This kind of “America did nothing in WW2” rhetoric is almost as r-word’ed as “America soloed WW2.” You’re an idiot if you think America was “years late” and didn’t play a huge role in the European front. Not even to address the Pacific Theatre.
Even prior to direct military entry, the US was providing mass amounts of aid to fight the Axis. We were giving the UK destroyers, arms, and ammunition immediately after the Nazi invasion of Poland, gave billions to China to help fight the Japanese invasion, and started arming the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease as soon as Germany invaded them.
We also deployed to Iceland to take over the Brits’ post there so they could free up troops to the mainland.
Even ignoring the European front, which is stupid, the US was instrumental in the African front and neutralizing Italy.
But nah, the US kicking ass and stacking bodies on 3 different fronts wasn’t important to winning the war. Nope.
Likewise (related to aid) churning out liberty ships at the rate of 3 ships every other day to counter lost cargo ships was totally superfluous and not at all crucial for England.
Y-you’re telling me that America wasn’t willing to just give away billions of dollars in aid in the middle of the worst economic disaster in the county’s history???
Ok so I’m by far an expert on world wars but from I understand, America did play a rather isolationist position prior to pearl harbor. We can agree that politically America had some pull on things going on in Europe but they didn’t actively put boots on the ground until shit got really close. Giving others weapons to fight with is one thing. Sacrificing your own lives for the world is a different one
If it wasn’t for the supply shipments to Britain, they likely would have lost before things got close in the first place. Note it wasn’t just weapons but also food and medical supplies.
Edit: Also, the shipments were regularly attacked by German U-boats, so there absolutely was risk to American lives still.
Yes WW2 started in 1939, and Pearl Harbor was in december 1941. So it took 2 years for USA to get involved. But USA was such a massive influence, because their industrial output was without comparison bigger than anything else in the world. It was bigger than Europe combined. USA was also a major factor in keeping the trans Atlantic traffic open, and defeating the German submarines. D-Day would have been impossible without USA, as USA was the biggest force. USA also suffered the most losses in operation overlord, with almost twice the casualties and killed as UK. All that is apart from doing by far the most in the effort against Japan.
I’ve always just seen 1939 as the beginning of WW2, and I’ve never seen it questioned since I learned about it in school in the 70’s. But maybe it’s seen different in Asia. And yes we also learned about the truce that was forced on the Germans, so that’s been taken into account all along. It’s still WWI and WW2, not WWI 1914-1945.
If you want an interesting novel, try ‘Night Soldiers’ by Alan Furst. Young Bulgarian boy is killed by local fascists. His brother is then recruited by the Russians to be a spy. He’s sent to Spain to help fight Franco. Enjoy.
Some would say 1935, with the invasion of Ethiopia. There’s also a large body of historians who view WW1 and WW2 as being a single event. To sort of piggy-back off my above reply, the idea that WW2 “began” in 1939 is as Anglocentric as Americans thinking it started in 1941.
they didn’t actively put boots on the ground until shit got really close.
False comparison. There was no alternative to “boots on the ground” for the European Allies when the war happened in their backyard, but there was certainly an alternative to the U.S. offering a quarter-trillion dollars (adjusted) in aid to Europe.
I lived in Russia, and in History class I was taught that Stalin singlehandedly showed up to save those poor helpless Europeans from bloody nazis, because it was the right thing to do.
When I loved in Europe, it were the Jewish partisans who won WW2 through brain drain on Germany, and the stupid Nazis killed themselves.
In the US I found out that the thing in Europe was typical Medieval European Kingdoms in a fight, and the real high-tech stuff was in the Pacific.
Now as a programmer, I know who truly won WW2: it was our legendary bro Alan all along.
If you haven’t read it, ‘Cryptonomicon’ by Neal Stephenson sounds like it would be your kind of book. The story alternates between the grandfather, who helped protect the Enigma secret from the Nazis, to the grandson, who is trying to start an online bank. There is hidden treasure, heroic US Marines, mysterious wizards, and tooth extractions.
Is the cryptonomicon referencing actual cryptography, or cryptocurrency nonsense? The Enigma is cryptography, but the online bank thing makes me think it’ll touch the cryptocurrency stuff.
