Jaime Lannister

if only you knew how bad things really are

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

"what's the most esoteric piece of knowledge you know?"

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

[Serf @RoyalSerf]

mace windu fell out of a window

[Sandy Petersen 🪔 @SandyofCthulhu]

Okay so I promised I'd discuss the nature of orc reproduction today and WHY they are in fact one of Morgoths' most lethal creations.

We know orcs breed fast. I admit this is stated by dwarfs and elves who are the slowest breeding things in the universe. (Arwen was 2800 years old before she got married.)

I'm speculating, but I think it's supported by the works. Imagine that orcs DON'T breed like humans. Instead they breed like dogs. A large dog is about about the size of an orc. They are pregnant about 80 days (same as a great dane). They give birth to a small litter of precocious children. Say 3-6 whelps, who are more or less abandoned to fend for themselves in a creche. A few guards get assigned to feed the orclings, and keep them from killing each other too much. Mom sticks around a few weeks as one of the guards, then leaves. If the orclings grow to adulthood at the rate of a dog, this means they can breed on their own in 2 years.

This isn't a weird preternatural ability. It's pretty common among mammals. A cow weighs more than 1000 lbs at 2 years of age. Mountain lions are 2 years old when they have their first litter. It's humans that are the outliers with our long gestation and growth. Why would orcs be similar? Why not be like other animals?

Morgoth's magic means orcs are born with a natural ability to learn Black Speech. If they're precocious the orcs can walk or crawl from birth. Think of lemurs - they are primates, but have motor skills early. Or goats & pigs - they can walk within a half hour of birth. This makes orcs more alien, which I think is good.

YES this also means that orcs, at age 2 and adult size, are going to be ABSOLUTELY CRAPPY warriors. Their skills will be limited. Sure they can stab you and figure out which end of a bow is the pointy bit, but most any human outfight a single orc. Don't worry. It's all part of the plan, and helps explain how the orcs get killed in such vast numbers in battles when they lose.

NOW FOR THE MATH. If orcs can breed at age 2, and each female has a litter of 3-6 orcs a year, then in the 78 years between the Battle of Five Armies and the War of the Ring, Sauron could have bred heaps of orcs. Assume the species was almost completely exterminated at Five Armies. Twenty years later there would be over 300,000 orcs.(assuming no losses). Thirty years after, almost 100 million orcs! By 78 years to the War of the Ring, there are theoretically 35 QUINTILLION orcs.

Obviously this isn't the case. They hunt, they fight, they die, they eat each other. I'm sure there are only a few million orcs by War of the Ring. But these creatures reproduce with amazing swiftness and that's what Sauron likes.

This is why Sauron doesn't care that orc warriors are inept. He can afford to lose 100 orcs for each human soldier he kills. He doesn't care when orcs kill each other at Cirith Ungol. Plenty more where THEY came from. And after all, orcs DO learn more skill in fighting over time, so eventually they're decent enough. Infighting just hones those skills.

Orcs don't need magic, super strength or anything else special to threaten Middle Earth. All they need is to be orcs. For leaders or elite troops, Sauron's got trolls, easterlings, and southrons. And a few remaining Black Numenoreans.

Why did Sauron breed Uruk-Hai? Surely they are slower to breed than orcs. I think the fact that Uruk-Hai can fight in the sunlight is a huge edge.

This means that an orc's family life is being raised in an underground warren, fighting for maggoty bread with your siblings, and being terrorized by bigger orcs. There are no orc babies in their cribs for Aragorn to massacre (sorry G. R. R. Martin). Just a terrifying unnatural species that destroys the world's natural balance. If allowed to grow unchecked, they will exterminate every other intelligent being.

You may argue that Sandy made a lot of assumptions here. And I did. But my assumptions match up with the movies and books AND more importantly make orcs a fearful force.

[Wild Horse 🪶🇺🇸 @Wild_Horse]

Cocksucker.

I generally don't like SEALs, but it's a fucking shitty thing to mock young guys who died serving their country.

Hasan knows he has to walk around in public occasionally, right? That there are SEALs... in the public?

[Take Testosterone @maxyourtest]

We’ve not forgotten

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

ELON, PLEASE BUY A JAPANESE TV NETWORK!!!

I’m begging you from the bottom of my heart. YOU are the only person left who can save and protect Japan!!

Maybe it sounds pathetic. But Japanese people have tried again and again, and none of us could buy one. Our media is terrifyingly dominated by the left. Every single day, Japanese TV pours out attacks on President Trump and tells people nothing but how terrifying AI is!!

Japan is a valuable market, too. Please, Elon Musk, buy a Japanese TV network and pull Japan out of this rotten information prison!!

