No_one
Underemployed Slav. Likes playing Factorio.
User ID: 1042
No_one
29d ago
Elon Musk is too guileless. He says exactly what he thinks is true with little regard for how others will react.
This is wrong. Musk has been consistently serving slop to the masses on twitter. Things he could not possibly believe but that were yet flattering the average 110 IQ twitter user.
I propose that Musk is not guileless, he has guile but is also erratic.
Zephon (2024)
Intro:
Is another C-tier(budget wise) 4x game using some crap Unity implementation(I guess, loading time 20s on a PC capable of 4K Cyberpunk 2077) that gameplay wise is easily on par with Civ V or earlier 4x games in most graphic stuff but the combat AI is actually not that bad and will punish you for fighting fair. Trailer here.. I get good frames but I feel a worse PC would probably suffer.
It's by devs who previously made the Gladius WH40K 4x game. This is a refinement of that game with their own post apocalyptic setting, that of a 22nd century some decades after first contacts came in the form of a surprise genocidal attack that was supposedly self defence. So it is a 4x with all the features of a typical 4x games, and is combat oriented. Even if you don't fight any player faction, the unplayable NPC factions will definitely fight you eventually and at quite the scale.
Overall, I like the gameplay and combat, the setting and writing of quests and characters is interesting if not that well executed and overall while I like the outline of the writing and the themes, in execution I am mildly annoyed there's that stench of Netflix/tweet chatGPT over some of it and they could have done so much better. But unless you're a literate right winger you may not even notice the annoying crap, I think. The most 'cringe' part for me is the 'forced diversity' part on which I'll elaborate later in the 'factions' section.
The map/game itself:
Unlike in common 4x games, the 'NPC empires' are an important part of the game and an inextricable part of the story. There's three of them, a retarded Skynet (did not cause the apocalypse, claims to want to help, not that good at R&D), survivors of the of the alien invasion fleet( definitely did cause the apocalypse), and your basic post-apocalyptic barbarian cannibal federation who somehow survived a few decades in a world of constant warfare between said mildly retarded Skynet and the aliens who while looking only mildly disgusting themselves employ biotech instead of most common machinery that looks like something puked up by a particularly sick cat and animated with voodoo.
Aliens and Skynet are perma-hostile to each other, Barbarians try to shake you down constantly. These factions don't really improve and apart from barbarians, don't colonize much and start with relatively strong cities.
Economy:
The economic part is not that complex, mostly standard 4x approach if a bit refined: all facilities in a city are physically visible on the world map and, at 3 per hex, a city of 7 hexes can only have at most 21 of them, though you're going to want multiples of each for later game units of course. Each facility has its own production and its own building queue, so there are large tradeoffs to make. You can't make planes in a tank factory or barracks and so on.
A city good at expanding itself can easily put up military factories and mothball the productive ones.. but building up that capacity means you delay your military production by quite some time. There's sadly no fun strategies based around slaving or causing refugee waves to exploit! All construction costs minerals, running everything takes energy, and people need to eat too. Late game units require stable transuranic elements and antimatter, sometimes in ludicrous quantities.
Combat: There's line of sights, terrain effects on cover, but mostly only for small unites (e.g. tanks or most planes don't benefit from forests or ruins providing cover and concealment much).
Weapons have damage, armor penetration, range and number of attacks, whether they're direct or indirect fire. Most units can overwatch so you need recon to avoid running into enemies and getting hit. Or if you move into a concealing tile (forest), they may not see you unless they're directly adjacent.
Units have experience level, morale, armor value, movement speed, evasion, vantage point (e.g. planes see over most obstacles etc but are also seen), number of subunits in each formation and a lot of less common properties. (e.g. basic human soldiers does 2x more attacks at close range, reflecting the difficulty of hitting anything with a rifle further out)
Most units (infantry) are composed of multiple small entities each with its own HP pool that each attack, so an attrited infantry unit delivers far less damage.
No_one
14d ago
You're Indian and raised there. To the British and many central/northern European guys, 15°C is shirt-sleeve weather when doing anything more active than sitting outside. If it's 15°C and sunny, I often just go shirtless because after the bloody winter it feels so nice to feel the sun on your skin once more.
Temperature sensitivity is bound to where you were raised, I think. I have seen black people wearing puffy jackets in a thirty degree weather, the kind of jackets I unzip when it's >10 °C because I'd sweat otherwise.
Autonomic nervous system just gets used to some particular temperature..
No_one
12d ago
Warheads on missiles are removable. All they'd need to do to launch a nuke is replace the warhead in one of their missiles with a nuclear one.
