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From the New York Times:
I Run War Games. Too Often, I Am the Only Woman in the Room.
By Becca Wasser, Sept. 26, 2019
I looked over the green plastic soldiers I held in the palm of my hand as my colleagues debated whether one figure should represent a battalion or a brigade. As I placed a single figure on the board, I was conscious of the fact that it wasn’t just a piece of plastic and that the discussion over what it represented wasn’t mere talk. Instead, what we were debating was whether we would put 400 or 4,000 men and women along the border of the Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula to potentially face combat. The outcome of that debate would in turn determine how people playing the game — whether they were uniformed military or high-school-age girls — would think about how a potential future conflict between North Korea and the Republic of Korea and the United States could play out.
When I tell people that I’m a war gamer, I’m either met with blank stares or overly enthusiastic questions about what it is like to play Call of Duty or Risk for a living.
No, dummy, she plays with little green army men for a hobby. Some people like to do that for fun, although 99% of them are male and generally under 13 years old. Generally, women have less silly hobbies, but it takes all kind. Some women aren’t stereotypical, you know.
In reality, war gaming for the Department of Defense is more than a board game or a computer model. A war game is an analytic or educational game that simulates war and creates a synthetic experience for players to consider different responses to a crisis and to see the consequences of those choices. The goal is to fight wars in a “safe” environment without real weapons or people, often to gain insight into a specific policy question.
As a game designer and facilitator, I have to create a believable environment and tell a compelling story that makes the players — usually United States military and government officials — take the game seriously, believe that their decisions have repercussions and play hard so that the results simulate the real world.
Wait a minute … She’s not playing with little green army men for fun, she’s getting paid to do it. It’s a sensible career for her.
Becca Wasser is a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.
Well, that’s, uh … stereotypical, isn’t it?
… But there is something else dictating the available choices in war gaming, and that is a lack of gender diversity. War gaming — as with war more generally — has long been a male domain and has significant barriers to entry, retention and advancement. You can’t learn by reading; you have to learn by doing. Many women — myself included — find themselves doing managerial or administrative work for games in a bid to break into the field and learn about war game design and execution, but they often find themselves stuck in that track. I didn’t grow up playing Axis & Allies or memorizing all the fighter aircraft flown by the United States Air Force, like some of my male colleagues did. These are the sorts of things that started me at a disadvantage. Everything about war gaming and military operations more broadly I have learned as an adult, from scratch, whereas most of my male counterparts have been inadvertently training for this job since they were children. Even now, 10 years into my career, I am still playing catch up.
In other words, she’s not really interested in war gaming, she’s interested in career advancement.
This sense of disadvantage tends to discourage women from joining war gaming teams — let alone the national-security field — because many feel that there is not a clear substantive role for them to play or a path to advancement.
In other words, there are whole bunches of guys out there who have been obsessing over war tactics and strategies since they were six, and the government could get the benefit of all their enormous investment in the subject at low cost ot the taxpayers, but THAT WOULD BE WRONG. Instead, the taxpayers should pay for more grown women to try to get up to speed on this arcane subject on the job.
Why?
Because Diversity, that’s why.
What percentage of op-eds in the New York Times consist of careerists offering Identity Politics rationalizations for why they should get promotions and make more money?
By the way, as befits a Rand Corporation analyst, Becca Wasser is smarter than the average Let’s-talk-about-my-hair op-edster.
Also, from Army Times:
Girl’s message for equality received in a big way: Green Army women figurines are on the way
By: J.D. Simkins September 5Just weeks after stories swirled about a complaint letter penned by an unsatisfied 6-year-old girl from Arkansas in response to a glaring lack of green Army women figurines, one toy maker is officially doing something about it.
BMC Toys, one of three companies to receive letters from young Vivian Lord — and the only to respond — has begun producing women figurines to be included in the iconic toy set that dates back to the 1930s.
You might almost think that there isn’t a big market for Little Green Army Women. Here we are 50 years into the Feminist Era, and one company has some concept sketches …
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
You might want to lower the sound. Also yes, there are no swastikas in the game, they’re all replaced by maltese crosses. I think they couldn’t sell the game in Germany otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USPd0vX2sdc
Just how many positions for war gamers are there in this beltway bandit organization and any others? A coupla’ dozen, 50 maybe? It’s not near as many as there are for people programming in Python, doing structural analysis of residences, or installing HVAC ductwork. Maybe this lady should branch out a bit, as is there money available for a diversity outreach coordinator for this small field of tax-payer supported make-believe war? We’ve got a whole long NY Times article just to help this one woman, it seems.
I think, men or women, the RAND corporation ought to be defunded along with a lot more of the warfare state. Do their war gaming results ever match what happens in real geo-politics? Sell off the toy soldiers on ebay – some of the classics might fetch a decent amount to make a tiny dent in making the taxpayers whole.
Are the new girl toy soldiers really worth making a whole mold for, just for little Vivian Lord? With that kind of responsiveness out of Big-Toy, maybe I should see if I can get a working set of those X-ray glasses that used to be a farce. It’s been years …
I was part of a Sustainment Brigade for the exercise, but we had lots of combat arms units participating. As far as the headquarters functions that we simulated (and that the exercise is intended to test) it didn't matter much whether you were male or female, but it would matter very much on the sharp end where physical strength makes a big difference. If this lady wants more equality, let her try to keep up in an infantry battalion for a few years and, if it doesn't break her physically, maybe she can learn how to design more realistic games.
Note: it is a huge mistake to place females in combat units (or direct support units for that matter), but here we are. To paraphrase HL Mencken, these ladies have decided what they want and they deserve to get it, good and hard.
The problem with most of the games, including COL duPuy's QJM (Quantified Judgment Model) , was that the agency (e.g., US Army Infantry School) PAYING for work on the model TOLD the modelers what the game had BETTER confirm about fighting the Ruskis at the Fulda Gap (um, every single time a TOW is fired, a Ruski tank bites the dust...).
There are also reasonably objective evaluations of the more prominent (i.e., EXPENSIVE) professional wargames that CONSISTENTLY conclude that the games CANNOT in fact duplicate the historical outcome of well documented battles (e.g., Kursk).
But my spare room is FILLED with toy soldiers and my bookcase is FILLED with board games (Panzerblitz is one of the most popular wargames ever produced).
But you've either got an analytical mindset that can deal with "conflict simulation", or you're one of the idiots that actually believes that battles and wars are won by some gutsy moron with a bayonet. As far as I can tell, career DoD guys prefer the gutsy moron model of conflict because it doesn't require that they be able to THINK.Replies: @Twinkie, @Lurker
X-ray glasses, that brings back memories and a smile.
I read the letter from Vivian Lord, one of her justifications is her that her friend's mom is in the army. Maybe the company can make some nurses and secretary models?
It goes the other way too, instead of training up the native population who could do a job, you import foreigners.
One interesting example is Australian actors. Since Australia has a rule about natively produced films and tv, there are a lot more opportunities per capita to get some screen time and experience, particularly for young people. These can then show up in Hollywood with greater experience and a CV with actual roles on it.
You can bet if some boy has a bag of mixed-sex soldiers, before long the some male figurine, probably the one with the bazooka, will be humping the females, probably the one crawling on her belly.
If a girl gets a bag of these mixed-sex troops, you can bet some female figurine, probably the one with the binoculars and pistol, will be ordering the male figurines to certain death.
1. Reality
2. The bag of green army wo/men.
And what are the ratios of men and women who understand what "crawling on belly" vs. "carrying binoculars and pistol" means?
Little green army women flat on their backs with their legs in the air.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But it’s the truth, and always will be. All the serious career women like Wasser will never be able to keep those girls away from the little green army men, no matter how hard they try.
And then we’ll all be paying for little green army std clinics, maternity wards, nurseries, housing, etc. Oh wait, we already are…
One interesting example is Australian actors. Since Australia has a rule about natively produced films and tv, there are a lot more opportunities per capita to get some screen time and experience, particularly for young people. These can then show up in Hollywood with greater experience and a CV with actual roles on it.Replies: @Steve Sailer
OK, so that’s why, say, Rebel Wilson from Tasmania was so jaw-dropping when she first made a splash in America in Bridesmaids. She’d been perfecting her shtick in Triple-A Australian TV and movies for years and years. She was like Lefty Grove being unleashed on major leaguers at age 25 after 5 years pitching for the independent triple a Baltimore Orioles, where he went 108-36.
Here is a showreel for Rebel Wilson from just before she broke out in Hollywood. Ghost Rider was filmed in Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3wyKYfa9ys
I think British actors get a good rep because a lot of them went through acting schools and theatre training. But really I think it's more just Hollywood taking anyone with experience over those without and importing anyone who can do a good American accent. The Oscars this year were a fascinating example of this, so many British actors.
Could it also be that America is running out of people with a classic Western European appearance? Does American not look enough like America anymore so Hollywood needs to employ some trickery?
And once you have such a system and pathway in place, then others can follow with less uncertainty and risk. Margo Robbie was a huge star in Australia but her ceiling was otherwise playing a main character on Home and Away which she probably could have done forever.Replies: @S. Anonyia
The original 1901 Orioles are telling Yankees of the major leagues-- literally. Today's Orioles are the 1901 Milwaukee Brewers.
On a side note, Rebel Wilson was strangely outed a few years ago as having lied about her birth name and been elusive about her age and such.
I say strange because its usual for celebrities to lie in interviews, and to have journalists never do any research or confirmation. As we see today, most journalists are programmed NPCs, even outside of celebrity culture. So the fact that some journalist tracked down Wilson's real name and found she'd been less-than-forthcoming about her age was unusual.
Ultimately, the journalist got sued for defamation in Australia, because she claimed Wilson lied about her age while it could only be proven that Wilson herself "avoided" questions about her age, didn't lie about. Weird anti-free speech rules they have. ANyway, the journalist was likely sued pour encourager les autres.
“the natural constituency of any dissenting political movement are the people who actually, very actually, in this very present, are losing out in the grand zero-sum game of human social status. These people are pissed and resentful, and they will do what they can to mess with society as it presently works.”
https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/leninism-and-bioleninism/amp/
This is an amazing sentence. She thinks this is unfair.
As we might expect of a (((Becca Wasser))).
These figures weren’t merely absent, there was a GLARING LACK of them.