X is our only lifeline now. If things keep going this way, I’m terrified Japan will end up like South Africa or Britain!!

I mean this with every fiber of my being: THIS IS THE SINCERE WISH OF ALL JAPANESE PEOPLE!!

PLEASE BUY A JAPANESE TV NETWORK!!!

You are our last hope. I’m not exaggerating. I’m not saying this for attention. This is what I truly feel. Please, please, PLEASE!!!

And when you do, I’ll put everything I have into promoting that network in Japanese!!! I have many Japanese friends whose posts reach HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of impressions. Every one of them feels the same way!!

Leave the promotion to us!!!

PLEASE, ELON. I’M BEGGING YOU!!!

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

NOBODY tells Americans this part of the story.

March 11, 2011.
A black, 30-foot wall of ocean swallowed Northeast Japan.
Our government froze. The Pentagon had no orders.
Communications were dead.

You know what Captain Thom Burke and Rear Admiral Robert Girrier did on the USS Ronald Reagan?

They didn't wait for the White House.
They didn't wait for paperwork.
They looked at the TV screen, saw their friend drowning, and committed the ultimate military sin:

UNAUTHORIZED ADVANCE.

“We’re going. NOW.”
They turned the massive nuclear carrier full throttle straight into the disaster zone.

Then came the hydrogen explosions at Fukushima.
Radiation plumes drifted across the Pacific.
Every foreign embassy told their citizens: RUN.
The US Embassy ordered an evacuation zone: STAY 50 MILES AWAY.

Did the Ronald Reagan turn around?
DID YOUR SAILORS RUN?

NOT. ONE. INCH.

Nineteen-year-old kids from Texas and Ohio stood on a freezing flight deck, radiation detectors in hand, launching helicopters into blizzards.
They hovered over submerged rooftops, pulling shivering mothers and babies out of the black water.
When Japanese refugees were brought aboard shivering in shock, your sailors gave up their own warm bunks and slept on the cold steel floor.

While the rest of the world ran away from Japan,
AMERICA CHARGED STRAIGHT INTO THE FIRE.

You didn't do it for a treaty.
You didn't do it for politicians.
You saw your friend bleeding, and you kicked the doors down to save us.

Happy 250th, America.
Japan will remember your boys forever. 🇺🇸🤝🇯🇵

[Timothy Stebbing @tjstebbing]

El Salvador is looking more and more like the romantic / futuristic depiction of the 'perfect kingdom' every Anime series portrays .. they just need air-ships

[Johannes M. Koenraadt @johannesmkx]

The daughter of a right-wing German publisher isn't allowed to become a teacher anywhere in Germany, simply because she's the daughter. The courts told her this after she graduated to become a teacher.

[Virtus Martialis @MarsdanVM]

Flamberge - while the name means flame-blade, it is mainly associated with large German two-handed swords, mostly used as ceremonial swords.

c.1550-1600
Total Length: 169cm
Blade Length: 118.7cm
Grip L: 49cm
Quillion Span: 50.5cm
Weight: 2980g

26th of September
#swordtember

[Alice Cordier @CordierAlice2]

Jean-Louis Leroux a tiré sur un voleur pour se défendre .

Cela faisait des années qu’il se faisait piller des litres de carburant.

Il vient d’être condamné à 5 ans de prison dont un ferme.

C’était juste dégueulasse.

Voici une cagnotte de soutien : https://t.co/Ryrsh3cETV

[Southern Zoomer @Zoomer_South]

Good morning y'all! I've been traveling all night and had a chance to ponder my thoughts a bit.

My whole life I knew I favored the South. I was born there, grew up there, and had family there. I really took it for granted, even well into my adult years.

Even still, as a kid I knew the South was special. Learning about American history and particularly the Civil War, I always found myself relating to, and rooting for the Southern cause. Not because I thought slavery was cool as a 12 year old, but because it was my home. My people. My culture.

It didn't really hit me in the face until I left the South. My work took me to live in Omaha Nebraska for a few years. Now, I'm sure Omaha is a nice place for those who call it home, but for me it was devastating.

Those were the worst, most isolating years of my life. I couldn't relate to anyone, the weather was horrible, and I was a thousand miles away from my family, and a glass of sweet tea. Finally, when I got the opportunity to move to Florida, I took it immediately.

When the time came, I began the drive from Nebraska to Florida. That's when it happened. I crossed into Arkansas, and started to see the rebel battle flag waving proudly in people's yards.

I cried. Not tears of sadness, but tears of relief. I was back home. It was then that I knew the South had to be protected. I knew I had to do something. Southern culture and heritage was worth preserving.

It's the biggest reason I started really posting on this account, and it's grown beyond my wildest imaginations. I thank every one of y'all for that.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Deo Vindice.