They know that Israel has invested a ton in missile defense and would probably gamble on being able to shoot down a lone surviving ballistic missile or two.
Israeli ABM consistently fails to intercept fast missiles that evade. It's simply too hard a problem. You need to track them exactly and guide interceptors, which have guidance issues bc of aerodynamic heating onto the incoming stuff.
They can intercept ballistic missiles all right, but not the more modern, faster ones that glide ..
No_one
14d ago
There was a treatise and also some horribly smug memoir.
The clown part is that it took years for people to surface that crap even though half a day of effort would have found it back then. But that'd mean someone out there would have to be proactive.
No_one
16d ago
For a system to last young people have to be able out maneuver the old. First past the post makes this hard.
Given the cohort size disparity, no one is ever 'outmaneuvering' boomers in Germany. They'll keep voting CDU till they can't. Clear eyed people I know are saying they can only imagine things changing for the better after the boomers die out as a group.
No_one
7d ago
Tar & chip seems like a good method, if properly done. Tar should prevent weeds from taking root easily, also waterproof so if there's soil being created in there (and it will be getting created in there), you can poison the crap and not risk much getting into the soil. Ofc, bad contractors can fuck it up easily.
I spent three days this week paving a 10x10' area with flagstones at the dacha. The old outdoors table was mostly rotten. Just the bloody stones, about 1000 lbs of them cost us €120, but there's nothing like those in the ground around here and we didn't want just a concrete slab.
Digging the ground level, putting in sand, buying, moving and placing the not that even flagstone to be at most +- 1/8" off the sloping horizontal plane, at most and then filling the gaps with concrete took like three days total. Hopefully it'll last at least 30+ years like other similar flagstone-paved paths at the dacha. Maybe 2-3 pros would've done it in 8 hours, I think.
No_one
7d ago
Yeah, pretty much. But there's no peak nor end to cinephilia or any other arena of art-snobbery. I'm sure among cinephiles you'd find those who look down on people who think Tarkovsky's 'Nostalghia' isn't actually self-indulgent artsy trash and a true person of taste and discernment likes some more obscure indeciphrable film with better cinematography.
No_one
9d ago
IRGC helped put down ISIS and unlike Americans,never provided CAS for them.
They're not friends of 'jihadis',they have their own league.
No_one
29d ago
He wasn't too liberal. He is a living fossil, him with his open mind and willingness to talk to people.
Today liberalism stands for western guilt, feelings and self expression over rationality, safety over openness, faith in solving social issues through social engineering, despite half a century of total failure of such efforts.
No_one
28d ago
There's some motivation out there. This tweet recently caused some consternation. If someone's younger, they need to be reminded that time is marching on ever faster as one ages.
It's way too late for me to have a real life. I'm not getting married I'm not ever having a real relationship I'm never going to build a house or buy one and make it the way I like it. I don't have the time or energy for any of that. I am an adult adolescent until death now. I got no chance to start any sort of a life that makes sense. You know I'm 40, right? I'm not in great health from stress issues stemming from the pandemic, and I can't handle 100% of my own needs, never mind a family.
Sure there's a lot that I can contribute to the world but I'm not going to get much back for it. No matter how much money I get there isn't much I can do with it. Maybe get a nice place to live or a car but not a real life
No_one
1mo ago
I'm gobsmacked that Shiloh has managed to milk three quarters of a million dollars (and counting!) out of being accosted over a minor literal playground scuffle.
Remember the Zebra killings? The ones so deprioritised from history that back on Reddit Motte when I mentioned them that people raised in the San Francisco area had no clue ~20 to several scores of whites were killed in a sustained campaign of race murder?
These people -violent black nationalists haven't gone away. They still exist.
Insane random killings of white people are still a thing, of course the DoJ makes a point of making sure no one investigates 'senseless' violence too closely. What would be the point? There's nothing you can do thus ignorance is bliss.
This one, a double murder by rifle followed by a shootout involving an armored car made the local headlines briefly. How many cases won't because it looks like just another robbery gone awry?
It's practically certain that that video has led to her featuring in sadistic rape / murder fantasies of hundreds of black bigots and likely also some leftist activist ones - as I'm unaware of any data that indicates that sexual sadism does not occur in black men, or that they do not have a subpopulation that is itching for some violence.
And while yes, they're not the mob, the odds of someone availing themselves of an opportunity to rape or kill someone who truly deserves it are quite real.
EDIT: i should read more carefully and post not as late at night.
You don't remember the congressional baseball match shootout? Just 8 yrs ago?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting
Perp was an abusive asshole if you read about his background, strongly political but not a schizo.