There is also a GLARING LACK of black female figures, and a GLARING LACK of bearded men in dresses called Trevor figures.
Once you open the Bigot Spigot you cannot close it, take great care!
Well, BMC Toys will have a few collectors pieces in a couple of decades.
I thought everything is in the computer today, simulated at minute-interval precision with large numbers of semi-autonomous agents? Then you can check whether your logistics skills are actually adequate.
And don’t tell me they are debating … when the game is already ongoing?
A green plastic Army woman would be worth like 2-3x a man so in this case probably 2-3 brigades.
Now, if the female Army figure is actually a man identifying as a woman... then the multiplier goes way the hell up. One figure could be equal to tens of brigades backed up by close air support and aircraft carriers.
Is she? Maybe she has a clearer goal in mind, but it’s obvious she’s trying leverage “Token Female in a Male-Dominated Area” into a cushy corner office. Unfortunately, she’s discovered actual ability counted in the field she attempted to use her vaulting pole, and there’s no HR checklist checker to rescue her floundering ass.
So what does she do? Pens an op-ed in which she admits all the men are far better at the task, but still begs for her Pussy Pass to be honored. Doesn’t seem terribly clever, and it certainly isn’t original.
Of course, when our boys get killed, it'll just be chalked up to 'a bad decision' and nobody will admit what went wrong.
It's not that different, in principle, from having idiot sons of dukes in charge of regiments or so on because they were connected, I guess, which has happened throughout history. But I would be curious to hear any active duty or retired military opinions, or perhaps one of the military history buffs who's studied how this happened throughout the ages.Replies: @Bill Jones, @68W58
I remember I once saw a poll the subreddit for a developer of grand strategy games (Paradox) had done on their members. There were more transexuals than actual women.
Becca Wasser
– 2008: BA, Brandeis, Int’l & Global Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies;
– 2014: MA, Georgetown, Foreign Service;
– Late 2000s: Begins the long process of burrowing in, fairly deep, into the Washington think tank world (RAND, 2015-);
– The highlight, as of today, of her RAND profile page is her Sept. 2019 New York Times article about the challenges of being a woman in war-gaming.
Not bad looking, especially by today's standards (not grossly overweight, no visible tattoos). But I don't see a ring on her finger. She needs to find a nice boy and kick out a couple of babies. Instead, she's wasting her life climbing the corporate ladder. But then again, she's probably Super Triple Platinum on United Airlines and she's been just everywhere, and that's what really counts in life.
So what does she do? Pens an op-ed in which she admits all the men are far better at the task, but still begs for her Pussy Pass to be honored. Doesn't seem terribly clever, and it certainly isn't original.Replies: @SFG, @Bill
And may hurt our military preparedness.
Of course, when our boys get killed, it’ll just be chalked up to ‘a bad decision’ and nobody will admit what went wrong.
It’s not that different, in principle, from having idiot sons of dukes in charge of regiments or so on because they were connected, I guess, which has happened throughout history. But I would be curious to hear any active duty or retired military opinions, or perhaps one of the military history buffs who’s studied how this happened throughout the ages.
My boy won't be getting killed, will yours?
If so, what made fail him so appallingly?
Didn't you love him?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF3QMXdUwAAj7r8.jpg
- 2008: BA, Brandeis, Int'l & Global Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies;
- 2014: MA, Georgetown, Foreign Service;
- Late 2000s: Begins the long process of burrowing in, fairly deep, into the Washington think tank world (RAND, 2015-);
- The highlight, as of today, of her RAND profile page is her Sept. 2019 New York Times article about the challenges of being a woman in war-gaming.Replies: @Hail, @Anon, @Jew York Times, @peterike, @Bill, @Eternally Antifascist, @Amerimutt Golems
Here is Becca Wasser speaking at the Atlantic Counil, May 2019, with the usual talking points on Russia, with some Iran and Israel [4:20] splashed in:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4820414/becca-wasser
Degree of vocal fry: High.
Why?
With analysts like this, I don’t see what could possibly go wrong.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF3QMXdUwAAj7r8.jpg
- 2008: BA, Brandeis, Int'l & Global Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies;
- 2014: MA, Georgetown, Foreign Service;
- Late 2000s: Begins the long process of burrowing in, fairly deep, into the Washington think tank world (RAND, 2015-);
- The highlight, as of today, of her RAND profile page is her Sept. 2019 New York Times article about the challenges of being a woman in war-gaming.Replies: @Hail, @Anon, @Jew York Times, @peterike, @Bill, @Eternally Antifascist, @Amerimutt Golems
Nice profile of her. One question: Is she a childless spinster? I couldn’t find any family information.
——
After reading Bryan Caplan’s The Case against Education, I look at people with masters degrees differently. It’s the only degree among all degrees, for all levels of student and student intelligence, that actually loses you money in all conceivable cases, according to his mega-spreadsheet of education costs and benefits.
Another type of masters is the failed Ph.D. You crap out in a Ph.D. program and you negotiate a masters to get out and leave them alone. Yet another type of masters is the Ph.D. that is aborted because you come to your senses and accept a real job. This is what James Damore did when Google offered him a job: have the fetal Ph.D. issued as a masters degree.
Her most likely age as of today is 33. Is one a spinster at 33 in 2019?Replies: @Known Fact
From the headline, I assumed this was going to be another M2F transsexual. Quite surprised to find out she really is a she.
Next week: female palaeontologist complains that she is disadvantaged compared to male colleagues with childhood dinosaur obsessions.
Racist… the figurines should be black women.
The majority of men are not regarded as strong enough to make good soldiers, so how anyone can think women are capable of being soldiers is bemusing to me.
The military would likely have no qualms about saying a 5 foot or so, puny man is not suitable for military service yet would likely accept a woman with the same stature and strength. How does that make any sense? It is like society is prepared to recognise the limitations of certain men but it’s sexist to ever recognise the limitations of any women.
How will little Vivian Lord tell the butch little green army wimmin figures apart from the regular little green army men figures (or figurines in the case of the little pink army men)?
Will the toy set come with a JAG for all the me-too accusations and sexual discrimination cases (which must be part of the fun of war gaming in the current year)?
Personally I’d like to see President Warren appoint Becca Wasser Commander-in-Chief as it’s ‘her turn’ (I mean 10 years, and not yet a 4-star General?). She can either start a land war in Asia or march on Moscow, thereby proving how America has suffered from so many missed opportunities because war-gaming was too male-dominated.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF3QMXdUwAAj7r8.jpg
- 2008: BA, Brandeis, Int'l & Global Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies;
- 2014: MA, Georgetown, Foreign Service;
- Late 2000s: Begins the long process of burrowing in, fairly deep, into the Washington think tank world (RAND, 2015-);
- The highlight, as of today, of her RAND profile page is her Sept. 2019 New York Times article about the challenges of being a woman in war-gaming.Replies: @Hail, @Anon, @Jew York Times, @peterike, @Bill, @Eternally Antifascist, @Amerimutt Golems
She is a fellow tribeswomen. Watch as all these alt-right Nazis on this website smear her with anti-semitism.
Wargaming is so male, so nerdy, that it never crossed my mind that there would be any women involved in it at all. Even in railway model circles there has been a sprinkling of women for years. But wargaming? Nah.
Yet she must so talented, that she’s got a paying gig out of it. What are the odds?
Clips that end too soon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXzNo0vR_dU
Comment: "If I had a young and very cute Ally Sheedy in my bedroom, I wouldn't play Global Thermonuclear War, That's for sure !!!" (Sigh!)
https://youtu.be/VS0u2WcQZdA?t=669
Gigi went on the raids but when the males started attacking the other sides lone chimp (they always did this with five to one superiority a la the prime principle of strategy: concentrate force against weakness) she just ran about getting excited, so pretty useless. In hunter gatherer societies where they have a valuable food source territory and others want to take it there is fighting that women are not involved in, but also women's social status greatly declines because they are can no longer be given choice in who to marry; they are given to other tribes as wives as gifts to make alliances. It's a necessary sacrifice, and isn't 'diversity' something similar?
I didn’t grow up learning the professional qualifications I now have, yet from the age of 21 I somehow acquired them without the help of the New York Times.
Exactly, if you’re a producer and need a young actor, the number of Americans with experience versus those of Australian imports (Who also represent a bigger slice of the pie in terms of raw attractiveness and screen charisma since a bigger selection of society can make a go of being an actor). But this just compounds the problem for American actors who don’t get experience because of so many foreign imports taking it. A topic Samuel L Jackson took issue with when it came to black roles which are even more scarce.
Here is a showreel for Rebel Wilson from just before she broke out in Hollywood. Ghost Rider was filmed in Australia.
I think British actors get a good rep because a lot of them went through acting schools and theatre training. But really I think it’s more just Hollywood taking anyone with experience over those without and importing anyone who can do a good American accent. The Oscars this year were a fascinating example of this, so many British actors.
Could it also be that America is running out of people with a classic Western European appearance? Does American not look enough like America anymore so Hollywood needs to employ some trickery?
And once you have such a system and pathway in place, then others can follow with less uncertainty and risk. Margo Robbie was a huge star in Australia but her ceiling was otherwise playing a main character on Home and Away which she probably could have done forever.
My understanding is that in Great Britain, Ireland, Australia etc, the upper & upper middle class doesn’t feel shame in using their family money to pursue frivolous or long-shot life choices like acting, music or art. Whereas in the U.S high-pressure parents make their children ashamed to pursue something like that and possibly squander their fortunes. Basically the fact that capitalism is more intense here discourages good looking, reasonably competent people from going into acting.
[Tiny Duck Mode] It looks like you‘ve never seen Hidden Figures.
https://twitter.com/i/videos/1178113784059191296
P.S. — Read Leonard Pitts.
[/End Tiny Duck Mode]
Girls are easily fascinated by the killstuff! 🤗🤗
Clips that end too soon:
Comment: “If I had a young and very cute Ally Sheedy in my bedroom, I wouldn’t play Global Thermonuclear War, That’s for sure !!!” (Sigh!)
OT but sort of related – if are admitted to hospital and you say you’re female, the NHS in England will put you on a women’s ward.
https://improvement.nhs.uk/documents/6005/Delivering_same_sex_accommodation_sep2019.pdf
If you’re admitted unconscious but wearing a dress (it IS your stag do, after all) you’ll get a shock when you wake up.
