RenOS
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User ID: 2051
RenOS
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9mo ago
Nate's model is designed to be bearish after convention, though. Basically, it assumes a candidate ought to get a substantial bump based on historical records, and if they don't, it adjusts accordingly. For Harris, it's arguable that circumstances are unusual enough that having a convention bump exactly like a normal candidate was not to be expected.
RenOS
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16d ago
Just to be clear, you mean the umineko project port, right?
RenOS
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30d ago
He is a pragmatist through-and-through. Old-school worker's left, though nowadays he dislikes unions as much as management. As far as I know he has never read any philosophical text, and he generally abhors big idea conceptualism as a whole. Either you have specific ideas for specific improvements, or he doesn't want to hear about it.
RenOS
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1mo ago
I agree - but to them, the situation in Gaza was sufficiently bad that it doesn't count. It's just a fairly simplistic moralistic view that doesn't really account for agency on the alleged victims side or pragmatic solutions.
RenOS
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1mo ago
Sorry, I should have mentioned: Currently I'm only listening to audiobooks, since it allows me to do household chores, cycle, etc. simultaneously. With small kids + full time work I don't really have time to properly read. The limited spare time I have I unfortunately already waste on substack/theMotte. But it sounds interesting enough that it will go on the list of things to read later.
RenOS
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2mo ago
I don't really mind it too much in itself. It's a question of frequency and presentation; It's annoying and stupid that it has become the default, especially so if it's not justified through fantastic elements. But it seemed relevant to the OP.
RenOS
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2mo ago
I think the only way to get persistent trade surpluses is when one country is saving in the other's currency (earning or buying their currency, and then just sitting on it).
From what I understand, Import/Export is specifically goods and services exchanged for money, so it does not include many financial instruments, such as direct investment into a foreign country or leaving your money at a foreign bank. So a country can run a long-term trade deficit indefinitely as long as it can re-capture the difference this way. Which is especially easy if you just-so happen to be the financial headquarter of the world. But yes, many countries saving in US currency is also an option.
I agree that, if anything, this implies a trade deficit is good for you.
RenOS
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2mo ago
I'm about as pro-capitalist as it gets but imo this is the wrong model for zero-sum (for example advertising) and negative sum (for example compliance) industries. Especially large, already successful companies can secure their position by burdening everyone with enough extra costs that only they can shoulder well enough due to scale.
I don't want to be mean, but there are far, far harder games than the DS series. DS is normie-hard; It's the maximum amount of hardness that you can afford while keeping most of the casual audience, and as oats says, it has multiple design decisions that allow you to get past content you consider to difficult (online co-op, single-use items, simple rushing, cheese/OP gear, or in the worst case, plain ol' grinding). Especially in co-op it's arguably quite easy.
RenOS
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6mo ago
Interestingly I have heard this is not quite as obvious as commonly assumed. While the majority may do exactly what is assumed, allegedly there is a substantial minority group that doesn't like it and thus has other practices (mostly oral).
RenOS
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7mo ago
As long as FDP, Linke + Others stay below 5% each while still adding up to almost 20% it might be enough.
I'm curious, why do you hold CoH2 in such esteem? Me and my friend group used to play both CoH1 and 2, but the main reason we switched was just that 2 had higher player numbers at the time (which is typical for newer games). At least it wasn't worse in gameplay, but imo it also wasn't better, either.
RenOS
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9mo ago
Yeah. Charisma, Intelligence and Status are extremely important for female mate choice. If given the options, the average woman will almost always choose a popular CEO over even the most ripped man imaginable. Provided the CEO is barely taller than her, of course.
RenOS
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9mo ago
I've started playing it before our newborn came (hadn't had the chance to play it again), but my biggest problem was the immersion break on missions when suddenly dozens of mooks show up and die one after another while Arthur's crew just cuts through them like hot butter. The rest of the game is made so realistic and immersive, why did the choose to make these fighting scenes so over-the-top ridiculous like most other action games? I don't mind it as much for other action games because there it's just the way the entire world works, but for RDR2 it just seems so bizarrely out-of-place.
RenOS
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9mo ago
On XCOM 2 (well, Long War, but for both XCOM I never really played anything else), I found the opposite, if played well the stealth mechanic is extremely substantial (though I preferred the first XCOM). But I also used a whole bunch of mods, including one that made timers freeze until stealth is broken (bc that just seemed stupid except for very few exceptions).
