WestphalianPeace
No bio...
User ID: 184
WestphalianPeace
11mo ago
would definitely be very interested. even just spitballing the German fraternities part and then doing the modern day later would be fine.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
Going from pure lurker to attempted effortpost-er can be intimidating if you aren't a natural writer. But if you have a subject that you are passionate about then that passion will carry through even if you find the idea of be awarded an AAQC to be challenging to imagine.
WestphalianPeace
1mo ago
"Suzerain" finally got it's "Kingdom of Rizia" expansion. Still rough around the edges and falls prey to purple prose but it's still a fun expansion to a unique game.
Did a reformist diplomatic run. Next is to do an Absolutist militarist run.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
Unity of Command 2: Desert Fox DLC - Rommel's North African campaign with 2 alt history scenarios (One for taking Tobruk and one for failing Tobruk but taking Malta). A lot of fun to play the opposite side after the Desert Rats campaign.
Victoria 3 - It's not polished but I played way too much Vicky 2 and it's just satisfying to maximize the Standard of Living for my pops
Darktide - 40k Horde-shooter. Dreamed for a long time about a game like this finally coming out.
Persona 5 on PC - JRPG's at their best.
Anno 1800 finally came out for steam so I'm hoping to finally try the anno games for the first time.
And at some point go back and get around to actually reading Chaos:head Noah.
WestphalianPeace
3mo ago
I'd be interested to see also a list of effectively banned videos related to these books. Extremist groups often create video's arguing their worldview and these video's often veered into the mixing together seemingly unrelated ideologies. It's a combination of fascinating and hilarious. Imagine, for example, seeing a video on Northern Irish Loyalist extremism and then suddenly the video starts explaining the necessity of a Land Value Tax. Incredible.
Or if in the midst of a Kahanist speech there was some side ramble against the Israeli government because of the importance of environmental regulations on water usage for sustained economic use.
If anyone else remembers, there was a time in early ISIS when they spooked the world by virtue of having a good media game instead of Al Qaeda style grainy shaky cam in the mountains. They produced a video explaining how after ISIS will fix the economy by brining back the Gold (Dinar) Standard in resistance the Federal Reserve. It is inadvertently hilarious/voyeuristically fascinating as they go back and forth between ancient history lessons, quotes from the Quran about weights & measures, and Free State Project tier screeds against the Federal Reserve. All in English.
You can still find it on Internet Archive (views: 150) but it's otherwise effectively scrubbed from the internet.
I can't help but find such absurdities to be interesting to collect.
WestphalianPeace
7mo ago
Have you ever considered reading the War Nerd translation of the Illiad? I confess to not having read the original poetic translation. But I found myself literally spontaneously guffawing and feeling as though relaxed next to a campfire storyteller in his novel format retelling. Sensations that I'm not sure are as easily flow-into-able in the more high brow accurate translations.
That said I'd like to read it in the original someday. Do you stand by the Fagles translation for the average man?
WestphalianPeace
8mo ago
I just beat the game. Depending on when you acquired some of your companions you might be locked into a class-path that isn't intuitive.
I respec'd Karlath and Shadowheart, eventually running the following party Main Character: Gale: Evocation Wizard Shadowheart: Life Cleric Astarion: Assassin Rogue Karlach: Berserker Barbarian
It's not complicated, but it gets the job done and lets you experience the game for the first time so that you can have fun making weird party compositions for your next run after you feel like you've got a strong handle on the game and know what to expect. Karlach is an HP tank that eventually becomes a khorne-tier murder berseker, Astarion does regular sneak attack damage, Shadowheart eventually becomes an high AC heal tank, and Gale give you the CC & sheer damage you need. Fireball solves everything.
Fought every battle normally and had a great time. With one exception. The True Soul Nere fight. Save scum. plant barrels. do whatever you have to do. That fight was an absolute nightmare and you can get screwed on spell slots due to its time restricted constraint.
WestphalianPeace
9mo ago
Military History Visualized depicted this disparity in production quite well.
And although the difference in battleships & carrier production is stark I find the immediate and ever increasing disparity in Escort Carriers and Destroyers to be the most damning.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I've always found the existence of the Mu'tazila tragic and fascinating, but I never knew their influence on Maimonides and Christianity. Can you direct me to where I can learn more?
WestphalianPeace
1mo ago
Remember the second half of On War when Clausewitz just starts getting really nerdy about old Napoleonic tactics involving skirmishers and such? The Idealism philosophical book isn't useful for the tactical and operational scale. And the tactics he spends the second half on are hilariously out of date.
So I'm less passionate about the idea of the average military personnel pouring over the book than I am about the very idea of establishing On War's prestige in the eyes of the laymen. Sun Tzu has some name recognition and some people have even pretended to read his book. But Clausewitz is pretty much forgotten by the non-engaged public unless you are some kinda warnerd.
