Analyzing Trump's Seemingly Random Foreign Policy Decisions

Greetings Friends (apologies for the Mercator projection which is still funny to me), Rare Burst of Inspiration post used to happen once every other year or so; the perils of aging. US Foreign Policy has been dreadful for roughly 30 years with some rare exceptions, I don't think much of Clinton's tenure but there are pretty good defensive arguments for what he did in the moment and the uniqueness of unipolarity so despite Black Hawk Down he wasn't that bad strictly from a foreign policy perspective; Bush Sr. and Reagan were both quite good at foreign policy; and Nixon the beloved was the best since Polk the actual best President. I guess Trump or someone in Trump's circle also thinks Polk is the best president hence the land grabbing tendencies or desires. Kind of an uncommon perspective but as we'll see a lot of my train of thought when it comes to how the world works recently becamse reality instead of theoretical "whenever this nonsense crumbles"........................................................................................................................................................................................................I'm more interested in discussing the current state of affairs than giving an overall discussion of how stupid the previous foreign policy decision makers were but essentially COVID destroyed the rules based order and the War in Ukraine/10/7th took it out back and obliterated it. There could have been either precautions to prevent this from happening or it could've never been structured in such a foolish way to begin with but essentially Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and so on were always stupid and this was already proven by WW2 and we didn't need to reiterate that process a hundred years later....................................................................................................................................................................................................................Now for a Biden retrospective, I think up until October 7th Biden was actually quite a good President and he did an excellent job in the early days of the Ukraine War, whether the Ukraine War is strategically smart from a non European perspective is another issue but assuming you want to support Ukraine in a defensive war a lot of that credit should go to Biden and Wesley Clark and so on. That said October 7th was an unmitigated disaster and led to the worst public facing genocide in 30 years, it's possible Iran will genocide its own populace at a faster tick soon but until then that statement holds up. Under Biden it really did not look like there was any chance the War in Gaza would ever end and Israel would continue doing preposterously evil things continuously but under Trump it seems to have a chance of restoring the pre October 7th order which is still bad but at least not horrifying............................................................................................................................................................................................................Here we have the first Trump foreign policy move of destroying Iran's Nuclear Facility at Fordow; in a vacuum this was a smart move done quickly but because of its proximity to genocide its kind of hard to evaluate. Also Iran will eventually rebuild its Nuclear program (*if the regime doesn't fall), but it might take like 10-30 years. In any case its still better than Iran and Israel exchanging missiles/F-35 strikes every few months, overall a solid move; doesn't seem like a regime change move in Iran would work anywhere near as well as the Venezuela one but it's hard to tell if Trump is operating on pure bluster in this case or not............................................................................................................................................................................................................As far as Venezuela's concerned I should point out that the previous leader of Venezuela Hugo Chavez was very anti-US but he was also a competent, popular leader and the country was doing perfectly fine under his rule. Nicolas Maduro was/is an incompetent dipshit that was extremely unpopular in his country, this is a big reason why a huge risk like using helicopters to extract a foreign hostile head of state went so well. So while this move looks on paper possibly quite foolish it went just amazingly well and if you were theoretically planning a Coup in 3 years (who would ever do such a thing) a good way to get the military on board is doing a flawless military operation that makes the US military seem terrifying to all but the strongest powers. This is a 10/10 for Trump in general, he probably got pretty lucky a helo didn't get shot down but it was going to work even if that had happened so maybe it wouldn't have had that much fallout depending on how poorly that aspect had gone...................................................................................................................................................................................................................Onwards to Greenland discussion; I don't think its smart to threaten your ally and demand their land and so on in general and I think the way Trump is going about doing it is both stupid on the surface and in reality. However, the Arctic ocean is in the process of melting and eventually will be a major trade route thus Greenland and Northern Canada will likely become a lot more prosperous in 50-100 years assuming no nuclear apocalypse; so Greenland isn't a bad piece of land to target acquiring on paper. Even if Trump does nothing and this whole situation is just seen as a farce there is at least a precedent of a US president demanding Greenland in the past for some other future president to utilize in the future. From a NATO perspective they have a new "enemy" to rally against and might actually become militarily competent again (Ukraine isn't in NATO yet) without the aid of the US; obviously Europe having a strong military has never caused any issues historically. So while this seems generally a pretty stupid move from Trump it could work out in the end, I may or may not be alive at the point when it becomes relevant but also projecting the future currently beyond a few months seems foolish (whereas you could foresee a Taiwan or Ukraine conflict from 15-25 years away before, now there could be a conflict anywhere on the planet at any time); insert proverbial Lenin quote waiting for decades and nothing happens, wait a week and then decades happen.

