[Crabcakes]

WTF is the Horus Heresy?

Books based on the Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying game. Known for their dense, dense lore.

In brief: everywhere is shit, the human race are in perpetual war with various alien factions, and everyone must praise the emperor who is probably long dead but just kept ‘alive’ by tech.

Musk’s ideal reality, really.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I get 40K, in fact I've just bought some bigger miniatures from Temu to paint.

I just think that when we post we should think about what our readers might or night not know, and not just try to confuse them.

[Watchman]

I know Trump is a joke, but I prefer any analysis of his politics to not be based on something I hold on the same level as Harry Potter (apologies to Mr McDandy and any other gamers).

[Andy McDandy]

No offence taken. Because they're fucking fiction and I don't take them as holy writ.

As a long departed contributor on the old site put it, it's just a hobby.

[The Weeping Angel]

Look it up. You've got google use it.

Yes I have.
And you have absolutely really impressive knack of pissing people off.

So do you Malcolm.

[Yug]

And so it begins...

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization (WHO).

"Oooh, that's a big one," the newly inaugurated US president said as he approved the document after arriving back at the White House. It was one of dozens of executive actions he put his signature to on day one in office.

This marks the second time Trump has ordered the US be pulled out of the WHO...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c391j738rm3o.amp

Isolationist pariah state in the making.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Look it up. You've got google use it.

Yes I have.
And you have absolutely really impressive knack of pissing people off.

So do you Malcolm.

Maybe, but I do it with good English...

[Malcolm Armsteen]

And so it begins...

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization (WHO).

"Oooh, that's a big one," the newly inaugurated US president said as he approved the document after arriving back at the White House. It was one of dozens of executive actions he put his signature to on day one in office.

This marks the second time Trump has ordered the US be pulled out of the WHO...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c391j738rm3o.amp

Isolationist pariah state in the making.

But can anyone afford to treat the USA as a pariah? Won't wealth and hard power ensure friends?

[Watchman]

But are these “friendships” only forged by Trump bullying others, and will only last until Trump thinks he’s won.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

But are these “friendships” only forged by Trump bullying others, and will only last until Trump thinks he’s won.

Yes, but then that's true of many international relationships, isn't it?

[Youngian]

US can push its weight around in international institutions but it did join and/or forge them in the post war years. Trump isn't an isolationist as such but an ad hoc. transactionalist in which he can only see immediate benefits of a deal.
But the US increasingly doesn't possess much that other powers can't provide. Take the Asia Pacific diplomatic alliance that Obama forged and Trump withdrew from, it still went ahead without the US as the CPTPP (and now absurdly includes the UK). It was meant to form the bedrock of a concert of US allies to act as a bulwark against China. Now it's an alliance that could use collective clout to play off America against China, India and Indonesia. That's America's loss.
America's use of military hard power is a big worry if Little Donald throws a strop because the other kids don't want to play with him. Trump's regime has the air of a declining imperial power lashing out rather than managing it's decline in a rational manner.

Americans completing and controlling the Panama Canal was a huge symbol of this dominant new global power in the 20th century. Trump's bellicose threats to reclaim it is a symbol of a ridiculous decline under his leadership. Not only is climate change causing water levels to fall making the passage increasingly unviable but a new route is being planned through Nicaragua. As well as the North West passage opening and a rival route to Suez via Turkey being proposed. None of these projects require American capital or Washington's say so to be realised.

[Samanfur]

For the record, large segments of the autistic community online actively push back against Musk, on the grounds that passing his entitled weirdness off as autism is giving them a bad name.

To paraphrase the makers of Roseanne Barr's medication: being autistic doesn't make you a Nazi. Being a Nazi makes you a Nazi.

[Watchman]

But are these “friendships” only forged by Trump bullying others, and will only last until Trump thinks he’s won.

Yes, but then that's true of many international relationships, isn't it?

I agree to an extent, most international relationships, by and large are for mutual benefit and most parties start from that position. Obviously some are more for necessity e.g relations between North and South Korea. But here we are dealing with Trump and his concept of international relationships is random going by what he says, also I don’t believe he can differentiate between trade deals and military ones

[Andy McDandy]

Bear in mind also that out of all the US states, only a handful are self sufficient. One of those is California. Piss them off enough and you lose the high tech industry, the soft power of the entertainment industry, and half the lower 48's Pacific coast. California's also a net contributor of taxes, making up for many dirt poor red states. If Hawaii goes, that's Pearl gone, and with it your Pacific reach (not to mention a symbolic loss).

