Martin The Mess

Martin the Mess, aka Big Brother. Science Fiction, Science Fact, History and Alternate History, Humor and Political Philosophy. Always Watching.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

With heavy heart I must announce that the rollout of our first podcast episode is now postponed indefinitely. We've had some...creative differences between our two hosts and are scrapping our first attempt at an episode.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@filming_chicago Any idea who was filming a movie in Sulzer Library at 4455 N. Lincoln this afternoon?

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@DanielVdeLima @kilianhekhuis @deloween @fakehistoryhunt A thousand years or more later, it matters little to none, but for extreme racists obsessed with Blood Purity, it's enough to worry about due to One Drop Of Blood theory.

It's dumb, but it's a meme that is not ENTIRELY without basis. But just barely.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@DanielVdeLima @kilianhekhuis @deloween @fakehistoryhunt Toss in Hannibal's Numidian Cavalry and other North African troops rampaging across Italy for a while (with the usual whoring/raping that armies do) and various Slaves from all over sold through Roman times, and there may be some lingering African DNA in the Italian gene pool.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@Thucydiocy I know, but where Thucydides is being discussed, bad takes can't be far behind, and I couldn't find you on BS yet.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

Isn't it obvious?

[PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 @patriottakes]

What is Eric Trump hunting in this fenced off pasture land?

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@TheSpaceshipper I see the usual suspects are well covered in the other replies, so here's one that's often overlooked. Ronald Sandoval from "Earth: Final Conflict". One of the better sympathetic villains, and very underrated.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@Trey_Explainer It wasn't half as much of a hype-to-bitter-disappointment slide as the original Phantom Menace trailer release gave us. But at least that one gave us this classic trailer parody.
https://t.co/8vb7F1OhtC

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@SilenceInPolish ...Russia should be able to push them around or dictate their form or composition of government. Just that Russia's gonna have a certain amount of economic and cultural influence over Ukraine whether they're in NATO or not.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@SilenceInPolish Yep. Ukraine for example is in Russia's natural sphere of influence. Bonds of similar language/culture/'religion, and past political and economic ties, mean that Ukraine is gonna be largely under some form of Russian influence whether they like it or not. Doesn't mean that...

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@SilenceInPolish But trying to claim Cuba as part of some sort of "American Influence Only Zone" isn't good either, and is gonna be more work to enforce than it's worth, even IF it works.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@SilenceInPolish ...matter if their brand of Communism works or not, they're gonna be poorer than they could otherwise be. Cuba is in the USA's natural sphere of influence, a region that can't help but be influenced by the huge rich nation right there.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@TropeCrafter @fuckyouiquit @Rochellia3 @AssyTwo @BorealBaron Mediums with a maximum character count per item don't lend themselves to extensive footnotes, and this issue has been argued enough lately that the fact that the vast majority of drug smugglers are US citizens going through airports etc. should be common knowledge by now.

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@TropeCrafter @fuckyouiquit @Rochellia3 @AssyTwo @BorealBaron I trusted him to have a source, and the 80% figure is one I've heard before. I doubt anyone even has solid figures on dual citizenship ratios, hence demanding a source on the actual questionable stat.

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

If we extrapolate the current war against Ukraine to World War II (as we often do), at this point, Hitler has invaded Poland but suffered defeats near Warsaw and Krakow, lost Poznan and has been locked in grueling battles for almost three years over completely devastated border districts.

Accordingly, Great Britain and France have not had to actively enter the war. Hitler, in this reality, is held back by the defenders' colossal efforts.

Therefore, there has been no blitzkrieg in Western Europe, no Dunkirk, no fall of Paris, nor the Battle of Britain.

Not yet.

Meanwhile, Western democracies have spent three years of war in Europe extremely reluctant to ramp up their defense industries to help Poland stop Hitler and save the world from what would follow if Poland were to fall.

The Western democracies provide Poland with limited aid but they keep spending months, even years, debating whether they might provoke Hitler into escalating the war—a war in which Hitler has already been throwing everything he can muster onto the battlefield, to reach his goals at absolutely any price.

Three years of appeasement and attempts to reason with Hitler allowed Krupp's factories to ramp up military production to full capacity while the Reich carried out mobilization and secured resources coming around the world.

Many argue that the best solution would be to rid Europe of this headache by simply forcing Poland to capitulate and turn into a General Government, despite Hitler’s clear and open proclamations of his goal to establish complete dominance of his Reich in Europe and the world, as well as to annihilate all inferior peoples and artificial states, which are meant to become part of the Lebensraum of the original Greater German Reich.

Others believe it is necessary to help Poland but only in ways that do not harm their electoral ratings—after all, voters might not understand why it is in their interest to help stop Hitler in Poland now, instead of dying under bombs in Rotterdam later, or storming Omaha Beach with heavy losses a few years later, and then fighting all the way to the banks of the Elbe.

Poland, meanwhile, continues to plead for common sense, bleeds out, and heroically fights on. Time is running out....

Axis powers and their infomal ally , the USSR, are supplying Hitler with ammunition and materials in exchange for advanced military technology to fuel their own rearmament and expansionist plans in regions from Northern Europe to the Pacific.

Recently, they also sent a small expeditionary corps against Poland, allowing their generals to gain invaluable experience in modern European warfare to be applied in upcoming wars.

Meanwhile, in America, the front pages are consumed by various conspiracy theories claiming that, in fact, bleeding Poland is to blame for the war, for daring to refuse to disappear from the map and requesting alliance with the West to protect itself from Nazi aggression.

Many are convinced that American industrialists, in collusion with Washington, provoked the war in Europe to launder money, despite Hitler having laid out his ideas about Reich domination and Lebensraum as early as the 1920s in Mein Kampf, and implementing his policy of seizing neighboring countries since 1938.

Others eagerly listen to those asseritng that Poland had been developing banned chemical weapons that only target ethnic Germans, making Warsaw the real aggressor, and that Hitler, as in Austria and Czechoslovakia, is merely ensuring the Reich's right to historical justice.

Even more people are convinced that sending arms to Poland to defeat Hitler on their soil is a waste of taxpayer money, as there are far greater problems at home.

Meanwhile, Hitler has been conducting the most insane anti-American propaganda campaign of hatred and war for years, with Joseph Goebbels and Julius Streicher spreading the ideas of destroying America alongside European capitals and their role in the world.

The Abwehr systematically engages in subversive and propaganda efforts to instill anti-Polish hysteria, confusion, and isolationism for the benefit of Germany's war effort.

America’s most popular radio host openly hurls profane insults at Poland’s commander-in-chief Edward Rydz-Śmigły, calling him a “warmonger” and accusing Poland of dragging America into its aggressive war against Hitler.

Meanwhile, the Axis clearly sees that the West is spineless and divided, easily yielding to blackmail and unwilling to resist even under unique conditions that do not require sending a single soldier to the battlefield.

The idea of destroying the U.S. role in the Pacific through a crushing blow to Pearl Harbor gains more traction every day...

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@EnterpriseCPU

[Martin The Mess @back2babylon5]

@76Pauls @TheSpaceshipper I have a pair of those and several other identifiable parts from my very first Lego Set from circa 1979. And a ton of other Lego, half neatly sorted into a set of small drawers, half unfortunately all mixed up in a box in need of sorting.