk into a brick and mortar gayming/tech store and buy the shiniest game on the shelf, without question ⁉️ ❓ and has probably never read a review in their life.

So it's always insane to me when Reddit types, you know the kind, the turbo wokescolds progressives, who deny that Wokeness is not even a real thing or even a definable concept, who go out of their way to oppose whaever the chud group opposes, the /r/gaming circlejerk types,

when Reddit types espouse that the very notion of Journ*lism being corrupt, or that there could ever have or has ever been an extreme lack of integrity from the gaming Journ*list Industry .

Look into the thread I linked, complete denial of the very existence of corruption of Journos, that @VFiddly cute twink states that all of what the initial G*merGate complained about never happened.....and wait what?

Like if you're the type of liberal like @QuadNarca here on rdrama.net, and you believe that GG pretty early got coopted by sexists and and fiends from the onset, I can agree with that. That the initial spurt of momentum of GG which was sparked by the slut Dev's bribery, and the subsequent conspiracy of the near entire Western Anglosphere journ*list industry simultaneously pushing out his pieces, all of that rendered irrelevant to the exposure of the ugly side of gaymers,

that would be a sensible and fair take. But to claim NONE of the initial G*merGate complaints of corruption in Journ*lism or the paracitical relationship of Publishers and Journ*lists was never warranting attention, is actual insanity. I'd even go as far as to say it's a pretty extreme stance.

Anyways none of that matters, Journ*lists literally wrote themselves out of relevance. Very few peeps have organizational or institutional trust in Gaming Journ*lists, or even the largest Gaming News online sites like IGN and Eurog*mer.

What was suspicions and a conspiracy theory about the lack of integrity of Journos, have become the literal norm for gaymers here in safrica, and I presume from the state of online discussions, the same can be said for the rest of the world.

I once came back to my home town in 2015 to look for the NAG magazine and could not find it at the magazine shelves in any shop. I would learn they had stopped printing by 2014, and had downsized to only a skeleton crew for the online articles.

YouTube by 2014 was large enough for independent personalities to make an audience, and I guess in the modern era, it's each g*mer strag's responsibility to find whatever reviewers you trust most, or whose taste most closely aligns with your own. Cuz, you sure as shit can't trust Gaymer Journos, the lowest form of Journos on earth.

As a bit of tiny good/neutral news NAG appears to still exist in Safrica, and makes a few articles every month, some of actually ok. It appears some of the survivors of 12 years ago managed to accumulate a small loyal following.

what do you Dramatards think?

Another interesting thing, Ukraine replaced some general.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/14/europe/lutsenko-ukraine-replaces-commander-russia-intl-latam/index.html

The new general:

I tried to find Reddit cope but seems Reddit ignored it for more important topics like

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1he7uz8/medical_marijuana_is_set_to_become_available_in/

Veterans will certainly be once they return home and can deal with PTSD with a joint instead of copious amounts of alcohol.

Although legalizing psychodelics would probably be better.

Why are Redditors such junkies ?

Lord knows they need it

Drugs are literally haram in all Arabic religions.

If you consume drugs at least know it roots your brain, don't cope with lord or you are not better than those who call them self Islam brothers and consume alcohol and drugs thinking not eating pig is enough and asking for forgiveness later. Deliberately committing a crime with idea to later ask for forgiveness is evil, only a jin would act like this.

Also most people that bought illegal weed did so because illegal weed ain't clean, it's mixed with strong shit

So

Why the replacement of the general is important, because it shows that Ukraine expects from new general to hold Pokrovsk at all costs like they held Bakhmut. It would be naive to expect in now because he lost Avdiivka and that's the reason Russian are now inside Pokrovsk. Pokrovsk ain't Bakhmut with multiple rivers and hills or avdiivka that was extremely fortified. On top of it Russian now have shit tons of fabs and Ukraine doesn't have that much bodies to throw holding Pokrovsk.