Ranking of Halos, 2026 Non Halo Fanboy Edition

Greetings Friends, I've had a comical interest in FPS's lately for whatever reason. Usually when I'm binging a genre it'll be 16 bit or PS1 JRPGs for a month or two but this time it was shooters. This will be a pretty lengthy pre-amble so fair warning. I played the original Halo quite a bit from 2001-2003 or so including LAN parties and so on; I had already played Doom, Doom 2, Duke 3D, Rise of the Triad, Quake 3, and a lot of Unreal Tournament as well as Goldeneye so I was never Mr. Halo but the game was fun and the campaigns in particular are quite good relative to something like Call of Duty's average campaign (though some CoD campaigns are good too). Side note: while Doom 2 is probably the best FPS still RE4 is a lot better than any FPS and anything that isn't Super Metroid, Vagrant Story, or a Link to the Past. RE4 has the best pistol in any game and also the best shotgun in any game and I guess ultimately that's what you want in a shooter. My first experiences with Halo 2 were in like 2005-2006ish, some random Freshman kept bugging me to play it so I eventually did; I guess I did know him from years prior but it was pretty impromptu on the whole; I also played Republic Commando and Crimson Skies High Road to Revenge thanks to this kid which are both fantastic games. I think we beat most of the game on legendary at that point (Halo 1 I've beaten the campaign like a dozen times across every difficulty) but possibly not the entire thing.....................................................................................................................................................................................................Enter first large gap of time here, at some point my brother (who is now a Lawyer) sent me Halo 2 and possibly Halo 1 as well in the mail because his roommate in the Coastguard left it over at his house; so I just had it spontaneously; I don't think I did anything with it for like 3 years but eventually I had some free time and no one in the house so I set out to beat Vanquish Tactical Challenge 6 for the Platinum Trophy which is still the hardest singleplayer thing to do in any shooter as far as skill required and also Halo 2 on legendary solo which was quite a fun experience, Halo 2 was much easier than Vanquish but it still took some doing and I just generally have a fondness for Halo 2 because of how it coalesced at that exact moment in time (now 14 or 15 years ago) I guess there's some random disdain for Halo 2's campaign because the ending is a cliffhanger and you had to play as Keith David (the horror!) but it seems pretty good to me still; also unlike Halo 1 Halo 2 did sort of birth the console shooter online experience even though COD4 is sort of the one that matters in that regard so Halo 2 would have a mark in the influential category (so Goldeneye, then Halo 2, then COD4 for console shooter influence; COD4 is more influential than Doom or Doom 2 though those games are a lot better; its sort of influential because of the moment in time moreso than the actual innovation). .................................................................................................................................................................................................................Enter second large gap of time, so at this point we've played Halo and Halo 2; surely enough to rank the entire series; well now I played Halo 5 with a friend without ever playing anything in between; we only played the campaign in co-op on legendary so I don't have any opinion on Halo multiplayer beyond 2 (other than a few firefight sessions in the past few days). Halo 5 is a pretty decent game but you do fight the same boss like 4 times in a row for some reason, as far as I can remember it did have the feel of a Halo game and the ability to like skip large portions of firefights if you could just get to the next checkpoint instead which we'll get to that issue later vis-a-vis Halo 4. Running past enemies is the essence of Halo, the key component of the experience regardless of the difficulty you play on, it must be present except for stuff that doesn't progress until you kill all enemies which is typically like one fight in an entire mission.........................................................................................................................................................................................................Enter Largest gap of time in this exercise, the Halo 5 run was in 2016 or 2017 and every other Halo was played in the past two weeks or so, a little bit of infinite like a year ago but the rest of it just now. Full disclosure I got Game Pass for free from Microsoft for about 2 years due to being a Youtubist; that period is shortly to run out though it will probably be back at some point to hazard a guess. Things not going so great for Phil Spencer and co presently but actually last year up until the last few months was quite a good one for game pass; Expedition 33, Oblivion remake, Avowed, Outer Worlds 2, Ninja Gaiden 4, etc. I'm happy with the money I didn't spend to get it. But since it was on the verge of running out I was suddenly motivated to actually use game pass for something aside from new releases, Lo! a Halo spree. I played 3 on Normal and 4, Reach, and ODST on Easy despite playing every prior game on Legendary; this was mostly a time consideration, Infinite I'm not even sure how the difficulty works but I guess its on Normal right now?............................................................................................................................................................................................................Now for Ranking stuff; 1. Halo: CE it seems like ranking Halo as the best shooter ever has died down but maybe there's still some people that feel that way, the first Halo has some fantastic levels and then a bunch of okay levels and just by virtue of having a LAN Party scene in the first place a sort of inherent legitimacy in the moment of time segment of gaming; that said I don't think it's actually particularly influential beyond regenerating health/shields which isn't something to be proud of. Its just a good game that's fun and replayable, it did come out before RE4 so if you look at before RE4 shooters it's almost certainly top 10 region but maybe not that much higher than like 8th.................................................................................................................................................................................................................2. Halo 2, the most influential game in the series due to online multiplayer on console; I guess in theory I shouldn't have that much nostalgia for Halo 2 since I played it for maybe 40 hours total but it still seems a bit better than everything except Reach and Halo 1, I remember where I was when I played different moments in the campaign in a tactile sense still. If we're looking at all time shooter rankings Halo 2 might barely scrape into the top 20 though we'll have that discussion again shortly.............................................................................................................................................................................................................3. Halo Reach, almost certainly the best game on a technical proficiency level and just the overall strength of the campaign. If you were someone who didn't give a fuck about Halo 1 when it came out I'd recommend Reach as the main game to play in the series; fantastic game but no nostalgia for it here, I do think Halo Reach should rank a little higher than Halo 2 on an all time shooter list..............................................................................................................................................................................................................4. Halo Infinite, the first controvertial choice I suppose; ultimately 3 and Infinite are very close and would both probably get an 8.5/10 from me but Halo 3's beginning and ending suck and Halo Infinite's middle sucks so ultimately I went with stronger ending. The story of both games sucks as well so that's not really a deciding factor. Halo Infinite does let you run past about 2500 enemies and that is peak Halo.............................................................................................................................................................................................................5. Halo 3, as above; I do think the like 5th through 7th level is some of the best Haloing available its just kind of ass after that part. The gunship is pretty cool for the 5 seconds you get to use it..................................................................................................................................................................................................................6. Halo 3: ODST; ODST is a pretty good game its just that Reach is better in every way. Also Nathan Fillion quips might have worked on me in 2009 but not really at this point in my life................................................................................................................................................................................................................7. Halo 5, I confess I don't know that much about Halo 5 other than I beat it on Legendary in Co-op and you fight the same boss 5 times; I'm pretty sure the entire story was discarded in favor of Halo Wars 2/Infinite's story...................................................................................................................................................................................................................8. Halo 4; unlike Halo 5 Halo 4 doesn't let you run past most enemies and just generally doesn't feel like Halo most of the time, the big tank level is cool and the you drive a Pelican level is cool. It's still a pretty good game ignoring the title.................................................................................................................................................................................................................Final thoughts: A lot of people seem to think modern Doom is like an iteration of Halo and also Destiny is from the Halo devs; I think Destiny felt kind of like Halo originally but not really at all anymore so no need to discuss that. I can buy that modern Doom is pretty Halo-ey and Doom 2016 is maybe the best single player console FPS of all time so that's fine. Doom Eternal is not very good on console and I've only played a little bit on PC which is much better and Doom the Dark Ages is like a top 10 game from last year but lower end of the list; only played that one on PC so couldn't speak to the console controls but I imagine they're fine. I did play all the Halos recently on PC with mouse and Keyboard except for Infinite which does read PS4 pads on PC, rest was on consoles though I played some Halo 1 multiplayer on PC (some time between 2005 and 2010?) which is fun.

