Unfortunately Banks is a good enough writer that even when Horza loses absolutely everything it's just kind of sad, like the whole thing was a complete waste where nobody wins. He could have been happy but instead he dies in misery, and the only reason is anticommunist brainworms.

Player of Games is great, I usually tell people to start with that one anyway because it shows you exactly what the Culture is and why it's a good thing.

Turbine engines are surprisingly adaptable, they can run on most things that burn all the way down to something as crude as powdered coal.

"Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul! (Hell yeah! Alright!) Famous quote I got from... quotes dot com"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadi

Set up camp in Al-Wadi'ah

Get washed away by a flash flood

Damn if only whoever sited those camps knew Arabic

For real, if I was going to glaze a guy to this extent I should probably at least know his first name.

You're right, and the US helped many of the perpetrators of those crimes get away scot free, if they didn't offer them a job first.

Not even 7,000 dead??? This was the legendary horrifying bloodbath that nukes had to be used to prevent a repeat of?

Fucking pathetic, the eastern front truly was the only real part of WW2 (and *asian resistance against Japan).

Important to remember these are NOT cluster bombs, they're missiles with multiple warheads.

Cluster warheads spread hundreds of small bomblets over a wide area - "intended" as an antipersonnel weapon, but actually, due to the number that fail to detonate immediately but remain as a deadly explosive hazard hidden in foliage or under the soil for many decades, as an anti-civilian terror weapon. Their widespread use was (of course) pioneered by the US in Vietnam, who immediately afterwards handed their surplus to the IDF under the supervision of wholesome chungus Jimmy Carter.

By comparison, the Iranian missiles deploy something like 20-60 warheads which separate high above the target, with a result more or less identical to firing multiple smaller conventional missiles. These are large warheads which are intrinsically more reliable than small bomblets, and while inevitably some will fail to detonate, they won't disappear into the dirt for twenty years only to resurface under a farmer's plough or in the hands of a curious child. They're also made by Iran instead of the US, so their comparative failure rate presumably reflects that.

Falsely equivocating between a missile that dispenses a few dozen conventional explosive warheads, and cluster warheads that deploy hundreds of fist-sized bomblets that will maim and kill civilians for decades after, is obvious and intentional propaganda by the USisraeli regime media. By blurring the line on what counts as a cluster weapon and who uses them, they obfuscate that the US and "Israel" are the most flagrant users of these horrific, criminal terror weapons.

If it clogged the plumbing I think it was probably several handfuls of seamen

My opinion, for which I have neither evidence nor doubts, is that he's not dead, he ran away to hide in Germany and these videos showing him in Israel are to make him look like less of a pathetic coward (and maybe throw off anyone trying to locate him).

They remind me of those videos of Zelensky standing in front of the most obvious greenscreen of all time, to 'prove' he was 'still in Kiev'.

I like this one, "As it was, as it is, as it will be", a Soviet poster from 1922:

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It really succinctly captures the progressive historical project of communism, that even that early in the USSR's life they were absolutely clear in their plan to advance science, industry and the quality of life of the workers and peasants and confident that they could achieve it.

I also really like these postcards from 1959, showing traditional dress from various SSRs:

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Edit: The pictures came out a different orientation than in the preview! On the top left are Belarussian, Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani peoples, on the bottom right are Turkmen, Tajik, Ukrainian and Uzbek peoples. I love how it shows the celebration of the various nations of the USSR and their differences, in such a commonplace way (a set of postcards) that it's clear it was not some kind of controversial or artificial statement.

But my absolute favorite is this one:

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"Through Worlds and Centuries"

We will make a gentle world where none of this happens ever again.

AND the parts of Poland marked as the USSR's sphere of influence in the M-R pact... Poland stole from the USSR in 1921!

Those areas were taken from (and returned to) the Belarussian and Ukrainian SSRs, so you can also ask libs when Ukraine is going to be returning its occupied Polish land to the 'rightful' owners.

tomorrow's incident has been confirmed

Is this a typo, or have the Juche wizards given someone a peek into the Orb?

The budget of the law enforcement agencies¹ of the US as a whole is more than that of the armed forces of any nation except China.

At $178 billion, it's $32 billion more than the budget of the armed forces of Russia post-SMO.

If you combine military and police spending (and seeing as they're both armies of imperial occupation, you should) the US accounts for 60% of the world total.

¹ Edit to clarify: the budget of police forces, so not including border patrol, coast guard, ICE, FBI, CIA, DHS, etc.

Imperium of Man ass mission objectives

"We must secure the relics of our fallen warriors, however many lives it costs!"

The stab-in-the-back myth really is the only way for imperialists to cope after a loss

May I Ask For One Final Thing?

It's a 13-episode fantasy comedy that dares to ask the question: what if violence solved everything? The main character is a purehearted young noblewoman who is ready to throw hands whenever it's called for, and she essentially just beats her way through a series of scumbags of escalating power in a low-stakes yet satisfying way. Everyone who you want to see punched, gets punched, and you get to watch her enjoy doing it. For what it is, 10/10.

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