BahRamYou
7hr ago
so I see that the liberals got the most seats, but not enough to make a majority, with conservatives in a close second. Does that mean they automatically win? Or do they both have to negotiate with the BQ and NDP to see which party actually forms the government?
BahRamYou
1d ago
It's probably because I've had my brain rotted by the internet and videogames, but I prefer writing that it's simple and clear. Straight to the point, with minimal fluff. I know that there's a place for the more flowery, poetic writing but I just can't enjoy it anymore, and I find it gets in the way of communicating complex ideas.
I do appreciate advanced vocabulary though. Like the standard writing advice is to not use adverbs, just find a better verb/noun instead. "don't say she was very sad, say she was morose." That sort of thing. Not only does it sound better, it also helps clarify just exactly what's going on.
BahRamYou
3d ago
Many of the Epstein victims admit they did it voluntarily for money, but you can't say that because it gets in the way of the narrative of helpless proles victimized by evil sex-trafficking finance guys.*
Por que no los dos? It's true that most of the victims were offered money to step on a plane, not forcibly kidnapped. But they were also psychologically manipulated and placed in a strange circumstance way outside anything the expected or had ever experienced. Being teenagers, maybe they thought they could handle it but then the reality was very different than they expected.
BahRamYou
5d ago
I don't look at it in terms of certainties, but in probabilities. It's not like a videogame where war is automatically declared when you declare on an ally- it's always subject to the whims of politicians and public sentiment.
So yes, this time, NATO countries chose to stay out of it, although they did provide massive amounts of material aid. I note the steady escalation as we went from financial and medical aid, to obsolete weapons, to eventually sending top-shelf military equipment. There's also been a divide in our politics, with Trump and the republicans being much more isolationist, while the Democrats want to get more involved. I could see a future where there's a cease-fire for a bit, a Democrat in the veign of LBJ gets elected, and the Republics flagrantly violate the cease-fire in a way that really pisses off the American public, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Or it could go the other way. I have no idea! I don't think Putin does either. Just saying that he'd be a fool to completely ignore the US and assume he has carte-blanche to conquer all of non-affiliated Europe just because Biden and Trump chose not to get involved in this specific instance.
Of course, what I would really like to see is a massive build up of our munititions stockpiles, so that even if we don't get directly involved, we could just send enough shells and missiles to stop the invasion. it's embarrassing how badly we're getting outgunned by 50-year-old Soviet tech.
BahRamYou
6d ago
It's worked out reasonably well. Ukraine got a ton of aid to keep their country going, while NATO was able to avoid a direct fight with Russia. Not ideal, but i can imagine a lot of ways it could have gone worse.
BahRamYou
6d ago
I wouldn't completely discount the idea of a vague security guarantee as "useless." That's more or less what we have with Taiwan, and that's managed to keep the peace for over 50 years so far. Obviously Ukraine would want something more explicit, while Russia would prefer an explicit guarantee of independance/non-interference. But sometimes the only political viable compromise is a vague muddle.
BahRamYou
7d ago
The funny thing is, in my experience blue-collar construction workers tend to be big fans of cigarettes. So maybe the two things aren't even all that disconnected!
There's also a weird tension. We celebrate the engineers who make better machines, because it makes our lives better. But there's a limit on how far that can go, eventually we run out of things to automate and create so much industrial abundance that it just becomes harder to get a regular job. EG, I'm worried that industrial fishing has become too efficient and without strict regulation it's just going to make more and more fish go extinct. Meanwhile, a normal traditional fisherman can no longer make a living.
BahRamYou
8d ago
"Build something. Do something."
Does it make any difference to you what we do, or is it enough just to have a job? Is the guy selling cigarettes at the same worth as someone making buildings?
BahRamYou
16d ago
If it was just a brief little loop of one specific memory, like the photos in Harry Potter, then I guess that would be OK. But it's not going to stay there, is it? It will develop persistent memory and learn over time, so it's basically an afterlife. And every single member of the family will want their own version, so now there's 10 copies of grandmas that have all evolved over time. that sounds horrible.
BahRamYou
21d ago
Increased PGM strikes and naval bombardments until they've destroyed all of the anti-ship missiles that the Houthis got from Iran. It doesn't need to be a genocide or an extended occupation. It's just the sort of thing that having more mass of conventional weapons in your military helps a lot with, which is why I support this sort of budget increase.
BahRamYou
21d ago
We could it at least give it a shot, before we give up on it entirely. Right now the US is just tickling them with small amounts of precision tomahawk missile strikes. This isn't like Vietnam or Afghanistan, where we're trying to pacify an entire large country. We just want to stop a thin strip of land near the sea from launching missiles at ships.
