#the documentaries could also be compared to gen kill

[atomicradiogirl]

interesting quotes from war by sebastian junger

[enbies-and-felonies]

Hi! Infodump? Infodump

alsoooo this is what I remember from hours of documentaries and wikipedia that may not necessarily be remembered correctly and w/ minimal wikipedia fact checking lol

The old Prussians were a bunch of baltic people who lived around where Kaliningrad is today. after the crusades in the Middle East, European christian leaders wanted to get rid of the last pagans in Europe 😬 and promised the same rewards for driving out the pagans in the area as the crusades in the Middle East, incentivizing crusading orders to begin the northern crusades in the area (which also included Lithuania.)

the Teutonic Knights, who were from germany (hence "teutonic") converted or killed/drove out the pagans from the area, and started a huge migration of German people to the area. they also tried to convert Lithuanians, but they failed. the Lithuanians later converted to christianity anyway when they joined with Poland to create the polish-lithuanian commonwealth.

after setting up a government there, there was not much left to do, as far as crusading went, and they chafed a lot with the christian neighboring countries as well. at the battle of grunwald (1410) they were defeated by the polish-lithuanian commonwealth and reduced to the duchy of prussia, under polish rule.

then, Albert, the elector of Brandenburg, (1490-1568) an electorate in the Holy Roman Empire (800-1806, could be called the predecessor of Germany, a precarious collection of >1000 germanic countries that was more of an alliance than an actual country, "the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire" -voltaire) also became ruler/grand master of prussia/the teutonic order (though prussia itself was not a part of the hre, and a fiefdom of Poland).

he passed down the title to Frederick William the Great Elector (1620-1688), who seized a chance in the 30 years war to ally with Sweden against Poland and force Poland to let prussia go. voila, the kingdom of prussia-brandenburg. however, he was not allowed to call himself king because a) Poland kept a small chunk of prussia for themselves, so the king of Poland also had the right to call himself king of prussia, and b) Brandenburg was still a part of the hre, which already had an emperor, and they didn't like having another guy in the hre call himself king.

(also these guys were all hohenzollerns)

okay! so his son Frederick I inherited Brandenburg- prussia, then his son Frederick I (not a typo, they were both Frederick I), then Frederick William I, also called the "soldier king." he put a great focus on military, but funnily enough, while his son Frederick II is known as the promoter of the arts who turned prussia from a backwater country into a European superpower, Frederick II entered a lot more wars than his "soldier king" father ever did. Frederick William I was also known for 'the Potsdam giants," his army of carefully selected soldiers who were all over 6 ft. also, Frederick William I was a terrible, strict father who was so bad that Frederick II tried to escape with his gay lover. Frederick William I was... not happy.

Frederick II was also known for being short, making his coffee with champagne and mustard, playing the flute, being even more misogynistic than other European rulers at the time, and tricking germans into liking potatoes (which grew well in German soil) so that they wouldn't have to rely on other countries for crops.

okay so Frederick II is also called Frederick the great (or große, which sounds like "gross" lol) completely reformed prussia, and also engaged with a lot of wars (that he won) with his military genius (cough cough using the fantastic military he inherited from his father cough). notable wars include the war of Austrian succession, in which he contested the legitimacy of Maria Theresa's succession to her father's throne (which was sort of an excuse to stole the fertile land of Silesia from Austria), and the 7 years war, the world war before the world wars, which was started again over Silesia.

prussia really rocketed to the European stage during the 7 years war, when it was surrounded by extremely powerful enemies (the French, Austrians, and Russians) on all sides, and was forced to do most land fighting by her own because her ally Britain was a) focusing on fighting France on the American stage, b) focusing on naval battle, and c) did not have the resources for huge land army. Britain mostly helped financially (on the European front, at least). prussia was losing terribly, but after a series of miracles, including russia withdrawing because the queen died and her nephew (I think?) who succeeded her loved prussia ("I'd rather be a Prussian soldier than a Russian czar," or something like that) and the Austrian generals being too careful and not seizing chances like prussia did. the fact that prussia managed to come out on top (even though they failed miserably in the beginning) was huge, and would continue to put them at odds with austria in the years following.

prussia also participated in the first partition of Poland w/ russia & austria. Poland should have dissolved prussia when they had the chance when they defeated the Teutonic Knights back in the battle of grunwald. :/

because Frederick II never had children with his wife (I wonder why) his nephew Frederick William II succeeded him, followed by Frederick William III, Frederick William IV, followed by William I.

