No_one
Underemployed Slav. Likes playing Factorio.
User ID: 1042
No_one
20d ago
What about.. the supply part of the army ? Driving trucks, working in logistics. Any part of that <100 km can be fatal on a bad day if a drone spots it and it's deemed a good enough target.
Phlebas is acknowledged as one of his weakest Culture work, I believe. Player of Games as one of the better ones. I didn't find any of the books too preachy though. And they aren't really 'communists' in any real sense. It's more of a thoroughly post-scarcity oligarchy with a number of unsolved questions..
Iain was a bolshie, true, but at least the books are good reading, and the preaching / lib-mindedness is at worst present, but not central.
Personally I don't mind long-winded books that are universally acknowledged to 'need an editor' if the writing is fun enough.
I really liked "The Algebraist". Not a culture book at all, and even though it's mildly political, you can hardly accuse the message of being communist. Any human except maybe the most reactionary/hierarchical types would concur, I believe.
Fearsum Endjinn is pretty decent. I liked 'Against a Dark Background' though it's a bit rougher.
He was a good to very good writer... 20 years of writing after work, followed by twenty more years being comfortably well off while writing for a quarter of a year, at most.
Well, pancreatic cancer is no joke. He was dead within three months of diagnosis.
No_one
18d ago
With AI, the odds of automating zersetzung are approaching 100%.
It's much less disruptive than jailing people, and probably cheaper.
No_one
11d ago
You should try to elaborate on making it a bit more clear.
Yes, protesters are important for democracy, for if they didn't protest, what excuse for political action would there be ?
the Golem is running amok on college campuses but is flexing as much political power as ever
Are you suggesting these protesters were funded, all along, by the same people who are now using the protests as an excuse to pass anti-semitism legislation ? (that, if it passes, is probably going to be struck down as unconstitutional, pretty soon )
I'm going to once again recommend "The Eternal Front" by Walter Blaire.
Technically it's a mildly hard mil-sf but the war is just the setting. Yes, there are fights, but mostly the novel is more of a mystery/spy/political story.
It's very well written for a self-published work and quite novel, to me.
All the constituent parts have been re-worked and put in an arrangement that is arguably original.
As in, vastly better than the typical technothriller tier writing most SF has.
I once wrote a nice message to the author, saying it's on the level of how Iain Banks wrote when drunk. He really liked it. Hard to judge, but I don't think I'm more than mildly wrong.
Most books - like e.g. 'Bobiverse' are painfully contemporary. You've got SF trappings, but everything else - language, ethics etc feels like modern day West.
This book - the SF trappings are minimal, 99% of stuff used during the plot is pure electric age tech, or even late steam era. It's set on the fringe of a rapidly declining colony that started with cca 22nd century tech level - AIs, fusion power, 'reasonable' nanotech etc.
The languages spoken by the various groups are all recognizable modern English - but style / vocabulary wise feel alien. However, unlike Star Wars, it's 'actually sf' in that it tries to be internally coherent, cares about historical, political and technological constraints and so on.
People have their own odd ethics. The colonists, Haphans, culturally seem like a weird mix between 19th century Britain (social mores) and North Korea (politics). They're described as pretty much human, but clearly from a 'prepped*' population. There's no mention of Earth whatsoever in their history, or of other non-Hapha humans, although Earth clearly exists within the setting because there's one oblique reference to it - a Hebrew derived name in a minor, outsider character.
The natives ancestors were human once but aren't, anymore. They're descended from someone's 'plausible' idea of a supersoldier race. There's a small bit of 'art major biology' in the book, but most of the stuff is within bounds of physics and biology.
They're savants at fighting - much more accurate, fast breeding, love fighting, vastly better reaction time, far less likely to die from injury, immune to disease, a second grafted on nervous system preventing combat fatigue or undue fear of death, a whole set of instincts related to weapons and looks like also primitive armament production. Neurologically problematic for them to tell a lie. And so on. Interestingly, linguistic drift is also what they're missing entirely.
They seem about as intelligent as Haphans, who seem pretty normal, but the feral supersoldier heritage causes problems - e.g. engineers or scientists killing each other due to disagreement is a frequent, not very rare risk. By themselves, they only ever achieved high middle ages technology.
*Quote from Iain M Banks' Algebraist (spoilers):
Prepping. A very long-established practice, used lately by the Culmina amongst others, is to take a few examples of a pre-civilised species from their home world (usually in clonoclastic or embryonic form) and make them subject species\slaves\mercenaries\mentored. so that when the people from their home world finally assume the Galactic stage, they are not the most civilised\advanced of their kind (often they're not even the most numerous grouping of their kind). Species so treated are expected to feel an obligation to their so-called mentors (who will also generally claim to have diverted comets or otherwise prevented catastrophes in the interim, whether they have or not). This practice has been banned in the past when pan-Galactic laws (see Galactic Council) have been upheld but tends to reappear in less civilised times. Practice variously referred to as Prepping, Lifting or Aggressive Mentoring. Local-relevant terminology: aHuman & rHuman (advanced and remainder Human).
