Obviously not a plant based potato.
Well, the Spudster is currently holding forth in Glibs Gulch. OMWC and I got in an opening round of smash liver last night, and tonight will be no different. To increase the thirst for alcohol, let’s see what in the links, shall we?
Last week, I just thought Tayyip was trying to keep the rioting from coming to Turkey. Now I’m more in the camp that he sees and opportunity to return to Ottoman Empire glory.
I hope they lose every fucking penny.
I don’t think this should be Sammy’s biggest fear in prison.
The undercurrent is that this is the fault of conservatives.
In a cable from the other war…
Somehow, these two articles create a closed loop.
This is where I look for rational political discourse.
The wine’s open, I’m outta here.
Just because I was listening to The Cars on the airplane.
Nah, if they fail that spectacularly they’ll probably get a government bailout. Let it die quietly after a decade or so of slowly bleeding money and cult members, like every other commune.
Wait, the American History X that there’s the possibility of change and redemption even in the worst sort of people?
There’s the possibility that progressives can change and redeem themselves?
It depends on the individual.
It worked for John Stossel.
More the way to follow the script. Reality be damned.
There is nothing at all shameful about cross dressing, and also you drove this man to suicide by making it public.
Also from the website – parrot poaching!
https://www.gazettextra.com/news/nation_world/dead-parrots-offer-clues-to-a-poacher-lurking-in-la-suburb-its-just-cruelty/article_909cb042-d0a8-54cf-8d46-dfa2a548ae43.html
The hilarious thing is that American History X was supposed to address the ostensible resurgence of white nationalism in the US in the 1990s. I guess when white nationalism is perpetually in resurgence, any media that portrays the resurgence of white nationalism is fore-and-aft-shadowing.
The movie didn’t really discuss the hatred between blacks and Hispanics, either.
Friday touched on it.
That’s a thicc redskin.
They prefer “native American” nowadays.
HOW DARE YOU!!!!
Oh, waitaminnit. You are making sense.
Nevermind.
And when traveling by car, do you listen to Jefferson Airplane?
No, the Car is where you listen to Train music. You listen to Airplane on the Train.
I assume there’s much Candy for all.
Halloween leftovers?
The company now owns more than 53,000 acres in the area — after some parcels traded hands — where it plans to create a walkable, green community they say would generate thousands of jobs.
There will be plenty of shit to shovel.
Flannery has assembled all the land it needs and does not anticipate making any additional purchases,” the company said in a statement.
Haha, suck it, speculators!
How many of those “billionaires” will be taking up residence in the Land of Tomorrow?
The Cars
Come see the violence inherent in the system! Y’all sign in whenever you want. Don’t bitch at me when I show up late!
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87821224358?pwd=eW55MTRDbDNtQkh2aHd3M1Nmenlzdz09
Eh, I will try again later.
For now it’s nap time!
“Milei=Trump,” said one post from a group called Swifties Against Freedom Advances, which is the name of Mr. Milei’s party.
Oh boy.
Candy-o. Yummy.
Mexican Sharpshooter, if you’re out there, I ordered that beer.
When you find yourself part of a group with “against freedom” right in the title, it may be asking, are we the baddies?
You have to have some self-awareness. QED. Or something like that.
I look forward to all the negative comments.
Young people lean far left. Where the hell is my shocked face?
I’m sure that city will do fine. You know damn well they’ll have a police force that actually does something. I doubt they tolerate shit on the sidewalks, tent cities, drug use, or open theft. That would put them ahead of most big cities.
Who’s going to do the landscaping?
The Morlocks
After a good meal of Eloi.
Robots. If you build a big wall around it and keep out the poors, you will have utopia.
It will be an interesting experiment if it goes anywhere.
But it’s in California so I fail to see how it will be different from any other city in California. I assume it will not incorporate so at least the county government will on their ass as well as the state if they try anything unwoke.
“I hope they lose every fucking penny.”
You can add that one to this list someday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_utopian_communities
it’s in California
this list
notice that’s a bunch of Yankee or Cali shit: the Southern attempts are usually escapees from Cali or France
Did you see that front page photo? Shit is getting very second in here. Very second indeed.
Speaking of Glib’s Gulch, is Iobot still around?
That photo above is hilarious.
It’s the final 2 minutes of the Bedlam game,
Oklahoma State 27
Oklahoma 24
Go state!!
(OU is ranked 9, OK state 22)
The final Bedlam game, thanks to OU scooting out to join the SEC. Shame, OU!! SHAAAAME!
Can you give final score when it happens? I juts want to sit here in the dark.
Needless to say, this weekend is already too long. Ten hours drive that should have been six, brutally expensive hotel, just to be a good son.
I am done. Home now. Martini in mouth.
Enjoy that martini.
In the pic linked below, The large text on top says “death to Israel” (marg bar Israel) in Farsi. Below it is “death to Israel” (al mawt l-Israel) in Arabic. Below that is “Down With Israel” in English. C’mon, Iran. Own your shit. This sign was seen at a military parade in September.
link
LOL. The English might as well be, “We are slightly annoyed with Israel.”
marg
mawt
Farsi is IndoEuropean; Arabic is not.
but both of these look like they’d sound like mort
al-bahr al-mayit = the dead sea
Marg sounds like it looks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_f8JxrcYNk
Mawt rhymes with “out”.
List of Proto-Indo-European roots – useful for comparative linguistics
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/indoeurop.html
This video is worth searching for too: Recitation of Schleicher’s Fable in Proto-Indo-European from “Prometheus”
Yummy.
Gaze deeply into the derp abyss:
https://youtu.be/qNMM5krNA6U?si=vevBKNX2C09sz0lt&t=35
I guess the other 2% are gay or so heavily demoralized that they’ll lie on an anonymous poll.
Would you date a transexual (m2f) woman?
OK WTF, if the poll were stated thusly:
Would you date a M2F transwoman?
1) Yes, I’d love to suck her shenis
2) No, I am a transphobe
Men are ugly, so I would not date one, even one pretending to be a woman.
Definitely hatred. Definitely not the cock, or alternatively, the dilated raw beef with ballsack labia where the cock used to be.
I miss when we still used the archaic term “sexual preference,” and the only people supposedly concerned about it were bigoted Christian fundamentalists.
Not to mention the fact that men and women are way different in ways beyond the cock.
You people are so biased.
“I don’t think this should be Sammy’s biggest fear in prison.”
I know everybody’s snickering over SBF getting gang cornholed in the pen, but he’s not going to a max security facility full of violent psychopaths. He’s going to the same kind of medium to minimum security facility that Martha Stewart got. Massively unpleasant to say the least, but not Oz. Sorry to disappoint.
I remain deeply uncomfortable with people’s glee over potential prison rape.
Yeah.
This.
#dittoes
Yup it’s deeply weird. I remember a study from a decade back that found that more men are raped every year than women, it just almost entirely happens in jails and prisons and so therefore is worthy of jokes rather than any serious treatment.
Completely agree.
Of course. He had Club Fed membership money, and it’s not like he did something seriously antisocial like sell cocaine to someone who wanted to buy it.
Say, were those millions in political donations returned?
The J6 prisoners aren’t in supermax either, but the conditions they’ve been subjected to are appalling.
Good point but Sam won’t get the treatment that Democrat run jails reserve for megamagas.
Good gravy. He bilked a massive amount of idiots out of some of their money.
He was a good “little traveler”.
As far as I know, none of his “victims” are on the street and destitute.
The real question we need to ask is why him?
There are so many little grifters like him that have taken advantage of our betters.
Why him? Why is he being thrust upon the Sun altar?
Extrajudicial punishment via prison rape ist nicht gut.
Israeli tanks without infantry support are easy targets for RPGs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQQuBM4JM_Q
Yeah, but they’ll nerf the RPG in the next patch. FUCKING VEHICLE CAMPERS!
Can you translate? You owe us that much for screwing up the youtube recommendations.
The title says “scenes from the clash of Al-Qassam fighters and the occupation army in Shaata [refugee] camp and the neighborhood of Sheikh Ridwan”
I’ll listen again for any interesting audio snippets. It’s usually what you’d expect. Stuff like:
“Go, go, go!”
“Oh god, oh god, oh god”
etc
Sometimes they pray things like “Oh lord, help this son of Adam kill the enemy.”
Well, that’s nice.
You know what I’m not seeing? The aftermath. You get the fireball of the warhead explosion, then they cut away or do an instant replay, with no conformation of a vehicle kill.
Makes me think they’re not actually taking any of these out.
One guy sets a D9 on fire that plants a flag on it.
https://youtu.be/iQQuBM4JM_Q?si=a2UtoiWXhd0u-4UF&t=115
The guys in my old NSA section are probably very busy these days.
UCS beat me to it.
I’d just add that these aren’t all tanks, just armored vehicles. Actual tanks are vulnerable from the top and bottoms, but not so much from the sides. You don’t see the aftermath because they kept rolling.
There are videos from other angles of IEDs detonating near IDF vehicles but not actually causing damage. So…
There are stories from the Gulf War of T-72 rounds bouncing off Abrams, the armor was so effective.
This Abrams was blown up by friendly fire:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Destroyed_M1A1_Abrams.jpg
Got shot by a Hellfire by mistake and then shot again by another Abrams to make it unsalvageable if it got captured.
The only countries with enough jet fuel to run the things already had better tanks anyway.
The first battle cry is “god is the greatest and the greatest praise for him”
(allah akbar wa al-akhbar al-hamd)
Kabir means big/great. Akbar means bigger/greater and also biggest/greatest. Hamd means praise and is also found in common named like Ahmed, Muhammad, and Mahmud (the root is h-m-d). All those names mean praiseworthy. Al-hamdulillah is a common phrase that means good/fine, but literally means praise be to god.
During Desert Storm, Saddam threatened the mother of all battles (um al-mu’arik). A similar construction is found in phrases like king of kings. It’s another way of forming the superlative in Arabic.
We have the same cry to our God.
If it’s the same God…well, it seems a wonderful opportunity for him to sort it out.
Oopsy, should be allah akbar was lillah al-hamd = god is the greatest and praise to him
Same thing basically.
Allah is god. Another common word is rub, which means lord. Rub al-‘alamin means lord of [all] the worlds and is another common expression for god. The phrase appears in the first verse of the Quran.
Koran gives English speakers a better idea of how to say the word, whereas Quran is a more accurate transliteration. There are umpteen ways to transliterate Arabic, and when other languages like French, Russian, Turkish, and German are included, you get some really weird results.
Rashid gets transliterated as Rachid in French. The situation for Muhammad is even worse. The same four Arabic letters in that name get transliterated as Mohamet, Muhammed, Mukhammed, and Mohammed respectively in those four languages. Mehmet is another Turkish variant of the name.
Names on passports are usually only in 3 languages at most. The US uses English, French, and Spanish. Most other countries use either English or sometimes French as the 2nd language.
This can make it difficult to find a bad guy whose name has been transliterated to French on his passport but not English, etc.
Who cares what the Quran says about anything?? I do not give a fluffydamn about what it says.
It is not the baseline for my behavior.
No more than the Bible.
Same here. You’ll enjoy this:
https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/all/cr_list.html
Link goes to an index of nasty Koran verses. The guy also went through the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Bhagavad Gita with a fine-tooth comb.
I saw this earlier on the Gram. Which is all Hamas propaganda at this point.
You can’t tell, but those aren’t all “tanks” and not shown is how much actual damage is done to the armored vehicles. It looks cool, though.
I guess either way they win with the under 30 lefties. They either destroyed the IDF “tanks” or they’re just some resistance fighting a well funded occupation with fireworks.
I know, but “tanks” is shorter than “armored vehicles”. The Arabic word for tank is dibaabah, which originally referred to siege towers, as seen in Kingdom of Heaven.
https://youtu.be/WyfAZaD9NLc?si=zjnBHZLbqj0pIhWG&t=140
Those are tandem charge RPG rounds they’re using. They can penetrate 600 mm (24 in) RHA (with reactive armor). Unsurprisingly, the thickness of Merkava armor is classified.
which originally referred to
claymore
that dude doesn’t look Scottish to me
** scratches ruddy-gray chin stubble **
I don’t doubt that the IDF are taking casualties. I’m just annoyed by the coverage and the response from the the class of 2027.
Learn Arabic with Derpy.
yalla = let’s go do/ do it
bismillah = in the name of god
Fun fact: bismillah is in the song Bohemian Rhapsody (bismillah, let him go). Freddy Mercury was born on Zanzibar and his parents were Muslims. His real name was Farrokkh Bulsara. Farrokh has the same root as Farrakhan. Both names mean “charming”.
Shukran means thanks in Arabic. Shakir means thankful and is a boy’s name. Shakira is the female form. Shakira’s family moved to Colombia from Lebanon.
Take it from me. My hips don’t lie.
I’m hoping your Arabic lesson is benign.
Why do I need to learn Arabic?
People with knowledge often like to show off.
I know I am prone to this behavior.
So I assume this is “Here’s something I know” from Derpy.
I mean, to be fair, someone asked him to translate some Arabic.
I doubt we’ll learn to be able to translate even with these little snippets.
Really? Even Google (PBH) can’t translate these snippets??
I’m supposed to “learn” something from his translations?
Well, color me non-impressed.
Let’s wait for it.
Good Lord. Are you as amazed as me?
I suppose I may be arguing with Chinese bots all this way. I am more stupid than I ever imagined.
Is it benign?
Showing off don’t matter much after that.
What is your opinion? I respect yours.
I believe it is.
I like Derpy’s “Here’s a thing I know”s.
I do as well. He just seems to be a little suspect at times.
That’s just me.
Who cares?
I dont.
I was on the phone for an hour. If you have Arabic questions, let me know. I spent 3,000+ hours studying it at a cost to the taxpayers of about $250,000, so I figure I might as well use it if I can.
Arabic is spoken by about 400 million people and its writing system has the third most users after the Latin alphabet and Chinese. It’s a more useful alphabet to know than Cyrillic.
Of all the writing systems, it is the one that can most easily be turned into art:
link
Doesn’t mean that is the one that i choose to accept as my end all.
I like my language. I like Shakespeare.
I like the hegemony of the British.
No the bad things of course, but the things never seen in recorded history.
I only have to consider the alternatives. Do we need to? Here???
Getting a sort of Lawrence of Arabia vibe here.
I love that movie. Got me interested in Arabic as a kid. I read the Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Lawrence from my grandpa’s library.
Shakespeare is great. There’s a joke that he was actually an Arab named Sheikh Zubayr. Sheikh means old man and Zubayr is just a name. A Palestinian told me that joke. He was one of my teachers at DLI.
I have a copy of the complete works of the Bard. Read it all in 2021. I finished the last few plays it while stranded in Baker, NV for 5 days.
