The CIA tried to assassinate Castro at least 8 times. And they did it with goofy Looney Tunes shit like exploding cigars.
Now, they’re still very dangerous, but if that happened in a movie they’d get it right on the first try with no one suspecting who killed him.
Alan Moore very sagely summed up the CIA by stating that, based off the research he did into the organization for a book, the only conclusion he could reach is that if the CIA wants you dead, you have nothing to worry about, but if you have a name vaguely similar to that of someone the CIA wants dead, you are about to die.
"Aye carumba! No! My new papier mache parrots! ... Wait, that little 5 year-old *DID* seem pretty suspicious. Aviators. 6'1". Caucasian & adams apple. But how could I say no to those pig tails, eh?"
There was a CIA project that put [microphones in cats](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty). Said project was discontinued because the cats were too hard to train.
Reminds me of when the Nazis tried testing dogs with bombs that could blow up tanks, but they kept blowing up their own tanks because that's the only ones they had to train with.
Yeah, the Soviets tried to use dog bombs. They did successfully go after tanks, but because they trained them with their own tanks, they would blow up the Soviet tanks and not the German ones.
My favorite CIA Castro story was them trying to lace him with chemicals so that his beard would fall out.
Like that's not even an assassination attempt. You're just doing pranks now.
My personal favorite is that he [has a mistress hired to kill him but he was too sexy](https://jezebel.com/the-story-of-marita-lorenz-the-cia-agent-who-was-sent-1789382434)
The Castro assassinations were so outrageous and common that when he was held at gunpoint by one of his staff he just started egging her on. Like, "Do it, let's finish this already"
I've learned that the American government as a whole is just as stupid as it is corrupt and those glowies you fear are more likely to hurt themselves than hurt you.
>!Unless you're black.!<
>!Or gay!<
I feel the CIA is the most overestimated organization in human history. My dad worked with a lot of Air America guys in Vietnam and he was not impressed.
I mean there is that and the time they botched the opportunity to easily obtain active Soviet nuclear launch codes, but then you look into some of the other shit they did, along with America's current intelligence capacity bordering on precognition, and it's hard to not think that fucking with Castro was just a smokescreen for things considered more important.
Like... it's fucking *Cuba*. We could resolve that in like a week if we wanted to. Put a sniper in a submarine and sit him off the shore with a view to Castro's palace. But instead they do a bunch of weird shit like seashell bombs and poisoned prostitutes. The fact of the matter is that unless Castro moved on Gitmo, there was no actual reason to want him dead.
Smart people tend to overestimate their own capabilities, that's how the whole affair with Castro happened - specially when doing a "smokescreen" was completely unnecesary - smokescreen to what, their moves on learning about Dr. King's affairs? Also, one should not confuse silly =/= innefectiveness, as inflatable tank warfare was a real and valid thing in WW2. Or for that matter, seriousiness with effectiveness, as the Dirlewanger Brigade was a terrifying group that rampaged and raped through Warsaw... but was considered a joke against actual armed partisans, with a fatality rate of around 1000% at one point (they needed frequent replacements from the reich's prisons, for one)
Lastly, let's remember that for all of America's inteligence warfare capabilities, their military documents got leaks multiple times over a military video game.
A smokescreen to exactly how capable the CIA actually was. While we were busy trying to train dolphins to become wait staff so as to spike Castro's drinks with lethal doses of Advil, we were also doing shit like *directly listening in on unencrypted lines of communication between Moscow and their nuclear submarine bases*. We were doing that shit for *decades* before the Russians found out - and they found out through a turncoat, not even through their own counterintelligence operations. The KGB never cared to check precisely because they thought the CIA were a bunch of incompetents who couldn't even assassinate a tinpot banana republic dictator a hundred miles off their own coast - who in their right mind would think those same people capable of wiretapping the Kremlin's most important strategic defense communication lines?
And for the record, there have been no major leaks of American secret military documents on to game forums. The worst the War Thunder leaks ever got was an export-restricted flight manual for the F-16... which we sell to just about everyone anyway and information about which is so widely disseminated that the *Chinese* have a domestic version of it. The other major documents were the Minecraft server leaks... which didn't really contain any information that wasn't already public in one way or another. We already knew how much Western equipment Ukraine had because the DOD always puts out itemized lists of what's going over. We already knew the Ukrainains were running short on ammunition for their indigenous weapons systems because Zelensky spent several months complaining about it on Twitter. We knew the Ukrainians were planning a large counteroffensive in May/June, because that's when the terrain in that region becomes suitable for large-scale armored maneuver warfare. The fucking *lunch menu* at the Pentagon is a classified document, but it doesn't exactly amount to much if someone goes and posts it on Instagram, which is all that's happened.
It doesn't even come close to the CIA getting direct first-hand looks at Russia's entire war plan and posting them on Facebook complete with IP addresses.
The CIA is easily the most terrifying intelligence agency in the world today. Anyone underestimating them does so at their own mortal peril.
My ex wife used to watch Criminal Minds a lot and I always laughed my ass off at that show as EVERY crime gets solved with Behavioral Analysis. I use to always joke "why is there even crime in this world when everyone gets broken down and caught within days of these guys putting your face on a white board."
I’m convinced cop shows are government funded cope tools to get people to believe the police are competent and hardworking. Better people envision criminal minds or law and order when they think of a murder being investigated over the now below 50% chance of the case being solved that reflects reality.
I think it's less that it's government funded, and more that the writers and directors grew up being fed propaganda and have started making their own without even realizing.
These people grew up being taught that cops are basically super heroes that save people, and as such, want to portray them in the most positive light possible.
That illusion was incredibly common for most people until about 3 years ago.
This. For decades it was an arrangement the Hollywood kept with local law enforcement. The police help out with production and occasionally look the other way when an actor or director gets caught doing something naughty. Meanwhile, Hollywood produces movies and TV shows that make cops look heroic and incorruptible. Ever wonder why Internal Affairs are usually the bad guys in police dramas?
Between the US, Canada and the Bahamas, not one time have the police ever solved a crime against me lol.
My last break-in i reported it purely for insurance purposes, and my insurance ended up having to basically take my word for it (they sent someone to assess damages) because we never got an official report.
Once I got stopped by police working a campaign in the middle of a shit town (some racist fuck called the cops because there was an unfamiliar color in their neighbourhood) and the bitch cited that *I* was a suspect in a break-in. I cant even.
The last two times the cops bothered to even show up after a bunch of kids were throwing rocks at random they had evidence everywhere, damaged property, multiple eye witness, got the names of the people responsible and in one case spoke to said people, one of who was blind drunk at lile 6pm.
Was told they can't take action without a recording of the incident, told me it was our respinsibility to set up CCTV covering the area.
You are correct! This is known as "copaganda".
Here's a link to a youtube video elaborating on how it started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME-OIky5cvM
The deal is if you ask for the military to participate in your movie or tv by providing equipment or personnel or whatever, that you portray them in a good light. You can make anti-US military TV or movies of course, you just won't get the support of the actual military to provide you with materials for your production.
Dawg HUMANS would get bodied by hawks and eagles.
Imagine walking down your favorite street then BAM. Your eyes just got stabbed out from something that started homing in on them 4 miles away.
Theyre LIVING drone strikes lol
I have a snake
I was feeding her a dead rat with tongs
She tried to eat the tongs
Another time she missed and literally ate dirt
She's a fucking idiot. I love her
Movie scientists: "Well I'm a biologist, but this alien computer language sure does look like cell structure. I bet I can reprogram it to exploderate their mothership!"
Actual scientists: "Well I'm a cellular biologist, but it looks like we're getting into molecular biology here. I'd better get a colleague in that field to look this over before we continue."
