I was more of a MCOSOFT ΓΛAX guy myself. Never could quite wrap my head around MARL.

I'm at the point now where if there's an AI slop image at the top, I'll just hit the back button.

> Then when the ticket winners were selected, he filtered by zip code so he had an almost entirely white audience

How did that work in the 80s? Did he spend days and weeks poring through (paper) census data and correlating it with ZIP codes? Did he use VisiCalc on an Apple ][ or Lotus 1-2-3 on an IBM PC?

Whatever his other misdeeds, I never got a racist vibe off MJ.

Is it just me or did the US get into a lot more foreign conflicts after they swapped "War" for "Defense" in the name?

Depends on the term.

Things had been kinda quiet for the last couple of decades. We continue involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan but didn't start new ones. We even pulled out of those by five years ago. So yes, definitely, we did a lot more warring with the Department of War.

Longer term, the "Department of Defense" got into an awful lot of wars from its name change in 1947. The Department of War might have more wars on a per-day basis in its short time under that name, but not a lot more.

But really, the answer to your question is "yes". We decided we wanted to do a lot more war, and we branded the department to go along with it.

I'd be really grateful if it stopped.

I do wonder why the occupation authorities did the exact opposite for Germany, emphasizing war crimes, collective guilt, etc, since (West) Germany was also a bulwark against the Soviet bloc?

Maybe partition has something to do? You had another Germany that would be viewed as "the good one" if these things are not done.

It may just be that there were different people involved making different decisions.

But I suspect the reason was they viewed Naziism as a greater evil than Communism, whereas the emperor worship in Japan was seen as relatively harmless. Though they did hang a whole lot of Japanese politicians and officers.

They can restart them and/or build new ones. Fission isn't some lost technology like Greek fire or Damascus steel.

Damascus steel…isn’t a lost technology.

Are you willing to share where you heard that?

> They can restart them

Can they?

> build new ones

That'll take 20 years.

> I really can’t think of any. Is even Iraq considered a success?

It was for Netanyahu, and that's the important thing here.

It's because we do these things not for American interests, but for the interests of a small country that has captured our political establishment through campaign finance and blackmail.

Did OP get killed by Israel yet?

It's always funny to me how every few years some Republican representative/senator gets the bright idea of running on "cutting foreign aid", then someone quietly points out most foreign aid goes to either Israel or Israel's neighbors so they play nice with Israel. Then the proposal is quietly dropped.