CaliforniaDisasters

On WX/Geo/Fire/Disaster/History Buff/CERT/Rockhound.

[CaliforniaDisasters @CalDisasters]

#RussoUkrainianWar

[WW3finalboss @WW3finalboss]

BUDANOV SAYS UKRAINE IS DESTROYING SOMETHING PUTIN CANNOT REBUILD: RUSSIA’S REPUTATION 🇺🇦🇷🇺

Kyrylo Budanov believes Ukraine’s campaign against Russia is inflicting damage far beyond destroyed infrastructure and financial losses. It is dismantling the image of a military superpower that Moscow spent decades cultivating.

“Russia is suffering a reputational blow. That is the most important thing. Oil prices may somehow stabilize, the war will end — things will normalize. But the reputational damage will last for a very long time.”

For years, the Kremlin relied on the perception that Russian military power was overwhelming and that its territory was effectively beyond the reach of its adversaries.

Ukraine has challenged both assumptions. Russian forces have failed to achieve a decisive victory, while Ukrainian drones have demonstrated that even strategically important facilities deep inside Russia are vulnerable.

Oil infrastructure can be repaired. Markets can recover. Military equipment can eventually be replaced. But restoring the credibility of a military power whose weaknesses have been exposed is a different challenge altogether.

Budanov’s final words leave little doubt about Ukraine’s determination to continue applying pressure.

“We are not stopping.”

For Budanov, the lasting consequence of Russia’s invasion may be the damage Moscow has inflicted on its own image of invincibility.

[CaliforniaDisasters @CalDisasters]

#RussoUkrainianWar

[Daisy @DaizyZeeX]

OMSK IS BURNING! 🔥
Ukraine has just hit the Omsk oil refinery...Russia’s largest fuel production facility, located 2500 km. away from Ukraine’s borders. This is HUGE.

[Acyn @Acyn]

TRUMP on HIGH GAS PRICES: We’re making money like we’ve never made before. They’ll say: President Trump is bragging about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump. I don’t give a damn. We’re making a freaking fortune.

[Mario @PawlowskiMario]

I live in a small MAGA town.
I know MAGA people. I drink with them. I talk to them. I study them.

They’re not the loud Twitter yappers, at least most of them. They’re quieter. Slower. But the delusion runs deep, just bottled up in passive smiles and soft voices.

A few weeks ago, one of them tried to convert me at a bar. He knew I wasn’t into the Trump cult, but he started soft. Calm voice. Friendly tone.

“Mario, you’re white. You can drink a lot, you eat meat, “he was just surprised that I was eating rare burger” and drinking vodka chasing it with Guinness. He also said, “You’re one of us. You should feel proud.”

That’s their seduction tactic.
Not facts. Not logic. Just subtle tribal grooming.
“You’re white. You drink. You belong.”

It was almost sweet, in a sad, culty way.
Like a Jehovah’s Witness trying to sell you eternal life with a shaky brochure and cheap suit.

But let’s talk about the whole ecosystem.
The truth.

MAGA men?
Most are not warriors.
They’re out-of-shape, insecure, jealous small-town boys who peaked in high school, still clinging to stories from when they “almost went pro” or “should’ve been in the military.”
They’re proud of being able to drink a case of light beer, drive a truck, and scream about freedom while their knees buckle from sugar and rage.

They’re easy to manipulate because they don’t ask questions.
They don’t read.
They react.

They memorize memes like scripture and repeat them like gospel.
They think being loud equals being right.

They think the world is laughing with them.
It’s not.
The world’s laughing at them, when it’s not just ignoring them entirely.

MAGA women?

They’re caught in a brutal paradox, constantly screaming about how proud and strong they are, while reshaping every inch of their body to meet a fake beauty standard pushed by the very system they claim to hate.
Plastic lips. Inflated cheeks. Eyelashes thick as windshield wipers.
Trying to look rich while shopping clearance at Walmart.
They scream about “natural family values” while injecting Botox and collapsing into MLM scams that promise empowerment through overpriced lipstick.

They mock liberals for being “gender confused” while wearing more synthetic parts than a Barbie made in a Russian factory.

Here’s the thing: MAGA America isn’t just backward.

It’s boring. MAGA folks are simply subsimple.

There’s nothing imaginative about it. No new culture. No innovation. No ideas.
They don’t invent, they imitate.
They don’t challenge, they chant.

It’s the same five phrases over and over.
The same flag. The same truck. The same outfit.
Patriot cosplay.

And that’s why the world doesn’t just hate MAGA.
It forgets it.
Because once the shouting stops, there’s nothing under the hood.