Hezbollah has been in the news a lot lately. Yeah, the name means party of god, but it comes from the Koran. Chapter 5 verse 56 says:
Fa-inna hezbollah, hum al-ghalibun
Truly the party of god are the victorious ones
فَإِنَّ حِزۡبَ ٱللَّهِ هُمُ ٱلۡغَٰلِبُونَ
Some translations render hezb as band, like a band of thieves. Band is related to the term bandit.
The verse appears on the Hezbollah flag. The text on the bottom says “Islamic Resistance in Lebanon”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah#/media/File:Flag_of_Hezbollah.svg
Holy crap. You have shown your allegiance.
Keep on keeping on. Just realize we see what you are saying.
?
I spent a few years at NSA getting paid to translate what Arabic-speaking terrorists talked about. Keep that in mind, please.
You can’t defeat an enemy you don’t understand. Too many people equate foreign language knowledge with sympathy for all who speak that particular language.
You think English-speaking Iraqi interrogators were fans of the US military?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tmN43MiZqw
One shwarma, please.
In WW2 Army phonetics:
bih-DEE shwarma min FUD-luck
For those curious about the Arabic in this Three Kings clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tmN43MiZqw
Starts around the 2-minute mark.
It’s very good Arabic compared to most Hollywood movies. The interrogator even has an Iraqi accent, as can be heard when he pronounces sh as ch.
***
yalla = do it
la, mohayl awl = no, the first (lowest) setting
yalla, yalla, b-surra’ah! = do it quickly!
na’am saydi, kul shi jahez = yes sir, everything is ready
yalla, Sohayl = do it, Sohayl
***
The Arabic version of The Office is funny. It’s called Mamnou3 (Forbidden) and it’s about a government censorship office.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArnErU6l-I0
Do your work travels ever take you as far as Helena? If so, there’s a Greek food truck there that has fantastic shwarma.
I went through Helena in the summer of 2019 on my big road trip. There’s a great Lebanese place near me in Gainesville called Falafel King. I love that place. There’s a wonderful Lebanese/Greek place in Augusta, GA called Laziza. Laziza means delicious in Arabic.
I stopped to use the bathroom at a gas station in Detroit and was surprised to see an Arabic sign inside. It said Inzaak al-hamaam, which means “flush the toilet”.
???
I thought they were Zoroastrian.
My bad, you’re right.
***
Despite this, critics, both journalistic and academic, have speculated over the meaning behind the song’s lyrics. Some believe the lyrics describe a suicidal murderer haunted by demons or depict events just preceding an execution. The latter explanation points to Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger, in which a young man confesses to an impulsive murder and has an epiphany before he is executed, as probable inspiration. When the band released a Greatest Hits cassette in Iran, a leaflet in Persian was included with translation and explanations.[42] In the explanation, Queen states that “Bohemian Rhapsody” is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution, he calls for God saying, “Bismillah” (“In the name of God” in Arabic), and with the help of angels, regains his soul from Shaitan (the devil in Arabic).
***
Though it’s likely he heard bismillah and other Arabic phrases while on Zanzibar, which is about 99% Muslim.
impressive math skills here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxVOJ5jQWyI
Yeah, a racist Americans in the mist article from the BBC is just what the doctor ordered for a Saturday night. 😃👍🏻
We can apply Betteridge’s Law of Headlines to that Beeb article.
After supporting BLM “peaceful” protest the reaction from Team Blue here in DC and NYC will be interesting.
https://nypost.com/2023/11/04/news/pro-palestinian-marchers-flood-dc-say-racist-state-israel-does-not-have-the-right-to-exist-long-live-the-intifada/
Even better…
Jewish Viewers Find a Refuge in Fox News
From the NYT no less.
Magajews in the mist. 🙄
Yeah, even the NYT is having a hard time hand-waving away the genocidal madness that is no-doubt shared by a large percentage of its readership.
I enjoyed that their first anecdotal Jew read the NYT and WSJ before turning to Fox.
Most NYT readers don’t read the WSJ. I think I’m the exception as the NYT is a good barometer to see what Team Blue is going to hit us with next.
That good ole one sided cease fire.
And Marquess of Queensberry Rules that Hamas follows.
I’m starting to think that all these “supersmart” groups that are supposedly in charge of things, are really pretty goddamned stupid.
The one powerful thing that they have in their favor is that entropy wins every time.
And they are definitely in the entropy camp.
Doesn’t mean they win this time…just that they have the advantage.
Fight, and they won’t win. Entropy is a weak physical force.
Once again…I await your comments.
Entropy is the second law of thermodynamics
Very important, that one, makes AC work.
I passed a big Pali flag proudly displayed outside a house today. Dollars to donuts it was a Uke flag a month ago.
I love how “ceasefire” has become the code-word of choice. These people know that “ceasefire” just means more rockets – see the last ten times Israel agreed to one.
You are more intelligent than 99% of the people on TV.
Xfinity
twitter
Wut?
X.org
Gon’ give it to ya?
