Dammit, that’s too fantastic to NOT be an idiom

Just wanted to share something interesting and happy (I’m not OP; I linked to them in the post body though), quarreling over which parent is the favorite most resembles her was not what I expected the comments to look like.

“No, you can’t get online, your grandmother is on the phone.”

are the Finns okay

I can still hear the MSN message sound in my head

And the original Steam chat sound

so it turns out that dad is probably older than the kid.

Big if true

Will the political will to start an actual shooting war with the US be there?

Theoretically yes. This is an issue that has been considered before, though admittedly not with regards to fucking Greenland. Turkiye and Greece have long been enemies as well as members of NATO, and it’s been considered that the invocation of Article 5 by the aggressed-upon party against the aggressing party in case of a serious war would, theoretically, be binding on the other members of NATO.

In practice, NATO is a gentleman’s agreement with no means of enforcement. Everything comes down to political will - NATO is just an organizational structure to facilitate a response. It cannot replace the will (or lack thereof) of national governments.

I mean, looks like an older skeleton, could have been a natural death and they just found it. I feel like a hunted Elephant Seal would have a more… butchered look to its bones.

Nah, the one who went to an island resort and tormented a stray fisherman (supposedly) was Tiberius. The only one to actually retire, permanently (as Tiberius eventually, reluctantly, returned to Rome) was Diocletian, who died farming cabbages somewhere in the Balkans.

Antoninus Pius died much as he lived - quietly. Got a fever after a dinner at his estate, knew his time was coming, passed imperial affairs to his adoptive sons, gave the bodyguard the password for the night, and died.

Explanation: Roman Emperors, both by the nature of men in power and the needs of the job, generally made a lot of fucking enemies, both contemporary and in the recollections of history.

Antoninus Pius is a rare exception, a man who came to power by uncontroversial means (being chosen as a successor by Emperor Hadrian for his integrity), ruling through a period of uninterrupted peace, prosperity, and legal reform, having few vices and living a simple and unextravagant life, and then handing power over to a well-regarded emperor (Marcus Aurelius, and, less importantly, his adoptive brother Lucius Verus). By the recollections of those who lived after his rule, his mildness and attention towards public good and infrastructure was highly regarded, and in his personal life, Pius was likewise uncontroversial, and his adoptive sons and their tutor remembered him as a kind man who enjoyed the simple pleasures - fishing, comedy, theatre, watching boxing matches.

We love Emperor Pius in this house!

Hell In The Pacific, hands down.

Fucking bootlickers.

The Great Fire of Rome killed a lot of people and destroyed a lot of wealth, but was inconsequential to the Empire as a whole. This is more Emperor Honorius bribing the barbarians not to invade, then stiffing them and pissing off to feed his pet birds as Rome was looted for the first time in over 700 years.

Explanation: The Romans, traditionally, would muster the male citizenry on the Field of Mars seasonally, for war (for the Republic was almost always at war) and training. This is a photo from a fantastic re-enactor group in Taiwan, teaching the children to fight and die FOR THE GLORY OF ROME

Insane that even commenting about how some prefer the Soviet days gets you a ban, simply for being insufficiently positive.

Fascists painted red. Issues like Uyghur genocide and support or neutrality on the imperialist invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and subsequent ethnic cleansing, are often clear indicators of tankieism; but really the root is tribalism without any deeper cause, principles, or thought process. Many are American exceptionalists who insist everything revolves around US policy.

Those who claim that ‘tankie’ just means ‘socialists’ and everyone who uses it is a bourgeois puppet or useful idiot are often the same kinds of people who will say things like “The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, led by workers and demanding a democratic and socialist government of the people, was counterrevolutionary fascism and they deserved to be crushed by Soviet tanks”

“No true Scotsman” is about redefining a term to suit the argument, not that purity tests or gatekeeping are inherently illegitimate.

Reality has a well-known WOKE bias

All words are made up but tankie just makes me think, go the fuck outside and touch grass

Would touching grass make us forget history?

I suppose intellectuals are dangerous counterrevolutionaries. As Lenin once said, after all, the educated classes are the ‘shit’ of the nation, not its brains. “No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals!”