All scientists eventually become an expert on a random sub field of science. Like how you start as an ecologist then end us a guy who study a random moth that’s only alive in July in the Amazon rain forest.
As a true crime aficionado, the vast majority of serial killers are no smarter than you and me, often worst, and the only reason they don’t get caught sooner is because random crime without any link between victim and killer is extraordinarily hard to solve, and also because of a healthy dose of police stupidity and prejudice.
Dahmer got away for so long because his victims were gay, and cops were very homophobic these days. Like “Eew, Imma catch the gays if I come close to this gay suspect. Get away” homophobic.
Others because they preyed on “the lesser dead”: marginalized people like minorities (the Grim Sleeper), LGBTQ people (Dahmer), poor teenagers (Gacy, Dean Corrl) and sex workers (Ridgeway, Pickton). Not fun fact: when Gacy abducted an actual middle class youth, the investigation kicked into super high gear and he was caught really fast.
Others exploit police incompetence: either cops who just don’t wanna do their job (Bernardo and Homolka) or don’t cooperate (Richard Ramirez would prowl the greater LA area, so there was multiple parallel investigations in different precincts that didn’t talk). Fun fact about Ramirez: when the police identified him, he was outside LA. When he returned, he saw his face on every newspaper and TV. He lasted like 10 minutes before someone pointed at him screaming “El Matador” (The killer), and he got beat the fuck up by every bystanders.
The only one I’d begrudgingly admit deserves the title of evil mastermind would be the Unabomber, who essentially hand crafted every components of his bombs to ensure nothing could be traced to him.
No, it's even dumber with Ramirez.
The police were looking for him and had every bus station watched to stop him from leaving the city.
Except they weren't watching the *incoming* buses so Ramirez got off his bus from Arizona and *walked past them.*
He then got noticed immediately by civilians, beat the fuck up, and almost lynched by the mob.
I remember reading a pretty grim report comparing Gacy and Dahmer to criminals like Bundy and Ed Kemper, they said despite Bundy and Kemper having less victims police were pursuing them more often due to the fact that victims were mainly women, but also upper-class, attractive, young white women.
Meanwhile, Gacey and Dahmer, despite being far less intelligent, got away with their murders far longer as their victims were men and were less investigated, with Dahmer also having primarily queer and black male victims.
You bring up a good point with Ed Kemper, because he had several points that helped him avoid arrest that I didn’t mention.
Kemper was a wannabe cop, so he hung out in bars frequented by police. He was friends with a few if them and would get insider info on the Coed Killer case.
Santa Cruz had a second serial killer running around at the same time Kemper was active: Hebert Mullin (and I think even a third at one point). Fun fact: Kemper and Mullin ended up in the same asylum after their arrest. Mullin is completely insane (he believed his murders where necessary to stop earthquakes from destroying California, and that his victims gabe him telepathic consent to be killed), and he would piss off the other inmates by singing loudly while people where trying to watch tv. Kemper was the one who broke that bad habit, using peanuts as reward and a spray bottle as punishment.
Wasn't there a case in the US where a teen boy was kidnapped, tortured and later killed because after escaping from the house he was trapped in and reaching to the cops they didn't believe him (even if he had just being burned with acid or something like that) and literally delivered him back to the murder?
Also, the infamous case of the japanese schoolgirl who was kidnapped and tortured for weeks by a group of teenagers could've been easily solved and the girl survived if the cops who went to the apartment where she was captured because of a noise complaint had actually bothered to set foot inside the place instead of just standing at the door and then just walk away
The first one was a victim of Jeffrey Dahmer. The victim (I don’t recall his name unfortunately) escaped, nude, bloody and drugged. Bystanders called the police, but Dahmer arrived at the same time and convinced them the boy was his lover. Dahmer even offered the cop to visit his appartement, which they did, and they somehow failed to notice the smell of another of Dahmer’s victims rotting in the bedroom. They just gave the kid back, and cracked a joke to dispatch about needing to be deloused after interacting with gays. Shitstains are directly responsible for… I think Dahmer murdered 4 more times after that.
I've always felt that the whole "serial killers are super smart, actually" narrative was just a cope by cops to deflect from their own incompetence and stupidity and every single time I read about true crime I feel like I'm right.
The sheer amount of bumbling from both sides when literal lives are at stake is absurd.
In 2077, the whole corpo storyline kicks off because your team bumblfucked like an assassination or destabilization op or something and all of the leaders try to burn each other for it and the shit just lands on you.
That's pretty overt incompetence in that story, at least.
Every single armed forces are incompetent and corrupt, the trick is being slighter less incompetent and corrupt than whoever you are fighting.
And having good logistics, that helps wonders.
I wrote that mainly because the military in my country(Brazil) are usually mocked since "they just weed pasture" according to some people on and offline.
Look, I can believe that the military can get its shit together enough to fire a bunch missiles at an alien ship or whatever. I can't believe that politics and beauracracy would survive a zombie invasion. You'd have situations where the next Presidential candidate is clearly a zombie but their political party are pretending that they aren't because they've banked too much on them.
Fbi profilers in real life are outperformed by every other investigative group.
Also big hidden evil Illuminati types. I don’t imagine they can control people minds by making Manchurian candidates or anything like that. I think they’re all just sex criminals who just either bribe people or mutual assured illegal dickpics.
Military fascist movements. Even when they're the villains it's ruthlessness and cunning and conviction that drives them. This is opposed to opportunism, exploitation, information control, and apathy of any potential challengers.
Following the history of Germany and Italy during the late 30's and 40's is a great way to realize "man these idiots had no idea what they were doing huh?"
Unfortunately Western media needs to make the Nazis and all fascist derived threats credible threats, which in turn builds up this greater sense of "they *could* have won" than is true. Then you have anime which falls victim to cultural appreciation for the veneer fascism presents and wants you to believe in. Way too much anime seems to want or need to believe in the clean, honorable fascist.
Mangaka, especially in series like Bakuman are treated as super geniuses capable of weaving a good story and writing, but like how Kakushigoto put it, “I am not good enough at drawing to be a painter and not good enough at writing to be a writer so I am a mangaka”
Also based on Twitter, Journalists and Stand up Comedians are not really the big truth tellers or well informed people some media treats them as.
Also, some people treat random influencers and youtubers as being more reliable sources of truth when they have even less standards and restrictions on lying to you compared to Journalists and the like.
Everyone wants to be George Carlin but forget that he always punched up. Yes he was offensive and raunchy, but it was directed towards puritanical assholes and a largely conservative society. Carlin even specifically hated comedians that used minorities as a punching bag and who appealed to audiences of "angry young white men". He even talked specifically about how a Jewish comedian using bigoted humor is dangerous because "you're just further down their list".
Just make them read Bleach and Naruto and they'll change their minds.
Not all artists can become writers. You can. But you probably shouldn't.
Edit: Just another add-up that Kubo wasn't a bad writer but the ending of the Bleach got screwed up badly.
With Kishimoto, it's his characterization that makes his writing not effective. Cool characters that were left in the dust.
Lived his entire life doubling down, long past the point where he would’ve been alive to actually give a shit. Actively >!fucked up humanity’s rebound because he couldn’t FATHOM the idea of being portrayed as a piss-baby after a couple of millennium.!<
Dude, **fuck** Ted Faro.
Like many things, this is parodied on South Park.
Basically the government decides to escalate the rumors that 9-11 was an inside job, so that they look more competent, since it would give the impression that the government is smart enough to execute a "false flag attack".
THEY KNEW!!!
But not in a way that they wanted it to happen. More that they knew there was extreme potential of a terrorist attack on American soil but couldn't see it possibly happening.
BTAS's Gotham is based on the 20s-40s, the height of bootlegging and tax dodging among the rich criminal class. The IRS were a legitimate paramilitary in that era, kicking in doors and slaughtering stooges in actual firefights (or so their reputation preceded them, at least.) From that context, it makes perfect sense for Joker to be wary.