From these sources, I learned I suffered from toxic inflammation, histamine intolerance, mold exposure, sensitivities to chicken, clams and chocolate, dormant Lyme disease, heavy metal poisoning, motherhood, hidden but newly awakened traumas, over-stress, under-sleep and nutrient deficits. But! With these pills and powders and out-of-pocket consultations – along with exacting combinations of vegetables, broth and, of course, mindfulness – I would become well.
American women, which are the focus of her reporting, are by most counts stretched thin. Compared with men, they report higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression and burnout, while also performing the lion’s share of care work. They feed their families while food costs soar and there is cadmium in the cocoa powder.
Now do drugging boys into submission.
I’m convinced that there are few behavioral problems in adolescent boys that wouldn’t be cured by milking a dozen cows before breakfast every morning
And cleaning out the stables. And doing whatever the hell else needs to be done.
We are a few years from that happening again.
I hope.
Just mowing the grass weekly would probably help – (not riding).
Given the vast quantities of cocoa ingested I can see the concern.
I loved that one, too
my mother-in-law once balked at the prospect of my taking her to dinner at a place that had excellent tuna and shark steaks: mercury
rather than asking her how much she intended to eat, I asked how long she was planning on living
either way, have some shark, lady
Cocoa powder. It’s what’s for dinner.
OK. I’m a Southern boy and I have not heard this one.
Explain. At length.
Thank you.
Hippies believe cocoa powder contains cadmium. Like, so much cadmium that it might as well be a Radio Shack battery shredded with a cheese grater.
Now, THAT makes sense.
Thank you, RJ.
It is stupid and yet I can see my mother seeing it on TV and going with it.
#winning
https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-cadmium-in-dark-chocolate-a8480295550/
Length above. TLDR heavy metals are found in cocoa. Large amounts of heavy metals are not good for human health. However, unless you eat large, large amounts of cocoa it is unlikely to be toxic in any way.
Now microwave radiation on the other hand…
Has it occurred to her that she might be possessed by
IsuzuPazuzu?HA!
Pazuzzu! Winning call!
Has Vienna’s new turd-fountain made the rounds yet here?
One imagines the “artists” laughing at the tourist rubes pretending to adore the deliberate ugliness.
Yeah. That thing is F-ed up.
Had to be done.
Falco – Vienna Calling
I love that song.
(80s kid)
He was so much more than a two-hit wonder.
Super talented but by all accounts, a dick.
I saw it. Didn’t know what to say about it.
Still don’t.
Europe is going to enjoy the people that are coming in unabated…as we are.
To be fair, those people think that the turd-fountain is shit.
My only happy thought is that I may get to to laugh at the fellow traveler complaining about their treatment. My guffaws will be the last things they hear on this plane.
Oh, if only Comrade Stalin only knew what is going on.
Please stop. My sides are hurting from laughing so hard.
You know what would improve that installation? The strewn entrails of the “Artist” and those who approved its creation.
Repeat as needed with new “Art” until quality improves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit
This is to the powers behind the scenes…I’ve never wanted to be on the negative side of things.
Apparently, Derpetologist is one of those things that are a no go.
Good luck. I’m gone.
How long will this be visible?
You done sniffed Derp out. Fabulous detective work there Kojak.
Thanks. You done much lately?
For what it’s worth, about a dozen of the west coast glibs have met me in real life. Perhaps they can assure you I am not a Manchurian Candidate.
Si, bastante. ¿Y tu, que has hecho esses dias?
I recall you being raised LDS. Did you go on a mission? 2 uncles and a cousin of mine learn Spanish as LDS missionaries.
I was raised LDS and now I’m now religious. I like to say I went from Latter-Day Saint to Latter-Day Ain’t.
An Army pal of mine did a mission in Brazil and married a local. It took him forever to get NSA permission to do his Arabic job.
Me? No, Irish Catholic, but pretty agnostic, I spent several years in LatAm, a couple of them in Brazil.
Wtf?
I think my Arabic has him convinced I’m a bad guy or a sympathizer to them. Maybe he’s worried about guilt by association. He shouldn’t be.
Something similar happened at DLI when I mentioned I improved my Arabic by listening to ISIS nasheeds (war songs). In their view, to listen to their music is to endorse their views.
Stupid.
Methinks you have not lurked long enough to get to know Derpy. Nice while it lasted, I guess.
You’re both nuts. Good people though..
From an interview in the 70s with Perry Fellwock, who later became an NSA whistle blower:
***
Do the Russians know about the NSA listening into them?
-They regularly wish NSA interception stations a merry christmas.
***
Oh, how I laughed.
A American coworker had legit business for a couple of months in the USSR during the Cold War. He had a “watcher” in him when he went out and about in Moscow.
One day as he bought his morning newspaper and a snack or coffee on the street, he decided to buy two this time, then waved at his watcher and approached him to offer the extra item he’d bought, figuring they might as well acknowledge the obvious and get formally introduced.
They shared a polite laugh and resumed the routine.
DLI during the Cold War
***
How big is this school?
