Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
All alliterations are accidental.
User ID: 83
Fair point, but I would maintain that there is still a significant difference in reach and intended audience between the big-name game companies of the 90s and those of the 2020s.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
2d ago
Good points. I think we need to differentiate between two groups:
- The tinkered-together video games of back when and the more creative indie games of today.
- The almost mass-produced AAA titles and derivative indie games of today.
The kind of mature industry that can churn out one Total War game per year, and a Modern Warfare every two years, and two Superhero games per year, and another Hero Shooter or Current-Thing-Clone so often they all just blend together...didn't exist in 2000. And didn't reach or cater to the same size and type of audience. Very very obviously the writing of the second group will be of a completely different nature than that of the first.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
2d ago
I think you touched upon one valid point, which is the size of projects, and that the man in charge is rarely the one with a comprehensive creative vision, and even if, has too much on his hands to see it through.
But as for generalized conclusions about the decline of culture at large - probably true, but on a longer time scale, and not the immediate cause of the sharp decline in video game writing quality.
I offer a different hypothesis: The game makers of old made games from first principles, the game makers of today make games that imitate the games they know. They have played games for decades now, since they were old enough, have consumed endlessly, and whatever unique creative ideas they might have had have since been sandblasted to dust by a thousand consumer products having gone throgh their brains. They think in terms of what they have experienced hitherto, which is games based on games based on games, and their writing likewise.
Nobody needs to explain or justify why games have hitpoints, third-person reticules, experience points and levels, ultimate abilities, hero classes, zombies, magic that produces differently colored fireballs, scientific anomalies that manifest as colorful particle systems, star lanes, energy shields...all of this is assumed away as the baseline stuff of our consumer experience, and it goes without saying that when something "new" is made, it is made out of all the old that constitutes the entirety of our experiences. And that old used to be from different media, and so had to be adapted to fit a creative vision that sprang form outside of the gaming world. But now the old is just well-trodden ground, trod again, and again, and again. I don't need to explain to you why you are the chosen one with quasi-magical powers who can slaughter hundreds of meaningless enemies - it's what you came here for. Whatever plot I provide to justify it is just background noise.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
3d ago
Accuse them of not providing honest data, or of being too brainwashed to meaningfully answer relevant questions, or of the data being somehow low-quality?
Or bite the bullet, admit that they're better on those metrics, but stand fast and declare that it's not worth the restrictive gender roles and religious indoctrination.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
3d ago
I don't really give a damn about doxing, but I don't live in America, and I'm not enough of conversationalist or social networkers to make a good host for a German Mottizens meeting, so by force of geography I don't see it happen for me either way.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
3d ago
Overall I fully agree with the posters above that safety guidelines regarding the dangers of outdoor activity are fantastically wrong, but you too have a point. You can get an awful lot of skin cancer from the sun, though may take decades for it to show. How serious a problem it is varies from person to person; some can get away with a lifetime of sizzling, others will regret not covering up a little.
I compromise and wear a floppy hat. That's my safety right there.
Real libertarian fascism has never been tried!
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Establish a militia. The militia is everyone. Each sunday hosts the neighborhood hand-to-hand picnic or the community rifle and machine gun competition or the regional anti-tank/artillery/anti-air/anti-drone festival. At least once a year, there will be vehicle competitions. Absence is excusable for anyone who is regularly present otherwise, but missing more than half of a year's events gets you fined. Refusal on ethical grounds get you reassigned to the mandatory neighborhood cleanup squads that are usually populated by chain-gangs of litterers. Medical waivers exist, but long-term ones are only given if you are too weak to hold a gun and also too frail to wear a bomb vest. The militia is funded through taxes.
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It is illegal to lie. A private citizen proven to have lied will be punished by a brief public shaming. Commercial entities will face heavy fines.