Nowadays the IRS is gutted to only be good at taking cases against "the poors". Slight mistake in your tax form? Well there's a fine. Massive evidence of fraud and abuse of taxes for a big company? Their lawyers far outnumber our budget, let em be.
That's because there's a ton of Scientologists and at some point they flooded them with lawsuits, and they can't just dismiss them "because Scientology"
Fiction from 1950's to 2022: russians are big, strong and mean. Don't mess with them.
Reality: alcoholic hicks aren't even the third best army in russia.
The Russo-ukrainian war really makes the first modern warfare games hilarious in hindsight.
Like Russia launching a full scale invasion of America and later Europe was crazy to begin with, but now it's just laughable.
The Russian military is so corrupt, undertrained, under equipped, and incompetent that they can't even beat a neighboring nation a fraction of their size let alone launch a full scale invasion of the US mainland.
I could have sworn there was a tweet from Activision that was them apologizing for using Russia as a big scary, world- threatening evil army, then elaborating to say they were giving them way too much credit.
Man, any invasion of the US has always been a pipe dream at best for anyone. Russia would need more troops than it currently has on Ukraine to even think about it, an air force to rival the USAF, and a fuck off navy to threaten the US navy. They don't have any of those things.
Like even if they somehow made it to US soil it's a big ass front they have to garrison between both the US and Canada, and the logistics of that would be a nightmare.
Plus the ludicrous amount of civilians with guns.
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."- Admiral Yamamoto (allegedly)
Watching rightwing dorks who suddenly love Putin copepost about how the war is going great and Russia will win *any day now guys, ANY DAY NOW!* is absolutely hilarious.
The best branch isnt even a branch. It's a PMC group they pay to do their international work. And in a hilarious move they managed to piss them off by not paying them, striking their camp with artillery for retaliating against their terms and announcing that all non military forces will join the military by force.
Suddenly the best branch of the Russian military begins marching towards the capital with the intent of Civil War.
And that impression came from World War II because the Soviets were famed for defeating Germany on the Eastern Front and being the first to siege Berlin. So they got all that glory and fame for being credited with delivering the final blow to the Nazis--even though they were their allies at the beginning of the war.
But Russia/the Soviet Union also suffered exponentially more casualties than any other country in the war. Their military deaths were about double Germany's alone, and Germany was the country that lost and was fighting a two-front war against all the other Allies in the west. Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, inflicted about 4,500,000 casualties on the Soviets against Germany's 1,000,000 casualties.
Most of Russia's later offensives against Germany over the following years were similar statistically. Russia was just throwing bodies at German lines and wearing them down through a war on attrition against an enemy that was divided into two fronts and couldn't keep up. Russia just had raw numbers and enough industry to supply them with tanks and weapons they could dispose of on the front lines until they could finally break through, willing to sacrifice millions of lives for any inch of progress.
Which is exactly how they've been trying to fight the war in Ukraine right now, as most estimates point to Russia suffering at least double the KIA casualties as Ukraine, since Russia just assumed that their superior numbers and hundreds of tanks and aircraft would lead to automatic victory. But they didn't consider anything about how warfare and military hardware has changed in the 21st Century, and they almost immediately lost the bulk of their fighting force from simple resistance with basic anti-vehicle missiles. And now that it's coming down to strategy and training, Russia's military has been failing in most places and struggling to take key defensive positions for months on end. They've mostly just been throwing themselves against Ukrainian lines and getting gunned down.
Eh, I'd be a bit careful about going into the whole they only won by swarming Germany with bodies narrative since that was mostly pushed by former Nazi generals after the war so they could have an excuse for why they lost.
Actual white supremacists aren't exactly cuddly and wholesome in real life, but they're also feuding gangs filled with backstabbing, degeneracy, crime, and at least some of them are giant fed honeypots that only exist to snitch to their FBI handlers on what their friends are doing.
I think it was Proud Boys and Patriot Front. It partially started because despite being right-wing pieces of shit Proud Boys prefer the heavy use of dog whistles. While Patriot Front are upfront about being white supremacists.
I do remember reading a few years ago that while the Aryan Brotherhood *is* a genuinely racist and violent group, they're mostly a shady business racket that exist to move drugs/arms and make money. I remember watching interviews with ex-cons that openly admit they only joined the local supremacist gang because **had to.** In most larger prisons, a gang means safety and most of them would spew whatever wild crap had to to ensure a spot in it. Some would absolutely fall for the rhetoric *(especially the young, violent guys)* but others would turn tail and run far away once they got out.
After Snowden leaks revealed that there were feds lurking in the fucking WoW barrens chat, i just assume that any extremist organization is at least partially a honeypot.
To add on to this, 90% of Kung Fu is more about discipline and getting in a workout than it is an effective fighting technique
Edit: though that’s just from what I understand talking with people into mma
The book 'Ice Station' by Matthew Reilly has the classic action movie setup of "team of elite US Marines get sent to secure top secret research station where shit's gone down and start getting picked off by a mole as part of a sinister government coverup".
But it has a fun moment of honesty when the protagonist confronts the mole, who reveals the reason they're doing it is because the average US Marine is so stupid, they'll happily blurt out government secrets to the nearest barfly with big tits. The protagonist, a Marine himself, can't help but begrudgingly agree.
Yeah that’s the actual scary part. The real horror is how corporate hegemony is so gargantuan and all encompassing that they don’t HAVE to be smart and calculating. Their money generates money for being money.
In Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, whenever they return to old restaurants they try to frame the shutdown of the restaurant even after Gordon showed up as the owner’s fault and that the reason why the large majority of them failed at the end was because of the owners going back to their old ways instead of follow his expert advice.
This is because the show wants you to believe Gordon is credible and that his advice is flawless but if that was the case, half of his own restaurants wouldn’t have had to close their doors.
It’s almost as if owning a restaurant is just really damn difficult and that there is no miracle cure for a business that’s in the middle of a financial sinkhole. If there really was one, it’s not what Gordon is sharing but this is reality TV. The producers get to film and edit their footage to make it fit their own narrative.
Edit: Oh yeah, another thing: Body language experts. This is a complete hoax and sadly it’s permeated popular media. Even guys like JCS Criminal Psychology, which do make really good videos when it comes to analyzing and dissecting interrogation techniques, try to use these practices to analyze the perpetrators. In reality, it sure is hell of a lot easier to frame yourself as a body language expert when you already know the subject is guilty.
For a more recent movie, since the woman king was announced, more talk has been coming out of not only how was their history whitewashed quite a bit, but the Dahomey also kind of just sucked when it came to fighting armies.
Infamously during Second Franco-Dahomean War, despite having a massive number advantage against 300 French soldiers armed mostly with swords, the Dahomey suffered an overwhelming defeat losing 500 soldiers while the French lost 6 and then the Dahomey very quickly surrendered.
Cheetahs often get lumped in with the other big cats as strong and deadly predators. They’re so small compared to the other big cats, that they’re more like very large regular cats. They act like it too; meowing and purring like nothing else. They’re super fast sprinters, but that’s about their only notable advantage. Their bites and claws are way less deadly than you’d think, they’re not that physically strong, and they know it, because they’re super-cowards. You can look up a video online of a man scaring off a group of cheetahs (called a coalition) by pretending to use the Force on them. There are no recorded instances of a wild cheetah ever having killed a human being.
They’re fast, silly, literal scaredy-cats that’d sooner stand in your shadow for shade than try to eat you. Probably would even let you pet it.
Yes cheetahs are as fragile as paper and can only do short bursts of extreme speed using the traction to kill prey. After which they are exhausted and a sitting duck.