(if you ever need to guess a Prussian monarch's name, guess frederick, William, or Frederick William)

William I bullied other northern German states like Saxony and Hesse into the northern German confederation, which was set up very soon after the seven weeks war with austria, in which prussia and austria fought to be the dominant power in the German confederation, a group of German countries that followed the dissolution of the fragile hre after the napoleonic wars.

(fun fact about the napzoelanic wars- Frederick William III, who was king of prussia during the Napoleonic wars and got his ass kicked, was incredibly indecisive and rather useless. his wife, queen Louise, became involved in politics and was very well-liked by the people.)

prussia won the seven weeks war, and thus was created the northern German confederation. in 1870, after the franco-prussian war broke out (in which Otto von Bismark, who knew the power of media, cleverly made it seem that France had been the aggressor), the southern German states joined the northern German confederation against France, laying siege to Paris. this sort of set up the stage for ww1 Franco-german aggression, in which France tried to take back the alsace-lorraine region prussia had stolen.

so! the southern German states joined the northern German confederation and officially became the German empire, and William I became Kaiser William I. prussia was the dominant force within the German government.

however, following Germany's defeat in ww1 and kaiser William II's (kaiser William I's grandson) abdication, prussia was reduced to the free state of prussia. while it still existed, all its power was sucked out. however, prussia was, compared to the rest of germany, much more economically stable during the disaster that was the Weimar Republic.

during n*zi germany, h*tler looked up to Frederick the great (who had nothing to do with nazism, and brandenburg-prussia had been known for receiving religious refugees), and the legacy of Prussian militarism, tarnishing the legacy of both. after ww2, the allies officially dissolved prussia because they wanted to remake germany during occupation, and they believed prussia would be an enduring symbol of aggression and militarism. (which, to be is fair, is its legacy- Bismarck himself described prussia as "not a nation with an army, but an army with a nation). Prussia was split into different German states, and east prussia became Kaliningrad, which was given to russia, and exists as an exclave today. while other germanic countries that existed alongside prussia like Bavaria and Saxony still exist as current-day states in germany, prussia does not.

Prussia's flag is also very cool- white, with black horizontal stripes at the top and bottom and a black eagle.

uh yeah! also look up the prussia meander kokoshnik- it's really cool. it was a wedding gift for duchess Cecile when she married kaiser William II.

bro,,,,,,,,,,, this was so fucking cool and when i asked for infodumps you DELIVERED /positive!!!!!

thank you!! this was really interesting and i loved it!!!! /gen

[presidentrhodes]

Spider-Man Far From Home spoilers

I just finished watching it and, honestly, I’d say it was a pretty good way to bid farewell to the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

Spoilers under the cut. This is pretty long and rambly. 

1. Midtown high is supposed to be a school for geniuses but these little shits use comic sans in tribute videos and steal watermarked Getty Images pictures to put in them. I loved it, particularly with the song choice and the fact that Vision’s picture was from the Civil War airport standoff in Leipzig — that means only Peter could’ve provided it and no one bothered to ask how he got it. 

2. Tom Holland really wasn’t kidding when he said the film was a love letter to RDJ/Tony Stark. He was everywhere, his sacrifice was being recognised around the world: they even had a documentary on him, which was available in the in-flight entertainment, plus, there were murals and photographs in Venice and Prague. He was very much present throughout the film. 

3. EDITH. In a nutshell, it’s an augmented reality-enabled AI that controls a tactical and defensive system Tony built to protect Earth in the aftermath of his demise. Think Ultron’s perfect self minus the winning personality — EDITH controls a bunch of massive Stark Industries satellites in orbit that are equipped with thousands of weaponised drones. It can remotely target individual threats and take them out with simple voice commands. It also is able to connect to any network in the vicinity, so, Peter was able to see what his classmates were doing on their devices. 

I’ve already seen so many angry posts comparing EDITH to Project Insight without taking into account a) intent; and b) the reality of the MCU. Tony didn’t build EDITH for the same reason Zola built Project Insight. The former was meant to be a last or first line of defence, controlled by an Avenger Tony personally trusted. The latter was a means to subjugate the world population to Hydra’s will. 

All tech in the MCU is dangerous when it falls into the wrong hands — that’s why they’re called the wrong hands and why Steve once said the safest hands are their own. The supersoldier serum gave us Steve Rogers; it also gave us the Winter Soldiers, a bunch of dangerous, invincible highly-trained assassins. Pym particles gave us Ant-Man and the Wasp as well as time travel; it also gave us Yellowjacket, who immediately wanted to weaponise the tech. The Iron Man suit gave us Iron Man; but also gave us Iron Monger, who wanted to build an army of metal soldiers. Wakanda’s highly-advanced weapon systems were able to withstand a full-scale invasion from the Outriders, but those same weapons almost started a global war in Killmonger’s hands. Project Insight and Ultron showed us the bad side of AI; JARVIS, Vision, FRIDAY, Karen and EDITH, to an extent, showed us the good side of AI.