No_one
8d ago
Why? He's a Mexican. You think if he grew a beard and went into Mexico and became a normal person with a normal job, he'd be in trouble ? Or you know, that he'd be widely recognized in the US offline if he changed his looks a bit ? Guys can always grow a beard. If it worked for a war criminal who was actually a fugitive, in a country one fiftieth the size of the US, not just out of favor, it should work for Nick.
Or that he couldn't get hired in the US in a red state by someone who isn't affiliated with America's ideological police, the misnamed 'EEOC' ? , so any small company ?
No_one
11d ago
BioTech investors.
These also include the 5 food corporations that own almost all food processing and would love to have a new, very safe market.
No_one
8d ago
I doubt he’s consciously repeating what they want him to though.
I think you're not serious.
His followers are effectively a horde of shit-flinging monkeys, a staple of jokes "name the jew" types. He sometimes says sensible things, and then tars them by 'jokingly' talking about holocaust denial, which while might be attractive to lower IQ Americans incapable of understanding human nature, is laughable to people with more experience or people who lived in the region, like Europeans.
Yeah, there's a remote possibility that his ego doesn't prevent him from just fading away, changing his name and not harming his cause, but I rather think he's playing a role for the FBI because they need him to play a role.
No_one
12d ago
Being non AAA is no guarantee of not being woke, because a lot of devs are normies, and woke is in the air.
Better odds: non-western developers who aren't woke. There's a few RW or die-hard liberal guys making games in the West. Also Outward was published by a major studio, so..
AAA, or published by a big publisher almost guarantees it's going to be woke. For this reason people are worried about new Kingdome Come game.
There may even be devs barely aware of 'woke'. E.g. the guys who developed Dyson Space Program, a 3d riff on Factorio are likely Chinese who grind code all the time and may not even be aware of it.
No_one
17d ago
I'd not really fear SV that much, but what D.C. gestapo contractors and their opposite numbers in China are going to do.
No_one
12d ago
would sanction it to hell, all national and international businesses would leave, unemployment would skyrocket, a lack of federal subsidies would make programs that keep the underclass in these states under control and pliable
Sounds just like what was supposed to happen to Russia, yet here we are.
has no real need not to keep trading with both parties.
If Texas wasn't sanctioned by China, what problem would they have? Chinese sell everything.
No_one
12d ago
You need to read 'The Populist Delusion'.
There always is a 'they'. In any mass society. Bottom up organisation never lasts. They end up controlled by people who had to keep them organised. US is a very old society. No purges or revolutions for 200 years. Not to mention, US was founded by freemasons. (lol) 'they' is very traditional here.
How did they do that? What is the evidence that they did this?
They didn't. Merely are exploiting the event to restore normalcy. Someone was afraid US might totally crack up before WW3.
No_one
11d ago
I think that's the one. But getting people in big cities to stop using city canteens so they can stop funding them seems like a win/win initiative so it should work out.
No_one
11d ago
Well, non-woke story having games I know of are Highfleet (made by a single Russian orthodox programmer) and Underrail (from Serbia).
There's also Starsector, a spaceship tactical/RPG game with a storyline. Russians, again.
Also there's the Colony Ship RPG. Made by 'Irontower Studio' whose website says this:
Iron Tower Studio is a premier destination for all your hardcore RPG needs. Proudly serving 0.003% of the Global Gaming Market since 2015. The remaining 99.997% need not apply.
And so on.
No_one
23d ago
Sailer's was joking how funny it is that Spielberg has spend like a million bucks on luxury Italian shotguns but there's like 2 photos of him shooting one.
No_one
12d ago
They don't really need to if the rest of the world sinks even more.
I'm not sure though. They've been trying to curb excessive working hours. I doubt they're doing that so their subjects can have more leisure time.
No_one
12d ago
There's the ethnic cleansing of Artasakh, 200k people ran away. Russian peacekeepers lost iirc 10+ soldiers. Allegedly a few massacres too.
No one gives a fuck, somehow. Azeris are 'reliable allies'.
People only give a fuck if there's a lobby group.
In my opinion, convincing someone to kill themselves or forcing them to kill themselves is morally the same thing.
If you are really going with "China depressed Uyghur TFR to 1.2", is suppressing their religion as being "genocide" then what's going in most of the world is also genocide. Religion is gone, TFR is in the crapper, no one is doing anything about it. The preferable solution is 'import people' to replace the dying out population.
What's true seems to be that a large % of their young males are in labor camps, there are anti-melee weapon measures everywhere (metal detectors, plastic shields, batons), there's a shit ton of police everywhere, much of them Uyghur. Strict surveillance, with people having to have tracking phone apps on.. (link worth reading, it's by a highly disagreeable person with no sympathies for either Uyghurs or Leninists.)