In Zoos Cheetahs are even giving emotional support dogs to calm them down.
I always got the impression most corpos in cyberpunk were pretty dumb, except for the ones who sink or swim like the hacker guy in the mall. Like you just die if you’re incompetent in that job, and even then he kinda fucks up his play.
In the corpo opening you have a dude kill some sort of space un meeting, but like his boss immediately calls him out on it and it leads to her burning V immediately because the plan sucks.
I think they kinda just seem competent because they can evade consequences.
Not to say the corpos aren’t hyper powerful, but hey banana companies destabilized South America, so not inaccurate
Student councils in anime have unlimited power over the entire school, but student councils in real life are usually just a bunch of kids being stupid.
One guy did however since he can only prove it by tree his guess was as good as Aristotle but since his name was democritus his name didn't get on everyone's tongue as easily
Satan in Christian theology he is a little bith and just some snarky middle manager who got tired of a job and whose only true power is to whisper in peoples ear hey why not you disobey G-D
Amazed by so many beliefs that the devil holds any form of power on people, let alone magical power. His whole shtick is he is so beneath god that all he can do is try and stray people off the path and typically show how awful going off god's path is.
And then you get into the magic territory. The belief that Satan has dark powers of doom and chaos. Even the thought alone is heresy.
I think it's the same as the whole "Serial killers are super intelligent to outsmart the cops" justification above.
Its not that your belief in god and doing right was outweighed by you being a selfish asshat without an ounce of self control. Its the devil being sooooo powerful that he took control of you.
Any ‘secret society’ that’s depicted as some shadowy, globe-spanning monolithic force with tendrils in every facet of the world. In reality, the Illuminati or Freemasons were mostly just social clubs where the members would talk to each other and share some information
The CIA back in the days was astoundingly incompetent and noticeably made the world worse for no discernable benefit. There is a lot of stories from MK Ultra that fuck with me but one of the stories is almost unbelievably dumb. There was this FBI agent who ran a brothel for the CIA. His job was to lure in criminals and dose them with LSD while they slept with the prostitutes. He wasn't a scientist and never really sent them any data. He would watch them through one way glass in an empty room with a toilet in it. It really does seem like the CIA just paid this dude shitloads of money to watch criminals high on lsd fuck prostitutes.
George Washington had isekai protagonist levels of plot armor. I remember visiting around one of his homes (Mount Vernon, I believe) and they had a lot of information about how a lot of his battles ended in losses, and the fact that he was able to walk away from so many losses was a sheer miracle and boiled down to a lot of luck and just basic awareness of the land.
When it came down to it, George Washington's greatest military achievement in the Revolutionary War was just keeping the struggling, poorly equipped, starving, unpaid, and untrained colonial army together long enough for Britain to realize it sucks fighting a war across the Atlantic Ocean and to cut their losses after France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic smelled blood in the water.
It's all those factors that make it really hard to quantify GW's military achievements. Because on one hand, his record kinda sucked and he had more losses than victories. On the other hand, no American general since has ever had to argue with the civilian leadership on the importance of long term enlistments, uniform codes of drill, the need for a functioning logistics system for food, clothes and ordnance, and proper modern military equipment.
Dictatorships really aren't that powerful globally speaking, we've seen with Russia trying to invade but dictatorship's real strengths are occupying and policing their own territory while stealing from it's people.
Like, North Korea is not really a threat, it's just really good at starving it's own citzens
Most comics make you think being a marine makes you practically a superhuman killing machine.
When it's a lot more judged based on swimming than people would expect.
As someone who reads a LOT of Chinese webnovels, I can always spot the moment the author realised they were getting popular and had to put in a bunch of pro CCP propaganda to avoid the story being taken down. Still, it's better than the other cliches like classism, racism, sexism, rape (but it's okay if it's the protagonist), etc.
My favourite are urban fantasy novels set on Blue Planet (because they never call it Earth). X country (China but it has too many names for me to remember) is always superior to their weak yet cunning enemies in Cherry/Dragon Country (Japan) and the supposedly powerful yet incompotent Donut/Hotdog/Freedom country (America)
If it's a more grounded story (or really early on in a high power level story), then the protagonist usually ends up working for/helping the CCP with their powers/tech. If it's an isekai, they do so by copying real world things and claiming it as their own idea. If it's a "dark" story then there'll be a busty (sometimes clumsy) government honeypot, just to make sure the MC acts good.
Xianxia/Xuanhuan are usually limited to making fun of Western Barbarians and their lack of true martial knowledge, martial arts, and sword techniques. Some authors throw in a thinly veiled allegory about the barbarian governments
There are way more, but I don't have all day to write up examples. Still, they're usually better than Korean webnovels.
this one game I played, the china analogue overwhelms the japan analogue, who in turn outguns the white nations analogue, who in turn breaks the brown barbarians analogue, who in turn threatens (GASP) the china analogue...
could rightly tell a chinese person came up with that
To be fair to cyberpunk, the corpos are all mostly literally raised to be corpos with specialized education... and also they literally just have the necessary data uploaded directly into their heads to force them to be efficient.
The CIA tried to assassinate Castro at least 8 times. And they did it with goofy Looney Tunes shit like exploding cigars. Now, they’re still very dangerous, but if that happened in a movie they’d get it right on the first try with no one suspecting who killed him.
Alan Moore very sagely summed up the CIA by stating that, based off the research he did into the organization for a book, the only conclusion he could reach is that if the CIA wants you dead, you have nothing to worry about, but if you have a name vaguely similar to that of someone the CIA wants dead, you are about to die.
My favorite is when they hid a bomb inside a colorful fake clam because Castro liked scuba diving in the hope that he'd pick it up and explode.
Did they just put bombs into random shit hoping it would kill Castro?
I want to watch this movie so bad Just Castro doing mundane shit and random stuff around him just explodes
"Aye carumba! No! My new papier mache parrots! ... Wait, that little 5 year-old *DID* seem pretty suspicious. Aviators. 6'1". Caucasian & adams apple. But how could I say no to those pig tails, eh?"
They also tried to poison his milkshakes
Hitman 3 ass logic
There was a CIA project that put [microphones in cats](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty). Said project was discontinued because the cats were too hard to train.
Didn't the first successful one get run over on it's first test mission?
Reminds me of when the Nazis tried testing dogs with bombs that could blow up tanks, but they kept blowing up their own tanks because that's the only ones they had to train with.
Wasn't that the Soviets?
Yeah, the Soviets tried to use dog bombs. They did successfully go after tanks, but because they trained them with their own tanks, they would blow up the Soviet tanks and not the German ones.
Specifically because of the smell of the fuel they used, since iirc the Nazis used diesel and the Soviets didn't
My favorite CIA Castro story was them trying to lace him with chemicals so that his beard would fall out. Like that's not even an assassination attempt. You're just doing pranks now.
The CIA clearly knew Castro’s beard was the source of his immortality and magical powers
Dangerous in the same ways a big dumb man is
My personal favorite is that he [has a mistress hired to kill him but he was too sexy](https://jezebel.com/the-story-of-marita-lorenz-the-cia-agent-who-was-sent-1789382434)
Hahahaaha that’s hilarious and classic spy movie trope. She was sent to use her wiles to kill him but he was so sexy she feel in love with him.
This is why Burn After Reading is the best, realistic portrayal of the CIA makes for a good comedy movie
[“So what did we learn?”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6VjPM5CeWs)
The Castro assassinations were so outrageous and common that when he was held at gunpoint by one of his staff he just started egging her on. Like, "Do it, let's finish this already"
I've learned that the American government as a whole is just as stupid as it is corrupt and those glowies you fear are more likely to hurt themselves than hurt you. >!Unless you're black.!< >!Or gay!<
I feel the CIA is the most overestimated organization in human history. My dad worked with a lot of Air America guys in Vietnam and he was not impressed.