But the next time some genuinely asks me "I don't get it. why didn't we just nuke Afghanistan?" I wish I could use an argument from authority using quotes from Clausewitz. Since people think with crude heuristics and assumed knowledge (no condescension. we are all condemned to this) I wish his very basics could be expressed and then get a sage nod of 'well if Clausewitz said so then I guess so" simply because they recognize the name drop. I have managed to actually get normal people to take seriously that war has economic costs by pointing out Sun Tzu.
There's also an effort post somewhere about how obsessions' with winning in the operational sense undermines grasp of the strategic/political reality. You'd think the Nazi's won the war for all the gushing people still have over Rommel and the first year of Barbarossa.
You know, for an comparatively low population city (compared to london, NYC, LA, Chicago) I feel like Philadelphia gets a disproportionate amount of representation on the motte.
Though I think if you met us in person you'd find we are mostly just normal people. We pay our bills. Make dinner each night. Delight in our hobbies and mostly just get by day by day. Though perhaps i'm only speaking for myself and everyone else you meet will be an unlikely instantiation of the heroic.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I don't mean this to challenge. merely to ask. do you remember that exact newspaper? I'd love to have that saved for posterity when arguing about this in person in the future.
WestphalianPeace
18d ago
Is there any desire out there for a book review of Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann by someone who is not of Walt Bismarck's milieu?
It was brought up in the podcast and address's a lot of what Yasine brings up. But it's also a bloody tome to reread and something that someone without context of who I actually am could use to immediately disqualify any other points I may make in the future. So I'm reluctant to just put it out there.
WestphalianPeace
3mo ago
I've also actually played some old school commercial wargames before! Historicon is a great convention with some incredible set ups.
And yeah when you find out about real life wargames you see that they fill that important niches of teasing out just how one might ought to respond under unstable circumstances. Kaiser Wilhelms insistence on winning the wargames he partook in was a gross violation of the Prussian traditional of the Professional General Staff.
Speaking from memory without a direct source I recall an anecdote that Field Marshall Paulus of 6th Army/Stalingrad fame wargamed how Operation Barbarossa would play out and concluded that after a few weeks of initial breakthrough the supply situation would become a shitshow, and then the entire offensive would grind to a halt near Moscow. I imagine he felt positively Cassandra-esque.
But for those proper military games implemented on a grand scale in real life - any war nerd worth his salt ought also to check out the Louisiana Maneuvers pre-ww2.
400k men moving around with umpires determining exactly what happened at each step. All done with 1940's technology. They had charts to figure out who beat who! Imagine maneuvoring around and then going "wait. I've got 20 dudes. You've got 10. But you have a machine gun and I have one mortar team. okay get a ref." and then waiting 30 minutes, getting a resolution, and then doing it all over again on the next hill. Mindnumbingly tedious but incredibly important for teaching US Generals what modern war might look like.
WestphalianPeace
3mo ago
Quakers still exist. But you are directionally correct. There are like 100k Quakers left in the entire US. Even fewer depending on how important you judge continuity of method to be.
But yes. Quakers used to be something like 2/3rds of Pennsylvania and now they are a drop in the bucket and mostly old and dying.
WestphalianPeace
3mo ago
Also surprised you didn't add in Hitler's Table Talks by 'The Brown Eminence' Martin Bormann. There are translations available but the translations are flawed and unreliable. Which means that unless you speak German you are restricted from one of the top 5 key books to getting a window into Hitler's Worldview. Decades of the topic being done to death and yet here we are still waiting for a reputable translation of one of the key books.
Weirdly enough some of the critiquing of the translation by the book was done by one of the New Atheist minor figures, Richard Carrier. Once you get into the weeds these things really do become a small world.
WestphalianPeace
3mo ago
When ISIS first started doing propaganda video's I recall a real sense of "wait these people are actually serious. they are actually trying" as opposed to a sense of pathetic LARPer's who'd have Dog Catching the Car syndrome if they ever actually took power.
Similarly I recall reading of Al Qaeda lifers basically complaining that the only people they can recruit are violent young men and the mentally ill and so they were desperate for more bureaucrats/judges to oversee the territory they've briefly overrun.
WestphalianPeace
6mo ago
Anyone who starts really getting into WW2 will eventually learn of Khalkin Gol. Zhukov's presence helps since he's everyone's first USSR general they learn about. But for the average person it's still obscured by several orders of magnitude. And even for the amateur enthusiast it's not exactly a clear "next operation after d-day, north africa, & stalingrad" type battle to learn about.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I personally tend not to comment unless there is a topic I'm passionate about , I've encountered a 'someone is wrong on the internet' issue, or a topic comes up that I feel uniquely able to address.
