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🎃 Really Spooky Smith

@reallyseansmith.bsky.social

2.1K followers 590 following 7.6K posts

Author of Even a Dog Enlists, Why Not You? and Rank Absurdity: An Irreverent Military Memoir. Formerly a US Army, MI, UN, NATO, etc. guy. Currently a Regular Human Person goofing off on Bluesky. https://www.amazon.com/stores/Sean-Smith/author/B0B6KPP5XL

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · Dec 13

🗃️ Quote, repost, talk to another human being if you must, do whatever it takes to spread the word my new book “Even a Dog Enlists, Why Not You?” is available NOW! Get it in paperback, get it for Kindle, read it for free with Kindle Unlimited, just get it!

Even a Dog Enlists, Why Not You? Family, History, and the First World War

Even a Dog Enlists, Why Not You? Family, History, and the First World War - Kindle edition by Smith, Sean M.. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Even a Dog Enlists, Why Not You? Family, History, and the First World War.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 2h

Maybe it's time to take another swing at writing fiction...

Outline 7 days
Research 30 days
First draft 120 days
Crafting an intro apologizing to the reader for my lack of credentials: 400 days
Proofreading 60 days

someone who is good at the writing please help me budget this time. my family is dying

🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 2h

a woman says that she hates it but thank you netflix

Alt: a woman says that she hates it but thank you

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 4h

It's extremely difficult to grasp the scale of the mass death caused by Eurpean diseases coming to the Americas. It's one of the worst things to happen to the human race. European colonialism was less a great achievement and more akin to robbing a memorial service for a school bus fire at gunpoint.

George Pearkes @peark.es · 5h

A thing I think doesn't get internalized enough in the discourse of the European subjugation of the Americas is that there was no way for contact between Europe and those continents to not end in abject disaster for indigenous Americans because of disease burden.

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 8h

"Sapiens" is so normal for the first 70,000 years of human history but then goes absolutely buckwild as soon as it gets to colonialism

🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 6h

Now I'm thinking what an OP malaise era car would be.

"Over 200 horsepower and under 4,000 pounds are only allowed in the S-Tier bracket."

*All the foreign exotics catch fire by turn 2 or spin out in the oil leaked by the one in front of them*

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 6h

Anti-intellectualism is pervasive and cuts across all ideological lines.

Hippies and Nazis both adore all kinds of woo.

Dan Kaszeta FRHistS @dankaszeta.bsky.social · 6h

Since when did "But I saw it on a meme! A MEME!" outrank "here's some peer-reviewed scientific literature that says otherwise". ???

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 16h

I feel like there are people who age gracefully, people who have a rough time of it, and me wondering how my head is a different shape now.

a man in a shirt and tie is touching his forehead

Alt: Al Bundy rubs his head

media.tenor.com

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 16h

My dad says the most woke shit in 1972 sailor language and it rules.

Burt Reynolds scowling with the caption MAD AT TRANS? WORRY ABOUT YOUR OWN DICK AND GET A REAL JOB.

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Reposted by 🎃 Really Spooky Smith

Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 18h

Lots of us have great-grandparents names who were absolutely changed when they came here, and when people say otherwise, they're assuming your great-grandparents name was in the Roman alphabet.

Robyn Pennacchia @robynelyse.bsky.social · 18h

Now, more than ever, it's important to understand why so many the myths we tell ourselves about immigration are actually very harmful.

First of all, your great-great-grandparents names *were not changed* at Ellis Island. No one there had the authority to do that.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 17h

Hell, doomsday plague more like!

🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 19h

Dolly was always super hype about Whitney's cover of her song, so as much as Dolly rules, I don't think this is even a hot take.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 19h

Without saying Hurt, fav Cover Song?

Nobody had their original version of a song nuked from orbit as hard as Bob Dylan was by Jimi Hendrix.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 20h

Shit, it's mostly forgotten that the WWI veterans came home directly to a recession and waves of random terrorism and racist violence and shit. Like they got off the boat in 1919-1920 and America looked more fucked than when they left it.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 20h

"Maybe we can get them to gas themselves?"

"Worth a try."

a police officer stands in front of a wall that says something undone

Alt: a police officer stands in front of a wall and shrugs.

media.tenor.com

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 20h

I don't think the Bonus Army makes sense unless you grasp that these people were traumatized, but also believed in what they did, and were often more disillusioned by the Great Depression and Hoover shafting them after the fact than the war itself.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 20h

The overriding themes were "It was horrible in ways I never could have imagined in a million years, I have no words for it so stop asking" and "I did what I was supposed to do as well as I could and would do it again if necessary." Often both. And that last part is critically overlooked, I think.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 20h

The fun thing about WWI is that thousands of returning veterans filled out surveys about what it was like and what they thought about it, we don't have to guess or have it filtered through fiction writers who couldn't have spelled "trench" if you gave them all the consonants in the right order.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 20h

Ceci n'est pas it, chief.

*Pours acid in eyes to save them*

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We are so overprepared for tomorrow's thing it's slightly ridiculous.
We cut a fitted sheet up into pieces that can be tied around the head and soaked them in vinegar, in case the gas hits the face. Ziplocked them individually with a package of earplugs taped to the outside in case of audio attack.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 20h

As much as we all bitch about GWOT MilGrifters, it's hard to top William Faulker stealing WWI medical records to claim someone else's war injuries as his own.

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🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 20h

Post you from a different era.

Cadet me circa 1994.

West Point Cadet me wearing the "white over gray" uniform.

🎃 Really Spooky Smith @reallyseansmith.bsky.social · 20h

I have to give the WWI Brits some credit here, you generally had to at least go across the channel before they'd publish your war writing.

William Faulkner: