[gsf_emergency_6]

Okay I feel i'd said something stupid ---about the train--- without knowing what or why :)

I had a notion that, compared to the US military, it was the Civilian Enforcers that practise apartheid-- ~a decade ago, not sure about now, they forced a black admiral to retire weeks back? Then again I was surprised that I was surprised at the inflation in NYC since the start of the pandemic

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/us/politics/admiral-alvin...

[aebtebeten]

I think that notion is largely true: the military started desegregating in 1948[0]; the Civilian Enforcers not until decades later[1]. (I'd believe, recent purges notwithstanding, that the military has successfully integrated[2]; civilian society apparently ... not as much as one might have hoped, 160 years after Reconstruction[3]?)

I'm not surprised at the inflation: USD has crashed by ~20% against CHF since last year[4], so it makes sense that less real value would show up in domestic prices.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9981

[1] eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968

[2] eg I believe if it were up to career officers, US Fort Bragg would not currently be named after a CSA general

EDIT: my bad, Bragg has been retconned to refer to US PFC Roland L. Bragg instead of CSA Gen Braxton Bragg

[3] the really silly thing is that Reconstruction seems to have been thrown in the trash in order to buy southern support for WWI, yet unlike the other major XX unpleasantry, the US participation in and effect upon that conflict was minimal

[4] I lay the blame squarely on US domestic policies; others may differ...

[gsf_emergency_6]

What have you recently learnt from Psychological Warfare that you think scholars don't get?

[aebtebeten]

Do scholars even read it?

I guess:

- (a) propaganda/psyop/marketing/engagement farming may not be as old as the hills, but it's close: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39994449 (Cyrus cylinder ca. 540 BC has it fully formed; no doubt there was a preceding oral tradition but we're never going to know what the ontogeny may have been)

- (b) everyone uses the same tricks, because they learn them from their enemies (in an adjacent field the KGB's precursor learned all their dirty tricks from the Okhrana, probably in a nearly unbroken line going back to the first chimps who put together a coalition to overthrow the alpha chimp before the alpha sniffed it out. 100W is pretty expensive for a neural net; how else are you going to justify that calorie expenditure without scheming and plotting?)

- (c) telling truths that might hurt is more effective than lying (judging by XXI standards, maybe that's why he's been dropped from the curriculum?)

[gsf_emergency_6]

Placeholder for an imminent stack on neo-colonialism (a)

Eg how frontmen and compradores subvert all of "identity politics", "technofeudalism", "corporatism", "monetary policy" lolll