Fridaaaaay!

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

OK, first an announcement! With great pleasure, we'd like to introduce to you the new, 8th mod of this very fine community. The coolest of cool guys around, the epitome of coolness, Bruce aka brucenstein! HEEP-HEEP-HOORAY!

*kneeling before our new overlord*

SPEECH! WE WANT A SPEECH!

But... because he's such a shy guy, I'd like to present his draft speech for the royal inauguration crowning ceremony, which I'm sure he'll be able to pronounce as soon as he manages to deal with his severe speech impediment. (HA!!!)


"Gentleman and lad... er... just gentlemen, apparently. Countrymen... well actually you're all over hell.

OK, OK....

LJ-ers and fellow modites... it is with great humility that you bestow this honor upon me. It is assuredly your pleasure for my being a part, probably the most important part if history serves, of this great community of smelly tree huggers and nutball bible thumpers.

I look at the state of your... our... community and see that it is a happy community; a happy community where everyone may come to be treated as equals in their their incorrect, nonsense, slipshod political views. It is precisely this plebian commonality of fallibility that both binds our community together, and separates their unwashed hands from ours. Well... at least mine.

I vow to you this 30th Day, Setting Orange, in the Season of Chaos 3172 (Hail Eris!), to stoke the fires of impassioned, yet reasoned and logically sound, honest, truthful, brilliant, infallible debate. How everyone else handles it, however, I cannot guarantee. But I can guarantee this: by your decision today, you have turned a great community into the best.

You're welcome."

As has been said elsewhere, Quit modesty, FFS! It's for those lacking other qualities!


Speaking of royal shit, let's get to the point already:

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Nonsense, commence!

Comments

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

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Did you not here hear? The epitome of coolness! Lern 2 reed, omg.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Another announcement

[kinvore.livejournal.com]

Also would like to announce that starting on May 9th talk_politics will be featured on LJ's Spotlight! No it's not a lulz, I'm serious'd.

So, you know, try not to troll it up for the new peeps, you know there's gonna be those who will post without bothering to read the rules. I'm sure many of you will start saving up macros and stuff for those poor unsuspecting souls, I'm just asking you to go easy on them. With Bruce as our new hall monitor we'll hopefully be able to keep things more-or-less running smoothly. I, however, will ditch you guys and come back when the noobery has cleared. Thank you.

Re: Another announcement

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Oh! I knew I had forgotten something!

Re: Another announcement

[anosognosia.livejournal.com]

NOOOOOOO THE RABBIT ONE

Re: Another announcement

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Oh god not again. It's gonna be worse that /r/politics for a few weeks...

Re: Another announcement

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

wait, you mean we're gonna have to get used to new people?

This is gonna screw up all the power dynamics of this place, old rivalries will be set aside as the old timers try to hold their ground against the newcomers, it'll be total chaos in here and already my carpal tunnel is acting up.

I'm gonna have to take 2 weeks vacation just to be able to keep up with this place after this.

Re: Another announcement

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Again? Aw lordah

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Oh no. Not those two again. They're ALL OVER THE PLACE! Run! Ruuuun!

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

At this rate you'll complete a full soccer team by the end of the year. And then we're doomed!

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

we still need a reliable striker. berbatov's been in a slump lately...

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

We've been working on that! Prepare for the penalty shoot-out!

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

How do any US peeps understand one freaking phrase! need subtitles.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Those bloody English and their bloody English language.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

I thought he was a mod already.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

They used to say that about the OP here, too. That must be pretty telling.

This is some insane shit

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

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Re: This is some insane shit

[kinvore.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's some jaw-dropping graphics.

I just like this one ...

[russj.livejournal.com]

Re: I just like this one ...

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Brought Up With the Star fully into WWII. This WWII is fought between the Eastern Alliance of Nations and the Central Powers, and features Russian armies starting with T-34s and K-V1s and AK-47s against a German army that starts with a slightly larger and more technological version of the 1939 army's equipment. What's really quite interesting is that Russia, with a puppet Tsarina under a military dictatorship led by Lavr Kornilov had most of its Soviet officer corps find their experience in the Imperial Russian army.

This Russia, without a massive foreign invasion and a major civil war is far stronger and more densely populated, as well as richer than OTL Stalinist Russia was. Meaning that the Big Bad is able to start off with an army that's not just the real version of what Germany's army was turned into in pop-culture mythology but brings firepower on an unprecedented scale and a We Have Reserves policy because they *do* have them. That Russia could lose some 10 million men and start somewhere around where the Soviet army of our world did, the one that was driven to Moscow and ended up in control of half of Europe.

So Lavr Kornilov's Stalinist Russia on crack is paired with a GMD that has a functional military under Ma Bufang, fighting Germany, Britain, and Japan and doing so with trucks and T-34s that vastly outgun anything Germany, Japan, or Britain can throw at them in the Far East.

In another inversion of an alternate history cliche WWII starts in Asia with a Sino-Japanese War.....triggered by China's backing Ho Chih Minh (our world's Vo Nyguen Giap who fills both slots in Vietnam's nationalist movement) against Japan and spreading into Europe by 15 May 1942 (a year later than the original starting date of Barbarossa that was delayed) with Operations Narva (against Sweden) and Nevsky (a two-pronged offensive against Kaiser Wilhelm III's German Empire). As a result the British, Japanese, and German Empires are currently the only Central Powers at war with the Eastern Alliance.

I provided some other deliberate subversions of alternate history cliches due to paying attention to the butterflies that would be unleashed. World War I doesn't begin in Bosnia because Austria (not Austria-Hungary even) never gets control of it, Bulgaria is the Bulgarian Exarchate of the Ottoman Empire, Russia's military reforms means it spends most of WWI on German soil and wins most of the battles, as opposed to OTL where almost all the war was on Russian soil and it lost almost all of them, the "peace in our time and peace with honor" quote is said by the Ottoman Sultan.....whose empire does secure peace in its time and peace with honor.

And all this from a more successful 1864 campaign for the Union as opposed to the Confederacy.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I might note that the Russian army develops the Kalashkinovs, T-34s and K-V1s and Deep Operations because the same theorists are around as in our world, the alternate World War I ended in 1918 with proto-blitzkrieg and the German army in Paris, and because Kornilov as a military despot believes with good reason he knows how his fellow generals operate, meaning he's not purging his army the way Stalin's did.

As a result by 1942 Imperial Russia under puppet-Tsarina Olga and the man behind the woman Lavr Kornilov has built a truly modern combined-arms force, equipped with trucks and radios (because the military dictator knows where Russia's weaknesses in the previous war were) and the Kalashkinov comes from Russian experiments with submachine guns inspired by the Tommy Gun and the German submachine guns of WWI.

A facetious description of my alternate World War II could be Command and Conquer: White Alert.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Our genes tell us of our journey across the planet, and we are all descended from a single tribe within Southwest Africa. Spencer Wells narrates this very cool Nat Geo special and offers a cool insight on our connectedness. Based on the genetics, apparently humans nearly died out due to climate change, and the population got as low as 1000-2000 individuals. We were an endangered species.

You can watch here! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV6A8oGtPc4)

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

I watched this some time ago...two times in a row. I may watch it again. Thanks for reminding me!

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

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[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Congratters to Bruce. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Hehe. You make it sound almost as if he'll be shoveling manure in a cowshed.

(Wait, actually thats not such a bad idea).

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

I have absolutely no clue as to the relevance, but it sure made me want to watch the movie again :D

You're going to LOVE this!

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

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[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

OH NO! MUST UNSEE!