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There is public health care. And public housing. And public transport in the shape of taxis. There is public education and public insurance. There are all shades of public welfare. All of this is available free of charge for public servants, who are lifetime wards and servants of the state and must buy their freedom (their price being equivalent to the costs of the services they used) if they desire it. Others may also use these public services, but have to pay for them outright. No tax money goes into public services. Public servants are employed for the betterment of public services, and other tasks considered essential to the existence of the state. Low-grade public service comes with a starting debt to the state.
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There are no driving licenses, speed limits, or bans on drunk driving. Anyone proven to have caused an accident is liable to pay double for all damages caused. Failure to pay will get you a public shaming, caning and defenestration, and possibly mandatory public service of the lowest grade or else the fine will be extracted from any known associates.
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Children are the property of their parents, and parents are responsible for all their children's actions. Forever.
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The display of flags belonging to foreign polities is considered treason. Limited exceptions are possible for diplomats, consulates and other foreign functionaries on official business. Speaking foreign languages is permitted, but any citizen may request a transcript written in both languages, and failure to provide it may result in fines, shaming and/or expulsion from the country. Providing a false transcript will result in expulsion from the country, into the sea. Multiple citizenship is possible, but only for legal immigrants, and such passes are strictly limited - only a fixed and low number may exist in the entire country for any given foreign nationality.
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Legal immigration is permitted, illegal immigration is not, and the punishment for illegal immigration is variably expulsion into the sea or immediate public service of the lowest grade for yourself and all your descendants. Legal immigration requires learning the language in advance and swearing an oath of allegiance. Breaking the oath results in the immigrant being returned to their country of origin, with loud complaints and a request for a refund.
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The country shall protect all refugees, no matter their origin or cause of flight. This protection will take the shape of arming them to conquer their home countries or at least a small part of it. Where this is too unlikely to succeed or has demonstrably failed already, refugees may instead accept public service of the lowest grade. Refusal results in termination of their refugee status, and they are now illegal immigrants.
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There shall be nature preserves, equal in size to at least half the country's. It will be permissible for any citizen to use these for recreation and hunting, though hunters are required to eat what they kill. Exceptions are made for killings of humans, cannibalism is not permitted without consent. Murder and manslaughter remain crimes, and the nature preserves are populated by large numbers of cameras and drones. It is permitted to construct temporary shelters from locally available material, but cutting wood must be limited immediately needful quantities. Fouling waters, causing wildfires or exterminating entire species is punishable by public service of the lowest grade.
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Duelling is legal, but requires the written consent of all parties involved, including to the rules of the combat.
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The state shall not meddle in questions of sex, gender, religion, identity, elective surgery, pregnancy, sexual practices or marriage. Except for public servants, for whom there are only two genders, no abortions, no body modification except to enhance performance, and only approved religions subject to reexamination at any time. For private citizens, the state offers arbitration in custody conflicts.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
3d ago
Finally, buxom blondes tend to come with uncertain mass distribution curves.
Oh this, oh this.
No matter whether you like tits, ass or hips, with even a little age mass goes where it wills, and it obeys no rules but gravity.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
4d ago
Yes, but you can clearly see a gradient of morality that's pretty much the gradient of skin darkness. From the very dark Liet-Kynes, practically a saint, to the darkish Chani, morally flawless except for her doing violence, to the lighter Stilgar, a fanatic blinded by propaganda, but at least on the right side, to the much lighter Atreides, greedy egoistical colonialists who exploit the natives for their political games and are nominal heroes only because they fight even worse people, to the almost-albino cartoon villain Harkonnens.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
4d ago
As dovetailing said, great circles. I once saw the Aurora Borealis on a night flight from Germany to Japan.
I just finished watching Dune 2 and took some notes while doing so. Notes, not an essay, so what you get is a jumble of thoughts.
- The Director turned a fanciful book that made little sense into a visually impressive film that makes even less. All visual spectacle.