Just cheap beer breath, fake smiles, and a belief that whiteness and loudness are still enough to matter.

You want the brutal truth?

Even without Trump, even without the cult, most of them would still be irrelevant.
Not because they’re evil.
But because they chose comfort over growth.
Tribalism over truth.
Imitation over imagination.

They don’t want to understand the world.
They want the world to stay small enough to understand them.

And that’s the saddest, most humiliating part.

[Secular Talk ([email protected]) @KyleKulinski]

Holy fucking shit

[C J - Andor is everywhere now @CHARLOT21755647]

The way Luthen pretends to flee just in order to trick the Imperial captain into turning up the tractor force so that the dish pulls the metal chaff right into itself … quite literally using “the tools of my enemy to defeat them”
#Andor

[Acyn @Acyn]

Trump: Why do we always had take people from shit house countries? Why can't we take people from Norway, Sweden, Denmark? They gave us Greenland. We got Venezuela and Greenland.

(Denmark did not give us Greenland)

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

Will Ferrell trying to break Danny McBride & Craig Robinson during an EASTBOUND & DOWN blooper reel is gold.

Watching the two of them fight for their lives to keep a straight face while Ferrell keeps pushing is almost funnier than the actual scene.

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

Trump:

“My uncle invented radar. Can you believe it?”

(Fact check: false)

[NWS Los Angeles @NWSLosAngeles]

HEADS UP!!!!

Minor to moderate coastal flooding likely Sun-Thu
* High tides 7.5 to 8.0 feet
- 1.0 to 1.5 feet above astronomical projections
* Moderate to significant beach erosion likely
* Small chance of localized upgrades to Warnings

#CAwx

[Acyn @Acyn]

OBAMA: He pulled out of the JCPOA, starts this war—Seven months later, six months after they declared victory, how's that war going? 

Our allies and our bases have been attacked. Americans have been killed. Hundreds of Americans have been wounded. We have run down our stock of missiles. And Iran now has veto power over the strait of hormuz, where oil goes through to the world market. 

This is the reason why the price of oil is up. Nobody disputes that. This is the reason the price of diesel is up. This is the reason why the price of just about everything is up.

Meanwhile, you got the defense secretary who's squarely focused on important matters: the jawlines and testosterone levels of our troops. 

These are not serious people. And the problem is you end up having to pay the price for their lack of seriousness.

[Alerts SoCal @AlertsSocal]

It’s wicked down here in South OC Mission Viejo area

#AlertsSocal #OCHAWKNEWS #Lightning #Thunder #Rain

[AnthroVet50 @spooked75]

I'm an American, a U.S. Army veteran, and I live in Europe.

And I'll tell you something that might upset a few people back home.

I want my fellow Americans to enjoy the same rights, freedoms, and quality of life that millions of Europeans already enjoy.

I want Americans to have access to affordable healthcare without worrying about going bankrupt because they got sick.

I want American students to pursue higher education without burying themselves in decades of debt.

I want Americans to enjoy stronger digital privacy laws, meaningful consumer protections, paid parental leave, and guaranteed paid vacation.

I want police officers held to rigorous standards of accountability, where de-escalation is emphasized and deadly force is genuinely a last resort.

I want Americans to understand that freedom isn't just about what the government cannot do to you. It's also about having the security and opportunity to actually enjoy your life.

And before someone starts screaming about socialism, understand something.

European countries are capitalist democracies. They have private businesses, entrepreneurs, private property, competitive markets, and individual liberties. They've simply made different decisions about what protections their citizens should enjoy.

Europe isn't perfect. No place is. But pretending America has nothing to learn from other democracies is ridiculous.

I served my country. I love my country. And I don't believe patriotism requires pretending that America is the best at everything.

In fact, I believe the exact opposite.

Real patriotism means wanting your country to improve, even when that means admitting another country does something better.

I don't want Americans to have fewer freedoms.

I want them to have MORE.

More protections. More opportunities. More security. More accountability. More freedom to live their lives without being financially destroyed by illness, education, or circumstances beyond their control.

And having lived on both sides of the Atlantic, I know that much of this is possible.

We should stop asking why Americans can't have these things and start asking why they're expected to settle for less.

[Fascinating @fasc1nate]

An AI recreation of Mt. St. Helens 1980 eruption created by Steve Rosenow.

The creepiest photos ever taken: https://t.co/l5p7U8P4A2

[Nic Munoz @nic_munoz]

People don't understand Newton's insane IQ. Newton spent two years locked inside his house. His neighbors said he seemed erratic. He barely went outside. If he did it was only to get food. In those two years he invented calculus. Like he literally invented what takes most people years to even learn. He also changed light theory forever. He found white light includes all the colors. And to top it off he started formulating gravity. All within two years. Two years of insane maniacally intense focus on changing the world. This may have been the most important two years in human history.