Feminists not too happy, I’m not too happy either.
https://twitter.com/leng_cath/status/1178729490685579267
What kind of hairstyles will these female plastic green soldiers have?
The NYT has a company of female contributors, editors, and columnists who mostly seem to be in competition with each other on who can elbow their way closest to the front page with the most asinine current year topics.
Plastic female figurines… I’ll buy the ones depicting a female soldier stateside giving birth to a bastard mulatto conceived in a foxhole or the back of a 5 ton, or maybe the one depicting a female cook slopping runny mashed potatoes onto a tray.
I think, men or women, the RAND corporation ought to be defunded along with a lot more of the warfare state. Do their war gaming results ever match what happens in real geo-politics? Sell off the toy soldiers on ebay - some of the classics might fetch a decent amount to make a tiny dent in making the taxpayers whole.
Are the new girl toy soldiers really worth making a whole mold for, just for little Vivian Lord? With that kind of responsiveness out of Big-Toy, maybe I should see if I can get a working set of those X-ray glasses that used to be a farce. It's been years ...Replies: @Cortes, @68W58, @Vinnie O, @Precious
I’ve been looking for a Jihadi Barbie (black burqa, straps with plastic explosive) with a string activating the shrieking of “Allahu Akbar!”) for a transgendered toddler. So far without success. You’d think the manufacturers would respond to the demands of a diverse customer base. Especially when Chanukah is approaching.
She probably doesn’t play chess, either.
Given the correlation between transsexualism and autism, and who tends to buy the Paradox games, that’s slightly less crazy than it sounds at first glance. The people who are active on their forums would be a fairly self-selected group.
Of course, that doesn’t affect the broader point in any way, here.
From the article:
But of course, if she is paid less than her male colleagues for “the same” work, this is intolerable patriarchal discrimination. And Nazis.
This reminds me of that black mathematician who complained about there being too few black mathematicians that iSteve wrote about a while back. It’s oddly interesting to compare the styles in which their op-eds were written.
Truer words cannot be found in any Bible or Quran…
My next door neighbor growing up had been a Marine in the Pacific in World War II. After he passed, his wife entrusted my dad, a cop, with his gunny sack of dangerous stuff. What stood out; the bayonet, which could be used with your hand or attached to a rifle. Pointed, sharp, slickly oiled in it’s sleeve, 40 years later ready to go. We did not paint it pink every October. Warfare may be more like a video game but there are in fact times it’s brutal, hand to hand, kill or be killed. Despite an entire Hollywood genre of ass-kicking women, on average a man’s upper body strength is always going to be a huge advantage, and putting female troops on the front lines is a bad idea. Recall the blonde Jessica Lynch getting taken prisoner by the Iraqis, and multiply that out. Will RAND be developing pink-tinged Little Girl and Calorically Challenged Girl atom bomb toys too?
Just remember. Girls play with dolls. Boys play with action figures.
Or, you could have the little orange Trump doll walk into the Demilitarized Zone to meet the little fat Kim doll and, you know, talk it over, and not have a war at all.
One would have thought that Liberals would hail such thinking as a long awaited breakthrough in finally ending war. Instead, they see it as essentially treasonous, because Trump. We live in a weird world.
The RAND Corporation was founded in 1948. Have we won a war since then?
I suppose it does provide a comfortable sinecure for think-tank parasites such as this woman.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF3QMXdUwAAj7r8.jpg
- 2008: BA, Brandeis, Int'l & Global Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies;
- 2014: MA, Georgetown, Foreign Service;
- Late 2000s: Begins the long process of burrowing in, fairly deep, into the Washington think tank world (RAND, 2015-);
- The highlight, as of today, of her RAND profile page is her Sept. 2019 New York Times article about the challenges of being a woman in war-gaming.Replies: @Hail, @Anon, @Jew York Times, @peterike, @Bill, @Eternally Antifascist, @Amerimutt Golems
She has very nice hair.
Not bad looking, especially by today’s standards (not grossly overweight, no visible tattoos). But I don’t see a ring on her finger. She needs to find a nice boy and kick out a couple of babies. Instead, she’s wasting her life climbing the corporate ladder. But then again, she’s probably Super Triple Platinum on United Airlines and she’s been just everywhere, and that’s what really counts in life.
Not off topic:
Can someone explain to me how General Loretta Reynolds USMC is not a Lesbian?
General Reynolds missed out in her true calling in life which was to be a large unpleasant Lesbian Irish Catholic Nun teaching in a Catholic Parochial School….
The Civil War wasn’t worth it…
WW2 wasn’t worth it…..
If BMC Toys really wanted to make their products reflect reality better, they’d have little green paraplegic combat veterans, little green psychotic war-veterans, little green drug-addict war veterans, etc. They could also offer a collection of collateral-damage figurines: civilians blown apart and mangled by bombs, missiles and machine-gun fire. And a defence contractor set, with action figures depicting well-paid civilians golfing, going on carribean cruises, eating at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, etc. And of course there would have to be a defense-intellectual set, with figurines of Brandeis graduates pontificating on C-Span and writing op-eds in the Times.
Rebecca’s brothers must have been war gamers and Rebecca is mad she never got asked to play. Sailer calls it again. Of course, Rebecca could always go to Israel, where girls don’t play with toy soldiers, where they really are soldiers, but where her brothers would be actual combat soldiers. But I doubt she would be demanding to serve on the front lines and I doubt she would be angry that all the Generals come from combat units so she never had a real chance to be a General. No, there, she would be married with kids. We really get the worst of it.
When I tell people that I’m a war gamer, I’m either met with blank stares or overly enthusiastic questions about what it is like to play Call of Duty or Risk for a living.
This eagerness to take offense is one of the most revolting features of “current year” behavior. It’s like swimming in a pool with a school of neurotic pirhanas, only with less goodwill. Mind you, telling people you are a war gamer w/o background/context is calculated to elicit precisely this response. Now you can take offense, lather, rinse, repeat, Yechh.
I think, men or women, the RAND corporation ought to be defunded along with a lot more of the warfare state. Do their war gaming results ever match what happens in real geo-politics? Sell off the toy soldiers on ebay - some of the classics might fetch a decent amount to make a tiny dent in making the taxpayers whole.
Are the new girl toy soldiers really worth making a whole mold for, just for little Vivian Lord? With that kind of responsiveness out of Big-Toy, maybe I should see if I can get a working set of those X-ray glasses that used to be a farce. It's been years ...Replies: @Cortes, @68W58, @Vinnie O, @Precious
I’ve been in a warfighter exercise, it’s an incredibly complicated simulation intended to test a wide variety of units and the roles that individuals play within those units during a high intensity conflict. It was a good learning experience, but it is set up to simulate a conventional “force on force” conflict and not the low intensity, asymmetric fighting that has been typical of the conflicts we have had for 50 years (excepting the 1991 Persian Gulf war).
I was part of a Sustainment Brigade for the exercise, but we had lots of combat arms units participating. As far as the headquarters functions that we simulated (and that the exercise is intended to test) it didn’t matter much whether you were male or female, but it would matter very much on the sharp end where physical strength makes a big difference. If this lady wants more equality, let her try to keep up in an infantry battalion for a few years and, if it doesn’t break her physically, maybe she can learn how to design more realistic games.
Note: it is a huge mistake to place females in combat units (or direct support units for that matter), but here we are. To paraphrase HL Mencken, these ladies have decided what they want and they deserve to get it, good and hard.
So, does Becca have Becky hair?
There is also a GLARING LACK of black female figures, and a GLARING LACK of bearded men in dresses called Trevor figures.
Once you open the Bigot Spigot you cannot close it, take great care!Replies: @Bill Jones
Half a century ago my little green army men were light on honkies, too.
Of course, when our boys get killed, it'll just be chalked up to 'a bad decision' and nobody will admit what went wrong.
It's not that different, in principle, from having idiot sons of dukes in charge of regiments or so on because they were connected, I guess, which has happened throughout history. But I would be curious to hear any active duty or retired military opinions, or perhaps one of the military history buffs who's studied how this happened throughout the ages.Replies: @Bill Jones, @68W58
“Of course, when our boys get killed,”
My boy won’t be getting killed, will yours?
If so, what made fail him so appallingly?
Didn’t you love him?
Oh for goodness sakes. I was into the hobby in the seventies and I knew no women who played the games despite haunting hobby shops on the weekends. The only two women I know who learned were an ex girlfriend and my wife. You cannot interest most women and if you do you’ll absolutely ruin the hobby. This chit has made inroads on the inevitable crash and burn and she’s alone.
Green soldier women? Just what every nine year old boy wants.
Of course, when our boys get killed, it'll just be chalked up to 'a bad decision' and nobody will admit what went wrong.
It's not that different, in principle, from having idiot sons of dukes in charge of regiments or so on because they were connected, I guess, which has happened throughout history. But I would be curious to hear any active duty or retired military opinions, or perhaps one of the military history buffs who's studied how this happened throughout the ages.Replies: @Bill Jones, @68W58
The idiot sons, at the very least, had to go out and fight with their regiments, so they had skin in the game. Females in infantry units will almost certainly be given assignments where their chances of having to go toe to toe with the enemy will be minimized (they’ll get gate guard or tower jobs on the FOB or they’ll be the CO’s driver or something). The idiot son couldn’t screw his way out of trouble either and if he went down it was just “next man up” and his death or injury didn’t demoralize the entire unit (likely the opposite).
My guess is she is not talented at all or she would have never written the stupid article. Truly obsessed wargamers think about the game, the hobby or the relaxing game of Axis and Allies they’ve been playing for a decade and are just starting move three. Not about who they’re playing with.
Steve has described the psychological right lean and traditional masculinity of transwomen here before.
I’ve heard military guys going trans is way more common than it is for the average populace.
The market for their female green war figurines might be bigger than you think.
The outsourcing or war gaming to RAND is more evidence of just how corrupt and nonsensical our military has become. The benefit of war gaming is not the results that are achieved; they are meaningless since no war plan survives first contact with the enemy. The purpose of war game is to teach the gamers how to respond to the web and flow of battle. The gaming is a learning process that comes from doing it.
War games should be being played by prospective generals as a learning process in how to conduct wars, with senior officers as overseers in the role of teachers to critique the results and processes for the benefit of the players.