- Present-day politics clearly present and accounted for. White people bad, the whiter the worse. Paul and Jessica are presented as outright villains, and Chani is the moral center of the story.
- Soundtrack with people suddenly screaming in fantasy-arabic, ouch, my ears.
- Emperor: A fucking joke.
- Chani, if it weren't rude I'd say she's an ugly bitch.
- Irulan - the acting suited the character, the speech did not, the looks did not at all.
- Margot Fenring, Lady Jessica, Alia, pretty actresses, decent acting.
- Fight scenes: Absolute trash. Ridiculous acrobatics VS completely passive victim-badguys. Harkonnens, Sardaukar, no matter, they just stand around dumbfounded and do some slow-motion waving once per scene, while the Fremen breakdance all over the place. And of course the Fremen have regular guns and use them...from off-screen at impossible angles, but not when it would actually make sense. None of the fighting makes sense!
- Lasers and metal-storm like helicopter door guns looked nice though.
- Sardaukar standing around in the desert sun in triumph-of-the-will formation.
- Worst of all: The boots. Floppily open-topped boots in a sandy desert. Ouch. Luckily it wasn't all of the characters who wore them, but I still pitied the ones who did.
- The Fremen hideouts are...giant highly visible architecture. How stupid exactly were the Harkonnens? Do the people of the future just not believe in reconnaissance? Same for the Fremen having a massive but completely unnoticed troop buildup just around the corner from the Emperor's army. Everything is so damn visible! But then the Fedaykin just dig themselves out of the sand at the feet of the army, so I guess nothing needs to make sense anyways.
- Javier Bardem, I don't know if he's a good actor at all. I don't know. Feels like he's phoning it in, or was never much good to begin with and I overrated him so far because I'm a Cormac McCarthy fanboy. Or maybe he is good, but the movie is such overrated tripe that he falls flat.
- The final duel between Paul and Feyd-Rautha is...meh. Not as bad as the one-sided fights preceding it, but it looks like stage fighting 101, with nothing but flashy, highly-visible moves meant to be easy to counter. Makes sense for a movie, of course, but still looks something in between silly and boring.
- Now, to be fair, Dune is difficult material to work with, because it made little sense even as a book. But this is just...all shape, no substance.
A thousand apologies for a worthless post, worthlessly posted, but I needed to put it somewhere.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
6d ago
This. We're committed to insanity.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
6d ago
No. I need to ferry around lots of people and things; having less space in the car makes it borderline useless.
Besides, this is retarded. There are many very small cars to choose from, without any of the extra hassle and just as fuel-efficient as the end result of that hack-job. And if all you want is to drive around yourself, no passengers and no cargo, then you may as well get a motorcycle or one of those scooter-sized cars that barely have an enclosed cabin.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
9d ago
So... who were the peasants fighting?
If German history is anything to go by: Robbers, marauding soldiers, each other, their wives, their lord's enemies when something went very wrong in the levying process, and once every few generations, their social betters in some abortive peasant uprising.
IMO if it were as simple as choosing between strength and weakness as terminal social values, it's an obvious choice. And our societies have not chosen weakness, obviously - we just pretend, as an overreaction to the ostentatious pro-strength attitudes of mid-20th-century fascism, opposition to which has since been the West's moral compass needle (in combination with some lingering Christian ethics). But everyone and their dog knows, and knows either very consciously or deep in their bones, that strength is better than weakness. It's just become polite to act as if it weren't the case. But we know that we want to be strong, that it feels better, gets us better results, is seen as better by others. The ability to act, to do, to accomplish is praised, and even if not praised, is still obviously desirable in every way.
But one problem is that being strong is hard. Being weak is easy. And yes, western society has made it too comfortable to take the easy way out, both by raising the baseline level of comfort available even to abject failures, and by espousing pro-weakness rhetoric (that we then drag our heels to act on, because nobody sane really believes it, leading to more confusion).
