Well, at least, they're releasing the Amelia Earhart files...

[D.o.S.]

That whole site is just a testament to the power inherent in perceived antiquity.

[Seance]

I did get the DigiTechRep to sign up here. (We already had the former leaves turn.)

There're a few other people who'd be worthy contenders to come here (some of 'em already do post here), but I think most of 'em are content in the Strictly FUZZ thread there.

I agree that the Strictly FUZZ thread on TGP is the best place on TGP. By far.
That thread is (for the most part) devoid of the dumb one-upsmanship and
infantile bickering and gear trash-talk that permeates much of TGP.

The stereotype of rock-n-roll lawyers with ducats to burn on NOS antiquities is
well deserved, but that's not the only demographic on TGP. But I don't see the
merit in litigating an ILF vs TGP scenario. It's just different neighborhoods in the
guitar-gear ghetto of the internet. Sure there's some gentrification going on, but
that happens everywhere eventually. And after defining "Normcore" as a trend, isn't
even the reaction to khakis and tucked-in golf shirts just as unhip as a Karaoke version
of a Huey Lewis and the News song sung by Ray Parker Jr.?
Meta-meta is no betta than meta.

And I first encountered the Geez of Chank there... so TGP can't be all bad. Right?

[Chankgeez]

Well said, Seance.

Let's just say speech is a little freer over here…

no comparison there...

and that small is beautiful.

[Faldoe]

I'd certainly like to see how Clinton would respond to this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HYLiMaj9Ak[/youtube]

[Seance]

no comparison there...

and small is beautiful.

TWSDS
(that's what she didn't say)





But I agree—the ILF flag flaps more breezy with freedom... and chuckles.

[D.o.S.]

I'd certainly like to see how Clinton would respond to this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HYLiMaj9Ak[/youtube]

I mean they're taking credit for something they had no involvement in for PR purposes.

And when I say 'they', I'm talking about people who have their entire autocratic legitimacy implicitly tied into a state of unending religious struggle, which was keyed in quite nicely last year here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ts/384980/

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.

We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways. First, we tend to see jihadism as monolithic, and to apply the logic of al-Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed it. The Islamic State supporters I spoke with still refer to Osama bin Laden as “Sheikh Osama,” a title of honor. But jihadism has evolved since al-Qaeda’s heyday, from about 1998 to 2003, and many jihadists disdain the group’s priorities and current leadership.

Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells. The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.)

We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature. Peter Bergen, who produced the first interview with bin Laden in 1997, titled his first book Holy War, Inc. in part to acknowledge bin Laden as a creature of the modern secular world. Bin Laden corporatized terror and franchised it out. He requested specific political concessions, such as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia. His foot soldiers navigated the modern world confidently. On Mohamed Atta’s last full day of life, he shopped at Walmart and ate dinner at Pizza Hut.

There is a temptation to rehearse this observation—that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise—and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.

The most-articulate spokesmen for that position are the Islamic State’s officials and supporters themselves. They refer derisively to “moderns.” In conversation, they insist that they will not—cannot—waver from governing precepts that were embedded in Islam by the Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers. They often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early Islam.

To take one example: In September, Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s chief spokesman, called on Muslims in Western countries such as France and Canada to find an infidel and “smash his head with a rock,” poison him, run him over with a car, or “destroy his crops.” To Western ears, the biblical-sounding punishments—the stoning and crop destruction—juxtaposed strangely with his more modern-sounding call to vehicular homicide. (As if to show that he could terrorize by imagery alone, Adnani also referred to Secretary of State John Kerry as an “uncircumcised geezer.”)

But Adnani was not merely talking trash. His speech was laced with theological and legal discussion, and his exhortation to attack crops directly echoed orders from Muhammad to leave well water and crops alone—unless the armies of Islam were in a defensive position, in which case Muslims in the lands of kuffar, or infidels, should be unmerciful, and poison away.

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.

[D.o.S.]

All that is to say if the CSA had taken over somewhere the size of Michigan and had a PR team they would be saying a lot of the same shit.

[Seance]

Interesting read.

Of course the other part to keep in mind is the nature of asymmetrical warfare. An inferior
military force can hobble a larger military force by attacking "soft targets" since in a global economy
the very fabric of society is formed through such connective tissue. Therefore the smaller foe
is able to coax the larger into bankrupting itself in an attempt to "become safe" by getting ever larger
and larger. Building walls on all sides and militarizing every aspect of normal life is an expensive
and self-defeating exercise. An existential threat doesn't remain static so you can eradicate it.

Modern asymmetrical warfare has adapted the example of what Russia represented to Napoleon
and Hitler (a war of attrition whereby drawing in an enemy then forces them to stretch their supply
chain to the breaking point so that you can snipe at their supply chain until the superior military
force collapses due to lack of supplies) to a non-Euclidean geometry. Instead of "drawing in" an enemy
in a straight line deep into one's own territory, the "drawing in" is existential and nebulous. You don't
even have to have "territory" to draw your opponent into. It is even better to draw your opponent's
territory into the battle zone so that the threat is existential and perpetual. This is accomplished by
randomly targeting every single link in the "supply chain" out of which your opponent's society is made.