This is part of why we wind up spending 18 years fighting a war in Afghanistan that we cannot win. We have military leadership that does not know how to win, and does not even know what winning is because the process of learning how to win wars has been outsourced to civilian think tanks which are not involved in fighting those wars. Stupid.
Like Global Thermonuclear War, the only way to "win in Afghanistan" is not to play.
The truth is Afghanistan had little to do with the events on 9/11/2001.
Wait a second, are we expected to believe that our military does their war-gaming with the actual green plastic army figures little boys play with ?! Are you sure this article isn’t from the Babylon Bee? What if Chinese Intelligence finds out about that? I’m sure these figures are now made in China. They could mold listening devices into the female figures knowing those will be likely be used at the RAND corporation.
It's been decades, so my memory is a bit fuzzy and may be a bit off in the details, but the noted wargame designer Jim Dunnigan used to tell a story about the early days of wargaming in the U.S. when he was visited by DOD investigators. Supposedly a basic wargaming mechanism he published in a magazine or in a game attracted the attention of the DOD, because of its similarity to the algorithm that the DOD had invented after years and millions of dollars worth of research. The USG wanted to know if he was the recipient of a leak or an espionage!
And the "algorithm" in question? Rolling of the dice and "combat resolution" based on force ratios (1:1, 2:1, 3:1, etc.) that Dunnigan had developed over an afternoon.Replies: @J.Ross
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjydHR9G-C0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1mXFRaPGC8Replies: @Joe Stalin, @teotoon, @Elmer T. Jones
Okay, but why is this recent WW2 movie totally devoid of swastikas?
She probably has her choice of guys in the specialty. The odds are good, but the goods are odd….
David Bowie was more entertaining than this seemingly Jewish yenta shyster stooge for the JEW/WASP ruling class of the American Empire named Becca Wasser.
David Bowie brings up Australia — which Bowie lived in for a while to get away from the horrible hubbub in England and America and Europe — and Australian accents.
If I could type in an Australian accent, and after looking at pictures of Becca Wasser, I would say that I am only somewhat interested in the fruits of Becca Wasser’s Bekka Valley charms. From my youth I remember some Australian foreign correspondent yammering on about something called the Beh — Kah Valley in relation to the shenanigans involving the Israelis and their pals in that portion of the Mediterranean world. It turns out the Bekka Valley grows lots and lots of pot for smoking and putting in your hummus.
In other words, this Becca Wasser is a BOW WOW brain-dead tart mucking about in the inner workings of the JEW/WASP ruling class of the American Empire.
David Bowie also played a Limey Brit soldier in a movie about a Japanese prisoner of war camp from WWII.
ASHES TO ASHES WITH THE JEW/WASP RULING CLASS OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE!
David Bowie answers little green men with little green wheels in Ashes To Ashes:
The shrieking of nothing is killing, just
Pictures of Jap girls in synthesis and I
Ain’t got no money and I ain’t got no hair
But I’m hoping to kick but the planet it’s glowing
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom’s a junkie
Strung out in heaven’s high
Hitting an all-time low
Time and again I tell myself
I’ll stay clean tonight
But the little green wheels are following me
Oh no, not again
I’m stuck with a valuable friend
“I’m happy, hope you’re happy too”
One flash of light but no smoking pistol
Rand is known inside the Beltway as the people to call to do a study and get the answer you want.
I play with dolls. Too often I am the only male in the room. This isn’t fair.
In a more sensible age, with regards to these sorts of things, H G Wells titled his book on wargaming:
Little Wars (A Game for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books)
It begins,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3691/3691-h/3691-h.htm
Sorry, I couldn't resist. But it's the truth, and always will be. All the serious career women like Wasser will never be able to keep those girls away from the little green army men, no matter how hard they try.
And then we'll all be paying for little green army std clinics, maternity wards, nurseries, housing, etc. Oh wait, we already are...Replies: @Danindc
Was thinking same thing. Will they make little Green transport ships for pregnant women departing aircraft carriers?
Did anyone catch the zombie Simpsons episode where Abe is gay-curious? Probably not, but it involved little green army men.
In the vein of ‘jumping the shark’ I propose ‘grandpa goes gay’ for when someone tries to tie social justice ideas to an older concept that has nothing to do with them.
War game hobbyists are such mincing betas that they’ll celebrate when the professional-managerial HR ladies come in to kick them out of their own hobby.
Tabletop war gaming is so niche and arcane (I would argue it’s basically the least feminine thing imaginable) that it’s escaped attention for this long but it happens to every stinky nerd subculture eventually.
Becca Wasser = Access a brew.
But Wasserbier? Nah. Better with lemon soda.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biermischgetränk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shandy#Biermischgetränke
So what does she do? Pens an op-ed in which she admits all the men are far better at the task, but still begs for her Pussy Pass to be honored. Doesn't seem terribly clever, and it certainly isn't original.Replies: @SFG, @Bill
Mmmmmmm. I doubt.
When I first heard her name, I just assumed she was a Beach Boy’s daughter. Same with Rainn, who’s a guy. (I think.)
Someone on the last baseball thread said the Atlanta Crackers were the Yankees of the minors. That title more properly belongs to the Orioles, who were often among the ten best teams in baseball, better than most of the “weak sisters” in the majors.
The original 1901 Orioles are telling Yankees of the major leagues– literally. Today’s Orioles are the 1901 Milwaukee Brewers.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF3QMXdUwAAj7r8.jpg
- 2008: BA, Brandeis, Int'l & Global Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies;
- 2014: MA, Georgetown, Foreign Service;
- Late 2000s: Begins the long process of burrowing in, fairly deep, into the Washington think tank world (RAND, 2015-);
- The highlight, as of today, of her RAND profile page is her Sept. 2019 New York Times article about the challenges of being a woman in war-gaming.Replies: @Hail, @Anon, @Jew York Times, @peterike, @Bill, @Eternally Antifascist, @Amerimutt Golems
I share others’ suspicions about her, but this isn’t actually true. She has several reports on her publications tab. Furthermore, it’s completely normal for the work of people on the defense side of RAND not to show up publicly. DoD usually doesn’t want the whole world to know about the stuff it commissions RAND to study.
Once jobs, oh sorry ‘careers’, were viewed as a necessary part of a functioning society. Something needs to be done that may not be very fun so people get paid to do it as long as they are somewhat competent at actually getting it done. The goal was to accomplish a socially beneficial task.
We now have such luxury and so few problems that jobs are viewed not as serving society but as unnecessary frivolity merely serving the ego of the person employed.
There is an analogy in education where great effort is made to get students through medical school for example so that certain people can say they are doctors. Extra time on exams, distraction free room, open notes are now common.
The focus is solely on the ego of the half-Witt medical student and not the large group of patients.
Wargaming, either involving miniatures (toy soldiers), pushing cardboard symbols around a map, or computer games, is in reality a pretty serious hobby and as these things tend to be almost 100% male. The comparison with model railroads, but with fewer women involved, is a good one.
From the playing fields of Eton to the rec room floors of American suburbia!
I note this line with mild disgust: "what we were debating was whether we would put 400 or 4,000 men and women along the border". No, missy: If you had any professionalism in your PC-addled mind, it would be "400 or 4,000 soldiers".
The original “little green army men” had female noncombatant office worker pieces. I cannot imagine the reasoning of that except GI-generation government propaganda.
We’re told that diversity enhances an organization’s effectiveness by introducing new ideas, perspectives, etc. And yet, when we hear from those “diverse” people (for example this Becca person), it’s clear that far from being effectiveness-enhancers, they’re burdens on any organization that hires them.
Or, it’s good insofar as it is masculine, that is, rigorous, both in being what roleplayers and wargamers call “crunchy” (rules and processes and not just “my side can do anything,” like the government does) and in connecting to available fact.
I used to incline very strongly towards the former position, but, as I age, I think the latter has something going for it.Replies: @Known Fact
BERNIE ALERT — OT ___Let’s give this NYC/Brooklyn derived communist iron man credit for carrying on and ruffling feathers at age 78. An old school socialist diehard. This means more room for Pocahontas to be declared (voted?) the Democrat Supremo who will clash with The Donald Maximus in the General.
Can’t we just give Barbie a bazooka?
Your comments 4 and 5 make a great juxtaposition (hope they stay adjacent after moderation is done). But in all seriousness, I wonder how the ratio of # crawling on belly to # carrying binoculars and pistol compares for men and women in:
1. Reality
2. The bag of green army wo/men.
And what are the ratios of men and women who understand what “crawling on belly” vs. “carrying binoculars and pistol” means?
I wonder if the toy makers will start making camp follower figurines for the older wars when such women were seen as a vital part of the war effort?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjydHR9G-C0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1mXFRaPGC8Replies: @Joe Stalin, @teotoon, @Elmer T. Jones
Female soldiers? Will these new games have rape scenes with the captured “soldiers”? And Why not?
So will these plastic soldierettes be slightly pudgy with tattoos and daddy issues like real soldierettes?
I remember finding a book about WWII planes at the library when I was 7 and memorizing all of the different planes. My sisters would draw pictures of various stockings and outfits (this being the 60s a lot of miniskirts and multi-colors) and send them to my Uncle in North Carolina, who worked for Burlington Mills.
I don’t think my parents encouraged this at all. I’m sure my sisters would have loved memorizing the difference between a P-38 Lightning and a Brewster Buffalo (the flying coffin made in Long Island City, now home to a Jet Blue office; somehow the Finns made’em work), or a Mustang, a Hellcat, Douglas Dauntless, etc.
Also explains why British actors have the same effect. They are literally sending their all-stars in terms of acting, and they just plain outshine most of our scrubs.
On a side note, Rebel Wilson was strangely outed a few years ago as having lied about her birth name and been elusive about her age and such.
I say strange because its usual for celebrities to lie in interviews, and to have journalists never do any research or confirmation. As we see today, most journalists are programmed NPCs, even outside of celebrity culture. So the fact that some journalist tracked down Wilson’s real name and found she’d been less-than-forthcoming about her age was unusual.
Ultimately, the journalist got sued for defamation in Australia, because she claimed Wilson lied about her age while it could only be proven that Wilson herself “avoided” questions about her age, didn’t lie about. Weird anti-free speech rules they have. ANyway, the journalist was likely sued pour encourager les autres.
It can be plausibly argued that my trajectory towards a military career was started with a Christmas gift of HO scale soldiers and tanks.
