I really want more Cold War french hardware in fiction both because it's *extremely* unique compared to the American or German hardware that normally gets shown off and also because the AMX-10 RC is one of my favorite vehicles because it's an armored car with a tank cannon.

I think the Romans would have been far worse given industrial firepower (though their society also wasn't built to support that due its structuring around small landowners) and, well, we saw what happened when the colonial empires got hydro-pneumatic artillery and machine guns.

This isn't *praise* in a strict sense; US hegemony has done quite a bit of bad particularly during the "no communism at couppoint" phase, but it is *unique* and by the traditional metrics for states that value power over morality, the US has done quite well for itself at least until recently.

To actually answer the question, Bret Devereaux makes an imo fairly convincing case that the US occupies a unique position as *global* hegemon, something achieved by no other state, with unmatched power projection abroad. Some of this is technological advancement but even then.

On the one hand, I kinda get it given the US' incredible reach after WW2 and the sheer breadth of its hegemony to the point where it includes its next closest rival. On the other hand, the US isn't and wasn't nearly as powerful as a lot of the diabolist left believe.

Would it, though? Like, what does "eliminating" the US even mean? A return to isolationism? Breaking the US down into component states? Nuclear war? Who gets the carriers? Who gets the nukes? What happens to the states that had American security guarantees? What happens to Florida?

The incident at 4:03:53:11:20...

Unlabeled tank from 1934.

And, if that's your thing, more power to you, I have no issue with what people get off to in their private lives. That being said, I think it is interesting to see how porn-brained a lot of the Gamergate types have gotten as of late.

It's a specific hyperexaggerated porn body that pops up in H-games and porn mods for various video games. I think tracking the steady divergence from a human form is actually pretty interesting because I think it's getting to the point where it's not overlapping with actual humans anymore.

Also the second gen Roadster, which was supposed to come out in 2020. FSD (still in beta idc what Elon calls it), which was supposed to be fully autonomous within 1-3 years since 2013...

This one's delicious and I miss it.

The North African campaign was actually a proxy conflict between factions in the ROC, who were using it as a route to smuggle Szechuanese Opium to neutral Austria.

Wait hold on I have more super old white guys:

Yeah they should be more like that bastion of leftism the USSR, which always opposed the Hitlerite regime from the beginning and never even thought of collaboration.

Pic unrelated:

"Remember, it's Hitler who harps on the superiority of his own color, his own people, his own country."

This is from the Pocket Guide to China, published in 1943 for American servicemembers in China.

I get the slight, vague impression that maybe they were aware that the Nazis were fascists.

A lot of companies (used to) pay for employees to get masters degrees on a similar basis because the actual cost was less than the benefit of having an employee who now has said education.

This one kinda makes sense. If you want to get people into a specific set of jobs, subsidizing their education and/or training is a pretty reasonable way to go about it.

L M A O

Imo its a combo of an understandable aversion to the nuclear bombs, knee-jerk anti-americanism (the US was oppressing this tiny asian country), and frankly, quite a bit of racism (Japan being perceived as being owed dominion over Asia/not caring or knowing that Asia isn't homogenous/etc).

It's a not-uncommon line of thought amongst the anti-american left. A People's History of the United States argues that the war wasn't fought against racism but Zinn, imo because he's a WW2 veteran, doesn't go to the point of saying this. I've run into a number of Japanese apologists as well.

Also, three *squadrons* of American mercenary fighters showing up in China with US military training and aircraft in April 1941.

And I like Bernie (ish) but cmon the quips write themselves, y'know?

>super old white guy

For the record human average on character creation is like.....20-40 depending on rolls and build. Astartes are I want to say 40-60? with much better starting gear. Campaign bosses cap out at like 80 stats (albeit with a giant pile of talents).

Straight up this is the statline of something that players are not meant to *interact with* much less in a combat context.

Kibellah with the sword of +stats on hit can end combats with the statline of a piece of a divinity and it is a massive shame that there is typically nothing left to use that on.

Also the song doesn't go "as he died to make men holy let us die to make men free" for nothing.

Also the government is literally, actually shut down, which I would count as "doing something."

This War Of Mine? Though even then the best outcome means not being ruthless.