Internet appeals to the mentally unstable also yield outsized results. A mentally unstable citizen of the US
feels large and important by tying their homicidal actions to a scary "idea" and the IS-type organization
seems more scary and omnipresent by seemingly using the nature of a free society against its opponent.

So whereas freedom of speech and freedom of movement within an interconnected economy, and having
a massive, strong military, all seem like strengths, a weaker opponent will always seek to turn those
attributes into liabilities.

So... voting Trump into office will only make matters worse. Because he doesn't understand the threat
and doesn't know what to do about it. And Trump is too easily manipulated into a "defensive" kneejerk
reaction, regardless of whether or not his reaction hurts himself more than his "enemies".

[D.o.S.]

On the other hand nuclear winter will probably solve global warming so...

[Chankgeez]

In other news, Steve Vai to Shield the Wealth of the 1 Percent:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/busin ... -news&_r=0

[Iommic Pope]

Normcore.

[Seance]

States vie to become Steve Vai in the movie Crossroads.

But who will America play? Chachi or Ralph Macchio?

[Seance]

Normcore.

I suppose it is a byproduct of "acquiring" your personal identity from a thrift store. The dreck of previous decades becomes kitsch, then
rebellious, then the cornerstone of one's sense of self. But too many Millennials wear Bill Cosby sweaters without thinking through the
implications of an association with Jell-O Pudding Pops and Quaalude-based rape.

The crude, fragile lameness of our own past is the cudgel by which the next generation haunts and mocks us. "Irony" is dead because
the lack of any reaction at all is the new normal by which the status quo is subverted through conformity. Also... facial hair is an
outgrowth of millennials living at home and lacking interest in having relationships.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/scien ... s-sex.html

[D.o.S.]

https://medium.com/slackjaw/i-replaced- ... .cz83ombx4

So under that method:

Some 43 Year Old White Men Are Not Having Sex. But a Vast Majority Are.

[Faldoe]

I'd certainly like to see how Clinton would respond to this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HYLiMaj9Ak[/youtube]

I mean they're taking credit for something they had no involvement in for PR purposes.

And when I say 'they', I'm talking about people who have their entire autocratic legitimacy implicitly tied into a state of unending religious struggle, which was keyed in quite nicely last year here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ts/384980/

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.

We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways. First, we tend to see jihadism as monolithic, and to apply the logic of al-Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed it. The Islamic State supporters I spoke with still refer to Osama bin Laden as “Sheikh Osama,” a title of honor. But jihadism has evolved since al-Qaeda’s heyday, from about 1998 to 2003, and many jihadists disdain the group’s priorities and current leadership.

Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells. The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.)

We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature. Peter Bergen, who produced the first interview with bin Laden in 1997, titled his first book Holy War, Inc. in part to acknowledge bin Laden as a creature of the modern secular world. Bin Laden corporatized terror and franchised it out. He requested specific political concessions, such as the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia. His foot soldiers navigated the modern world confidently. On Mohamed Atta’s last full day of life, he shopped at Walmart and ate dinner at Pizza Hut.

There is a temptation to rehearse this observation—that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise—and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.

The most-articulate spokesmen for that position are the Islamic State’s officials and supporters themselves. They refer derisively to “moderns.” In conversation, they insist that they will not—cannot—waver from governing precepts that were embedded in Islam by the Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers. They often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early Islam.

To take one example: In September, Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s chief spokesman, called on Muslims in Western countries such as France and Canada to find an infidel and “smash his head with a rock,” poison him, run him over with a car, or “destroy his crops.” To Western ears, the biblical-sounding punishments—the stoning and crop destruction—juxtaposed strangely with his more modern-sounding call to vehicular homicide. (As if to show that he could terrorize by imagery alone, Adnani also referred to Secretary of State John Kerry as an “uncircumcised geezer.”)

But Adnani was not merely talking trash. His speech was laced with theological and legal discussion, and his exhortation to attack crops directly echoed orders from Muhammad to leave well water and crops alone—unless the armies of Islam were in a defensive position, in which case Muslims in the lands of kuffar, or infidels, should be unmerciful, and poison away.

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.

I don't follow. It seems like you're saying ISIS didn't start this - as in it is centuries old, as the Atlantic piece states, which I agree with. But I can't tell if you're downplaying ISIS because they didn't start what they are doing?

They are Islamic and following what the prophet Mohammed did. I think we are on the same page but I can't tell.

Of course ISIS want's PR, but they are doing a good thing here, in that piece in the propaganda magazine, in terms of being honest about their intentions. I think there are many people that knowingly and or unknowingly say Islam is a religion of piece and that ISIS is "un-Islamic" when in fact they are very Islamic. Further still I think there are those that agree with ISIS or the need for Sharia Law and deny or obfuscate their desires for it in order to try and manifest covertly.

This does not mean all people that consider themselves "Muslim" follow and agree with ISIS' views and methods. It may mean though - and this is a good thing for reform - that the true Islam - which is inherently violent needs a reformation in the 21st century and that such a proposition needs to come to the forefront.

And ISIS could of course be using such an argument - that Political Correctness is keeping us in the west from really understanding the genesis of the problem - to play into Trump supporters' hands in hopes to elect him so as to send ground troops back to the middle east and give ISIS the holy war they want.