I note this line with mild disgust: “what we were debating was whether we would put 400 or 4,000 men and women along the border”. No, missy: If you had any professionalism in your PC-addled mind, it would be “400 or 4,000 soldiers”.
I’m perfectly prepared to grant that women [i]can[/i] fight, and there are isolated examples of them doing so, and some are even moving figures, such as Joan of Arc or the ‘Maid from Pskov’ in Alexander Nevsky.
None of it bothers me in the least.
But there is something sick about normalizing the image of a woman as a combatant.
Seriously.
This comes to mind:
As someone with a background in Military Intelligence, I thank god that the folks with Weapons Grade autism are on our side. I don’t use that term in a mocking manner, it takes a special sort of individual to sit at a desk for upwards of 12 hours at a time mashing away at a computer. The best analysts are almost exclusively male and their social tendencies vary between obnoxious aspergers to staring at their shoes when they walk and keeping a couple fingers in contact with the nearest wall at all times as they navigate the basements of the NSA. There’s a few brilliant women who are like this as well, but their number is relatively smaller.
Off Topic:
https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2019-10-02/tom-of-finland-house-echo-park
Please remind me to stay away from Echo Park.
Third Reich?
Yup.
https://i2.wp.com/919raleigh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DSC_5924.jpg
(The bird droppings are a nice touch.)
Interestingly enough, the model for the male statue was an American of Teutonic extraction - Terry Schroeder, the captain of the water-polo team. (The female was an African runner.)
https://i.ibb.co/QKq5kxH/Terry-Schroeder.jpg
Schroeder's identity was leaked to the media before the '84 Games began. His teammates enjoyed embarrassing him by introducing him to women who had been admiring the statue. (He was already married at the time.)
Incidentally, numerous athletes have reported that the Olympic Village is essentially a giant brothel.
“Xi says China no threat, announces military cuts at 70th parade.”
Maybe Xi is right, no need for a military buildup?
Looks like the chances are now 95% that Elizabeth Warren is going to be the next president.
What is Obama gonna do? How much support will the Green Party get? How many Trump voters will respond to Trump's weakness and betrayal on immigration by refusing to vote for Trump? Will a Sam Francis type political party emerge that explicitly advances the interests of Whites as Whites?
Are those odds better or worse than they were for Hillary?
Right now, everyone is deciding Elizabeth Warren stands for whatever they want her to stand for. In fairly short order, she will prove unable to simultaneously say what everyone wants to hear, and her support will start to decline.
PredictIt betters say Warren is looking good but far from a sure thing:
Trump 2020 no longer is completely inexperienced in government and the country has not fallen apart since he took office in 2016. So some of the doomsday arguments used against him before will be less effective. But then again, he no longer is an outsider to the swamp and he didn’t deliver on some of his promises like the wall.
I don’t blame him for that because literally every promise he didn’t deliver on is because his own party refused to do what was obviously necessary.
Featured right here at Unz:
https://www.unz.com/sbpdl/the-american-empires-unraveling-white-female-marine-general-claims-the-militarys-diversity-is-our-greatest-strength-over-the-homogeneity-of-russia-and-china/
I think warren is harder to beat that Hillary, but it remains to be seen if trump 2020 is harder to beat than trump 2016.
Trump 2020 no longer is completely inexperienced in government and the country has not fallen apart since he took office in 2016. So some of the doomsday arguments used against him before will be less effective. But then again, he no longer is an outsider to the swamp and he didn’t deliver on some of his promises like the wall.
I don’t blame him for that because literally every promise he didn’t deliver on is because his own party refused to do what was obviously necessary.
Gigi the diesel dyke female chimp who went to war.
Gigi went on the raids but when the males started attacking the other sides lone chimp (they always did this with five to one superiority a la the prime principle of strategy: concentrate force against weakness) she just ran about getting excited, so pretty useless. In hunter gatherer societies where they have a valuable food source territory and others want to take it there is fighting that women are not involved in, but also women’s social status greatly declines because they are can no longer be given choice in who to marry; they are given to other tribes as wives as gifts to make alliances. It’s a necessary sacrifice, and isn’t ‘diversity’ something similar?
The beautiful Black church ladies with their beefy upper arms connected to handbags of a potential weaponized nature are gonna bolt Biden and go with Cheekbones Woman Warren? We’ll see.
What is Obama gonna do? How much support will the Green Party get? How many Trump voters will respond to Trump’s weakness and betrayal on immigration by refusing to vote for Trump? Will a Sam Francis type political party emerge that explicitly advances the interests of Whites as Whites?
I chose econometrics and wargaming as my methodology specializations when I worked on my Ph.D. in military history. As a part of that I ended up spending a good amount of time at Carlisle Barracks doing research into wargaming. You’d be surprised by how “primitive” and intuitive methods end up approximating very complex algorithms.
It’s been decades, so my memory is a bit fuzzy and may be a bit off in the details, but the noted wargame designer Jim Dunnigan used to tell a story about the early days of wargaming in the U.S. when he was visited by DOD investigators. Supposedly a basic wargaming mechanism he published in a magazine or in a game attracted the attention of the DOD, because of its similarity to the algorithm that the DOD had invented after years and millions of dollars worth of research. The USG wanted to know if he was the recipient of a leak or an espionage!
And the “algorithm” in question? Rolling of the dice and “combat resolution” based on force ratios (1:1, 2:1, 3:1, etc.) that Dunnigan had developed over an afternoon.
Which sounds not too far off from the primitive war game model devised by HG Wells.Replies: @Lurker
True, but that does require clicking on a tab.
For those looking at the page for just a few seconds, as the great majority do, these are the highlights they have chosen to give her:
That quote from her attention-seeking/self-promotion piece published last week, on the trials and tribulations of being a female ‘wargamer,’ is so frivolous as to be embarrassing.
She’s crossed a little Rubicon here, or stumbled across it, in a fit of attention-seeking.
I don’t have a perfect label for what she’s done, but it’s something in the spirit of “famous for being famous.” She’s now famous not for being a wargamer who is female (as it were), but for being a female wargamer. In other words, people who deal with her professionally might well be intimidated by/resentful of this power-play and look at her differently from now on. Yes, she will be getting mass-media invites out of this, whereas the men will get nothing (or some kind of mild scorn).
Third Reich?http://www.renegadetribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Josef-Thorak-Comradeship-German-Pavilion-Paris-Exposition-Internationale-1937-2.jpgYup.Replies: @Stan Adams
The L.A. Coliseum:
(The bird droppings are a nice touch.)
Interestingly enough, the model for the male statue was an American of Teutonic extraction – Terry Schroeder, the captain of the water-polo team. (The female was an African runner.)
Schroeder’s identity was leaked to the media before the ’84 Games began. His teammates enjoyed embarrassing him by introducing him to women who had been admiring the statue. (He was already married at the time.)
Incidentally, numerous athletes have reported that the Olympic Village is essentially a giant brothel.
https://www.unz.com/sbpdl/the-american-empires-unraveling-white-female-marine-general-claims-the-militarys-diversity-is-our-greatest-strength-over-the-homogeneity-of-russia-and-china/Replies: @tyrone
One may well ask ,would a category 5 ass whipping be a good thing for America?
"Out of ruins, wisdom!"
I think, men or women, the RAND corporation ought to be defunded along with a lot more of the warfare state. Do their war gaming results ever match what happens in real geo-politics? Sell off the toy soldiers on ebay - some of the classics might fetch a decent amount to make a tiny dent in making the taxpayers whole.
Are the new girl toy soldiers really worth making a whole mold for, just for little Vivian Lord? With that kind of responsiveness out of Big-Toy, maybe I should see if I can get a working set of those X-ray glasses that used to be a farce. It's been years ...Replies: @Cortes, @68W58, @Vinnie O, @Precious
Well, gee, golly. I started playing Avalon Hill’s wargames (e.g., Blitzkrieg) when I was in college. Several years later a friend (retired USMC colonel) gave me a THICK binder containing summaries of all of the wargames DoD had at the time. I think the count was over 300. (I think classified games were simply stubs to let people know they existed)
The problem with most of the games, including COL duPuy’s QJM (Quantified Judgment Model) , was that the agency (e.g., US Army Infantry School) PAYING for work on the model TOLD the modelers what the game had BETTER confirm about fighting the Ruskis at the Fulda Gap (um, every single time a TOW is fired, a Ruski tank bites the dust…).
There are also reasonably objective evaluations of the more prominent (i.e., EXPENSIVE) professional wargames that CONSISTENTLY conclude that the games CANNOT in fact duplicate the historical outcome of well documented battles (e.g., Kursk).
But my spare room is FILLED with toy soldiers and my bookcase is FILLED with board games (Panzerblitz is one of the most popular wargames ever produced).
But you’ve either got an analytical mindset that can deal with “conflict simulation”, or you’re one of the idiots that actually believes that battles and wars are won by some gutsy moron with a bayonet. As far as I can tell, career DoD guys prefer the gutsy moron model of conflict because it doesn’t require that they be able to THINK.
Why would even a nerd pick an ugly, inbred wench who already resents men? They could at least get a not-too-attractive gal who’s not from an inbred group and doesn’t seem to hate men.
Dennis Prager today interviewed Baruch Lurie about the loneliness crisis and neither mentioned "no fault divorce."
What would Mr. C. Heartiste (website and social media r.i.p.) say about Becca Wasser?
Women can do anything, if they put their minds to it. A woman has just broken a record held by Usain Bolt!
https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/wellness/story/olympic-sprinter-allyson-felix-breaks-world-record-held-65973598
One of the most interesting phenomena about wargaming (or simulation more generally) is the difference in the way people react to defects in the simulation. Some people’s attitude is that you should not exploit defects in the simulation to gain advantage over your opponents b/c that interferes with the realism of the gameplay and thus the point of the exercise. Other people’s attitude is that defects in the simulation are part of the game and the real purpose of games is to teach you to understand the situation you find yourself in (and especially to distinguish between the situation you find yourself in and the one you wish you found yourself in), understand the goals, formulate a strategy taking these into account, and win.
I used to incline very strongly towards the former position, but, as I age, I think the latter has something going for it.
There are plenty of women who like baseball but I never ran across a chick who played these simulation games.Replies: @Bill
However note that all sexual failure is always the man’s fault.