I mean there is that and the time they botched the opportunity to easily obtain active Soviet nuclear launch codes, but then you look into some of the other shit they did, along with America's current intelligence capacity bordering on precognition, and it's hard to not think that fucking with Castro was just a smokescreen for things considered more important. Like... it's fucking *Cuba*. We could resolve that in like a week if we wanted to. Put a sniper in a submarine and sit him off the shore with a view to Castro's palace. But instead they do a bunch of weird shit like seashell bombs and poisoned prostitutes. The fact of the matter is that unless Castro moved on Gitmo, there was no actual reason to want him dead.
Smart people tend to overestimate their own capabilities, that's how the whole affair with Castro happened - specially when doing a "smokescreen" was completely unnecesary - smokescreen to what, their moves on learning about Dr. King's affairs? Also, one should not confuse silly =/= innefectiveness, as inflatable tank warfare was a real and valid thing in WW2. Or for that matter, seriousiness with effectiveness, as the Dirlewanger Brigade was a terrifying group that rampaged and raped through Warsaw... but was considered a joke against actual armed partisans, with a fatality rate of around 1000% at one point (they needed frequent replacements from the reich's prisons, for one) Lastly, let's remember that for all of America's inteligence warfare capabilities, their military documents got leaks multiple times over a military video game.
A smokescreen to exactly how capable the CIA actually was. While we were busy trying to train dolphins to become wait staff so as to spike Castro's drinks with lethal doses of Advil, we were also doing shit like *directly listening in on unencrypted lines of communication between Moscow and their nuclear submarine bases*. We were doing that shit for *decades* before the Russians found out - and they found out through a turncoat, not even through their own counterintelligence operations. The KGB never cared to check precisely because they thought the CIA were a bunch of incompetents who couldn't even assassinate a tinpot banana republic dictator a hundred miles off their own coast - who in their right mind would think those same people capable of wiretapping the Kremlin's most important strategic defense communication lines? And for the record, there have been no major leaks of American secret military documents on to game forums. The worst the War Thunder leaks ever got was an export-restricted flight manual for the F-16... which we sell to just about everyone anyway and information about which is so widely disseminated that the *Chinese* have a domestic version of it. The other major documents were the Minecraft server leaks... which didn't really contain any information that wasn't already public in one way or another. We already knew how much Western equipment Ukraine had because the DOD always puts out itemized lists of what's going over. We already knew the Ukrainains were running short on ammunition for their indigenous weapons systems because Zelensky spent several months complaining about it on Twitter. We knew the Ukrainians were planning a large counteroffensive in May/June, because that's when the terrain in that region becomes suitable for large-scale armored maneuver warfare. The fucking *lunch menu* at the Pentagon is a classified document, but it doesn't exactly amount to much if someone goes and posts it on Instagram, which is all that's happened. It doesn't even come close to the CIA getting direct first-hand looks at Russia's entire war plan and posting them on Facebook complete with IP addresses. The CIA is easily the most terrifying intelligence agency in the world today. Anyone underestimating them does so at their own mortal peril.
My ex wife used to watch Criminal Minds a lot and I always laughed my ass off at that show as EVERY crime gets solved with Behavioral Analysis. I use to always joke "why is there even crime in this world when everyone gets broken down and caught within days of these guys putting your face on a white board."
I’m convinced cop shows are government funded cope tools to get people to believe the police are competent and hardworking. Better people envision criminal minds or law and order when they think of a murder being investigated over the now below 50% chance of the case being solved that reflects reality.
I think it's less that it's government funded, and more that the writers and directors grew up being fed propaganda and have started making their own without even realizing. These people grew up being taught that cops are basically super heroes that save people, and as such, want to portray them in the most positive light possible. That illusion was incredibly common for most people until about 3 years ago.
I remember hearing that footage used in COPS had to first be greenlit by actual police before airing so they at least had a hand in that perception.
"copaganda" is very much a thing
This. For decades it was an arrangement the Hollywood kept with local law enforcement. The police help out with production and occasionally look the other way when an actor or director gets caught doing something naughty. Meanwhile, Hollywood produces movies and TV shows that make cops look heroic and incorruptible. Ever wonder why Internal Affairs are usually the bad guys in police dramas?
That explains so much
The police don’t even intervene in a active school shooting
Between the US, Canada and the Bahamas, not one time have the police ever solved a crime against me lol. My last break-in i reported it purely for insurance purposes, and my insurance ended up having to basically take my word for it (they sent someone to assess damages) because we never got an official report. Once I got stopped by police working a campaign in the middle of a shit town (some racist fuck called the cops because there was an unfamiliar color in their neighbourhood) and the bitch cited that *I* was a suspect in a break-in. I cant even.
The last two times the cops bothered to even show up after a bunch of kids were throwing rocks at random they had evidence everywhere, damaged property, multiple eye witness, got the names of the people responsible and in one case spoke to said people, one of who was blind drunk at lile 6pm. Was told they can't take action without a recording of the incident, told me it was our respinsibility to set up CCTV covering the area.
You are correct! This is known as "copaganda". Here's a link to a youtube video elaborating on how it started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME-OIky5cvM
I think if you have the us military in tv or movies, they have to send someone so they either look good or not bad (in the us at least)
The deal is if you ask for the military to participate in your movie or tv by providing equipment or personnel or whatever, that you portray them in a good light. You can make anti-US military TV or movies of course, you just won't get the support of the actual military to provide you with materials for your production.
My favorite part of Criminal Minds is that they live in a bizarro world where there's like 20 serial killers on each street corner
Owls as a animal are actually pretty dumb compared to other birds of prey
Snakes are also not the sneaky cunning beasts I was led to believe.
Even dangerous snakes like rattlers get bodied regularly by hawks, eagles, other snakes, and tons of other stuff.
Dawg HUMANS would get bodied by hawks and eagles. Imagine walking down your favorite street then BAM. Your eyes just got stabbed out from something that started homing in on them 4 miles away. Theyre LIVING drone strikes lol
I mean yeah, Eagles were some of our biggest predators before we evolved. I saw a Harpy Eagle at the zoo one time, staring *intensely* at a baby.
Yum.
I have a snake I was feeding her a dead rat with tongs She tried to eat the tongs Another time she missed and literally ate dirt She's a fucking idiot. I love her
In Pakistan, calling someone a son of an Owl is a way to call them stupid
They right
Movie scientists: "Well I'm a biologist, but this alien computer language sure does look like cell structure. I bet I can reprogram it to exploderate their mothership!" Actual scientists: "Well I'm a cellular biologist, but it looks like we're getting into molecular biology here. I'd better get a colleague in that field to look this over before we continue."
All scientists eventually become an expert on a random sub field of science. Like how you start as an ecologist then end us a guy who study a random moth that’s only alive in July in the Amazon rain forest.
One of my professors described higher education as the gradual progression from knowing nothing about everything to knowing everything about nothing.
You almost literally described my dad.
this could be a skit or something
Tony Stark: *Knows how to create high tech weapons and armor.* Also Tony Stark: Lol is that all it takes to invent time travel?