The only reason it wasn't a mass murder is luck and maybe the perp not being that great a shot?
No_one
12d ago
Israel isn't a NPT member state.
The actual impetus appears to be the stockpile of 60% enriched uranium, but 60% enriched uranium isn't itself a violation of the NPT.
With modern centrifuges that's a few days away from material for efficient uranium bombs.
No_one
10d ago
Expecting Iranians not to be able to build compact, boosted fission warheads 70 years after such were first built is unreasonable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boosted_fission_weapon
Note that they do have an interest in lithium 6 separation.
More importantly, to play MAD, you have to have launch-ready nuclear weapons.
Chinese spent decades with hydrogen bombs and a definitely not launch ready posture.
Neither India nor Pakistan have MAD capability, yet their weapons are still deemed useful.
For the purposes of scaring away carrier groups, fission warheads are entirely sufficient. While you may think glassing cities after the enemy blew up a carrier or military base of yours is a proportional response, most of the world wouldn't think so.
No_one
24d ago
As someone who's pro-industrial policy and also anti-CCP, I think think the supply chain problem is one of those issues with a lot of misplaced attention, wherein globalization gets projected onto various political narratives, to the detriment of analyzing capability.
CPC wants to rule, or at least have veto power in the world by providing quality stuff in quantity at an unmatched price.
Quoting JZ281C from twitter
I used to think that CN will appreciate its currency to help rebalance trade. This makes sense for an economic perspective, but from a geopolitical perspective it would make sense to keep CNY undervalued for now.
My main mental-model recalibration is recognizing that geopolitical considerations increasingly dominate economic calculations.
The big unknown is whether China's end game is co-existence with the US, or destruction of the current US political-economy. If it is the latter, then it will continue to be extremely aggressive with its strategic offensive in the global trade/tech domain.
CNY undervaluation is increasingly concentrating global industry in CN. This is a geopolitical move. You cannot understand this with economic logic.
CNY undervaluation sacrifices present Chinese living standards/consumption in exchange for future geopolitical dominance.
CN is essentially engaged in a war of attrition of national will power against all the other great powers including India. Countries that cannot suppress popular demand for higher present standard of living will lose geopolitical power to CN over time via de-industrialization.
There is no free lunch. Any attempt to compete in industry with China will involve major sacrifices in present standard of living. Any country that cannot out-save China will lose. Competing with China is not about policies. It fundamentally requires national mobilization similar to a total war. Simply printing money to subsidize industry without suppressing consumption will lead to inflation and eventually debt/currency crisis. US didn't have a market economy during WWII, it had wage/price controls and War Production Board to coordinate industrial production at the national level. People planted victory gardens and accepted rationing.
All in all, if you want to fight China geopolitically, maybe you should not have utterly burned out the goodwill of the working classes. Maybe they'd be willing to make big sacrifices then. Asking people you have been trying to replace to accept a 1950s standard of living will be a hard sell.
No_one
2mo ago
Facts are: he was trespassing, he had a knife in a place where he shouldn't have had one and then when confronted stabbed a guy who objected to him being there.
To me it seems outrageous a bond is even allowed. He is being charged as an adult. Letting murderers walk free for months until there's a court case? That's not how thing are supposed to go.
No_one
23d ago
We're All Sitcom Characters Now
Lot of small/middle accounts on twitter are perfectly normal and don't try to engagement bait or make a brand. And something like 80% of twitter eyeballs are allegedly people who barely if ever post.
No_one
18d ago
overthrowing a US-backed monarchy
The monarchy was overthrown because the US under Carter refused to support it. (or at least Nixon thought so and blamed Carter for it) They were told if they cracked down on the revolutionaries US would not back that decision.
No_one
20d ago
Enforcing borders is not at all arbitrary as that famous wolfpack range map shows. It's as arbitrary as childbirth.
No_one
27d ago
East Asians are severely underrepresented in gang criminality, religious motivated violence and the like.
East Asians do organised crime so well organised and so quietly that they basically never cause enough outrage for a democratic government to do anything. No bodies found, no shootings, no nothing.
Factions:
There's eight of them in the base game, some of them share a particular native type of tech (so far, three with ~8 units each) but each has different leader and faction abilities. You can in theory mix & match, but as the production facility for each unit type is unique, the gigantic opportunity cost definitely prevents mixing units of the same tier (so 2 infantry types etc, not to mention, in the crucial early game the other faction's units are an era behind) and some resources differ.