Bean Dip, Burrito Filling, Fajita Meat Recipes

Greetings friends, Figured I might as well write this up since I've enjoyed my past few attempts quite a bit. Basically like 15 years ago I had an excess amount of money to buy food and thus wound up working on a particular recipe for 9-12 months intensively and then just added random refinements or subtractions additions over time. The basic concept is refried beans, salsa, sour cream, and shredded cheese (or chopped up block cheese) which is a common enough dip composition but then you combine that with a fajita mix which was Heinz Beef Gravy, Extra Lean Ground beef, and 1 of each color of bell pepper sliced (green, orange, yellow, and red in this case); added to the fajita meat was some kind of taco seasoning (doesn't matter which), garlic salt, and garlic powder typically added directly to the gravy as its cooking on a stove top. The fajita meat is extremely good by itself but you can mix it with the bean mix and voila super good bean dip. In the past 5 years or so I haven't been able to eat a large amount of meat, I can eat meat occasionally just not as a regular component of my diet so I just was working with the bean dip component itself independent of the fajita mix and I've subtracted the sour cream and added rice (and garlic powder recently) but basically you need a bonding agent so that the salsa doesn't become the dominant flavor. Generally avoid using salsa that tastes too much like tomatoes as it will overwrite some of the other component flavors. I've made the full on dip with the fajita mix like 30 or 40 times and the bean component several hundred times with varying results but sometimes you will end up with a completely heterogeneous solidified mix and sometimes it will be more homogenous and closer to liquid; both can be good for different reasons and all of these can be used with tortillas or tostadas as a main dish or just as something to eat with tortilla chips or doritos.