In my time, there were about 1200 students. Not all of them came from NSA. Russian (with about 600 students) was the biggest thing, then Vietnamese and then Chinese, at that time. The school was teaching 48 languages and had a capability for teaching up to 112. Our instructors, men and women, were native Russian speakers. They’d come west in the immediate postwar years. So, to keep up to date we got a lot of contemporary Russian material as well. After two months, we lived in barracks where only Russian was spoken, the latrine and no smoking signs were in Russian, and we played Russian language Scrabble.
XXXXXed circuit TV programs in Russian. Monterey’s special feature was a Russian shop using rubles and Soviet goods.
***
https://cryptome.org/jya/nsa-elint.htm
I recall there being about 2,000 students at DLI when I was there.
One part of Foreign Area Officer training is the US military sends you to your duty station 6-9 months early travel and improve your language skills. The Soviets didn’t permit this so the Army set up a miniature Soviet town in Garmish, Germany. Inside the compound everything was Soviet and they delivered couple day old Pravda and other publications as well as piped in radio and TV. The workers were largely ex Soviet citizens. After the Cold War ended it became the Marshall Center and is still operating.
What a gig, Be paid to immerse yourself in Soviet crap while living in an alpine tourist town and home of the 1936 Winter Olympics.
I will add my 2 cents re Derp. He is not a Feddie or a HAMAS supporter. He is absolutely correct you have to study your enemies in their own language and media,
The KGB had a similar school in Vinnytsia, Ukraine for the same reason. Putin studied there and it was even the premise for a movie called The Experts.
***
In the Soviet Union on the eve of Perestroika, groups of potential Soviet spies are trained in a town made up to pass for “Indian Springs”, Nebraska. The denizens of the town speak perfect English and go about their days as Americans to train the cadets to fit into American society. One of the trainers in this town, KGB agent Cameron Smith (Charles Martin Smith), feels that the training is substandard as the town has failed to develop culturally since its inception and is stuck in the 1950s.
In order to rectify the situation, Smith hires New York City club-goers (and aspiring club-owners) Travis (John Travolta) and Wendell (Arye Gross) to teach modern ways to the outdated town under the auspices of opening a nightclub. The two are drugged en route and wake up in Russia unaware they have left the United States.
***
***
From 1954 to 1991, the KGB was the main security agency for the Soviet Union (it disbanded at the end of the Cold War). While their training was thorough throughout the ’50s, the agency ran into one problem. The USSR’s intense Cold War travel restrictions made it impossible for spies to experience actual American life. Most of what they knew about the western world was from what they saw on TV or in movies. To immerse recruits fully into American life before they were sent to America to blend in with the local Midwesterners, the KGB created Spy Schools. These training camps were located in specially constructed towns made to mimic English and American life.
…
To help deep agents in their training, the KGB employed the best linguists from all over the Soviet Union (you couldn’t let a Russian accent slip). They also hired retired deep cover agents to pose as Americans in these towns and teach the trainees what it was like to be born and bred in the United States or UK.
In the above photo, you can see an ex-spy posing as an American-looking police officer and talking to a suited man over a coin-slot parking meter. This small detail of American life is so easy to overlook, but the details – like the usage and lingo of the parking meter – were essential to acquire in order to pose as a someone born in the USA.
***
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVMP4dQLNgY
In a KGB book, I read about a typical training scenario:
***
You have been pulled over by American police. Talk your way out of the speeding ticket using good, idiomatic English.
***
Stalin advised spies to attend church services because preachers tend to use language that is both prestigious and easy to understand.
Jack Barsky’s description of his KGB training is better than the CIA film I linked above. The KGB chose that name because it belonged to a child that had died very young. The KGB liked to use the names of dead children for its agents since they were authentic and unlikely to be the same as a living person. A common task for KGB agents was to walk through cemeteries and make notes of the graves of dead children.
Here is the tombstone Jack Barsky found:
link
The gravesite for Jack Barsky, the 10-year-old boy who died in Maryland and whose identity Albrecht Dittrich ultimately assumed. (Courtesy of Jack Barsky)
***
But despite the fact that the actual Jack Barsky was not around to interfere, becoming the new Barsky “wasn’t easy.”
“I tried once to get one birth certificate and that failed, because the office that issued the birth certificates also cross-referenced death certificates, and I wound up asking for the copy of my birth certificate after I died,” he recalled. His second attempt was successful, but he wasn’t yet out of the woods.
He then covered himself in dirt and played the character of a farmworker, because the farm industry was exempt from Social Security requirements at the time, when he went to the Social Security office to get the necessary documentation.
“I made myself into somebody who had just jumped off the potato truck. I rubbed soap into my eyes to make them red, I had stubble on my face, the hair wasn’t really combed well, dirty T-shirt,” he said. “Two weeks later, I got the Social Security card in the mail, and I was allowed to actually legally work in the United States.”
***
He tells his story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXu5cK5q-Z8
The only reason I ever listen to NPR. Even the language learning applies, although it’s more like learning new vocabulary words and new definitions.