The point is, technology in the wrong hands will always be a bad thing yet people only seem to gripe about Stark tech while ignoring every other piece of advanced technology we’ve seen weaponized or misused. I wonder why. Since the MCU canonically isn’t made up of one big Luddite colony, there’ll always be new technology being developed and bad guys finding ways to abuse them. 

Just look at the holographic tech Mysterio designed while at Stark Industries. Even before he was fired, his ambitions were grander and afterwards, he weaponized it and willingly sent people to their dooms so that he could play a hero. When 16-year-old Peter Parker, MJ and Ned — literal children — found out the truth and Mysterio risked being exposed as a fraud, he actively tried to kill them. Mysterio beat the shit out of Peter and threw him in front of an incoming high-speed train, so, no, I don’t care if Tony Stark was mean to him by firing him, he was a piece of shit who tried repeatedly to kill a kid. 

Tony, meanwhile, spent $600+ million on the holographic tech to design B.A.R.F — a technology with some really promising applications in the MedTech sector to help people overcome their PTSD and trauma. That’s the fucking difference between a superhero and a supervillain.

Sure, EDITH also has massive privacy concerns. That’s on Tony, but after the Decimation, I think people have bigger problems to worry about than whether Peter Parker is snooping on their text messages. Ultimately, EDITH offers Peter, and whoever else is going to fill up the Avengers roster in the future, a plan B to strike the bad guys from a safe distance. I

4. Tony left Peter in charge of EDITH. Not the Avengers, not SHIELD, and definitely not the US Department of Defense — a fact that actually pissed off Mysterio. Tony left it in Peter’s hands because he knew Spider-Man took the meaning of responsibility far more seriously than he ever did. All those years ago, Peter told him if one could do the things he could, and they didn’t, and then the bad things happened, they happened because of them. And, honestly, if anyone deserves to have control over such a potentially dangerous piece of tech that can help in future battles, then it’s Peter — even more so than Tony. 

5. Again, Peter is 16 in this film and still coping with loss and trauma. He willingly gave controls of EDITH to Quentin because Mysterio had everyone fooled, including Nick Fury/Talos — they’re both highly experienced soldiers. Fooling them wouldn’t have been easy and Mysterio’s plan was extremely well thought-out and perfectly executed. Peter redeem himself in the end and takes back control of EDITH. 

6. Peter and MJ were super adorable. Spider-Man is the only franchise apart from Iron Man, where the secondary lead characters are allowed to grow without it all being about the main hero. MJ is allowed to explore her feelings for Peter and measure them against Brad’s affection. Ned is allowed to also grow in his character and be more than Spider-Man’s best friend/guy in a chair. 

7. Happy and May were also adorable.

8. Happy ruined a perfectly good bed of tulips just to rescue May’s nephew and give him the TLC/pep talk he needed after, again, Beck pushed Peter in front of a high-speed train that would’ve killed an ordinary person. 

9. Peter confusing ACDC with Led Zeppelin is the most Gen Z thing ever. Happy watched Peter design his own suit and it reminded him of the times he spent watching Tony tinker in his lab. You could feel Tony’s absence pretty viscerally in that scene on the jet. 

10. Peter tingle. Lol. 

11. Happy’s words about Tony were beautiful. He said something along the lines of, “Tony was my best friend. He second-guessed everything he did. He was a mess. But the one thing he didn’t second-guess was picking you.” That really furthered the Iron Dad Spider Son narrative.

12. Iron Zombie was the w o r s t thing ever. Again, Beck emotionally manipulated 16-year-old Peter Parker and said if Peter was any good, his mentor would still be alive just as he projected an illusion of a decaying Iron Man corpse attacking him. To give you a sense of how manipulative he really is, he told his guy in the chair that Peter’s blood will be on his hands because he had failed to report a missing drone part that MJ had discovered in Prague. 

13. Peter finally understanding that he doesn’t have to be the next Tony Stark or Iron Man. He just needs to be the next Spider-Man and Peter Parker. 

14. Peter choosing to safeguard EDITH. 

15. J. Jonah Jameson and J.K. Simmons. That is all. He’s the MCU equivalent of Alex Jones and I love him so much. I wonder if this means we’ll see Doctor Strange offer Peter his help to erase everyone’s memories about the reveal of his secret identity. 

