iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 45m

Vietnam isn’t a proxy war either if that’s the standard. The ability and will to exploit the Sino-Soviet split shows Hanoi marched to its own drummer.

000

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Dimko Zhluktenko @dim0kq.bsky.social · 4h

To honor all the newly appointed Ukraine experts who say Ukraine is doomed, I want to present you this legendary take. It was really a mainstream belief in 2022 that it is over for Ukraine. 5 years later, we still stand, take ground, destroy targets 2000km deep into Russia 😎

1947990

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 1h

Was North Vietnam exploiting the Sino-Soviet split for an infinite ammo supply because it was fighting for the interests of Beijing or Moscow?

000

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 1h

How do you define proxy war, then? Soviet troops literally fighting a shooting war with Israel, even a brief one, differs from US troops fighting a shooting war with North Vietnam in what specific ways?

100

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 1h

Yes, I know. You are, to repeat, saying the Soviet Air Force getting shot down in a lopsided asskicking by the IDF in a proxy war doesn't qualify as a proxy war because ?????.

100

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 1h

Yeah, OK. Soviet supplies to Egypt and a literal turkey shoot of the Soviet Air Force by the IDF clearly don't qualify anything for that because you say so.

static.klipy.com

Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack

Alt: Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack

100

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 3h

Genius terrorist isn’t as bullshit a media invention as genius serial killer, but it is close.

729036

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 3h

If you read accounts of successful terror groups, one of the things you realize is there’s a recurring pattern of the handful of smart or even average intelligence ones tearing their hair out trying to keep these violent morons on task.

820016

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Calliope @calliope5431.bsky.social · 1h

There's a reason only one terror group has ever indigenously manufactured nerve gas, and it was the one that was run by brilliant Japanese engineers with minimal prospects after the 1980s bubble economy crashed.

1162

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Calliope @calliope5431.bsky.social · 1h

Terror groups often have highly-educated disillusioned elites at their core (al-Qaeda very much fits the bill here). However, they are as a rule dominated by less-educated recruits. This is what happened with ISIS and AQI: al-Zarqawi was a high school dropout.

0121

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 1h

"Soviets inciting or triggering an incident where the IDF had a turkey shoot at their expense for literally providing part of Egypt's air attacks on Israel" doesn't apply to....the IDF beating the Soviet Air Force like a red-headed stepchild?

100

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Doctor Charlton Cussans PhD @charltoncussans.bsky.social · 3h

As I once explained to my students, the failures of Reconstruction make more sense when you realise that the kind of active involvement a new liberal-style government needed to make it work was still decades away from being conceived.

1375

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

innes mck @innes.bsky.social · 2h

once again reminded how the designer of the furby sincerely believes they are alive radiolab.org/podcast/more...

CALEB CHUNG: Well, I have to ask you, when is something alive? Furby can remember these events, they affect what he does going forward, and it changes his personality over time. He has all the attributes of fear or of happiness, and those are things that add up and change and change his behavior and how he interacts with the world. So how is that different than us?

JAD: Wait a second, though. Are you really gonna go all the way there?

CALEB CHUNG: Absolutely.

JAD: This is a toy with servo motors and things that move its eyelids and a hundred words.

CALEB CHUNG: So you're saying that life is a level of complexity. If something is alive, it's just more complex.

JAD: I think I'm saying that life is driven by the need to be alive, and by these base primal animal feelings like pain and suffering.

CALEB CHUNG: I can code that. I can code that.

11382112

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 1h

That's....still not the take most scholars on the Korean War actually use. Stalin expected a walkover with no US involvement at all to give him a freebie with a pro-Soviet Korea won on the cheap.

100

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 1h

That incident in particular along with the Bekaa Valley is where the US tilt to pro-Israeli policies set in and it was and is 100% military viagra given US struggles with Vietnam at that time and with losing most of the late Cold War proxy wars.

100

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 1h

I don't think that's why Stalin greenlit the Korean War or anything close to it, as even a cursory reading of Korean War literature would tell you. Likewise nobody except maybe Ho Chih Minh actually expected a prolonged US war in Vietnam to oppose at all.

100

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 1h

I think they're going to try even harder to dummy up their intended civil war as an end-run to all their other problems and refusing to understand why they haven't already done this in spite of their best efforts as a minimum point.

022

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

ghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 7h

it is going to be crazy bad for everyone involved if the American desi diaspora has to security up the way American Jews have had to

1343773

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

And one of the biggest reasons reality always has other plans is the people using the proxies are always focused on their domestic issues and only intermittently remembering the war is actually fought by the proxies for their own interests.

020

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

Sadat literally waged the war with one eye on ending Egyptian dependency on the USSR....after he armed himself to the teeth with Soviet weaponry and gave Israel hopefully a decisive defeat or at least a bloody nose.

100

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

Israel literally planned its defense strategies around US arms suppliers and expected superpower involvement to mitigate its initial troubles, and proved entirely correct in that. Egyptian and Syrian strategy in turn was even more specifically Cold War oriented as well as anti-Israeli.

200

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Doctor Charlton Cussans PhD @charltoncussans.bsky.social · 3h

That's just Four Lions.