Another problem is that even a society that openly praises strength and abhors weakness still has many failure modes, but arguably none worse than those of a society that pretends to love weakness.
Are we all just saying the same? I feel like we're beating a dead straw horse here.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
9d ago
n+=1, Vitamin D has positive mood effects.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
10d ago
I used to do that up until something over ten years ago, but then the giant HDD I kept it all on broke and I just gave up on the concept.
Nothing in life is permanent, and holding on to anything requires continuous effort and attention. Can't hold on to every piece of data that seemed remotely interesting at some point. The internet is ephemeral, but so is all existence.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
11d ago
If you speak French and have a remote job it could be interesting.
I do and I do, actually. Not sure whether my contract allows remote work from outside Germany though. But then again, I'm not married to this particular job. I am unfortunately married to a woman who falls apart at temperatures above 15°C, whereas I begin to feel comfortable at 25°C and more. I don't think Morocco is a realistic option, sadly.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
11d ago
Well, the idea was more like "let's shut down all the bad energy (nuclear and fossil) and replace it with renewables".
The first was easy, the second was not, so here we are.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
11d ago
overcomplicated shitty design that barely works in the first place (something the Germans have been historically, and are still to this day, guilty of)
I just want to confirm this. Every company I worked for so far was in the business of making overfitted and overengineered clockwork software that went over time and over budget and tended to fall apart at the seams when any changes were attempted.
Germans cannot do things like agile, modular, minimum viable product or cost-efficient, it seems.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
13d ago
Why not drink water?
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
13d ago
I like to drink lots of coffee, and generally I can stomach it fairly well. When I notice that I'm overdoing it, I either cut back or water it down. Sometimes I cut it down to a single cup a day for a few weeks. Sometimes I quit entirely for a few months. If you notice health problems that might be related to coffee, quit coffee. At least for a while. It's just a drink, you can drink other things. And the withdrawal symptoms aren't that bad, in my experience - maybe a mild headache for a day or two; nothing modern medicine can't fix.
Decaf weirds me out. Just like non-alcoholic beer. It's wrong.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
13d ago
Speaking of traffic, is there anything in the pipes that might get us more new blood?
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
14d ago
If my wife were stable, then a rural location near Ulm, with a view of the Alps (given decent weather). I have history with the place, friends there, there's work and activities, and once you get far enough away from the town proper, the landscape can be nice. But really, it's the distant mountains on a good day. Hundreds of kilometers of mountain range in plain view for anyone with good eyes. See https://www.swp.de/bilder/die-schoensten-sonnenauf-und-untergaenge-aus-ulm-und-neu-ulm-16130225.html .
If the previous condition were met and if my income were better and/or its growth stronger, lake Constance, directly on the shore: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodensee. Not as broad a view of the mountains, but closer to actually go there and explore (in Austria and Switzerland, then), and being near a large body of water is nice. But the area is famously expensive the closer you get to the lake, so, money.
And if I hadn't fallen for the heartfelt patriotism meme, then I'd want to live near the ocean. Obviously lots to choose form here - but if I have to pick something I personally know, then the French Atlantic coast is beautiful, though the local inland geography and architecture do nothing for me. At least I speak the language. Mmmmaybe Japan? I've been there, it's beautiful, but I'm really not sure how isolating it would be to live there as a foreigner, unless you manage to slot yourself into an urban expat community. And frankly, I'm not good at networking.
If I am to just throw something out without ever having been there, then Portugal, just going by the map, looks good. Warm and with the Atlantic all over. But my wife would probably melt. Then again, with that constraint the Japanese summer would've killed her already.
And lastly, if I had no concern for standard of living or safety, then I might just want to spend my days in some ancient Carthaginian settlement on the North African Atlantic coast. Say, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essaouira, just living with history at my back and the stark, naked face of the Earth below me, and the Ocean gently wiping it all away.
I think he's implying you paid no attention to the Ukraine and Russia in the years leading up to the war.
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