I enjoyed my visits to the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland, very near the NSA.
Cool hands-on exhibits (several working Enigma machines), lots of facts about codes and code breaking through the centuries. They cover human intelligence and signal intelligence.
There are some memorial exhibits too for American spies who died in the line of duty.
One of my favorites is the replica of the wooden Great Seal of the US that was gifted to the US ambassador to the Soviet Union, where it hung in the office and listened to the ambassador for months.
***
Is anything safe from the NSA?
Before you can crack an utterly new code you need about 130,000 groups in it. That’s a mathematical fact. A once off message in a new code which isn’t used again is safe. That’s the outer and inner limit on the decoding side. The other is that landlines can only be tapped not intercepted from the distance. But they can be bugged and in some countries the postal authorities might cooperate with the NSA.
***
News you can use.
If the Rosetta Stone hadn’t been in 3 languages, one of them well-known (Greek), A sample of 130,000 hieroglyphics would have been needed to decode it.
***
The following interview tells us a great deal about both sides of the NSA mission — everything from how Agency people feel about themselves and the communist “enemy” to the NSA electronic breakthroughs that threaten the Soviet-American balance of terror. We learn for example that NSA knows the call signs for every Soviet airplane, the numbers on the side of each plane, the name of the pilot in command; the precise longitude and latitude of every nuclear submarine; the whereabouts of nearly every Soviet VIP; the location of every Soviet missile base; every army division, battalion and company — its weaponry, commander and deployment. Routinely the NSA monitors all Soviet military, diplomatic and commercial radio traffic, including Soviet Air Defense, Tactical Air and KGB forces. (It was the NSA that found Che Guevara in Bolivia through radio communications intercept and analysis.) NSA cryptologic experts seek to break every Soviet code and do so with remarkable success, Soviet scrambler and computer-generated signals being nearly as vulnerable as ordinary voice and manual morse radio transmissions. Interception of Soviet radar signals enables NSA to gauge quite precisely the effectiveness of Soviet Air Defense units. Methods have even been devised to “fingerprint” every human voice used in radio transmissions and distinguish them from the voice of every other operator. The Agency’s Electronic Intelligence Teams (ELINT) are capable of intercepting any electronic signal transmitted anywhere in the world and, from an analysis of the intercepted signal, identify the transmitter and physically reconstruct it. Finally, after having shown the size and sensitivity of the Agency’s big ears, it is almost superfluous to point out that NSA monitors and records every trans-Atlantic telephone call.
***
https://cryptome.org/jya/nsa-elint.htm
This is from the 1970s. I invite you to ponder how much better NSA is at all this stuff these days. Remember that the next time you hear some politician or general or bureaucrat say “no one could have predicted…”
“Veteran” protesting makes a uniform oopsy:
https://youtu.be/Mv33Ntc2M0A?si=qwTj5OsMRACvoAPs&t=83
He has his US flag patch below his deployment patch. I call shenanigans. Shenanigans, I say!
Based on the uniforms and camcorder resolution I’m going to guess that video was shot in about 1993
Mornin’ all.
How about some Morphine to get that time change smoothed over?
You Look Like Rain.
Do Not Go Quietly Unto your Grave.
Share and enjoy!
Catching up on the comments….
That’s gotta be one of the most abrupt, random and puzzling “screw you guys, I’m going home” Glibquits I’ve seen yet….
Perhaps a few too many drinks were had.
Yeah, that was odd.
Good standard time morning!
How long are you in State Spud? Let me know if you want to make the trip down for some steel shooting.
I’m a part-time vegetarian now that I’m dating IT lady, so OMWC and Tomb Raider would be welcome.
*shakes cobwebs*
Time has changed, hasn’t it.
Times have changed and times are strange
But I can’t trace time
Stinky Wizzleteats on November 5, 2023 at 1:00 am
You’re both nuts. Good people though..
The unofficial official libertarian motto. We should put a derivative on our own flag.
The emoji corresponding to that sentiment: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
celebramus insaniam
suh’ fam
yo whats goody yo
TALL CANS IN STANDARD TIME
Italian in Naples, the birthplace of pizza, react to pineapple on pizza:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDUy3Y_w9Tk
[chef’s kiss]
Vegas.
I am still in Vegas.
This town is the Dog of the Beng.
Saigon… shit; I’m still only in Saigon… Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle.
When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said “yes” to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’m here a week now… waiting for a mission… getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.
I got my orders for the week. Work is shipping me to Portland, OR and then Spokane, WA.
Id rather stay home.
Stupid time change. 😒
Good morning peeps.
🍳🐥
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MLeIyy2ipps
🎶🎶
The wife is historically a lefty… and pathological TDS sufferer. But she is far more conservative than I am outside of team affiliation (as are most lefties, when compared to real libertarians). She had become a voting Libertarian before Trump broker her brain.
All of this is to introduce you to the red (or black) pill process as embodied by Internet personality Houseinhabit. A housewife type who gained an Instagram following covering the Johnny Depp trial and other celebrity trials,she began covering the media propaganda…. And went and got herself black pilled.