RenOS
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10mo ago
Could you link to such a post about LOTTs fact checking?
RenOS
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15d ago
Hmm weird, I can't find anything on how to play that on android. The umineko project version is a bit tedious to get running, but so far it seems to work, so I'll just use that.
RenOS
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16d ago
Hmm, I had watched Higurashi, which I enjoyed very much, but then never got around to Umineko, which at that time seemed to me like just more of the same, but as a "normal" murder mystery. Seems I misjudged things. Would recommend the manga or do you have another option? I probably won't play on the PC for some time, though maybe the fanported android version.
RenOS
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20d ago
Tbh this is just as bad a take imo as the fanatics wanting to get rid of cars in the countryside said bc they "just need better public infrastructure". Yes, cars are superior for rural regions and public infrastucture is just not feasible there, but for well-designed suburbia and especially for smaller cities, bikes are also just better in many circumstances. It has nothing to with hobbies, hippies or fitness fanatics (though regular exercise is one of the benefits of bikes!). They need so much less space, they're cheaper, more flexible, less dangerous for pedestrians, etc.
Reducing cars in the suburbs to pedestrian speed and giving them the blame for any accident is great, it means even smaller kids can run, play, and bike through the suburbs without me needing to worry much, It means I can walk and bike there without having to be attentive all the time, and as long as it is properly designed even if I need to drive through it's just a minute or so of slow driving.
In cities car culture is also awful, the smell got better but everything is just so clogged and noisy. Worse, the danger means that even if you want to bike, it makes you choose the car bc a single idiot can cost your life. When I was living in London, almost everyone biked for a while, and those who stopped always had an incident with a crazy car driver. I myself also had several such situations. The counter here is usually crazy cyclist, but crazy cyclists are merely annoying, even a collision will usually not even seriously hurt you (though I get very pissed when small kids are involved, but even there I can literally just jump in front & stop the bike if needed); Crazy drivers can kill you with frightening ease, and there is absolutely nothing you can do. There's a lot to dislike in the EU, but well-targeted car bans are great.
RenOS
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28d ago
I also want to add, I can't remember any atheism rants in DCC (not saying there are literally none, but if there are, they are extremely easy to forget). Carl does have regular (mostly internal) rants against the aliens running the show, but they're really a very small part of the overall story, and for the most part are perfectly understandable for someone being thrown into a gladiator deathmatch against his will. Religion inside the show is transparently fake and gay, but everything inside the show is deliberately set up in mockery. Outside of the show, the alien antagonist are mostly non-religious, and even if they have a religion, their evilness has usually nothing to do with it.
RenOS
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1mo ago
Mandatory reminder that David Graeber is an activist hack.
RenOS
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1mo ago
I didn't mind books 1-2 dystopian dark comedy style at all - quite the opposite, that is one of my favorite settings. I think that all ultra-large/monopolist organizations can easily go down terrible paths, and that obviously includes megacorps. Even in book 3, it started to become obvious to me that the author really hates capitalism in general, but it was still somewhat easy to ignore. But in book 5 the core plot itself is very much about how amazing the feminist environmentalist communist etc. preservation alliance is, how everything bad in the world is because of evil profit-maximizing companies, and how SecUnit just has to join the Klassenkampf to bring forward the great revolution and everything will be great. Also, I'd say that SecUnit is if anything somewhat constrained, it's the humans from the alliance who are worst.
Also, the author herself is openly very far left and has in interviews quite clearly talked about the anti-capitalist messages in the murderbot series.
RenOS
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1mo ago
Didn't you get tired of the politics? The first two stories or so were okay, but at some point it became abundantly clear to me that it isn't just a dark satirical setting, the author genuinely just thinks that capitalism is that terrible, and that everything would be better in communist feminist utopia.
RenOS
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1mo ago
Having 4 people with 1/4 of your genome is objectively better than just being one person because of the risk dilution (Nevermind that I don't plan to have so few grandkids).
On the second, my experience has been the opposite. A few big actors - often rather general memes than really the particular mouthpieces making the actual statements - are imo the winners on the cultural influence market. By far one of the worst places to invest in unless you're extremely confident.
A super-jacked dude is rare enough nowadays that he is reasonably high on the totem pole to reliably land one-nighters, yes, as long as he has some charisma to match.
But from my experience, CEOs and other high-status men are still higher even on this count.
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