As for Panama, ousting Noriega was one thing. Taking the country is another. Then again, he probably thinks Darien Gap is a fashion designer.

[Bones McCoy]

Bear in mind also that out of all the US states, only a handful are self sufficient. One of those is California. Piss them off enough and you lose the high tech industry, the soft power of the entertainment industry, and half the lower 48's Pacific coast. California's also a net contributor of taxes, making up for many dirt poor red states. If Hawaii goes, that's Pearl gone, and with it your Pacific reach (not to mention a symbolic loss).

As for Panama, ousting Noriega was one thing. Taking the country is another. Then again, he probably thinks Darien Gap is a fashion designer.

The MAGA lot and the Crypto-Techno Bros are trying to shift the Tech hub from California to Texas.


If Panama open the canal sluices and drain the Gatun Lake into the Pacific, they'll render the canal impassable for a long time.
America's beef is restricted canal traffic.
But this is a precaution because the lake is low.

Draining the canal would be a terrible piece of self-harm, but would leave an invading American force with nothing to show but a few bananas.

[Crabcakes]

Shifting the tech hub to Texas just shows how fucking stupid they are. You do that, you change the demographic and quite likely shift Texas to Democrat (the bosses might be republicans, or just chameleons of convenience - the necessary employees, given they are skilled, young and educated, will heavily lean the way skilled, young educated people tend to do). Texas also has a fucking laughable power grid.

[Youngian]

Trump talked about territorial expansion in his speech but didn't mention anywhere specific apart from Mars. And God swerved a bullet to kill a bystander so Trump could send America to Mars.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Shifting the tech hub to Texas just shows how fucking stupid they are. You do that, you change the demographic and quite likely shift Texas to Democrat (the bosses might be republicans, or just chameleons of convenience - the necessary employees, given they are skilled, young and educated, will heavily lean the way skilled, young educated people tend to do). Texas also has a fucking laughable power grid.

That would be nice if that was true, but Texas has been about to turn Democrat for a decade. Democrats romp home in Houston, Dallas and Austin but Republicans still do very well in suburbs. See this (massively expanding county) next to Houston.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_County,_Texas

Lots of people are happy to go along with the Greg Abbott shit because they like paying no state income tax and buying relatively cheap houses, and they vote for Trump too. For all the new liberal tech workers in Austin and Houston, the state's also adding a lot of others who vote conservative.

Texas to go Democrat is a bit like "Northern Ireland to go Nationalist".

[Bones McCoy]

Shifting the tech hub to Texas just shows how fucking stupid they are. You do that, you change the demographic and quite likely shift Texas to Democrat (the bosses might be republicans, or just chameleons of convenience - the necessary employees, given they are skilled, young and educated, will heavily lean the way skilled, young educated people tend to do). Texas also has a fucking laughable power grid.

That would be nice if that was true, but Texas has been about to turn Democrat for a decade. Democrats romp home in Houston, Dallas and Austin but Republicans still do very well in suburbs. See this (massively expanding county) next to Houston.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_County,_Texas

Lots of people are happy to go along with the Greg Abbott shit because they like paying no state income tax and buying relatively cheap houses, and they vote for Trump too. For all the new liberal tech workers in Austin and Houston, the state's also adding a lot of others who vote conservative.

Texas to go Democrat is a bit like "Northern Ireland to go Nationalist".

In the USA the state incumbents organise the elections.
This means they can gerrymander the place to shit to counter an inflow of California hippies.

[Abernathy]

Things to add to the list of fucked -up things that are wrong and need changing in the fucked-up USA. Both of these things have been grotesquely mis-used, even abused by both the 45th/47th president and the retiring 46th president, though in Biden’s case he (I’d say justifiably) issued pre-emptive pardons to protect people who had acted in the interests of democracy and the American Republic from the vengeance of Donald Trump.

Seriously :

- the power of the presidential pardon . I mean, really - what the buggering fuck is that all about ? Arguably, presidential clemency is only ever exercised in a grossly politically partisan way (Trump has done so with knobs on). Seems to me it shouldn’t fucking exist. Makes a mockery of the very concept of democracy.

- presidential “executive orders” . Trump is of course taking the piss here again. Instantly reversing all of Biden’s executive orders, and ordering the pardoning and release from jail of more than 100 violent insurrectionists who took part in an attempted overthrow of the US government. Again, why is this absurdity even required in a country with a fully functioning two chamber parliament ? In my view, the instrument shouldn’t be needed at all, or at any rate should be subject to far more restricted parameters of use than it currently is (if it even is).