Taking the wife with. There is now an army of TDS suffering women who also have been convinced that the government and the press and the tech companies are irredeemably corrupt. It is an odd combination, but it might be the deciding factor in the fate of the American experiment.
https://substack.com/@houseinhabit
Also available on Instagram, but I don’t do Instagram
Being black-pulled and simultaneously having TDS is an odd combination.
My understanding of TDS is that the Orange One was an existential threat our otherwise great system.
It does make for some really odd swings in opinions out politics. It is a very unstable and unpredictable combination. But the knowledge..or more importantly belief…that things are corrupted and we are being lied to is the key. The TDS prevents applying it to Trump. But, this is a very large group. They are the suburban moms who supposedly gave biden his wins in places like Philadelphia.
Because of the direct comparison they have trouble coming right out and saying Biden is on the take…. But they are desperate for an avatar to attach their dissatisfaction to. For some it is Kennedy, but I don’t know that he will be able to break through – particularly now that they have placed him in radio silence.
I don’t know how it plays out, but the opportunity is there. They still love Hoda, but they distrust everything. They are at a tipping point and just need someone to believe in to transform from reliable D voters to a populist wave.
Not sure who could do it though. Maybe Tulsi? Don’t know that they identify with her.
No offense to your wife but believing that population (AWFLs) are anything other than trained seals for the Cathedral is an idea I have a hard time squaring with reality.
TDS is weirdly powerful.
Matt Welch is an instructive case. The dude literally turns purple when Trump comes up. As a cosmotarian, he views himself as libertarian and mistrust of the powerful is a big talking point…. yet he cannot see the plots that were used to derail Trump. Like Bill Maher, he cannot see that the FBI and CIA created the whole Russia thing. Like, literally *can’t* see. No amount of evidence can penetrate.
Emotional choices cannot be changed by appeals to logic.
But now this group has *two* deeply felt emotional beliefs. Seeing the corruption elsewhere has set up a deep conflict. So far, the group is able to hold these beliefs separately. They rarely collide.
But they are about to.
And that is an unstable situation. Probably 20 to 30 million (mostly) women fall into this category. How they break might decide our fate.
Not looking for a dead thread argument but I don’t think I agree with your premise.
“Well, everyone will says so”. Or better yet;
“I don’t know anyone who voted for Nixon”
Is their motto. It’s a population whose guiding star is over-socialization. I refute the idea that they somehow no longer trust the corporate press or the diluting elite. It doesn’t line up with their incentives.
It’s a nice sentiment though.
And that was an impressive number of typos….even for me
AOC and Tliab have declared that “from the river to the sea” is a call for a multiethnic free state, free for all religions and peoples. An aspiration to true liberty.
So,Derp… with your deep knowledge of the language… Do you have a breakdown?
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1720574880557539763?t=vr2jF3uPJPLpc_PUBntt2g&s=19
From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.
From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for
freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, notdeath, destruction,orand hate. My work and advocacy is always centered injustice and dignity formore power forall peopleme no matterfaith or ethnicitywhat.FIFH
They are, of course, lying. It is the motto of an organization that is founded on the elimination of Jews from “Palestine”. And just leaving won’t do it – Hamas wants revenge for humiliation of Israel “taking their land” and beating them repeatedly on the field.
The slogan rhymes in English, so it’s targeted at foreigners and did not originate in Arabic. The Hamas charter says it all:
***
The original Charter identified Hamas as the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine and declares its members to be Muslims who “fear God and raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors”. The charter states that “our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[3] and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel.[4][5] It emphasizes the importance of jihad, stating in article 13, “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”[6] The charter also states that Hamas is humanistic, and tolerant of other religions as long as they “stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region”.[7] The Charter adds that “renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion [of Islam]”.[1] The original charter was criticized for its violent language against all Jews, which many commentators have characterized as incitement to genocide.[8][9]
***
But, that doesn’t sound like “peaceful coexistence” at all…..
“Let’s keep the genocide on the down-low, guys.”
“OK!”
World’s cheapest supercomputer from 13 years ago:
https://youtu.be/hSVo4ejZ7rc?si=GyXxpt3DH2FBWkcd&t=140
It’s in Nagasaki, Japan. It can do 158 tflops and cost $420,000. It’s a GPU cluster machine.
I was working out how to make a similar cluster with Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computers. One of those can do about 70 gflops (70 billion floating point calculations per second), so you’d need a cluster of about 2,000 to do what the Nagasaki computer does. That would cost about $16,000 plus peripherals like switches and such. You could save some money by overclocking them and using oil cooling. I’ve already proven that concept with my own experiments.
I was thinking of writing an NSF grant proposal. They have this Partnership for Innovation program.
When the Stone Souper computer came out (25 years ago) we grabbed a bunch of desktop and server boxes that were headed to retirement and installed a copy, along with some cheap switches.
Not having anything better to do with it, I wrote some recursive sort and search algorithms and tested them out. It was really fun. Too bad I didn’t have a practical use.
Must be this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soupercomputer