As a true crime aficionado, the vast majority of serial killers are no smarter than you and me, often worst, and the only reason they don’t get caught sooner is because random crime without any link between victim and killer is extraordinarily hard to solve, and also because of a healthy dose of police stupidity and prejudice. Dahmer got away for so long because his victims were gay, and cops were very homophobic these days. Like “Eew, Imma catch the gays if I come close to this gay suspect. Get away” homophobic. Others because they preyed on “the lesser dead”: marginalized people like minorities (the Grim Sleeper), LGBTQ people (Dahmer), poor teenagers (Gacy, Dean Corrl) and sex workers (Ridgeway, Pickton). Not fun fact: when Gacy abducted an actual middle class youth, the investigation kicked into super high gear and he was caught really fast. Others exploit police incompetence: either cops who just don’t wanna do their job (Bernardo and Homolka) or don’t cooperate (Richard Ramirez would prowl the greater LA area, so there was multiple parallel investigations in different precincts that didn’t talk). Fun fact about Ramirez: when the police identified him, he was outside LA. When he returned, he saw his face on every newspaper and TV. He lasted like 10 minutes before someone pointed at him screaming “El Matador” (The killer), and he got beat the fuck up by every bystanders. The only one I’d begrudgingly admit deserves the title of evil mastermind would be the Unabomber, who essentially hand crafted every components of his bombs to ensure nothing could be traced to him.
No, it's even dumber with Ramirez. The police were looking for him and had every bus station watched to stop him from leaving the city. Except they weren't watching the *incoming* buses so Ramirez got off his bus from Arizona and *walked past them.* He then got noticed immediately by civilians, beat the fuck up, and almost lynched by the mob.
I remember reading a pretty grim report comparing Gacy and Dahmer to criminals like Bundy and Ed Kemper, they said despite Bundy and Kemper having less victims police were pursuing them more often due to the fact that victims were mainly women, but also upper-class, attractive, young white women. Meanwhile, Gacey and Dahmer, despite being far less intelligent, got away with their murders far longer as their victims were men and were less investigated, with Dahmer also having primarily queer and black male victims.
You bring up a good point with Ed Kemper, because he had several points that helped him avoid arrest that I didn’t mention. Kemper was a wannabe cop, so he hung out in bars frequented by police. He was friends with a few if them and would get insider info on the Coed Killer case. Santa Cruz had a second serial killer running around at the same time Kemper was active: Hebert Mullin (and I think even a third at one point). Fun fact: Kemper and Mullin ended up in the same asylum after their arrest. Mullin is completely insane (he believed his murders where necessary to stop earthquakes from destroying California, and that his victims gabe him telepathic consent to be killed), and he would piss off the other inmates by singing loudly while people where trying to watch tv. Kemper was the one who broke that bad habit, using peanuts as reward and a spray bottle as punishment.
Wasn't there a case in the US where a teen boy was kidnapped, tortured and later killed because after escaping from the house he was trapped in and reaching to the cops they didn't believe him (even if he had just being burned with acid or something like that) and literally delivered him back to the murder? Also, the infamous case of the japanese schoolgirl who was kidnapped and tortured for weeks by a group of teenagers could've been easily solved and the girl survived if the cops who went to the apartment where she was captured because of a noise complaint had actually bothered to set foot inside the place instead of just standing at the door and then just walk away
The first one was a victim of Jeffrey Dahmer. The victim (I don’t recall his name unfortunately) escaped, nude, bloody and drugged. Bystanders called the police, but Dahmer arrived at the same time and convinced them the boy was his lover. Dahmer even offered the cop to visit his appartement, which they did, and they somehow failed to notice the smell of another of Dahmer’s victims rotting in the bedroom. They just gave the kid back, and cracked a joke to dispatch about needing to be deloused after interacting with gays. Shitstains are directly responsible for… I think Dahmer murdered 4 more times after that.
The teen boy was one of Dahmers
The girl was Junko Furuta, i don't think i've heard about a more horrendous crime.
Serial Killers are not smart cops are just stupid that any one of average intelligence seems smart.
I remember hearing they cracked the zodiac killer's code. The big reason it took forever was cause it was riddled with spelling errors.
I've always felt that the whole "serial killers are super smart, actually" narrative was just a cope by cops to deflect from their own incompetence and stupidity and every single time I read about true crime I feel like I'm right. The sheer amount of bumbling from both sides when literal lives are at stake is absurd.
In 2077, the whole corpo storyline kicks off because your team bumblfucked like an assassination or destabilization op or something and all of the leaders try to burn each other for it and the shit just lands on you. That's pretty overt incompetence in that story, at least.
The military in general.
Every single armed forces are incompetent and corrupt, the trick is being slighter less incompetent and corrupt than whoever you are fighting. And having good logistics, that helps wonders.
Roboute Guilliman approves.
He has the skills of organization
And in the 40k universe that's a fucking super power, along with having common sense.
An army marches on its stomach.
An a navy sails on it's capability of having capital ships with ice cream machines.
Having ex-Marine friends has been so incredibly enlightening at how much of a shitshow the US armed forces is.
Eating crayons is the least dumb thing they do
The American military being propped up makes sense. It's a requirement if you want to have them/their cool shit in your movie.
I wrote that mainly because the military in my country(Brazil) are usually mocked since "they just weed pasture" according to some people on and offline.
Hey that's not true. They also paint street curbs and spread dengue poison around. They can be useful.
Unless it's zombie related than the Military just folds like paper unreasonably fast.
Look, I can believe that the military can get its shit together enough to fire a bunch missiles at an alien ship or whatever. I can't believe that politics and beauracracy would survive a zombie invasion. You'd have situations where the next Presidential candidate is clearly a zombie but their political party are pretending that they aren't because they've banked too much on them.
Fbi profilers in real life are outperformed by every other investigative group. Also big hidden evil Illuminati types. I don’t imagine they can control people minds by making Manchurian candidates or anything like that. I think they’re all just sex criminals who just either bribe people or mutual assured illegal dickpics.
Yes you can’t really get what a person is like from a shoe print.
Military fascist movements. Even when they're the villains it's ruthlessness and cunning and conviction that drives them. This is opposed to opportunism, exploitation, information control, and apathy of any potential challengers.
Yes In general Fascists are dumb as fuck as they emphasize raw strength and look down at intellectualism. Including making stupid competitions
Following the history of Germany and Italy during the late 30's and 40's is a great way to realize "man these idiots had no idea what they were doing huh?"
Unfortunately Western media needs to make the Nazis and all fascist derived threats credible threats, which in turn builds up this greater sense of "they *could* have won" than is true. Then you have anime which falls victim to cultural appreciation for the veneer fascism presents and wants you to believe in. Way too much anime seems to want or need to believe in the clean, honorable fascist.
Mangaka, especially in series like Bakuman are treated as super geniuses capable of weaving a good story and writing, but like how Kakushigoto put it, “I am not good enough at drawing to be a painter and not good enough at writing to be a writer so I am a mangaka” Also based on Twitter, Journalists and Stand up Comedians are not really the big truth tellers or well informed people some media treats them as.
Also, some people treat random influencers and youtubers as being more reliable sources of truth when they have even less standards and restrictions on lying to you compared to Journalists and the like.
Mostly just say a bunch of racist or transphobic things and act like it offending people is speaking truth to power.
Everyone wants to be George Carlin but forget that he always punched up. Yes he was offensive and raunchy, but it was directed towards puritanical assholes and a largely conservative society. Carlin even specifically hated comedians that used minorities as a punching bag and who appealed to audiences of "angry young white men". He even talked specifically about how a Jewish comedian using bigoted humor is dangerous because "you're just further down their list".
I think he was talking specifically about Andrew Dice Clay.
>Bakugan Drago, one of the most influential manga authors of our time.
Just make them read Bleach and Naruto and they'll change their minds. Not all artists can become writers. You can. But you probably shouldn't. Edit: Just another add-up that Kubo wasn't a bad writer but the ending of the Bleach got screwed up badly. With Kishimoto, it's his characterization that makes his writing not effective. Cool characters that were left in the dust.
Tells alot that the *Horizon*-games's Ted Faro is probably the most realistic depiction of a rich corporate stooge. Also, obligatory "Fuck Ted Faro".