The book came out around 1998, so it might have invented the idea of cryptocurrency.
After I read it, I discussed it with another fellow. He told me that he’d shown one passage to his wife, an astrophysics student. She showed it to her professor, who told her that this was advanced math.
When the Greeks were settling around the Mediterranean they founded many ‘New Cities’, (Neapolis). One remained a ‘new city’ for long enough for the name to evolve to Naples.
The Phoenicians did the same, in their language ‘New City’ was Qart Hadasht, we now call it Carthage. One of the Carthages in what is now Spain was conquered by Rome and to differentiate it from the Capital of the Carthaginians they called it Carthago Nova, essentially New New City.
I tried to download Chromium but it’s a mess. No way a regular user will be able to download and install it. The will to do it will fade pretty quickly
Winget is awesome! It’s nice to see Microsoft finally focusing on adding basic quality-of-life features to their OS. First there was Windows Terminal, then proper bash support with WSL, and now package management with Winget! To be fair, it’s not 100% there yet. Tried installing ffmpeg with winget recently, and it took like three times longer than apt-get would have. But hey, better than downloading EXE’s from some random website. Really excited for what they’ll add next. Who knows, maybe Windows will finally be a viable desktop OS some day!
I prefer my pacman being able to cd to a directory and install there rather than winget’s “-location direct path” but yeah Linux is faster and better for tech illiterate people like myself
Linux is faster and better for tech illiterate people like myself
For real tho, I could never come up with a good reason why I choose Linux over windows. But recently I tried Windows 11, and that finally made me understand. What are sticky keys? Why are you telling me the exchange rate of EUR to USD right now? Why do I need to put . in front of my username when signing in? Why can’t you just tell me that you want TPM and UEFI boot enabled instead of cryptically saying that my hardware is incompatible even though it is? There’s just too much crap going on for a dumb fuck like me to understand. I would like one boring linux desktop experience that hasn’t changed since 2003 please.
Firefox doesn’t fucking work with my daughter’s online school. This is a national school that multiple states are adopting as a state online school (meaning it is a public school and we don’t have to pay tuition) and we have to use Chrome because I can’t get it to work in Firefox and I hate Edge. Even worse, a bunch of materials from the school either don’t mention which browser to use or specifically say you can use either Firefox or Chrome. I spent like half an hour trying to figure out why it wasn’t working. I did updates, resets, anything I could think of, until my wife texted me and said maybe it has to be in Chrome. And yep, that worked.
Of course, the school is run by Pearson, and they’re evil, so they probably have a deal with Google anyway.
Damn, that sucks. I have always been keeping my school/university stuff in a separate browser, so maybe your daughter can use something like Ungoogled Chromium for school and Firefox for everything else.
I’ll look into it eventually, but we had to do this at the last minute because we had to get school started and she gets annoyed when I try to do anything on the notebook while she’s around.
You can get browser extensions that change your user agent string, which websites use to fingerprint you. So you’re just spoofing a different browser/OS. I use this one.
Flatpak (and flathub.org) has been a lifesaver for this, I use Ungoogled Chromium. Of course only for the few broken shitty websites that I’m forced to use
Yes, boomer humor tends to be unfunny when you consider the real fact that the US is one year away from having open genocide of minorities and other “undesirables.”
Having to live armed every day because fascist shitbags are openly trying to kill you tends to suck the fun out of parties.
when did the left agree we had to lie about the right to make them sound bad? That we just had to make up bullshit that obviously is a lie to go after people on the right?
Mate, there are prominent US politicians saying they aim to destroy the issue of trans people, to find a solution to a the trans problem. What do you think that means?
In 1930s germany most people would vote for the facists, people did not turn to facism because they were born evil. That is to say, if you were german and lived through the effects of the end of ww1, you would be facist too
I’ve gotten fucked at every step of my life by capitalists and other greedy fuckheads, and it hasn’t made me fascist and I didn’t and never will vote for Trump.
Some people are just pathetic and want someone else to solve their problems. Some people are just stupid and cannot see how their problems will never be solved by a greedy asshole getting more power.
Some people are just terrible and will look down on others for merely existing. That doesn’t make them evil. It makes them FUNCTIONALLY evil. A hand does not need to know why in order to strangle someone.