Dennis Prager today interviewed Baruch Lurie about the loneliness crisis and neither mentioned “no fault divorce.”
https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/wellness/story/olympic-sprinter-allyson-felix-breaks-world-record-held-65973598Replies: @Hail, @Hypnotoad666, @El Dato, @Sean
The record is the total number of medals, not an actual sprinting time, right?
It's been decades, so my memory is a bit fuzzy and may be a bit off in the details, but the noted wargame designer Jim Dunnigan used to tell a story about the early days of wargaming in the U.S. when he was visited by DOD investigators. Supposedly a basic wargaming mechanism he published in a magazine or in a game attracted the attention of the DOD, because of its similarity to the algorithm that the DOD had invented after years and millions of dollars worth of research. The USG wanted to know if he was the recipient of a leak or an espionage!
And the "algorithm" in question? Rolling of the dice and "combat resolution" based on force ratios (1:1, 2:1, 3:1, etc.) that Dunnigan had developed over an afternoon.Replies: @J.Ross
Rolling of the dice and “combat resolution” based on force ratios (1:1, 2:1, 3:1, etc.) that Dunnigan had developed over an afternoon.
Which sounds not too far off from the primitive war game model devised by HG Wells.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Wars
He roughed out the basics and people have been refining ever since.Replies: @Twinkie
This article omits one of the key elements of the standard template for a “Field X needs more diversity” story. That is, it fails to argue that war gaming will benefit from the unique lived experience of females.
I guess the author couldn’t bring herself to argue that women have special insight into the best ways to kill foreigners and destroy their stuff.
https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/wellness/story/olympic-sprinter-allyson-felix-breaks-world-record-held-65973598Replies: @Hail, @Hypnotoad666, @El Dato, @Sean
I bet someone has more than 12 Special Olympic gold medals. If so, he or she is obviously the “winningest.”
Let's put Wasser in a Humvee and send her on down some dusty road in a bad place. As is too often the case, she may be the only woman in the vehicle. You go, girl!
OT: Amazing problems of vocabulary of the 21st century.
Why I Called It ‘Quantum Supremacy’: Researchers finally seem to have a quantum computer that can outperform a classical computer. But what does that really mean?
Geee……
Baizuo Gas is no laughing matter.
The new motto:
“Out of ruins, wisdom!”
General Loretta Reynolds USMC:”I want to be called Loretta….”
The American Empire is imploding.
I am now in control here -- just like Al Haig -- and I hereby command Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell to immediately raise the federal funds rate to 20 percent like it was in 1981. That order will immediately implode the asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate, thereby causing the military jurisdictional sphere of influence of the American Empire to contract significantly.
The US military is a giant corrupt jobs program and the jobs program is running amok.
https://youtu.be/rE9HHIB5HTs
US Air Force General David Goldfein is a nutcake Jew who pushes anti-White "diversity."
The baby boomer officers in the American Empire are mentally deranged idiots.
The Islamic terrorist US Army killer hadn't even finished shooting the Hell out of Fort Hood before that baby boomer sonofabitch Gen. Casey was warning about any damage to so-called "diversity."
The US military needs Andrew Jackson and George Washington but we got baby boomer boneheads like Loretta in the Marines and Goldfein in the Air Force and that absolute douchebag Casey from the US Army.
Listen to this Jew nutcake baby boomer boob Goldfein:
https://twitter.com/usairforce/status/1109394356505477121
And don't tell me they are debating ... when the game is already ongoing?Replies: @Aardvark
They do not seem to be using the Intersectional Pokemon conversion chart.
A green plastic Army woman would be worth like 2-3x a man so in this case probably 2-3 brigades.
Now, if the female Army figure is actually a man identifying as a woman… then the multiplier goes way the hell up. One figure could be equal to tens of brigades backed up by close air support and aircraft carriers.
https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/wellness/story/olympic-sprinter-allyson-felix-breaks-world-record-held-65973598Replies: @Hail, @Hypnotoad666, @El Dato, @Sean
I’m looking forward to a remake of Akira with a more diverse and female cast.
If she has an actual position at a company designing game scenarios for the Department of Defense, why write the article? Does her company support the article? Her colleagues? Is she hoping for more war toys for girls? Why doesn’t she just go learn her job, in Iraq or something?
I guess the author couldn't bring herself to argue that women have special insight into the best ways to kill foreigners and destroy their stuff.Replies: @Altai, @guest
I don’t know, have you ever read a puff-piece about Madeline Albright?
Laughing.
Imagine that all that obsessing about black guys who did grow-up playing cops and robbers and collecting every single army man they could find, trading and building strategic scenarios in sand, grass and puddle, not to mention GI Joe getting preferential treatment, when at the end of the white women keep replacing white and black boys for such activity was not only a labor of fascination, learning and competition in preparation for the real thing.
White girls who don’t prepare in youthful play environments, never will in real life either.
Interesting.
Good article and telling.
She must think she’s Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn in a scene with Levon Helm in Coal Miner’s Daughter.
The American Empire is imploding.
I am now in control here — just like Al Haig — and I hereby command Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell to immediately raise the federal funds rate to 20 percent like it was in 1981. That order will immediately implode the asset bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate, thereby causing the military jurisdictional sphere of influence of the American Empire to contract significantly.
The US military is a giant corrupt jobs program and the jobs program is running amok.
I think, men or women, the RAND corporation ought to be defunded along with a lot more of the warfare state. Do their war gaming results ever match what happens in real geo-politics? Sell off the toy soldiers on ebay - some of the classics might fetch a decent amount to make a tiny dent in making the taxpayers whole.
Are the new girl toy soldiers really worth making a whole mold for, just for little Vivian Lord? With that kind of responsiveness out of Big-Toy, maybe I should see if I can get a working set of those X-ray glasses that used to be a farce. It's been years ...Replies: @Cortes, @68W58, @Vinnie O, @Precious
Are the new girl toy soldiers really worth making a whole mold for, just for little Vivian Lord? With that kind of responsiveness out of Big-Toy, maybe I should see if I can get a working set of those X-ray glasses that used to be a farce. It’s been years …
X-ray glasses, that brings back memories and a smile.
I read the letter from Vivian Lord, one of her justifications is her that her friend’s mom is in the army. Maybe the company can make some nurses and secretary models?
Do you know where H.G. Wells is buried?
Carter has to be the worst ex-President of all time, though it seems Obama is determined to pass him. Carter couldn’t handle the job when he had it, much less at 80.
Are the military autists powered by Cheetos and Mountain Dew like their civilian counterparts?
I’m picturing Becca Wasser…
My son’s a war gamer, some sort of futurist space Marine type game. Rocks the Grizzly Adams beard down to the tops of his collar bones easily.
Maybe if this women had an awesome neck beard she’d be taken more seriously as a war gamer. It does seem to be a pretty common in that community.
In a way this is cool in that we’re talking about this instead of nuclear winter fallout like we were 30 odd yrs ago…..it means things are getting safer.
On the other hand if we got into a real “hot war” it probably means we are f**ked….
The problem with most of the games, including COL duPuy's QJM (Quantified Judgment Model) , was that the agency (e.g., US Army Infantry School) PAYING for work on the model TOLD the modelers what the game had BETTER confirm about fighting the Ruskis at the Fulda Gap (um, every single time a TOW is fired, a Ruski tank bites the dust...).
There are also reasonably objective evaluations of the more prominent (i.e., EXPENSIVE) professional wargames that CONSISTENTLY conclude that the games CANNOT in fact duplicate the historical outcome of well documented battles (e.g., Kursk).
But my spare room is FILLED with toy soldiers and my bookcase is FILLED with board games (Panzerblitz is one of the most popular wargames ever produced).
But you've either got an analytical mindset that can deal with "conflict simulation", or you're one of the idiots that actually believes that battles and wars are won by some gutsy moron with a bayonet. As far as I can tell, career DoD guys prefer the gutsy moron model of conflict because it doesn't require that they be able to THINK.Replies: @Twinkie, @Lurker
Dupuy’s work had some significant mathematical errors, but that wasn’t even the worst problem. His model was, as with many such models, mechanistically firepower-based, and poorly handled the crucial intangibles of war such as morale, cohesion, and operational excellence.
You got that backward – DOD is very firepower-based and always has been.
“Poor old Jimmy” catches and caught a lot of shit he had no control of….
…..theres a lot of evidence the 70s inflation and malaise was caused by massive easy money policies under JFK and later Johnson and Nixon (broke the gold link to the dollar and imposed price controls and rationing) in order to finance the Vietnam clusterf*** and LBJs Great Society and later Nixons war expansions and various policies before he did his janitorial “withdraw from SE Asia with dignity” bombing campaign.
Just like how if you rent you know rents have doubled or worse even in tangential markets in the SE USA since the early 2010s as everything from worker costs to property taxes to property values slam thru the roof and make basic living cost inflation rise…..then theres food costs….notice how the dollar menu doesn’t exist any more and vanished around say 2014? Yeah that’s because of worker and food cost inflation…..all that Fed funny money Bush printed up to finance the Iraq and Afghan wars and later to shore up the economy after the Bush housing bubble blew up….all that easy money is finally coming back to haunt us as inflation and to the detriment of some….deflation of some types of businesses and assets…..
Carter could have done better and did botch the Iran thing but he catches flack he doesn’t deserve.
Dubya is the main reason with his neocons why the economy is in the morass it’s in, with growth in asian rivals and aging demographic reasons domestically contributing to that.
He also should have told the Panamanians to pound sound, its our canal. The only reason Panama exists is because of it (they'd been part of Colombia prior).
Robert Novak in "The Prince of Darkness" said that Carter was one of the most dishonest people he'd ever met. Not in terms of corruption but in terms of compulsive lying. He'd lie to you if you asked him the time.
My point was more that he's been a terrible ex-President. I'm not aware of another ex-POTUS that was such a sanctimonious twit and spent so much time flying around the world criticizing his country and his successors. Until Obama anyway.Replies: @Neoconned
or, from another perspective…
I Run War Games. Too Often, There is an Underperforming yet Entitled, Self-Absorbed and Disgruntled Woman in the Room.
Liberally substitute any activity in which you have standing, experience, or casual but informed interest for “War Games”.
Classic Sailer staccato grievance commentary™!
Oh! So you’ve seen them, too.
