Grant_us_eyes
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User ID: 1156
Grant_us_eyes
3d ago
Okay, this is where I admit my historical shortfall and getting a few forts mixed up; The fort I was thinking of was Fort Pike, which I had somehow thought was the fort along the Mississippi River. It's not; those forts are instead Jackson and St Philip. In contrast, those two saw one hell of a battle; whereas Fort Pike was taken without a shot.
I had also forgotten how soon New Orleans fell during the Civil War; I could have inexplicably thought it was taken much later.
So! There's a solid argument that Fort Pike wasn't that critical, disqualifying it.
If so, I'd probably pick Vicksburg, which saw... comparatively small causalities and was basically the last Confederate hold-out on the Mississippi.
Grant_us_eyes
4d ago
Anything by Peter F Hamilton, really.
Hell, his first trilogy basically starts off with an artificially-engineered psychic British detective hooking up with a hot, stacked redhead and then going off to have adventures employed by a British megacorp in a post-global warming apocalyptic Briton.
Grant_us_eyes
5d ago
Modern society as a whole could never stand treating Indians and Muslims the way Germans were treated before and during WW1.
Then again, when you start looking at ancestry, there's a solid argument to be made that America is more German than English. (English comes in third, with Irish in second.) History is weird.
Grant_us_eyes
5d ago
You'd have to define what counts as 'front line', however.
Or else you'd just have people(like me) who'd play with the definition. Do defensive emplacements count? Cause I can think of places in the civil war that were both tactically critical, staffed the entire length of the war, yet saw very little combat.
Grant_us_eyes
8d ago
Less a movie and more a television series, but I can bet a decade or so from now, people are going to be writing sociological essays on the development of the Star Trek.
You could probably do that now anyways, but given how dark and bleak the latest stuff has gotten(or so I've been told), yeesh...
Grant_us_eyes
9d ago
What concerns me is the cultural message sent.
And you're ignoring shared social norms.
I'll be the first person to admit I think people need to get punched in the face more, or atleast know what physical combat, be it fisticuffs or whatnot, actually feels like and be capable of such.
That said, one of the first things my dojo drilled in my head, with the potential for sparring against people that might not even be able to speak the same language I have, is, when disengaging from sparring, always step back. The answer should be pretty obvious - you're keyed up, blood pumping, riding an adrenaline high, and stepping into someone's space is basically an aggressive maneuver that could result in a broken nose without them even intending to do so.
Reflexes are a hell of a drug.
So. Mutual combat? Fine. But it has to be ritualized, it needs to be strict, and it needs to be understood, by both parties, there are lines you do not cross.
And we definitely don't have that, and likely will never have that, given the current social situation in America as a whole.
Grant_us_eyes
10d ago
A very interesting review/analysis. Thank you.
I also find it interesting that Indie games are leaning more and more heavily toward sound design and implied, environmental story-telling to push forward immersion and investment in the game as a whole. Your description of Hollow Knight reminds me quite a great deal of Vintage Story, which despite being a procedural minecraft-origin game leans very heavily into both sound design, music fade-in/out, and implied environmental story-telling to piece together an overall tale - one that you, in the theme of Darksouls-like game, can completely ignore in favor of just killing things and building.
I can't say I find this development overall to be disagreeable. I always did enjoy the Elder Scrolls take on such.
Grant_us_eyes
10d ago
I can't read the article at the moment, as my work doesn't allow for archive links.
But going by forum commentary, this article is about what I expected.
The bitterly ironic thing is, I, as someone who's rather vociferous about 'stand your ground' and 'A man's home is his castle' and the use of firearms for defensive shooting - even then, I can think of atleast one instance that could be argued as a valid, bad shot that was ruled as 'legal'. And, I'm sure, if one did actual research, could come up with far more applicable instances than this circus cavalcade of examples.
(For illustration purposes, the case in particular I'm thinking of was the situation in Texas where the Mother and Step-dad refused to hand over a shared child to the Father(the father in question did have shared rights), and the Step-father shot him as a result. The step-father was ruled not guilty. While I'm sure the plethora of lawyers on the Motte could 'Um, ACTUALLY' the case in question, from a contextual, moral, and ethical standpoint, I have no problem pointing at that situation and noting 'Nope, that shit is fucked up.')
Grant_us_eyes
14d ago
And every time that gate became easier to hop over, things got worse and worse.
Yes, as I said.
If you're asking for where the apex was... man, I don't know. I couldn't tell you. Probably in some nebulous, fuzzy area between 1996-2004 where things still looked optimistic and before we saw the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train loaded with caustic chemicals.
Grant_us_eyes
15d ago
These things don't last because they aren't good for the majority of people.
Bingo. The 'Golden Age of the Internet' was the golden age specifically because it was self-selecting and gatekept behind one really big fucking gate.
And every time that gate became easier to hop over, things got worse and worse.
The internet is fine. The real issue is that the majority of people are fucking retarded, and so that's what everything gets marketed to.
Grant_us_eyes
19d ago
I saw someone remark 'You're able to pull all-nighters in college because that's when you should be having children' and that line as stuck in me like a thorn.
Grant_us_eyes
21d ago
There's a... I don't want to say 'reputation,' and I don't have a series of studies to point at either, so I'll just say a [reputation] of rising politicians who go from thriving in lower-level politics to tripping at higher levels because they go from being big fish in small ponds to working in an ocean of interests that aren't so easily corralled.
...isn't this just the Peter Principle as applied to politics?
Grant_us_eyes
22d ago
Perhaps, yes. But Darwin's argumentative style was fairly distinct in that he operated in isolation, stripping everything of context and focusing on single and individual elements and proceed to wear the argument down until you more or less gave up while refusing to concede ground on what he choose to argue about.
Hence why I don't think it's a Darwin alt.
Grant_us_eyes
22d ago
Giving everyone involved credit where credit is due, Darwin was never banned so doesn't need an alt if he wants to come back in and Just Start Asking Questions again.
Instead, they come across as a sort of 'Why aren't you getting back in the longhouse' style of moral harassments that's honestly aghast as to why thier decades-old tactics aren't functioning properly anymore.
Grant_us_eyes
25d ago
Not quite. There's a sub-set of the right that's very, very much into hating Russia.
The left just glosses that over in place of the right who are sick and tired of involvement in foreign wars and go 'not my problem' and take that as endorsement.
Grant_us_eyes
29d ago
Bluesky is where all the Leftists whom were offended with Musk buying twitter ran off to.
Mastodon I don't know anything about, so I can't really say.
truth.social is the social website Donald Trump spun up after being banned off of Twitter for some reason.
They're typically just twitter/x clones. Presumably Mastodon, as well.
Fallacious logic. There have been plenty of conspiracies that have held up to scrutiny with no one whistle-blowing, despite the likely large number of personelle involved.
MK-Ultra, for example, is only know due to a filing mishap that meant not all the paperwork on said project was successfully destroyed.
More recently, we've learned of 275 plain-clothes FBI agents amoung the January 6 crowd - not a single whistleblower.
Conspiracies can work just fine, it seems.
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