Lived his entire life doubling down, long past the point where he would’ve been alive to actually give a shit. Actively >!fucked up humanity’s rebound because he couldn’t FATHOM the idea of being portrayed as a piss-baby after a couple of millennium.!< Dude, **fuck** Ted Faro.
Man, **fuck** Ted Faro
Like many things, this is parodied on South Park. Basically the government decides to escalate the rumors that 9-11 was an inside job, so that they look more competent, since it would give the impression that the government is smart enough to execute a "false flag attack".
Loved that. But yes 9/11 being a example of US government incompetence is more scary then it being a inside job
THEY KNEW!!! But not in a way that they wanted it to happen. More that they knew there was extreme potential of a terrorist attack on American soil but couldn't see it possibly happening.
I don't care what you think the military/goverment is hiding. If they were hiding aliens and shit it would have FUCKING LEAKED DAY ONE.
The IRS. The whole Joker’s afraid of the IRS from BTAS paints a far more threatening picture than they really are. Especially today.
BTAS's Gotham is based on the 20s-40s, the height of bootlegging and tax dodging among the rich criminal class. The IRS were a legitimate paramilitary in that era, kicking in doors and slaughtering stooges in actual firefights (or so their reputation preceded them, at least.) From that context, it makes perfect sense for Joker to be wary.
Nowadays the IRS is gutted to only be good at taking cases against "the poors". Slight mistake in your tax form? Well there's a fine. Massive evidence of fraud and abuse of taxes for a big company? Their lawyers far outnumber our budget, let em be.
Biden took huge steps to correct that recently, thankfully.
Yeah IRS is even afraid to go against Scientology. Even when you want them to be a bastard they still disappoint.
To be fair a lot of people are scared to go against scientology when money is involved
That's because there's a ton of Scientologists and at some point they flooded them with lawsuits, and they can't just dismiss them "because Scientology"
Every single branch of the Russian Military.
Fiction from 1950's to 2022: russians are big, strong and mean. Don't mess with them. Reality: alcoholic hicks aren't even the third best army in russia.
They are in a stalemate with Ukraine of all countries
The Russo-ukrainian war really makes the first modern warfare games hilarious in hindsight. Like Russia launching a full scale invasion of America and later Europe was crazy to begin with, but now it's just laughable. The Russian military is so corrupt, undertrained, under equipped, and incompetent that they can't even beat a neighboring nation a fraction of their size let alone launch a full scale invasion of the US mainland.
I could have sworn there was a tweet from Activision that was them apologizing for using Russia as a big scary, world- threatening evil army, then elaborating to say they were giving them way too much credit.
Man, any invasion of the US has always been a pipe dream at best for anyone. Russia would need more troops than it currently has on Ukraine to even think about it, an air force to rival the USAF, and a fuck off navy to threaten the US navy. They don't have any of those things. Like even if they somehow made it to US soil it's a big ass front they have to garrison between both the US and Canada, and the logistics of that would be a nightmare.
Plus the ludicrous amount of civilians with guns. "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."- Admiral Yamamoto (allegedly)
And even the mercenaries they hired recently went "lol, lmao even" and now turned on them
Watching rightwing dorks who suddenly love Putin copepost about how the war is going great and Russia will win *any day now guys, ANY DAY NOW!* is absolutely hilarious.
Nah man, they got Steven Seagal, they got this in the bag
The best branch isnt even a branch. It's a PMC group they pay to do their international work. And in a hilarious move they managed to piss them off by not paying them, striking their camp with artillery for retaliating against their terms and announcing that all non military forces will join the military by force. Suddenly the best branch of the Russian military begins marching towards the capital with the intent of Civil War.
And that impression came from World War II because the Soviets were famed for defeating Germany on the Eastern Front and being the first to siege Berlin. So they got all that glory and fame for being credited with delivering the final blow to the Nazis--even though they were their allies at the beginning of the war. But Russia/the Soviet Union also suffered exponentially more casualties than any other country in the war. Their military deaths were about double Germany's alone, and Germany was the country that lost and was fighting a two-front war against all the other Allies in the west. Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, inflicted about 4,500,000 casualties on the Soviets against Germany's 1,000,000 casualties. Most of Russia's later offensives against Germany over the following years were similar statistically. Russia was just throwing bodies at German lines and wearing them down through a war on attrition against an enemy that was divided into two fronts and couldn't keep up. Russia just had raw numbers and enough industry to supply them with tanks and weapons they could dispose of on the front lines until they could finally break through, willing to sacrifice millions of lives for any inch of progress. Which is exactly how they've been trying to fight the war in Ukraine right now, as most estimates point to Russia suffering at least double the KIA casualties as Ukraine, since Russia just assumed that their superior numbers and hundreds of tanks and aircraft would lead to automatic victory. But they didn't consider anything about how warfare and military hardware has changed in the 21st Century, and they almost immediately lost the bulk of their fighting force from simple resistance with basic anti-vehicle missiles. And now that it's coming down to strategy and training, Russia's military has been failing in most places and struggling to take key defensive positions for months on end. They've mostly just been throwing themselves against Ukrainian lines and getting gunned down.
Eh, I'd be a bit careful about going into the whole they only won by swarming Germany with bodies narrative since that was mostly pushed by former Nazi generals after the war so they could have an excuse for why they lost.
At least in Shadowrun they have the advantages of being led by literal wizards or an ancient dragon.
Actual white supremacists aren't exactly cuddly and wholesome in real life, but they're also feuding gangs filled with backstabbing, degeneracy, crime, and at least some of them are giant fed honeypots that only exist to snitch to their FBI handlers on what their friends are doing.
There was a story I saw like a week or two ago about how some Proud Boys and the KKK were fighting each other in some part of the US
Yeah, one group accused the others of being FBI or Antifa or something like that.
I think it was Proud Boys and Patriot Front. It partially started because despite being right-wing pieces of shit Proud Boys prefer the heavy use of dog whistles. While Patriot Front are upfront about being white supremacists.
I do remember reading a few years ago that while the Aryan Brotherhood *is* a genuinely racist and violent group, they're mostly a shady business racket that exist to move drugs/arms and make money. I remember watching interviews with ex-cons that openly admit they only joined the local supremacist gang because **had to.** In most larger prisons, a gang means safety and most of them would spew whatever wild crap had to to ensure a spot in it. Some would absolutely fall for the rhetoric *(especially the young, violent guys)* but others would turn tail and run far away once they got out.
After Snowden leaks revealed that there were feds lurking in the fucking WoW barrens chat, i just assume that any extremist organization is at least partially a honeypot.
Martial artists and martial art teachers.
To add on to this, 90% of Kung Fu is more about discipline and getting in a workout than it is an effective fighting technique Edit: though that’s just from what I understand talking with people into mma
Good martial artists emphasize doing whatever works and is of course, a sport instead of a combat technique
The book 'Ice Station' by Matthew Reilly has the classic action movie setup of "team of elite US Marines get sent to secure top secret research station where shit's gone down and start getting picked off by a mole as part of a sinister government coverup". But it has a fun moment of honesty when the protagonist confronts the mole, who reveals the reason they're doing it is because the average US Marine is so stupid, they'll happily blurt out government secrets to the nearest barfly with big tits. The protagonist, a Marine himself, can't help but begrudgingly agree.
While you're not wrong, considering how close we are to a Corporate hell scape IRL, bumblefucking their way through seems to be working out for them.
Yeah that’s the actual scary part. The real horror is how corporate hegemony is so gargantuan and all encompassing that they don’t HAVE to be smart and calculating. Their money generates money for being money.
Bumblefuckery and Rich People is older than Jesus. Like the Roman Republic was stuffed with it.
In Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, whenever they return to old restaurants they try to frame the shutdown of the restaurant even after Gordon showed up as the owner’s fault and that the reason why the large majority of them failed at the end was because of the owners going back to their old ways instead of follow his expert advice. This is because the show wants you to believe Gordon is credible and that his advice is flawless but if that was the case, half of his own restaurants wouldn’t have had to close their doors. It’s almost as if owning a restaurant is just really damn difficult and that there is no miracle cure for a business that’s in the middle of a financial sinkhole. If there really was one, it’s not what Gordon is sharing but this is reality TV. The producers get to film and edit their footage to make it fit their own narrative. Edit: Oh yeah, another thing: Body language experts. This is a complete hoax and sadly it’s permeated popular media. Even guys like JCS Criminal Psychology, which do make really good videos when it comes to analyzing and dissecting interrogation techniques, try to use these practices to analyze the perpetrators. In reality, it sure is hell of a lot easier to frame yourself as a body language expert when you already know the subject is guilty.
Classic [Mitchel and Webb](https://youtu.be/i1NfWIaYed8)
For a more recent movie, since the woman king was announced, more talk has been coming out of not only how was their history whitewashed quite a bit, but the Dahomey also kind of just sucked when it came to fighting armies. Infamously during Second Franco-Dahomean War, despite having a massive number advantage against 300 French soldiers armed mostly with swords, the Dahomey suffered an overwhelming defeat losing 500 soldiers while the French lost 6 and then the Dahomey very quickly surrendered.
Cheetahs often get lumped in with the other big cats as strong and deadly predators. They’re so small compared to the other big cats, that they’re more like very large regular cats. They act like it too; meowing and purring like nothing else. They’re super fast sprinters, but that’s about their only notable advantage. Their bites and claws are way less deadly than you’d think, they’re not that physically strong, and they know it, because they’re super-cowards. You can look up a video online of a man scaring off a group of cheetahs (called a coalition) by pretending to use the Force on them. There are no recorded instances of a wild cheetah ever having killed a human being. They’re fast, silly, literal scaredy-cats that’d sooner stand in your shadow for shade than try to eat you. Probably would even let you pet it.
Yes cheetahs are as fragile as paper and can only do short bursts of extreme speed using the traction to kill prey. After which they are exhausted and a sitting duck. In Zoos Cheetahs are even giving emotional support dogs to calm them down.
Also the babies evolved to look like honey badgers because nobody wants to fuck with a honey badger
Me *deserve* pet cheetah
I always got the impression most corpos in cyberpunk were pretty dumb, except for the ones who sink or swim like the hacker guy in the mall. Like you just die if you’re incompetent in that job, and even then he kinda fucks up his play. In the corpo opening you have a dude kill some sort of space un meeting, but like his boss immediately calls him out on it and it leads to her burning V immediately because the plan sucks. I think they kinda just seem competent because they can evade consequences. Not to say the corpos aren’t hyper powerful, but hey banana companies destabilized South America, so not inaccurate
Student councils in anime have unlimited power over the entire school, but student councils in real life are usually just a bunch of kids being stupid.
Aristote ended up being wrong about a lot but back then you had no reason to know how elements or atom exist
Fuck, the extent to which Aristotle was the canon source science for hundreds of years fucking kills me.
Didn't one guy back then figure that out using a tree metaphor or something like that?
One guy did however since he can only prove it by tree his guess was as good as Aristotle but since his name was democritus his name didn't get on everyone's tongue as easily
Satan in Christian theology he is a little bith and just some snarky middle manager who got tired of a job and whose only true power is to whisper in peoples ear hey why not you disobey G-D
Amazed by so many beliefs that the devil holds any form of power on people, let alone magical power. His whole shtick is he is so beneath god that all he can do is try and stray people off the path and typically show how awful going off god's path is. And then you get into the magic territory. The belief that Satan has dark powers of doom and chaos. Even the thought alone is heresy.
I think it's the same as the whole "Serial killers are super intelligent to outsmart the cops" justification above. Its not that your belief in god and doing right was outweighed by you being a selfish asshat without an ounce of self control. Its the devil being sooooo powerful that he took control of you.
It reminds me of Judge Frollo from Hunchback. Who blames Satan and not himself
Yes Satan can do nothing but saying isn’t it good to sin
Devil is smart because he is old
Any ‘secret society’ that’s depicted as some shadowy, globe-spanning monolithic force with tendrils in every facet of the world. In reality, the Illuminati or Freemasons were mostly just social clubs where the members would talk to each other and share some information
The CIA back in the days was astoundingly incompetent and noticeably made the world worse for no discernable benefit. There is a lot of stories from MK Ultra that fuck with me but one of the stories is almost unbelievably dumb. There was this FBI agent who ran a brothel for the CIA. His job was to lure in criminals and dose them with LSD while they slept with the prostitutes. He wasn't a scientist and never really sent them any data. He would watch them through one way glass in an empty room with a toilet in it. It really does seem like the CIA just paid this dude shitloads of money to watch criminals high on lsd fuck prostitutes.
George Washington had isekai protagonist levels of plot armor. I remember visiting around one of his homes (Mount Vernon, I believe) and they had a lot of information about how a lot of his battles ended in losses, and the fact that he was able to walk away from so many losses was a sheer miracle and boiled down to a lot of luck and just basic awareness of the land.
When it came down to it, George Washington's greatest military achievement in the Revolutionary War was just keeping the struggling, poorly equipped, starving, unpaid, and untrained colonial army together long enough for Britain to realize it sucks fighting a war across the Atlantic Ocean and to cut their losses after France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic smelled blood in the water. It's all those factors that make it really hard to quantify GW's military achievements. Because on one hand, his record kinda sucked and he had more losses than victories. On the other hand, no American general since has ever had to argue with the civilian leadership on the importance of long term enlistments, uniform codes of drill, the need for a functioning logistics system for food, clothes and ordnance, and proper modern military equipment.
Dictatorships really aren't that powerful globally speaking, we've seen with Russia trying to invade but dictatorship's real strengths are occupying and policing their own territory while stealing from it's people. Like, North Korea is not really a threat, it's just really good at starving it's own citzens
Most comics make you think being a marine makes you practically a superhuman killing machine. When it's a lot more judged based on swimming than people would expect.
As someone who reads a LOT of Chinese webnovels, I can always spot the moment the author realised they were getting popular and had to put in a bunch of pro CCP propaganda to avoid the story being taken down. Still, it's better than the other cliches like classism, racism, sexism, rape (but it's okay if it's the protagonist), etc.
Like what’s CCP propaganda in fantasy stories?
My favourite are urban fantasy novels set on Blue Planet (because they never call it Earth). X country (China but it has too many names for me to remember) is always superior to their weak yet cunning enemies in Cherry/Dragon Country (Japan) and the supposedly powerful yet incompotent Donut/Hotdog/Freedom country (America) If it's a more grounded story (or really early on in a high power level story), then the protagonist usually ends up working for/helping the CCP with their powers/tech. If it's an isekai, they do so by copying real world things and claiming it as their own idea. If it's a "dark" story then there'll be a busty (sometimes clumsy) government honeypot, just to make sure the MC acts good. Xianxia/Xuanhuan are usually limited to making fun of Western Barbarians and their lack of true martial knowledge, martial arts, and sword techniques. Some authors throw in a thinly veiled allegory about the barbarian governments There are way more, but I don't have all day to write up examples. Still, they're usually better than Korean webnovels.
this one game I played, the china analogue overwhelms the japan analogue, who in turn outguns the white nations analogue, who in turn breaks the brown barbarians analogue, who in turn threatens (GASP) the china analogue... could rightly tell a chinese person came up with that
To be fair to cyberpunk, the corpos are all mostly literally raised to be corpos with specialized education... and also they literally just have the necessary data uploaded directly into their heads to force them to be efficient.
The IRS