CarbonConscious

Likely. I think we'll see a lot of drones and big missiles and carpet bombing type stuff before any boots hit the ground, if even at all.

I don't disagree; it certainly wouldn't be a walk in the park the way Desert Storm was portrayed as, but all the middle east excursions so far have felt pretty phoned-in and half-assed, like they never really had a good enough reason to full-on invade anywhere, just station a bunch of troops to conduct police actions and target the specific and relatively small groups (while naturally casualty-ing huge numbers of otherwise un-involved civilians, of course).

Those felt like they were invasions sold as being based on the pretext that there were some dangerous people in an otherwise neutral country that had to be rooted out, or the state apparatus as a potential threat with enhanced capabilities (chemical weapons, well-organized individual bombers etc).

I worry that the actual state launching actual clear-as-day attacks (justified though they may be in reality) would be such a juicy pretext to not just send in some troops to occupy, but to really start crazy bombing at a new scale we haven't seen yet. If they consider this a full WW2 level mobilization, I'm not saying they would win, but at least the conflict is going to be way bigger and more intense and direct than anything we've seen in a long time outside of the eastern bloc.

Again, it would be a huge shit-show no doubt, and very possibly unsuccessful, but I think the cost to human life will be on an entirely different scale than we are used to in the last 30-odd years (which has already been catastrophic, obviously).

And of course on top of all that, just about everybody involved is nuclear equipped, so anyone that's feels they are losing too badly could always just...

I mean good on em and all, but this does feel like it would disrupt commerce enough for the empire to make up an excuse to roll in. If they really haven't become fully equipped* yet, it seems like it would likely go pretty bad for everyone involved.

• meaning if Iran isn't actually nuclear-equipped by the time shit hits the fan, their leverage is so much weaker that some might see an initial excursion as testing the waters to really drop the hammer

I wonder more and more every day if it isn't just the "unofficially-nuclear-equipped rogue state that has made it clear they will take everyone else down with them" thing.

Shit, they probably have the footage for real, they only just need to scrub off the IOF logos on the killers.

All Cops Are Bricked (in the genitals)

Good News About The Cringe Zone

I got tricked into buying the software version of the one about colonial era ships, because the person working the book fair told me you could launch cannon balls and blow up the dude in the toilet, like it was some kinda wacky action game, and I was a wacky little action dude at the time so of course I had to check that out.

Turns out it was closer to Encarta but without the Mind Maze part. The guy blowing up was a tiny little animation, and you could not, in fact, fire the cannon at all. Something something disappointment immeasurable etc.

In time, you will find, these things take up space inside your mind...

where you, could be keeping honest thoughts of the sea!

To be fair, it was a much more effective electoral strategy than the follow-up:

we're not going to do shit if you vote for us!

actually, doing nothing would be way better than what we were planning, not to mention way harder to buck our lobbyists that want us to do the terrible things, so we're going to fuck things up pretty bad if you vote for us. but the other guy might fuck things up slightly more, and it's your fault either way! but we won't do anything to stop it, because that's too hard/we don't care, ~~good luck~~ fuck you!"

Just use the same "inflation" math the grocery stores and fast food restaurants use, and you'll find you're owed just shy of $10.8 million.

My life-long textural aversion to the stuff was secretly just spidey-sense all along!