went into manhattan yesterday for the first time in almost a year for my mandatory yearly doctor checkup and it was both weird how normal everything still sort of looked and horrifying how many things have closed up for good
— Bo Bolander (@BBolander) January 14, 2021
Lockdown goal achieved. This is exactly why it has lasted so pointlessly long.
european cuisine, so chichi. https://t.co/pnaqXswT4I
— Steve Randy Waldman (@interfluidity) January 13, 2021
Recite the mantra: I will not live in the pod and I will not eat bugs.
I really need that other planet now.
Facebook was more helpful to the riot than Parler.
Let's follow the logic here.
Parler's business model is dangerous and should be illegal. Facebook caused even more violent activity than Parler. Therefore… https://t.co/gXRrbgzn2S
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) January 14, 2021
Facebook should be nuked from orbit and every high-level exec there barred from doing anything in that field again.
Been saying that for years. And I’ve been right for years. Where ya’ll been at?
What amazes me is the sheer stupidity that keeps being revealed?
They used a walkie-talkie app rather than just using walkie-talkies? https://t.co/YfHNvQQtrA
— Ian Welsh (@iwelsh) January 14, 2021
Of course they trained. The congressmembers were evacuated much faster than the insurrectionists thought would occur and some of their own people got in the way. The serious ones were using these doofuses for cover so they couldn’t advance beyond them much. It was obviously a planned op using opportunists and good-time goons to decoy themselves. As far as that goes, it was a smart tactic but it did not allow for speed and that’s why it failed.
They thought they’d get in and start taking hostages and killing within 2-3 minutes. Instead, it took them more than 10, which was both a lucky failure of mission planning, mostly due to lack of experience with understanding how such operations proceed, and an example of rare competence on the part of those coordinating the evacuation.
What I would’ve done if I’d been planning this operation is minimal weaponry and dressing like the biggest dipshits around, with light body armor concealed under my doofus regalia, and gone in with a real party goon atmosphere running through the halls as part of the first wave, encouraging those who were just there for a riot party to follow along so they could still act as clueless decoys while I moved as fast as possible. Speed is everything in these sorts of things and they didn’t take that into account.
Luckily for us, any variant of the plan above would only work once, and they blew their shot. They weren’t smart — rather stupid, actually — but their strategy overall was not bad.