Also Russian already captured more territory than in November

First November

Today and as you know live map now copes hard so that thing below Kurakhove don't exist + Ukrainian left Kurakhove yesterday.

So when I told Russian gaining exponential more ground every month since June I wasn't lying. Just telling brutal truth

So no wonder that r-slurs like @Christmas_Commander are mad at me but you see he politely asked me to tell him when Russian reach pokrovsk. They guy called me hoi4 player I toke it as compliment because he is low IQ so all his insults against me is prove of him being delusional about his IQ. He thinks Ukraine is equality distributed with Ukrainian soldiers and that Russian would move same speed always. Now that corned parrot will scream "rent free" because that's peak of his IQ and he is proto pro khohol.

But I am like giga surprised that Redditors didn't reposted khohols official proofs of NK soldiers:

Thing is Kursk wasn't that snowy the past days and those videos ain't geolocated and it's just soldiers.

So giga impressed Redditors realised this is no proof.

More from Kursk region 🇰🇵🐜 pic.twitter.com/QVFrr6Y5xE

— MAKS 24 🇺🇦👀 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) December 15, 2024

See its North Korean soldiers there is flag on top of them

⚡️Soldiers of the 🇷🇺Russian and 🇰🇵North Korean Armed Forces in the Kursk region, situation pic.twitter.com/2G7nRAt4s7

— 🪖MilitaryNewsUA🇺🇦 (@front_ukrainian) December 15, 2024

Look more Korean

They don't even ask how is that possible. To collect those bodies Ukraine needs to move forwards. They won't have time to put those in formation anywhere close to the front so it's just photoshot or photoshop somewhere far away from the front and no proofs it's NK

The new prokhohol cope is this:

https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1het6jr/ukraines_volodymyr_zelensky_delays_critical/

Zelenskyy wants to give its resources away.

The thing is 80% of Ukrainian recourses are Donbas and Dnipro. And Trump ain't r-slur to buy Donetsk city resources that Zelenskyy wants to sell to him

This is the only correct approach. I don't care that he doesn't deserve it or that it isn't fair, I care about the results. Americans can go protest him or w/e, abroad the only thing to do is try to win his favor

Trump doesn't deserve things that are not under Zelenskyy controls ? Like when foods saying you don't deserve me at my best when you don't want me at my worst ?

Estonia (I am leaving it here for you to have better picture)

Americans must be thinking now, "OMG, he is a real boss, he owns all of Europe, everyone is afraid of him, everyone has to respect him."

Meanwhile...

United States

Americans by and large do not care what happens in Europe.

Estonia

If we are swallowed by Russia and China, which I don't think will ever happen, but if that does happen, the US will lose its economic and military power at the speed of light.

The last time they pursued the "America First" policy, we know what happened.

EU

And the American government by and large doesn't care what Americans think, which is why Americans don't matter in foreign policy.

Why are Redditors so low IQ like imagine a guy wakes up at 6 every morning to reach his job at 8/9 then works till 16/17 then comes home at 19:00 buys a kebab because he lives alone and is tired, falls a sleep at 24:00 in front of his TV holding ps5 controller and so 5/7 a week if you come to him and tell Ukraine needs the money and his kebab will soon cost more for sake of Ukraine. He is going to say Frick Ukraine and there are millions people like this guy in Europe. The help for Ukraine reached such lvl that averagecels starts asking tha frick we help them that much ? People virtue ain't unlimited.

Zelensky needs to swallow his pride and be pragmatic, if cosying up to Trump and stroking his ego is what helps the war effort, then it needs to be done.

Redditors are so bad at business no wonder they so poor. They don't follow the story up to date. Republicans are only interested in shit in far west of Ukraine. They also not interested in shit from ultra unpopular guy whose legitimacy is also questionable and that's why they suggesting election. So why would Trump need Zelenskyy deal if he can find him self an Zelenskyy successor and help him get rid of Zelenskyy and get even a better deal ?