I literally HAVE gone through what they have. I’ve grown up and lived in red states almost my entire life, but thank you for assuming my experience.
Again, stop infantalizing them. They are grown-ass adults PRETENDING to be victims of things that aren’t even victimizing them. They are pathetic losers taking the bait.
If you’re a fish, taking the bait means you die. If you’re a fascist, taking the bait means the “other” dies. They are not worth the pity you are giving them.
His point is that even if the Germans of 8-9 decades ago were stuck in a bad position such that fascism was their best choice, the people who are leaning into fascist ideals today don’t have that same excuse.
You can choose how you respond to a situation. It is ABSOLUTELY their fault. It will never not be their fault (those who supported, not merely lived through it).
Stop infantalizing people. Are humans not special in conservatives’ belief? Are we not better than dumb animals? Then why are you using the excuse that they were a cornered beast?
In 1930s germany most people would vote for the facists …
This is a common misconception. Even at the height of their power, the Nazis got only 43% of the votes. They were able to win elections because the other parties were unable to come together and run a joint candidate list. If the Social Democrats and Communists had formed a coalition, they might have won instead.
The Italian Liberals of the 20s adopted a “wait and see” approach, leaving the outnumbered socialists, anarchists and communists to fight both the fascists and the loyalists alone. Then when it was clear that the fascists were winning, the Liberals joined them.
I suspect that the 30s Social Democrats of Germany were similarly irresolute (though didn’t join before they were forced to) when dealing with the Nazi threat. Centrists tend to be, whether center-right like the Italian Liberals or center-left like the German Social Democrats.
I suspect that the 30s Social Democrats of Germany were similarly irresolute (though didn’t join before they were forced to) when dealing with the Nazi threat.
The social democrats started the iron front, they fought the SA in the streets, they didn’t join them. Their party was banned and members where thrown in jail once the Nazis won.
I sit corrected, then. Should have known better than to think Social Democrats as useless as liberals in fighting fascists tbh, given what we’re seeing today…
The NSDAP got 43,9% but since another party, the DNVP which was another right wing party they formed a coalition with, got 8% they had majority. So most people who voted did vote for the fascists.
Fair point, the DNVP was a right-wing party, but I wouldn’t call them fascist. They were dissolved after Hitler won absolute power (although not imprisoned or killed), and some even worked with the German Resistance.
I’ve been to Sam’s club on a Sunday after church, meal team six ain’t gonna do shit. I’m so sick of hearing this dumb fucking idea that somehow these fastfood patriots are going to do anything except continue to scream at clouds and die of fox news induced aneurysm. Sick of living in this dumb fucking bizaro country where trump is the second coming of christ and school shootings can’t be stopped! Jesus God damn toe sucking Christ. Is the soda rotting brains? Do micro plastics cause fuckwit syndrome? SOMEONE ANSWER GOD DAMNIT.
lesarde >> lizard (c. 700-1300 ad) - slow process over hundreds of years of evolving from a mix of languages but at this point heavily influenced by the French
unknown etymology, maybe blitzartig >> Blizzard (1870) coined overnight by a newspaper guy in the era of muck raking, yellow journalism and the birth of the tabloid.
Yeah, but they do a lot of good stuff for the open internet, and they respect user freedom and privacy. Unlike Google, they allow you to use proper adblockers and don’t want to screw you over with this MV3 bullshit.
I’ve drunkenly managed to turn on it reading out my key presses and some other weird accessibility setting. For the life of me couldn’t turn it off, we had three people all super drunk trying to figure out how to stop my phone from yelling numbers and letters. It was fun until I managed to get my phone locked with too many failed attempts.
I’ve actually played around in the settings after someone pointed out the magnifier that’s hidden in there, which has been a blessing for reading those evil sites that use code to disable the “force pinch to zoom” accessibility feature in my browser. (I have impaired vision.) There are definitely some settings in accessibility that are way beyond my needs though lol
Damn, I remember a big fall from stairs I suffered as a kid, scrapped a good chunk of skin from my knee but made full recovery in a couple of weeks, nowadays the lightest bruise leaves me permanently scarred 😮💨
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