16. Every Nick Fury scene automatically becomes 2000x funnier when you realize it’s Talos posing as Fury and 90% of the time, he has no idea what the fuck is going on and he’s just winging it as he goes along. Also, he was furious that he and his wife, as members of a shapeshifting species, were unable to detect Mysterio’s ruse. 

17. Mysterio was a douchebag. Apart from trying to kill actual kids because he feared they might expose him, he did nothing worthy of a hero. He was jealous and angry about Tony, and he wanted to usurp Iron Man without doing any of the hard work. He willingly put people in danger, was prepared to sacrifice people to make his actions seem more realistic and wanted to take credit for saving the day and preventing an Avengers-level catastrophe. I’ve already seen reviewers trying to sympathise with Mysterio, and his persistent attempts to kill a 16-year-old kid because Tony was apparently mean to him. 

18. And, no, Tony did not steal B.A.R.F tech from Mysterio as some review sites are claiming. The narrative is unreliable at best because we hear only Quentin’s point of view — the same Quentin who had been using his holographic tech to deceive people and put them in harm’s way because he wanted to shake the Queen’s hands or some misguided bullshit. He deserved to fired. Plus, he was a Stark Industries employee. Tech companies almost always own the patent to whatever tech you design or invent for them when you’re on their payroll. It’s how corporations work.

19. Tony quoted Henry IV to Fury when he told him to give EDITH to Peter and said Spidey wouldn’t get the reference (Heavy is the head that wears the crown) because it’s not Star Wars. It was a nice, poignant moment — made funnier when you realize that’s Talos in disguise, which means at some point, Fury had to have a conversation with him about Shakespeare and Star Wars. Someone pls write the fic. 

20. The most important thing is that this film actually tried to address the Decimation. Endgame pretended to gloss over it to give Gay Joe Russo his 15 minutes of fame. But this film actually started with May and Peter organizing an event to help the displaced. Pepper sent a huge check and apologized for not being able to make it in person. :( 

20a. I love Jake Gyllenhaal. I had expected Quentin to be a dramatic thot but he really brought a lot of depth to the character. 

Overall, I liked the film a lot more than I had anticipated. Some people are going to scrutinize this film to death to prove Tony was the ultimate MCU villain and, hey, if that’s the hill they choose to die on, I don’t really care. After 11 years and 23 films later, if they still think that Tony was the real villain all along, then nothing we say or Marvel does, will change their mind. 

Personally, I thought this film was a good send off to Tony, now that they’ve firmly established that Peter Parker/Spider-Man is going to be the new face of the MCU and will carry with him the Iron Man legacy. He wasn’t always right and a lot of his choices tended to backfire but, in the end, his motivations were good and he still went out as the man who saved the world. He, unlike Beck, or Vulture before him, never tried to kill a child, not even when he brought him to a parking lot brawl among friends. 

Now, if only Marvel can just leave Tony’s legacy alone and let Peter, and the rest of the MCU, thrive on its own instead of retconning established Iron Man lore to fit new narratives. 

[njawaidofficial]

Critic's Notebook: "The Mooch" Is the Newest Star of Summer's Most Toxic Reality TV Show

http://styleveryday.com/2017/07/29/critics-notebook-the-mooch-is-the-newest-star-of-summers-most-toxic-reality-tv-show/

Critic's Notebook: "The Mooch" Is the Newest Star of Summer's Most Toxic Reality TV Show

From Anthony Scaramucci’s potty mouth to John McCain’s dramatic vote, Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ story hour to Trump’s Jeff Sessions obsession, the hate-watch of the summer is in full swing.

Summer is traditionally the season when the networks largely abandon scripted programming to concentrate on reality shows. But their offerings pale in comparison to the current reality show taking place in Washington, with the White House and Congress in a dead heat for which can produce the most drama. Cliffhangers? Check. Pivotal votes? Check. Colorful characters? Not only check, but thanks to the newest arrival, White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, checkmate.

Cable news aficionados can be forgiven if they’re feeling a bit fatigued these days. Just last night they had to stay up to the wee hours as the GOP-dominated Congress fitfully stumbled over their health care bill. It was the latest of a series of attempts so misbegotten and absurd that they’ve managed to do what the Democrats never could — drum up popular support for the Affordable Care Act. Even Trump supporters have suddenly realized it isn’t so bad after all.