The problem with most of the games, including COL duPuy's QJM (Quantified Judgment Model) , was that the agency (e.g., US Army Infantry School) PAYING for work on the model TOLD the modelers what the game had BETTER confirm about fighting the Ruskis at the Fulda Gap (um, every single time a TOW is fired, a Ruski tank bites the dust...).
There are also reasonably objective evaluations of the more prominent (i.e., EXPENSIVE) professional wargames that CONSISTENTLY conclude that the games CANNOT in fact duplicate the historical outcome of well documented battles (e.g., Kursk).
But my spare room is FILLED with toy soldiers and my bookcase is FILLED with board games (Panzerblitz is one of the most popular wargames ever produced).
But you've either got an analytical mindset that can deal with "conflict simulation", or you're one of the idiots that actually believes that battles and wars are won by some gutsy moron with a bayonet. As far as I can tell, career DoD guys prefer the gutsy moron model of conflict because it doesn't require that they be able to THINK.Replies: @Twinkie, @Lurker
Cool!
Which sounds not too far off from the primitive war game model devised by HG Wells.Replies: @Lurker
I read that years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Wars
He roughed out the basics and people have been refining ever since.
The Baroness
Zarana
Covergirl
Scarlett
Lady Jaye
Pythona
This list, compared to any list of all the male characters of the G.I. Joe franchise – an effort by Hasbro at altruism, with no attention at all to how much money could be made selling toys to anyone at all willing to pay, regardless of genitalia – only reinforces the authoress’ point.
(No word yet on how Negro yet Scottish Destro fits in.)
Then read this:
Cardi B Walked Off A Photoshoot After Being Sexually Assaulted
I I have some doubts about this story.
There’s a Risk variant board game from the Eighties (it went through three or four names, the first is “Shogun”) where the little plastic army men are ashigari and daimyo fron the Japanese civil war period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Wars
He roughed out the basics and people have been refining ever since.Replies: @Twinkie
As you can read in that entry, the Prussians already developed wargames (or sorts) in the 19th Century. Their origins go back further than Wells.
Remind me which side “The Chinese” are on.
I don’t know why I’m amazed that a woman who’s that articulate and well-educated has her head so far up her ass. Okay, maybe I do know.
A more advanced society (a society that could kick our ass, anyway) would start training females early on. Let them watch as adult military men mop the floor with adult women in good physical shape. Let little girls watch grad school math classes with 90% men. Let them look at the 1927 Solvay Conference group picture of physicists: out of thirty, there is one woman. Let them watch as the best female tennis players in the world can’t even score points against top 500 men.
The current generation of women is lost – confronting their false worldview with reality would result in mass psychosis – much worse than we had after Donald Trump beat HRC.
We know what holds women back more than anything: themselves. Because they don't want to advance. Not really. They want status and power and money, but they'd like to just have it. They don't want to, you know, do stuff to get it.Replies: @Anon7, @Jim Don Bob
David Goldfein is just as much of a baby boomer dirtbag boob as that Loretta baby boomer bonehead from the Marines.
US Air Force General David Goldfein is a nutcake Jew who pushes anti-White “diversity.”
The baby boomer officers in the American Empire are mentally deranged idiots.
The Islamic terrorist US Army killer hadn’t even finished shooting the Hell out of Fort Hood before that baby boomer sonofabitch Gen. Casey was warning about any damage to so-called “diversity.”
The US military needs Andrew Jackson and George Washington but we got baby boomer boneheads like Loretta in the Marines and Goldfein in the Air Force and that absolute douchebag Casey from the US Army.
Listen to this Jew nutcake baby boomer boob Goldfein:
Carol Alt is a Prussian. That’s all I need to know to like them.
Are war games with toys (and paying people who run than over 100k a year) really necessary these days? Can’t computer versions run through more accurate simulations more efficiently, so we don’t have to employ so many contractors to continue their childhood hobbies?
By the way, I know someone who essentially sells these toys & parts to foreign military contractors for a very lucrative living.
Hillary is running. It won’t be Warren. Hillary the Revenge: This Time Its personal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjydHR9G-C0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1mXFRaPGC8Replies: @Joe Stalin, @teotoon, @Elmer T. Jones
Battlefeld is better. And funnier.
I was in the Navy, and while there seemed to be more women in the Pentagon staff it was not really noticeable. Lot more Intel, Information Warfare, Public Affairs types based off ribbons and warfare devices. Desk type people, male and female.
I remember more being struck how we were being shown scenarios where our vessel would be destroyed with some calculated possibility near 100% and no one would bat an eye. No one wanted to look stupid or mess up the radio orders when we would be told to proceed to our imminent deaths. That would be embarrassing.
True, but at the risk of accusations of autism – those Prussian games were more abstract and dealing with larger units. Whereas gaming with actual figures generally tends toward smaller units; is their morale holding up/declining, is their movement suppressed and so on.
“Jimmy! Stop making the Taliban gangrape the girl soldiers, young man.”
– Jimmy’s mom
I guess the author couldn't bring herself to argue that women have special insight into the best ways to kill foreigners and destroy their stuff.Replies: @Altai, @guest
I thought that’s where she was going with the “these figures represent real peoplez!” But apparently not.
A more advanced society (a society that could kick our ass, anyway) would start training females early on. Let them watch as adult military men mop the floor with adult women in good physical shape. Let little girls watch grad school math classes with 90% men. Let them look at the 1927 Solvay Conference group picture of physicists: out of thirty, there is one woman. Let them watch as the best female tennis players in the world can't even score points against top 500 men.
The current generation of women is lost - confronting their false worldview with reality would result in mass psychosis - much worse than we had after Donald Trump beat HRC.Replies: @guest
The biggest up-her-ass aspect is she knows men have more experience and interest, but she just don’t care. For no other apparent reason than that she would like to advance.
We know what holds women back more than anything: themselves. Because they don’t want to advance. Not really. They want status and power and money, but they’d like to just have it. They don’t want to, you know, do stuff to get it.
Granting women’s suffrage was a terrible mistake.
Read the Bible. The ancients understood the nature of women.
Is “winningest” a new superlative? It’s so difficult to keep up these days 🙂
Let’s put Wasser in a Humvee and send her on down some dusty road in a bad place. As is too often the case, she may be the only woman in the vehicle. You go, girl!
Warren will have a Black (guy) V.P. candidate to get that 95% Black vote….no, not Spartacus. You wait, he will appear.
Available at Project Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3691/3691-h/3691-h.htm
Is it Hillary or Romney? A lot of people are saying the “whistleblower” is somehow linked to Joseph Cofer Black, a former Romney national security advisor, ex CIA operative and Bush appointee. He, for whatever reason, also sits on the board of the Ukrainian “energy company” Burisma.
Based on recent literature (such as the hot off the presses Debbie Harry bio) it seems “rock out with your cock out” is, like, actually a thing. Session man David Spinozza was apparently the all time king of whipouts.
Somewhat related:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/four-years-in-startups
Men are to blame for everything she doesn’t like.
President Carter did a lot more damage than he is usually credited with.
Most girls don’t play with kill, kill, kill with your figurines ( I know because I know – no one was as tough of as a little girl as I was). I had 3 sons; I was shot with howitzers and even worse, often. This whole movement must go thru Lagertha’s (the TV show) approval, hahhahahaaaaa!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF3QMXdUwAAj7r8.jpg
- 2008: BA, Brandeis, Int'l & Global Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies;
- 2014: MA, Georgetown, Foreign Service;
- Late 2000s: Begins the long process of burrowing in, fairly deep, into the Washington think tank world (RAND, 2015-);
- The highlight, as of today, of her RAND profile page is her Sept. 2019 New York Times article about the challenges of being a woman in war-gaming.Replies: @Hail, @Anon, @Jew York Times, @peterike, @Bill, @Eternally Antifascist, @Amerimutt Golems
With that “facial appearance” it is not too difficult to decipher to which tribe she claims “membership”! Therefore, it becomes much more easily deductible her motivations for op-eding regarding why she S-H-O-U-L-D be receiving much more “recognition” from her, in her opinion, less intelligent male colleagues and as a fringe benefit much more money than they receive. It is all consistent with a “genetic” history from Brandeis U!
We know what holds women back more than anything: themselves. Because they don't want to advance. Not really. They want status and power and money, but they'd like to just have it. They don't want to, you know, do stuff to get it.Replies: @Anon7, @Jim Don Bob
I put it down to HBD. Western European men evolved to take their places in organizations. Women demand what they can understand: the pay check, the authority, the prestige – that’s all they can see. “Successful” women often say that they feel like imposters, and it’s true. They don’t have any idea how to fit in. They aren’t capable, they evolved for other roles.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/30/four-years-in-startups
Men are to blame for everything she doesn't like.Replies: @Lagertha
welcome to the narrative.
he did, and he pulled that country religious boy stuff, all the time. It was insufferable. He was a phony Godist (my word).
none of the above. Sometimes, I feel like I really need to flog you, Whiskey! Hillary is over.
The mad scramble right now, is to makeover someone, someone like Gabber or Harris to be the face of the election – this whole affair over the Impeachment craziness, is worse for the Dems – momentum is a thinning thing.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EF3QMXdUwAAj7r8.jpg
- 2008: BA, Brandeis, Int'l & Global Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies;
- 2014: MA, Georgetown, Foreign Service;
- Late 2000s: Begins the long process of burrowing in, fairly deep, into the Washington think tank world (RAND, 2015-);
- The highlight, as of today, of her RAND profile page is her Sept. 2019 New York Times article about the challenges of being a woman in war-gaming.Replies: @Hail, @Anon, @Jew York Times, @peterike, @Bill, @Eternally Antifascist, @Amerimutt Golems
That’s why they cornered U.S. foreign policy while goyim slept.
BTW, here is the paper everyone is talking about
Free download.
Rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in Pakistan and India portend regional and global catastrophe
Don’t do it then, unless you are looking for population reduction and a solution to global warming.
They can use this to make the “woman throming grenade” one.
It looks most likely she is single, never married, no children. As peterike noted above, “I don’t see a ring on her finger.”
Her most likely age as of today is 33. Is one a spinster at 33 in 2019?
BIG
SURPRISE
GUYS
SHE
IS
JEWISH
https://media.giphy.com/media/ScKoQVd3in8NW/giphy.gifReplies: @black sea
Interesting to note that one of the instructors takes her by the shoulders, hurries her to the sandbag pit, tosses her in, and makes sure she has taken cover before he does.