1155

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

Western Russia propagandists literally do 'our emotional support theocracy is both strong and weak.'

051

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

And that's without this war almost starting WWIII because Henry K did a fucky wucky.

000

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

I think at the point where both Israeli and Egyptian actions were motivated by superpower action and inaction that it qualifies as the most direct proxy wars of any of the Arab-Israeli wars, to a point people retroactively read all the others as like it when they weren't.

200

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

The full blown Wiccan mythology basically blends all of this and is a fascinating NRM but a case of 'that is a cool story and it would be cooler if any of it was true but none of it is.'

040

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

We also owe it to Marija Gimbutas that a quasi-Marxian teleological stage of society assumed cavemen were matriarchal and then this was displaced by rugged manly warlords with their swords and spears.

static.klipy.com

Brazzers

Alt: Brazzers

140

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

Yeah, it's basically 'sure but what if it was girl power and awesome'. The actual 1600s beliefs on witchcraft and the bizarre psychosexual proto-QAnon shit with the Black Mass is nowhere present and that's by design.

140

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

I would say it decidedly does but even if it didn't the Lebanese Civil War and Syrian and Israeli involvement in it damned well does qualify as one.

000

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Calliope @calliope5431.bsky.social · 2h

The point of these wars is to get the other side to give up and go home. Nobody *aims* for attritional warfare, because it increases the chances your side loses. This is particularly true in Ukraine, where a short sharp victory would set an example to the world not to violate international borders!

1277

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

This was also the kind of hope the USSR and PRC had in Korea and Vietnam, too. Reality had other plans as it always does.

030

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.blog · 12h

Lovecraft made the cult of Cthulhu multiethnic not to express some deep racial animus, but because he wanted a group that was, effectively, unspoiled by white people. He created an artificial mythology because white ethnologists and anthropologists had already infiltrated everything else.

1325

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.blog · 12h

At the same time, the cult of Cthulhu is explicitly excluded from voodoo as a religion, and is also seen to be separate from pretty much every indigenious religion on the planet. It is the cult of those on the outskirts, the outsiders rejected by other groups, and explicitly not white people.

1241

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.blog · 12h

So "The Call of Cthulhu" is a departure from Lovecraft. For once, he's got a Mythos cult that is not predominantly made up of white people, which isn't led by white people, and, in fact, white people know almost nothing about and seem excluded from.

1261

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.blog · 12h

The surrounding communities are explicitly racist against Innsmouth, assuming they've intermarried with non-white people. No idea that Innsmouth is full of hybrid deep ones, they're just being garden-variety Massachusetts racist. The truth is weirder. That's the joke.

1362

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

Also rivals Dracula for the 'wait what the fuck' portrayals of ethnic groups like say, Kurds, as exotic evil villains when this is an almost non-entity in Western fiction. Does unfortunately blend into anti-Yazidi prejudice and the idea of Melek Taus as Satan.

010

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.blog · 12h

in Europe; an Asian precursor who were the ancestors of the Sami people. This wasn't completely off-the-wall; anthopology had suggested Asian groups in Europe earlier who may have inspired folklore and legend, and authors like Arthur Machen and J. R. R. Tolkien riffed on the idea in their writings.

1262

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.blog · 12h

Murray, who was a bit biased in her sources, largely doesn't mention BIPOC folks in her book. Tituba, who played such a role in the Salem affair, isn't even mentioned. Her main element of not-white people involved with witchcraft is the assertion that the religion originated with a non-white group

1281

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

Equally ironically he speaks very negatively of the OG Puritans in the same ways he does about Dutch-Americans. Even in his stories, even when the POV characters are despicable villains. For all that he was obsessed with New England he had some interesting fault lines with that.

010

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.blog · 12h

...you can see why many people would go "Aha! Racism! This is Lovecraft being racist!" Sortof. But in another, more important way, not the way people are thinking. For context, it's important to note that the majority of cultists in H. P. Lovecraft's stories are white people. With good reason!

1351

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

But I don't think he deliberately did any of that for the same reasons a followup post to this notes.

110

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

Every single example of the cult seen on screen in the actual story is a marginalized and/or colonized group pushing back against the full force of the high tide of colonialism. Add to it the nihilistic hope for the end of the world and dancing in the glory of the monsters and uh.....

110

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

It also adds to the idea, whether or not he consciously intended it, that the Cthulhu Cult specifically targeted marginalized people to sell its message. It's one of the few stories where there is a viable anti-racist reading of tropes decidedly par for the course with his usual racism.

110

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

Worth pointing out that even a cursory look at the Malleus Maleficarum will lead you to go 'oh, QAnon predated the Internet, didn't it. Incels too. Goddamnit.'

050

Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️ @metabluesky.bsky.social · 2h

Essentially, yes. Wicca is 'Witch Cult hypothesis correct but it's feminist and awesome', at least in the idea of Wiccans.

020

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Wallenstein Appreciator @marbleliberal.bsky.social · 2h

Yep! @beijingpalmer.bsky.social talks about it

051

Reposted by Queen of Halloweentown MetaBlueSky ♨️

Shoe-per Intelligence @shoe.bsky.social · 2h

Wheeee

15315