[Critically Thinking & Drinking 🧐 🥃🧉🍸🍹🤪 @TheCriticalDri1]

Single GREATEST commercial ever made in the history of mankind 🤣

[🎼🌺Music Love♥️ @ThoNg676733]

One of the most Badass lines in Cinema.

HistorySudden Impact (1983)

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

In 1941, a Spaniard walked into the British embassy in Madrid and offered to spy on the Nazis.

The British turned him down.

So he went to the Germans instead, pretended to be a loyal fascist, and got hired as a German spy. His plan was to lie to them for the rest of the war.

It worked better than anyone could have imagined.

His name was Juan Pujol García. Before the war he had tried his hand at running a chicken farm and a movie theater. He had no spy training. What he had was a deep hatred of both fascism and communism after the Spanish Civil War, and an incredible imagination.

The Germans gave him a codename, invisible ink, money, and orders to go to Britain and recruit spies.

He didn't go to Britain.

He went to Lisbon, Portugal, and made everything up.

Using a tourist guidebook, maps, magazines, newsreels, and a British railway timetable from the library, he wrote long, detailed reports about life in England. Military movements. Morale. Ports.

He'd never been there. He made mistakes. He didn't understand British money. He once reported that dockworkers in Glasgow would do anything for a liter of wine.

The Germans loved him anyway.

Then British codebreakers reading German messages noticed something strange. The Germans were hunting for a convoy that didn't exist, based on a report from some agent in Britain they'd never heard of.

The British went looking for this mystery spy. They found Pujol. In 1942 they finally took him on and brought him to London.

Now he had real help. MI5 gave him the codename Garbo, after the actress, because they thought he was the greatest actor in the world.

Together with his British handler, Pujol built a fake spy network for the Germans. It eventually had 27 imaginary agents. Each had a name, a personality, a job, and a backstory. A Welsh nationalist. A Venezuelan student. A Greek sailor. Some of them recruited their own imaginary sub-agents.

When they needed to explain why one agent had gone quiet, they killed him off. They even put a fake obituary in a Liverpool newspaper. The Germans reportedly paid a pension to his widow.

Who also didn't exist.

Then came D-Day.

Hours before the landings, the British let Pujol send a message warning the Germans that the invasion was coming in Normandy. It was timed so it would arrive too late to matter, but it made him look brilliant.

Three days later he sent the most important message of his career. Normandy was a trick, he said. The real invasion was still coming, at Calais, led by a huge army under General Patton.

That army was fake too. But the Germans believed him.

German forces that could have been rushed to Normandy were held back near Calais for weeks, waiting for an attack that never came.

The Germans were so grateful they awarded him the Iron Cross.

A few months later, King George VI made him a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

He's one of the only people known to have been decorated by both sides of the war.

After the war, afraid of revenge from surviving Nazis, he faked his own death from malaria in Africa and disappeared to Venezuela, where he lived quietly running a shop.

For decades the world thought he was dead.

In 1984, a British writer tracked him down. Pujol came back to Normandy for the 40th anniversary of D-Day and met veterans who had landed on the beaches.

Some of them thanked him.

[Hque 💌 @hquestudio]

Robert Baratheon is called a useless king because people think being a good king = being a good person.

Robert was a TERRIBLE person. Drunk, whore, fat, hit his wife, ignored his kids, spent all the money, let Jon Arryn and Ned do all the work.

But he kept the peace for 17 years. SEVENTEEN.

Think about what he inherited:
- A kingdom bankrupt from a war
- Dorne wants revenge for Elia and her kids
- The Iron Islands rebelled
- The Lannisters want payback
- The Targaryens are still alive across the sea
- Every house is broke and angry

And nobody moved. WHY?

Because everyone knew what Robert did to Rhaegar. He caved his chest in with a hammer at the Trident. The man who killed the most beloved prince in Westeros.

Tywin Lannister - the richest, coldest man alive - was SCARED of Robert. That's why he stayed in line.

Robert's whole reign was: "You all hate each other but you fear me more."

As soon as Robert died? War. War. War. War. Five kings. Red Wedding. Sparrows. White Walkers.

Robert wasn't a good king. He was a necessary king. A hammer holding the Seven Kingdoms together by fear.

The moment the hammer broke, the whole thing shattered.

[Eric Fisher @ericfisher]

As of this date, this is how the current El Nino event compares to the last 3 Super-Ninos

Absolute beast. Has been dominant over tropical weather this summer/fall and expect the Lower 48 pattern to get much stormier later in November.