Instinct . . . responsibility . . . career competence . . . vestigial chivalry? Whatever it is, cohesive societies depend on it much more than our betters will ever acknowledge, much less understand.
Most guys would never just blurt out, “I’m a wargamer.” They would say something like “I run military simulations for RAND. Basically, I get to play wargames for a living.” This first part gives people the context. The second part puts it in layman’s terms.
Can someone explain to me how General Loretta Reynolds USMC is not a Lesbian?
General Reynolds missed out in her true calling in life which was to be a large unpleasant Lesbian Irish Catholic Nun teaching in a Catholic Parochial School....
The Civil War wasn’t worth it...
WW2 wasn’t worth it.....Replies: @Bugg
If you showed the D-Day troops on those transport craft on the way to the Normandy beaches what we have become roughly 75 years later, say trannies reading supposed books to small children in public libraries and streets filled with Arab women wearing patio umbrellas, they probably turn the boats around and call it a day.
I've also heard this sentiment express as:
"We had the guns pointing the wrong way."Replies: @Hail
Carter definitely was dealt a bad hand but he played it about as poorly as possible. Normally I’m pretty skeptical of people that look to politicians for inspiration, but I do believe politicians at least shouldn’t be discouraging. Carter carried himself and governed like an old woman, that affected people.
He also should have told the Panamanians to pound sound, its our canal. The only reason Panama exists is because of it (they’d been part of Colombia prior).
Robert Novak in “The Prince of Darkness” said that Carter was one of the most dishonest people he’d ever met. Not in terms of corruption but in terms of compulsive lying. He’d lie to you if you asked him the time.
My point was more that he’s been a terrible ex-President. I’m not aware of another ex-POTUS that was such a sanctimonious twit and spent so much time flying around the world criticizing his country and his successors. Until Obama anyway.
I dunno enough about him personally to confirm/deny the lying thing but it wouldn't shock me. Like Bill Clinton hes a Southern politician and all they are known for is talking out of 2 sides of their big mouths.
I know him mostly for his charity work with Habitat for Humanity. And personally I agree with a lot of his criticism of our foreign policy though not all of it. We really do need to mind our business and get out of the Middle East. Unless of course we just nuke that shit hole, which is about all it's good for considering how much blood and treasure we've sunk there.....
Carter was right to criticize zBush and at the very least the idea Reagan was a saint and he a devil totally nonsense. Both have much to answer for and if Carter is guilty of anything it's the deregulation movement started under him and then exploded under Raygun
I used to incline very strongly towards the former position, but, as I age, I think the latter has something going for it.Replies: @Known Fact
Exploit the simulation’s defects or not — that was also an issue way back when in the Strat-O or APBA baseball games. E,g, some lightly used career benchwarmer has one great season based on 110 at bats — do you make him a regular?
There are plenty of women who like baseball but I never ran across a chick who played these simulation games.
NYT and a few others have made this rant a regular feature — just insert a different profession or academic discipline that is still mostly male but does not seem to require too much literal or mathematical heavy lifting for women to demand their piece of the action. Just two days ago it was economics, yet again.
I’ve done plenty of features on people in a job/gender mismatch — male nurses, female scientists or warriors etc. Stuff like that movie where Schwarzenegger teaches kindergarten. Their basic mood has usually been bemusement, not resentment. But editors can find resentment if that’s what they’re looking for
Oh but wait — Belinda Gates with a BILLION-dollar grant to fight gender inequality
https://time.com/5690596/melinda-gates-empowering-women/
Her most likely age as of today is 33. Is one a spinster at 33 in 2019?Replies: @Known Fact
In modern parlance she’s “hitting The Wall” — her Sexual Market Value is on the decline and childless spinsterhood awaits if she doesn’t get real and lock down some decent guy pretty soon
We need more females who want to kill — especially want to kill the Muslims.
He also should have told the Panamanians to pound sound, its our canal. The only reason Panama exists is because of it (they'd been part of Colombia prior).
Robert Novak in "The Prince of Darkness" said that Carter was one of the most dishonest people he'd ever met. Not in terms of corruption but in terms of compulsive lying. He'd lie to you if you asked him the time.
My point was more that he's been a terrible ex-President. I'm not aware of another ex-POTUS that was such a sanctimonious twit and spent so much time flying around the world criticizing his country and his successors. Until Obama anyway.Replies: @Neoconned
I see your point.
I dunno enough about him personally to confirm/deny the lying thing but it wouldn’t shock me. Like Bill Clinton hes a Southern politician and all they are known for is talking out of 2 sides of their big mouths.
I know him mostly for his charity work with Habitat for Humanity. And personally I agree with a lot of his criticism of our foreign policy though not all of it. We really do need to mind our business and get out of the Middle East. Unless of course we just nuke that shit hole, which is about all it’s good for considering how much blood and treasure we’ve sunk there…..
Carter was right to criticize zBush and at the very least the idea Reagan was a saint and he a devil totally nonsense. Both have much to answer for and if Carter is guilty of anything it’s the deregulation movement started under him and then exploded under Raygun
Tune in next time for When Illiterates Theorize as we explain why every breakfast should include Orange Nectar and why Evening News should be changed to Evening Infoshow.
‘Looks like the chances are now 95% that Elizabeth Warren is going to be the next president.’
Are those odds better or worse than they were for Hillary?
Right now, everyone is deciding Elizabeth Warren stands for whatever they want her to stand for. In fairly short order, she will prove unable to simultaneously say what everyone wants to hear, and her support will start to decline.
There are plenty of women who like baseball but I never ran across a chick who played these simulation games.Replies: @Bill
Yeah, I used to play APBA Football. One of the guys I played with would draft these mediocre defensive backs who had had one interception returned for a TD or for a big gain. Their cards would have insane return numbers on them. He would pretty reliably get a score out of these scrubs every second game or so. This enraged some of the guys in the league and others were totally chill with it.
“Dubya is the main reason with his neocons why the economy is in the morass it’s in, with growth in asian rivals and aging demographic reasons domestically contributing to that.”
Wrong.
There are plenty of factors, but that foundation was established during the deregulation policies of Pres Reagan, advances in technology for mass consumption, Pres. Clinton and the policies that changed rules of investing regarding real estate and the unchecked work of hedge fund and similar financial and the shifts from product to process investment instruments.
War games should be being played by prospective generals as a learning process in how to conduct wars, with senior officers as overseers in the role of teachers to critique the results and processes for the benefit of the players.
This is part of why we wind up spending 18 years fighting a war in Afghanistan that we cannot win. We have military leadership that does not know how to win, and does not even know what winning is because the process of learning how to win wars has been outsourced to civilian think tanks which are not involved in fighting those wars. Stupid.Replies: @SaneClownPosse
Not in Afghanistan to “win”.
Like Global Thermonuclear War, the only way to “win in Afghanistan” is not to play.
The truth is Afghanistan had little to do with the events on 9/11/2001.
Here is a showreel for Rebel Wilson from just before she broke out in Hollywood. Ghost Rider was filmed in Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3wyKYfa9ys
I think British actors get a good rep because a lot of them went through acting schools and theatre training. But really I think it's more just Hollywood taking anyone with experience over those without and importing anyone who can do a good American accent. The Oscars this year were a fascinating example of this, so many British actors.
Could it also be that America is running out of people with a classic Western European appearance? Does American not look enough like America anymore so Hollywood needs to employ some trickery?
And once you have such a system and pathway in place, then others can follow with less uncertainty and risk. Margo Robbie was a huge star in Australia but her ceiling was otherwise playing a main character on Home and Away which she probably could have done forever.Replies: @S. Anonyia
It’s perhaps running out of skinny people (particularly men) with classic Western European appearances. Some of them are still around the South and Midwest, but they are generally upper class and usually make sensible life choices rather than trying their shot at the tv/film industry. It starts on a smaller scale in high school drama classes- usually only weirdos, fatties, gays, and future druggies take them these days.
My understanding is that in Great Britain, Ireland, Australia etc, the upper & upper middle class doesn’t feel shame in using their family money to pursue frivolous or long-shot life choices like acting, music or art. Whereas in the U.S high-pressure parents make their children ashamed to pursue something like that and possibly squander their fortunes. Basically the fact that capitalism is more intense here discourages good looking, reasonably competent people from going into acting.
https://time.com/5690596/melinda-gates-empowering-women/Replies: @S. Anonyia
This is annoying not only due to the waste of people just throwing around that kind of money, also because her life is somewhat a testament to gender inequality. She won big by marrying well not by doing anything notable. Give that grant to the self-made lady who invented Spanx instead. She could probably do more with it, and change more women’s lives in a practical way by giving them practical skills. And she’d need way less money to produce results.
She’s also retconning history.
As we might expect of a (((Becca Wasser))).
There have been at least one or two recent surveys of surviving British WW2 vets where the overwhelming majority voice exactly this sentiment.
I’ve also heard this sentiment express as:
“We had the guns pointing the wrong way.”
Charles Roberts invented the Combat Results Table (CRT) to determine the out comes of battle bases on combat ratio and dice rolling. It was in all of the early Avalon Hill games. Dunnigan improved on it.
I've also heard this sentiment express as:
"We had the guns pointing the wrong way."Replies: @Hail
Link, please!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229643/This-isnt-Britain-fought-say-unknown-warriors-WWII.html
First one I could find:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229643/This-isnt-Britain-fought-say-unknown-warriors-WWII.html
https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/wellness/story/olympic-sprinter-allyson-felix-breaks-world-record-held-65973598Replies: @Hail, @Hypnotoad666, @El Dato, @Sean
Usain spent the night before the 200 metres with multiple members of the Swedish women’s handball team.
The most fit female recruit has the upper body strength of the 50th percentile male. Females also suffer more bone fractures carrying things like, you know, sixty pound packs, because they just don’t have enough T to get the job done. I blame Pat Schroeder.
A Hard 5
We know what holds women back more than anything: themselves. Because they don't want to advance. Not really. They want status and power and money, but they'd like to just have it. They don't want to, you know, do stuff to get it.Replies: @Anon7, @Jim Don Bob
Well said, sir! I may steal that.
A soft 6, IMO.
Or anyone who watched someone catch a bullet for his country in the last two hundred years or so.