Native tech types:
Middle Americans (dudes with body armor & guns, tanks, SPAA, guided missiles, big artillery, nukes, even bigger tanks, brutal air power and of course space marines with antimatter sprinkled blades that cut anything as pinnacle of infantry). Will nuke you if given a chance. Each faction type has several 'operations', basically a sort of spell of some sort.
Silicon Valley Americans (cyborg under-armed infantry, hover-servitors with plasma guns, purely mechanical spider snipers, some time-cheating floating beam weapon using AI drone etc). Will cause a small pseudo black hole to appear over your city or army and stay being horrible for a month.
And the very definitely illegal aliens who introduced themselves by gigadeaths and now claim it was all a misunderstanding or necessary or something along those lines and the various humans who've developed an affinity for said alien's ..deity? Not at all clear what the they do, don't feel like playing them.
The 'Silicon Valley' tech tree is natively had by three factions: 'Emulated Mind'- a partly failed upload who is good at logistics and sort of good with some of the cringiest writing(survived death and cancer and won't let the apocalypse stop her), and 'heartless artificer' who is a strictly 'ends justifies the means' type of person and implausibly represented by a pretty indefinable mocha woman with a slight spanish accent.
Whereas, we know it'd be some extremely intense white or asian autist-psychopath IRL. The special traits for the two are: emulated mind can only build two cities but gets more from random facilities around the map, and the 'heartless artificer' is good at cloning and can also improve production through a 'performance review' called 'fountain of blood' where the lowest performers get the bullet to motivate the rest to work up to 34% harder.
Then there's 'Rogue Operative', undoubtedly an Asian trans cybercriminal who social engineered a little too much and ended up running the remains of a company she was attempting to steal from when the end of the world came. I say trans because it's the 22nd century so I'm assuming gender-affirming surgery has been perfected by then but affinities towards hacking have likely not changed much.
The middle American tech tree is had by three base factions: 'Fallen Soldier' -a robust looking hispanic guy who just won't die, kind of a like a WH40k perpetual. His faction's special power is just rigorously training their units and also healing charms-pieces of his flesh somehow prevent those who bear them from dying. Also somehow fix damaged hardware but I'm going to overlook that for now. Naturally, people love not dying of common wounds and diseases. He doesn't know why he rose from the dead, but if you wear a piece of his flesh as a talisman you're going to heal much faster.
Then there's 'practical romantic' (not actually romantic anymore) - the most normal human faction out there. Special power- get resources from defeated enemies, can buff morale with influence. Looks Iranian I guess.
Then there's the most seemingly implausible human faction, led by a fat German aristocrat (monocled, too) who spent a few decades in a bunker before getting out and becoming useful. A good administrator(can rush production) and diplomat/trader. German aristocracy, whatever is left of it is led by people who are almost invariably tanned jocks, and if not that, reasonably fit and very good skiers. Although, maybe in the late 21st century being a fat foodie will once more be a status mark? Perhaps it's good writing.
No_one
14d ago
The worst things we know of were done in Canada, the 'straw country' US uses for dirty work bc their judges have no jurisdiction there. Ewen Cameron kept some people on LSD in a coma so long they lost memories.
In the US I know that CIA ran a brothel where they were drugging people and drugged some military personnel in experiments, but I have never seen claims US universities (not just a few individual researchers) participated in this.
Seeing as drones are proliferating on the battlefield, in 20 years a platoon is going to have an APC with a server rack with more intelligence than an small office building of west pointers and a dozen recon drones in the air at all times.
Between everyone having a phone which can be easily turned into a snitch that keeps track of where you go and military drones, keeping the population surveilled and preventing it from feeding or aiding guerrillas is going to be a lot easier.
They were doing this in Xinyang. Every single person had to use a phone with a tracking app, they were also checking in arrivals at every single building, probably noting who was in close proximity. This isn't even SF, this is present day counter-insurgency
Tell me, how are there going to be 'cyber attacks' when the army will go around methodically securing or destroying all satellite comms on the grounds of them being security risks ? And the national fiber network is of course not going to be left in place, it's going to be severed from the internet and any channels going in or out are going to be approved by some paranoid AI system ?
Setting up a nation-wide panopticon is only as hard as is forcing the population, at gunpoint, to install the right brand of spyware app onto their phone.
Not very hard at all. They need the phones for most financial operations and they use either android or apple, so you need two kinds of apps to use lol. Verrry difficult. I'm sure there's going to be 3-4 Chinese vendors of such apps fiercely competing with each other over features.
With global IQ of 90 and AI, spyware apps are probably going to come into fashion to prevent silicon mischief.
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