I thought it was a lot of fun. Cute buddy comedy/ romantic comedy, but about metal. If it had been about any other genre, it would have been kinda formulaic and boring, but all the lame tropes juxtaposed with metal music was very entertaining.
Not much of a war, really just a naval blockade, but I think that the Venezuelan crisis of 1902 is maybe the most overlooked major event of the 20th century.
Basic breakdown: Venezuela took out shitloads of loans from England and Germany in the late 1800s. In that same time, they underwent a series of revolutions. The dude who ended up in charge decided that he didn’t want to pay off the debts that somebody 5 governments ago had accrued. He also assumed that the US would keep the European powers from doing anything about it based on the whole manifest destiny thing. Teddy Roosevelt however decided that he would keep out of it.
A bunch of British and German warships then anchored just off the Venezuelan coast and started taking ships and messing with all the marine traffic. The British mostly led the charge on this whole operation, except for one time that a German ship bombarded a little base called Fort San Carlos, killing a couple dozen people.
This entire time, Americans had kind of been stewing about this whole thing. The bombardment was a tipping point, and the US started putting pressure on Britain and Germany to get out of our sphere. The British said that they had given strict orders not to attack any land-based targets, so the blame landed firmly on the Germans. A couple weeks later all the countries agreed to terms of arbitration.
All of this seems relatively tame on the scale of international conflict. However, 12 years later this massive fucking war broke out between all these European powers. They beat each other up for years, and everything seemed to be going really poorly for everybody. Then the US decided to join.
A lot of people don’t realize how close it was, which side of the war the US would fight for. Generally we had better relations with the Entente powers (Britain, France and Russia) than we did with Germany, but there were millions of German immigrants living in America and it had been less than a century since Britain had burned down our capitol. The Venezuelan blockade played a large part in our decision, just because the general populace had this idea of “Germany bad” because of it.
Now, American troops didn’t do well in WWI. They mostly got their asses kicked. But just the fact that there were fresh troops being infused into the lines meant that the momentum shifted towards the Entente powers (now Britain France and the US). Within two years the war is over, Germany surrenders, signing a shitty-ass peace accord that all but guarantees that WWII will happen.
I’ll admit that this is a bit of an oversimplification, and a bit of speculation on my part. But I really believe that the entire 20th century would have been completely different if that blockade had gone differently. The Soviet revolution, Mussolini, Hitler, the Holocaust, Chairman Mao, the Cold War, Vietnam, etc. All of that might not have happened if that German captain had gotten the memo to not shell land-based targets.
My work magically got a supply of N95 masks early in Covid. It was unexpected, so we didn’t have a plan or a system for them. Didn’t think to have a limit or anything.
A crew from Albert Lee bought every single one, took them back to their store, and sold them at 100% markup.
Tangentially related. I watched a pretty interesting documentary many years ago about avant-garde art in Weimar Germany. Back in the days of the kaiser and before, if you painted a horse it damn well better look like a horse. During the third reich, if you painted a horse it damn well better have hitler on it. But during the interwar years there was quite an explosion of weird shit from the German art community.
Then, of course, the war happened and all that shit ended, just like it’s happening in Russia now. Not that America did much better back then. Frank Capra was directing WWII propaganda films and Bugs Bunny was flying a B-29.
This is what I keep trying to tell people about this war. There are no good guys. There is no right side of history to be on.
There are sides. And people are perfectly welcome and justified to take a side. But you have to understand that whichever side you take, they have done terrible things to innocent people for terrible reasons.
She would be my choice as well, but she just announced she wouldn’t.
But this is the DNC…
Guns are like tattoos. If you’re into them, you probably have a bunch.
Argument is correct.
Tone is asshole.
Upvote or downvote? I’m not sure on this one.
Sorta. As a middleman who works his ass off to make other people’s lives easier, it’s not quite as black and white. My job is kind of unique, though. We are geographically located in the only access point for a niche market. Our vendors physically cannot supply our customers, so we middle.
I’m sure there are a shitload of useless middlers suckling off the consumer’s teat, but sometimes we are necessary.
A man was arrested outside the Kremlin for holding a sign that said “Putin is an imbecile!”
He was sentenced to two years for slander and five years for spilling state secrets.
He didn’t say what it was. It might be a flashlight that goes into the exhaust pipe.
Really digging Reign in Slumber. Thanks for the recommendation.
On the topic of Asian metal, Voice of Baceprot just played the Glastonbury festival, which is pretty awesome. All-female Indonesian band.
Also, the dude who works at the gas station down the street introduced me to Minerva, a Bangladeshi metal band.
There’s a small craft brewery in small-town Wisconsin that partnered with a coffee roaster to make a canned coffee called “Woke”. The coffee is pretty good, and the beer is damn good.
They piss off the local right-wing government, so they’re constantly getting shut down, but it usually only lasts a couple weeks.
The only ability you have in French is to judge. It’s what the language is for.
Neuwörtermachenaufgeregheit.
Bikes are popular in Seattle, but I’m not sure I’d call it a bike-friendly city. Tons of rain, tons of hills, tons of bridges, tons of crappy roads. We put bike lanes in a bunch of places, but a lot of them still have to go through confusing intersections or only cover part of your commute. Add on the new trend of no-hands driving, it’s still pretty dangerous.
“Think about how dumb the average American is. Then think that half of em are dumber than that!”
Or when a cop punched a 16-year-old girl in the face for yelling at him.
Or when they beat up an old man for getting on a bus with a golf club he was using as a walking stick.
Or when they beat up a guy while yelling “I’m gonna beat the Mexican piss out of you”
Or when they shoot a native dude in the back from 20 feet away because he had a small knife.
Sigh. Go to the fucking natty, get left off the list. I get that Washington has had massive turnover, but that’s still bullshit in my brain.