So if there is a topic you are passionate about or something you think you have unique knowledge about, then write! Make getting down your exact thoughts on a topic its own satisfaction. Take pleasure in manipulating the rhetoric to try and hit just the right note for what you're going for. Focus on the act of writing itself as whats enjoyable.
Bonus points if at any point you edit your comment to be more in line with the sentiment of charity and exactness. Shoot for that Actually A Quality Contribution Ribbon! Or, alternatively, make it clear to yourself that you just have a simple comment or idea and stop yourself from overthinking about the issue. Easier said than done, but I think either approach is reasonable.
And keep in mind that a lot of comments here are Pareto's of Pareto's. Once the blur of names start to become more clear you'll notice the same names over and over. These are people who are extremely comfortable with posting. By the mere fact of post regularly they are unusual people. So your case is likely far more normal.
WestphalianPeace
15d ago
They don't think it's ugly. They actually prefer it. They are the ~1% approve at the end of any poll about do you prefer building A or building B.
People like Ozy really exist. They really do have actual disdain for things a statistically normal person finds beautiful. From Ozy's own self-description:
"One could very reasonably make the case that the natural human aesthetic sense prefers realistic paintings of beautiful landscapes with water, trees, large animals, beautiful women, children, and well-known historical figures"
"However, art of this sort leaves me cold"
"The first time I saw it, Joan Miro’s The Birth of the World moved me to tears from its sheer beauty. I make a special effort to visit it every time I am in New York City, including taking my husband to see it on our honeymoon so he could understand my aesthetics better. "
This is Joan Miro's The Birth of the World
To them uglyness isn't ugly. It's genuinely mindnumbingly beautiful.
In Malcolm & Simone Collins "A Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality" they model sexuality with two polarities, one for intensity and one for Yes/No. So most people have an inborn strong intensity towards Bloated Corpses and that is often paired with a disgust reaction. Makes sense evolutionarily. But evolution is a blind idiot god without context. So sometimes the intensity meter stays the same but for the Yes/No marker the 1 becomes a 0, and they become sexually attracted to Bloated Corpses with all the intensity that most people are repulsed.
WestphalianPeace
15d ago
I get that that's a thing but I'm generally skeptical. Until there is good evidence otherwise I take it for granted that people are honest about their aesthetic preferences.
WestphalianPeace
17d ago
A comprehensive history of how European Americans have imagined themselves overtime, the social conditions preceding each shift, when Reaction happened and how it manifested, leading up to the present day US, UK, & Canada.
In the podcast a lot of your comments seemed focused on Why not sort for the Cultural Trait Directly (The high IQ Ugandan) as well as Why focus on this broadest possible identity group (proxy of a proxy of a proxy). He doesn't really address point 1, but the entire book is about the inevitable social patterns people display regarding point 2.
Kaufmann traces over time how ethnic shifts intensify otherwise dormant identifications (case studies in voting patterns & self identification in the same city at 5%, 10%, and then 30% Hispanic. How previously blase National Symbols become are suddenly realized to be Ethnic Distinction symbols once the population of an area sharply shifts. Tipping points movement patterns in the UK mirroring the US), distinguishes between ethnic stories of 'who are we' changes vs how intermarriage may create more colorism distinctions, uses mono-racial but multiethnic societies as case studies for what happens when societies experience massive shifts over a short amount of time (Northern Ireland, Antigua, Ivory Coast).
Briefly flipping through it again (it's been a few years) It's really a mostly empirical work. As far as I can tell Kaufmann's primary adversary is less the cultural right than the old economic focused left. I'd contrast it with Mark Blyth's "Angrynomics" which makes the old left case for economics as the primary driver of social forces as an explanation for Trumps victory in 2016 and the broader populist shift in Europe. Kaufmann hammers over and over that the cultural conflict over ethnicity explains far more of the data in self-identification, voting patterns, school choice, internal migration, de facto spatial segregation, and support for X or Y policy.
It's most salient chapters for the non-academic are the final fourth and final. Kaufmann both extrapolates what will happens and then also illustrates a few plausible near future scenarios depending on how society responds. His go to example for contrast is Mauritius vs Mexico, which stand in for a closed off society vs an open mixed one.
Imagine Shinigami Eyes but applied to people who merely engage seriously with an author.
I want to be able to talk with progressive minded people that 2+2=4 without a tag next to my name that's the same as the one next to Walt's and have my thoughts dismissed out of hand.
WestphalianPeace
3mo ago
For anyone who finds this type of military puzzle solving interesting I'd recommend listening to Drachnifel's video's on these exact US Navy Fleet Problems. Great write up on the history and use of such programs.
I will reaffirm reading War Nerd's version of the Iliad. The novel format communicates the humor, frustrations, and desires very clearly for anyone who isn't already intimately familiar with a more formal translation. It is simply fun to read.
More options
Context Copy link