Which again, not nice, but unless they're getting worked to death on low rations, still not genocide. And with Chinese labor costs being as they are, I doubt they're not feeding them properly.
Now, not nice at all, but it's a just another case of 'fucking around and finding out'. Uyghurs failed to rein in their radicals, said radicals killed a couple hundred Chinese in machete attacks, caused the ongoing clampdown. Surely you remember the headlines? There was the big riot in the capital, then a half dozen big attacks in the following years.
No_one
24d ago
I believe there are malicious, intelligent, competent agents which plan for humiliation and elimination of large masses of populations,
And that's why I'm dooming on AI. Because enough people aren't psychopathic enough and causing a genocide isn't that easy if all you have is a handful of conspirators.
Meanwhile, in the real world, it took giant totalitarian states to do anything, years of effort. AI systems will however make it much easier to pull off a conspiracy or develop a lethal agent.
They'll also make it much easier to detect anyone trying to do either, but doing so is costly and paranoid so the conspiracies will have an edge. Also, gigadeaths, if it didn't involve just 3rd world getting killed would crash the economy and destroy the supply chain. I think the Venn diagram between "non delusional genocidal wannabe world masters" and "wants to live in ruins, relying on scavenging spare parts" contains exactly zero people, and the former category is also very small too.
We have only one that could probably genocide, and it's in a superpower competition so no matter how feisty they might feel, just doing an actual genocide is pointless. Besides, they're patient and rich enough to not genocide people as you can tell by what's going on in Xinyang.
No, what's happening is basically just chaos+information overload and stress. Schizos of a certain sort are liable to act out in such an environment.
No_one
26d ago
I thought we are beyond this already, the same was said before invasion of Ukraine. I
People in the know (Mearsheimer had a talk on this in '14, Bill Burns-the ambassador said as much in his leaked 2008 memo etc) have been saying Ukraine is liable to get invaded if US tries to integrate it into NATO.
US:
- set up a defence treaty with Ukraine,
- vowed to integrate it into NATO at some unspecified date,
- refused to renounce that ambition
- laughed at the Russian ultimatum that sought a decrease in troop levels near its borders, disavowing ambition to integrate Ukraine
So who exactly was saying Ukraine won't get attacked?
No_one
11d ago
Hegel
Seeing as you're conversant with what to me seems like insufferable turgid nonsense, what do you make out of the claims that Hegel is being misunderstood and misclassified ?
Thus far, however, the most influential English-language account of Hegel’s Hermeticism is Eric Voegelin’s. In his essay, “Response to Professor Altizer’s ‘A New History and a New but Ancient God’” Voegelin admits that “For a long time I studiously avoided any serious criticism of Hegel in my published work, because I simply could not understand him.” The turning point came with Voegelin’s study of gnosticism, and the discovery that, “by his contemporaries Hegel was considered a gnostic thinker:” Voegelin goes on to claim that Hegel’s thought “belongs to the continuous history of modern Hermeticism since the fifteenth century."’ Voegelin’s principal statement on Hegel’s Hermeticism is a savagely polemical essay, “On Hegel: A Study in Sorcery,” referring to the Phenomenology of Spirit as a “grimoire” which “must be recognized as a work of magic — indeed, it is one of the great magic performances.”
Voegelin’s claims are unique in that he does not simply claim that Hegel was influenced by the Hermetic tradition. He claims that Hegel was part of the Hermetic tradition and cannot be adequately understood apart from it. Unfortunately, however, Voegelin never adequately developed his thesis. He never spelled out, in detail, how Hegel is a Hermetic thinker. Voegelin has, however, encouraged other scholars to develop his thesis more systematically (and more soberly). David Walsh, for instance, has written an important doctoral dissertation entitled The Esoteric Origins of Modern Ideological Thought: Boehme and Hegel (1978), in which he makes strong claims about Hegel’s indebtedness to Boehme. Gerald Hanratty has also published an extensive two-part essay, entitled “Hegel and the Gnostic Tradition” (1984-87).
No_one
11d ago
I hate my life so much. I haven't had a date actually happen in six months.
Keep it in perspective. It could always be worse. It could be a year. It could be five years. Or a decade. Or maybe you could not date at all due I dunno, a horrible circumcision accident or something of a similar nature.
No_one
20d ago
When the word 'gooning' has been not only coined but escaped containment to the point fossils like Norman Finkelstein are aware of it, yeah, it's way past time.
Impaired brain development/functionality
Erectile dysfunction in <35 men has gone up from 2-5% to 20-30% in recent years.
Really no substitute for giving it a try. Just get a good hentai game(youtube link,sfw) and a free afternoon and find for yourself.
Majority of people don't have careers, and never had. Being a grocery clerk, factory worker, some low paid service sector employee or lowest rung bureaucrat or manager or something else for 30 years isn't a career. It's a job.
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