What is your argument exactly.... that no amount of larger military spending could possibly beat a small insurgent group like the houthis, but it's also useless against major powers because everything would just be nukes? most military simulations do not agree with either of those.
BahRamYou
21d ago
Well, knowing Trump, this is probably just empty boasting + big round numbers ("ten billion dollars") + grift for him and his cronies.
But if it actually goes through, I can see the logic to it. China is rapidly buiding up its navy, much faster than the US and allied nations. We can't use nuclear weapons because they do too (plus it's just horrible). And raw dollars are misleading, since their military gets paid a lot less, so in PPP it's a lot closer. Same with Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
Hell, we've been fighting the Houthis for over a year now, and we still haven't been able to completely shut them down. Some ships are still avoiding that area. The US can protecdt its homeland, but it doesn't have anywhere near the kind of global dominance that it once had.
BahRamYou
23d ago
Well, he's an old man and a lame-duck president. His political future was probably cooked regardless of what he did. But he'll still have all the usual presidential powers like vetos, pardons, and foreign policy. The tariffs might be the defining feature of his presidency.
BahRamYou
26d ago
I second all of this. I have messed with shorting a little (although usually by options rather than naked shorts) and it's a lot harder than being long. You're paying interest the entire time, and when it goes against you, you effectively get more leveraged, increasing your risk even while you think "cmon, this price is totally irrational, when is the bubble going to burst already!?" I know some perma-bears who have been predicting doom for the past 10 years (just from market valuations, nothing to do with Trump) and they keep getting proven wrong.
BahRamYou
27d ago
I'm also (somewhat) saved by laziness... was going to buy more (on leverage) yesterday but never got around to doing it. Never Get Up.
I'm personally getting screwed on this one because of some very aggressive options plays that I was doing. Thoughts and prayers for the stock market today, please.(I'm joking but am also seriously nervous right now)
BahRamYou
27d ago
OK, now that the site is working and I can actually read it, I can say that I really disagree with that person's opinions on RTS games. To me, they feel like the sort of opinions people have from thinking about RTS games and making them, but not so much actually playing them. Judging by this: https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/3_-_Fight_your_opponent,_not_the_UI it seems like he wants to make a game that's slower and more thoughtful. But that's just not how RTS games work... the strategy comes from which things you focus your limited attention and focus on. If you make everything too convenient and automated, there's nothing left for the player to do, and all games go the same way.
It's funny to me that he complains in that article about how much busywork is in the macro of Starcraft2. One of the big changes in that game compared to the original was that they greatly eased the task of macro, by adding automine and multiple building select. Lots of us complained about that change, and I still think we were right... the beauty of original Starcraft is that your opponent is constantly distracted with those macro tasks, so there's lots of opportunities to attack and win battles even when you're outnumbered. There was a glut of games from the 2000s that tried to "fix" RTS by automating things, including Total Annihilation (which I guess this game is a mod of?) and there's just no staying power to any of those games. Once you figure out the meta build, that's it, there's nothing left to do in them. Meanwhile, original Starcraft is still going strong after all these years with an active community of both pros and casual players.
I've never even heard the term "monospam." In what game was that a problem? I guess Total Annihilation? It was never an issue in starcraft or AOE2, since it's natural to want a combination of units unless you're doing a very early rush. If anything, noobs tended to build too many different types of units, and you have to learn as you get better to just focus on a few that share upgrades and buidings.
Still, well-written and thoughtful, so thanks for sharing it.
BahRamYou
29d ago
The site seems to be down so I can't read it there right now. But, I'm a little confused by that quote about Void Rays... what was wrong with them? I played SC2 when it first came out (after playing a lot of original Starcraft) and I thought Void Rays were fine. Charging them up by firing on your own stuff might have looked goofy, but it still required some skill and preparation. If anything, my complaint about SC2 was the opposite... everything was just too easy and automatic, so armies could all form up into one single death-ball and move around in perfect synchronization, giving little chance for players to show their skills or make a comeback wtih a smaller army.
4chan is back up! I'm so happy!
I... feel like that says something bad about me, that 4chan is basically the only place left on the internet where I feel at home. (this place is also good, but I do feel a bit out of place here). So many places these days are either enforced, toxic positivity (reddit) or worshipping a single influencer (most other social media). 4chan lets me speak my mind, and I feel like the people there actually get me. I'm a depressed, aging, alcoholic weeb so 4chan is very much "my people." But I can't help but feel like the people there are, weirdly, smarter than a lot of internet sites these days.
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