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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 11m

Look out kid, it's somethin you did. God knows when, but you're doin' it again...

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Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 23m

“If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it” says the crowd trying to ban drag shows and books

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 1h

For everything I have against it, Once An Eagle probably belongs on here too. I've had to go back to it many times to effectively criticize it, and its only real competition is The Caine Mutiny.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 2h

My current understanding is that he's the least successful of that era's service chief reformers, and we're measuring him against McPeak, Boorda, and Krulak.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 2h

Army friends, where does Eric Shinseki currently stand in terms of being revolutionary or counterrevolutionary? Is he one of the Army's great transformational leaders or is he a frustrated/failed reformer?

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 5h

"Whoa, I just wanted to publicly martyr myself, but now I understand it could end with my televised execution!"

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 5h

The guy planned to die in the attack. I'm unclear on the extent to which the problem of suicide terrorism can be deterred by the death penalty.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 5h

The mix of pre-training, fixing medical screening, and simple things like recruiter training fixed everything. There wasn't some audience of super-fit, hyper-masculine guys looking at The Calling and saying "Well I'm not joining because of this."

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 5h

You know what actually fixed Army recruiting? Better medical admin and physical preparation. It turns out there are a ton of people who wanted to serve, but they needed help getting to the baseline before shipping and not getting screened out or left waiting forever on a waiver. It wasn't the ads.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 5h

I think the year after it came out the entire Army fell short by tens of thousands, and The Calling got a lot of blame, enough that they switched back to Be All You Can Be, which we made fun of, and the Jonathan Majors ad, which we made fun of. But none of it helped.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 5h

So I know the ad he's talking about...The Calling. We made fun of it in the Marine Corps, because we make fun of basically every Army ad, more because it was animated than because of its themes. But the thing is that the Army hit its recruiting goals that year, just not on the reserve side.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 5h

Can't speak for anyone else, but the Marine Corps hasn't missed an annual recruiting goal since like the mid-90s. But even for the Army I think Hegseth has his history wrong.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 6h

I know it's like the least off-putting thing about him, but can someone just draw some eyebrows onto Thiel? Maybe with the same dye he uses on his hair so they match?

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 8h

I think even his closest allies are starting to get tired of the "From this day on, the official language of San Marcos is Swedish!" shit.

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Tony Stark @tonystark.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

lol new defense chart from “How the Army Fights”

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

You know who this would never happen to? A flag officer. Partly because so many of them do a ton of running, but mostly because they have the experience to run against the crowd giving high fives specifically to avoid this kind of optic.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

There's a type of humor horseshoe theory where instead of a punchline it's all about looking around to see who is and isn't laughing like Kim Jong Un just told a joke.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Only 48 hours. I remember 2016, when we locked things down for like a month. By the end of it, it was like Irish monasteries looking at a steep decline in trade and demanding the Vikings come back.

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Zeddy @zeddary.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Hilariously much of what we consider 'Americana' came from German immigrants in the mid-1800s. Hot dogs, beer, Christmas trees, hamburgers...but they also brought abolitionism with them so Elon's gotta get the calipers out...

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

In a dead heat with Lemmy's Cinnamon Girl cover, which always makes me smile. youtu.be/IeLiNShk72A

youtu.be

MOTORHEAD / THE MUGGERS- Cinnamon Girl

YouTube video by ONLY VINYL

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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Sometimes my wife and I like to send each other text messages as though they’re democratic fundraising messages, and I believe she has produced the jewel of the form.

, it's
and I
have some personal news to share with you.
Being a mom is one of the greatest joys of my life, and I feel deeply that we should have salad tonight
This year has been challenging in many ways, and I have immense gratitude for the kindness and support of family, community, and people like you who have continued to stand by me through everything. It means the world, and I wanted you to be among the first to know that squash is in the oven and kale is in the fridge.

As many of you are aware, ve been navigating one of the most challenging periods of my day while waiting for dinner.
Facing baseless federal hunger brought on by not eating since lunch, fighting for the working kids of this country, and now caring for a mean toddler and helping him grow up in a world that isn't always easy. But it has also reminded me exactly why I do this work and who I do it for.
I will never stop working to eat dinner. I will never stop fighting for what is right, even when there is also some feta in the fridge. And I will never stop being so very thankful that you are by my side in this important work and that there is tahini in the pantry for dressing
With love and gratitude,
stop to end

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I like how our widely agreed upon aesthetic for future warfare is just "It's my first day using CAD."

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Even suggesting we should just piss away that talent is reason enough to shitcan Hegseth, who is easily the most replaceable man in the building.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

This also makes me think about the Louisiana Maneuvers. For all the GO firings of the Louisiana Maneuvers, the institutional knowledge and savoir faire of a GO is too valuable to throw away, so most got reassigned to more administrative commands. thehill.com/newsletters/...

thehill.com

GOP senators are not happy with Hegseth

Welcome to The Hill’s Defense & NatSec newsletter{beacon} Defense &National Security Defense &National Security The Big Story GOP senators are not happy with Hegse…

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

And it will probably be one of those factoids used to show how benighted people were in the past, like "And it wasn't until ten years later that doctors definitively proved Diet Coke caused dementia."

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I doubt it will even be a tricky one. I think he'll mostly exist in the minds of future Americans through one of those inane presidential factoids, like Coolidge having a pet raccoon. Trump will just be the guy who had a Diet Coke button.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The year is 2045. A student taps his foot trying to remember if Johnson, Clinton, Trump, or Nixon was the one who was impeached more than once. He finally picks A because he's using too much time on one question and they probably wouldn't have four C answers in a row.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I'm torn between on the one hand being concerned we will eventually forget the lessons of this grave moment of national crisis and on the other hand kind of taking solace in knowing Trump will eventually just be reduced to one question a bunch of students get wrong on a high school history test.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The right setup is probably plugging an N4 guy into the TSC, maybe to be part of the SPO's royal court, but the TSC really needs to take the first step and plug a guy into the MOC's LRC for like a Pac Sentry. I don't think PACOM's J4 is a solution on its own.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Don't forget the TSCs. At the theater level for logistics, it's the Army's world, the rest of us just live in it.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Oh no question. But do you think there's a non-Hegseth argument the Army is currently in a similar position to before Louisiana, even if the gap isn't something as dumb as "we need more warfightery GOs"?

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

What are your thoughts @pptsapper.bsky.social? You're kind of one of my go-to Army oracles.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Whomst among us hasn't used WW2 as a cargo cult?

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Does he have a sound theory of how/why? No. To him it's just a pretense for his culture war bullshit. But it isn't clear whether we're in the same position as we were before the Louisiana Maneuvers, just in some different way with different gaps.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

To be charitable, I think that, much like his pal Scheller did with his anti-leader rant, he's tapping into a feeling that's a lot more widespread than we want to admit. I don't agree with any of his jocksniffing nonsense, but I think the wars suggest we probably did promote a lot of the wrong guys.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

So like theater-scale sustainment under attrition, dealing with EPWs at scale, etc. Not being able to take air supremacy for granted is probably up there, or having to fortify against munitions that are both huge and guided.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

So does anyone have any thoughts on what the missing pieces are today? As much as I love wargames, my blind guess is it's actually not free play force on force. It's probably more stuff where when you even bring it up the flag officer says shit like "Yeah, we're really gonna have to look at that."

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Also, there hasn't been enough evaluation about what the pre-Louisiana Army promotions got right, or why they got it right. It all just melts into the oversimplified narrative of separating the chaff of non-warfighters, which isn't exactly what happened.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

For example, Marshall would have killed to have brigade and division commanders under the constant observation of NTC/JRTC, or the constant high echelon CPXs of the combatant commands. Are there still giant missing pieces that could cause mass firings? Probably, but they aren't the same ones as WW2.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

To discourage imbecile boot ass field grades whose life is built around the conceit they could have won OIF/OEF because they're just more warfighter-y than GOs, the institution needed a narrative about exactly what happened at the Louisiana Maneuvers and how today's GO corps is different.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Which isn't a problem unless the world is giving you some steady I/W that you probably promoted a bunch of the wrong guys for the last few decades, and you can't articulate how or why, so it just becomes some Louisiana Maneuvers "we need warfighters" sloganeering.

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Dark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The Louisiana Maneuvers have a pretty fixed place in the Army psyche, to the point even an idiot like Hegseth knows a bit about them. But I think if I asked any random field grade about them, they could mostly just tell me "Patton was cool," not why the Army had promoted so many of the wrong guys.

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