Last night’s episode of the seemingly never-ending saga was the most powerful of all. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington feels like a documentary compared to the spectacle of Sen. John McCain, recently diagnosed with brain cancer and still sporting the scar from his surgery, making a dramatic return to Washington. First, he lectured his colleagues about how badly they’re failing the country. Then he voted in favor of a bill he had just railed against. Finally, he shocked everyone by joining moderate Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski in seemingly defeating the bill for good. (Except, as we’ve come to realize over the last few months, you can’t kill this thing without silver bullets and a crucifix.)

As if aware that every good reality show needs some laughs, Sarah Huckabee Sanders read a letter to the president at a recent press conference. It was from Dylan, a 9-year-old boy, nicknamed “Pickle,” who said that Trump was his favorite president and that his birthday cake was in the shape of Trump’s hat (sorry to have it break it to you, Dylan, but that’s actually his hair). Dylan also asked the president how much money he has, but he’ll have to wait until Robert Mueller forces Trump to release his tax returns to find out. 

Meanwhile, Kellyanne Conway, the Goldie Hawn of this Laugh-In administration, has made a few appearances. Yesterday, on such unbiased shows as Fox & Friends and Hannity, she decried the “hoops you have to jump through” to satisfy that pesky Office of Government Ethics. She also lamented that her colleagues at the White House were “using the press to shiv each other in the ribs,” although, to be fair, Scaramucci would probably be happy to eliminate the middle man. 

That shrinking violet Donald Trump Jr. recently turned down the opportunity to appear on camera before a Senate committee, instead cutting a deal to be interviewed privately. The same was true of Jared Kushner — though that’s understandable (have you heard him speak?). But we’re bound to hear from both of them in future episodes of As the Beltway Turns.

And then there’s our president, and I use the term loosely, who still seems to think that he’s hosting The Apprentice. The internal White House struggles have been going on since Trump took office. But they’ve reached a fever pitch recently, with the former reality television star even reprising his trademark “You’re fired!” catchphrase to comically (presumably — one never knows) threaten Health Secretary Tom Price if the health care bill failed to pass. Trump did this at, of all places, the Boy Scout Jamboree.

Since Trump appears to believe that running the country involves little more than tweeting things he’s heard on Fox & Friends, he’s had ample time recently to double down on his threats. His constant tweetstorm humiliation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions has actually managed to make the immigrant- and marijuana-hating Southerner seem sympathetic. It seems Trump isn’t going to fire Sessions, but rather badger him incessantly until he quits on his own. Forget The Apprentice; this has the makings of an all-new, high-concept game show in which contestants are subjected to social-media torture until they break. It should prove particularly popular among teenagers.

Then there’s poor Sean Spicer (a phrase I never thought I’d use). The hapless press secretary’s fate was sealed when Melissa McCarthy began playing him to devastating comic effect on Saturday Night Live. That the person portraying Spicer was a woman was the final straw for Trump, who derides weakness above all else. Spicer “resigned” after Scaramucci was hired, but the writing was already on the wall. Now, if we can only persuade Lorne Michaels to ditch Alec Baldwin and hire an actress to play Trump, we may not have to worry about POTUS running for re-election.

Of course, for sheer obnoxiousness, no one compares to Scaramucci. Spicer at least had the decency to look suitably pained while delivering bald-faced lies on behalf of the president. Scaramucci spews them out with a relish that would make Joseph Goebbels blush. If he was going to be on a reality show, it would be Jersey Shore.

The profane, gel-haired financier, whose nickname is “The Mooch” (you can’t make this stuff up), has already been labeled Trump’s Mini-Me. A communications director who seems to equate communicating with making obscene threats, he began honing his obnoxious act with a series of testosterone-drenched appearances on Sunday morning political shows, in which he threatened to kill White House leakers. He then gave a jaw-dropping interview to the New Yorker, in which he described Reince Priebus as a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic” and declared, “I’m not Steve Bannon. I’m not trying to suck my own cock.” (The latter comment was particularly egregious since the act to which Scaramucci was referring requires extreme flexibility, not a trait associated with Bannon.) The statements were so remarkable that even the normally staid New York Times felt obligated to print them in full.

Scaramucci, who Trump seems to enjoy wielding as his personal weapon of mass destruction, clearly had his target set on Priebus, whose fate was sealed in the latest episode of Survivor: White House Edition. Friday afternoon, Trump ousted Priebus and named Gen. John F. Kelly the new White House chief of staff. Priebus will hopefully have the opportunity to form a support group including Sessions, Spicer, Sally Yates, Preet Bharara and James Comey, among many others. Now that would make for great reality television!

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