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

When Muslim Thugs throw plastic bottles at Police they get no prison time

If a patriot does it he gets two years in prison

Are you seeing the two tier criminal justice system yet?

[Gabe's Ghost 🌩️ @phantomdawg]

My new Walmart bird friends. I think they're called Grackles and the brown ones are females or juveniles.

[Róisín Michaux @RoisinMichaux]

About 20 ANTIFA activists attacked a well-known engineer/academic called Damian Ernst while he was giving a class on energy markets (Liege, Belgium)

Ernst has recently worked on research into AI use in defence. He has long been hated among the left in Belgium for his promotion of nuclear energy over “degrowth”.

His research in defence and his centre-right politics make him, as far as ANTIFA is concerned, a genocidaire.

(I interviewed Ernst years ago and he is an utter gentleman and extremely smart guy. One of the best brains in the country.) Courage à vous @DamienERNST1

[Wild Horse 🪶🇺🇸 @Wild_Horse]

Mmm... no.

Let me answer this in reverse order.

He wasn't a "goat herder" when I encountered him. He was a soldier. He had a radio, he had a well-maintained AK and he'd acted in a rearguard capacity for his team mates.

We don't demote people's martial actions just because they come from a less industrialized society. You "trivialize" him when you say that's all he was. A goat herder.

I get that you're in a more academic position now than we were after 9/11, but back then, people were just shellshocked that we'd been attacked on home soil and a lot of the questions regarding those attacks hadn't yet been raised.

Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. That wasn't in dispute. Some got away to Pakistan and elsewhere in the high intensity phase of operations (before 2015) but many stayed and fought with the Afghans... who were no angels themselves, btw. Go look up "bacha bazi".

Some SF guys got really swept up in George Bush's talk about democratizing the Middle East and Central Asia but I'd read about the region and the people before and knew that it was a ridiculous idea. I was a soldier and I was there in that capacity only. We weren't social workers.

We were never going to liberate women. Five minutes in Kandahar disabuses anyone of that notion.

Hollywood makes war look like a philosophy class. It's not. You're not spending your time staring at the sunset in an angsty way, postulating the Big Questions.

You're with a small group of guys who are the best friends you'll ever have, and desperate not to do anything that will let them or your unit or your country down. You're there to have a chance to fight an enemy that had killed thousands of your countrymen and women.

I never hated the Afghans and I enjoyed seeing their country. It wasn't my role to determine the strategic validity of being there as long as we were. Could we have done things differently or better? Absolutely. But that wasn't within my direct sphere of control, so why agonize over it?

The way it ended was shameful for us, but I was stateside when that happened.

[Basil the Great @BasilTheGreat]

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY HARROWING

A Muslim woman forces a little girl to "SAY SORRY TO MUHAMMED"

She even gets some of her thug male friends to step in and terrify the girl

All the while she smiles and smirks on camera

Make her famous, evil wench

[Sandy Petersen 🪔 @SandyofCthulhu]

Three things I am convinced of regarding orcs.

1) Orc females look like males. They're flat-chested like chimps and other apes. They're just as aggressive and cruel as males. When they're pregnant, they sequester themselves, and after giving birth they abandon the babies in a warren with other young orcs and a couple guardians. The children grow up squabbling over food and such and get tough.

2) Orcs are instinctively cruel. Heaven does not blame them for all their evil, any more than a rat is "blamed" for raiding a pantry. They are judged by their own lights. Perhaps an orc who refrains from some petty cruelty has shown more moral courage than an elf who did a noble deed. I do agree that some orcs lean into their natural evil.

3) We know orcs can breed with humans. We also know that there is no indication from the stories that they WANT to breed with humans. I think orcs are naturally far less interested in sex than are humans. We know that dwarfs and elves have pretty weak sex drives. I think this goes to orcs. But orcs are forced into sex by their cruel masters to make more of their numbers. This is doubtless another reason that orcs dwindled fast in the Fourth Age after their masters were wiped out.

I offer these as ideas you can jeer at or use or adapt.

[CatGirl Kulak 😻😿 (Anarchonomicon) @FromKulak]

I don't see how anyone could look at any of those 3 conflicts and see anything but a bargain.

The Troubles Killed 4-5 per 100,000 per year.

DC alone, the nation's capital, has a homicide rate of 25 per 100k.

You're already in a civil war. but one side isn't fighting.

[Zoomer @ZoomerHistorian]

So it turns out that burning down the houses and vehicles of invaders in Belfast for a few days actually results in net-negative immigration immediately

Who would’ve known!

Were there literally any consequences at all in Northern Ireland for this? The protestors all got exactly what they wanted. Gives out a very unfortunate message for the Government!