WestphalianPeace
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User ID: 184
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I'd forgotten about the Japanese wargame carrier issue! Thank you for reminding me. I've never given the Pacific Theater the attention it deserves. Navies just don't click in my head the way they seem to hold a spell on some people. But yeah I'd heard about the carrier anecdote. Mind-numbing stuff. I've read enough books on the European Theater that I can sometimes see how the Germans would see things the way they did. But it's really difficult for me to get into the mindset of the Japanese regarding attacking America.
Actually I've been using your exact book as an audiobook to fall asleep to! (i already listened to it once properly. don't worry) I should probably read it as an actual physical book. The details stick better that way. If you like Stahel then you should definitely check out Robert Citino's trilogy. His accounts are fairly mainstream but he summarizes the mainstream take on things very well.
Got any other recommended books? If you havn't read/listened to Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction" then I can't recommend it highly enough.
WestphalianPeace
6mo ago
Such a great series.
Novawar (now Iamnova) also did an entire let's play of Legend of Dragoon for those who are irrationally attached to that ancient rpg.
WestphalianPeace
11mo ago
Likewise for me.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
It was! Thank you so much! I'd thought it lost to me for good.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
that was always my issue. I find the combat system to be too opaque.
EU4: First more morale, then more discipline. Have enough artillery. use terrain. done.
CK3: Good Knights. Good men-at-arms. have more troops. men at arms. done.
Victoria 3: Don't ever go to war. Just build tall. comfy. done.
Victoria 2: Enough infantry to fill the frontline. Enough artillery to do damage. Some cav for early game capture.
Stellaris: A confusing as figuring out HOI4 Navy.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I never could get a full grasp of Stellaris. And the new ck3 expansion is just okay. After the End 2 released on steam though. Shame they removed the California rationalists big Yud lore.
Suzerain is unique as a western VN. And it's hard. But pulling off the Great Sordish Recovery is incredibly satisfying.
It's also a great way to understand the struggles of post ww2 Turkiya
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
If you're a weeb them Akame ga Kill: Gekisen it's a minute and a half of calm before the drop/hype. I time it to 30 seconds before the drop to psych up before heavy squats.
Military music is also pretty effective. Any Sousa march. British Grenadiers or US Field Artillery March. Sakkijarven Polkka. Though I have a special place in my heart for "Merck toch hoe sterck" for those lifts where it feels like it's not about exploding but rather about grinding the bastard out.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I kept thinking that I should respond to this with some other longwinded paragraph of text. But you are right. and I'll keep it simple. I'm happy that I could help. Anyone wrestling with these questions deserves nothing less.
WestphalianPeace
2yr ago
I've been meaning to read On the Nature of Things for awhile now. Having read it would you stick by the prose translation or advise looking for something else?
WestphalianPeace
2yr ago
As a Delaware Valley Quaker with a Scots-Irish best friend that book was positively eerily familiar. I was expecting interesting facts and instead simply felt uncomfortably seen. The audiobook also perfectly recreates the rhythmic cadence of a proper silent meeting.
WestphalianPeace
10mo ago
so this is actually one of the really interesting parts of Wages of Destruction. It drives home the incredible degree to which Nazi Germany was this backwards economy pulling off a Potemkin village of industrialization. I'm recalling from memory but if i recall correctly
- an ongoing housing crisis sucking up peoples meager wages
- bizarre financialization schemes to trick people into buying vehicles they'd never get
- the inability to create a decent radio that could compete in the international market
- the average german still being so poor that their diet lacks sufficient protein
- lack of mechanization on farms
- large swaths of the economy still being literally small land owning peasant farmers
- subsequently an obsessions with land inheritance laws as early at 1933.
- price controls on both ends of the market for the purpose of political support.
- lack of enough labour for the farms requiring requisition/corvee labour/slavery
- still not enough food to create a net calorie balance
and finally not enough steel for everything. there's just not enough steel for construction, fortifications, tanks, airplanes, ships, & ammunition. Let alone the domestic economy. And so one of the central ideas in Wages of Destruction is that the Nazi state uses this scarcity of steel and turns it into a means of political control. Dolling out steel here and there to favour one industry/military faction over another.
The Nazi's take this total control and use it to focus everything into one area or another the result is visible, legible, & shocking. But it's going all out for short term sugar highs over and over again. And the underlying health of the economy is nowhere near that of the US, UK, or France. And it doesn't have the comparative scale of the capacity of the USSR.
Should we bring back thee & thou?
We should.
As George Fox points out in his classic book titled
A Battle-Door For Teachers & Professors To Learn Singular & Plural; You to Many, and Thou to One: Singular One, Thou; Plural Many, You.
Wherein is shewed forth by Grammer, or Scripture Examples, how several Nations and People have made a distinction between Singular and Plural. And first, In the former part of this Book, Called The English Battle-Door, may be seen how several People have spoken Singular and Plural; As the Apharsathchites, the Tarpelites, the Apharsites, the Archevites, the Babylonians, the Susanchites, the Dehavites, the Elamites, the Temanites, the Naomites, the Shuites, the Buzites, the Moabites, the Hivites, the Edomites, the Philistines, Amalekites, the Sodomites, the Hittites, the Medianites, & c.
Also, In this Book is set forth Examples of the Singular and Plural, about Thou, and You, in several Languages, divided into distinct Battle-Doors, or Formes, or Examples; English, Latine, Italian, Greek, Hebrew, Caldee, Syriack, Arabick, Persiack, Ethiopick, Samaritan, Coptick, or Egyptick, Armenian, Saxon, Welch, Mence, Cornish, French, Spanish, Portugal, High-Dutch, Low-Dutch, Danish, Bohemian, Slavonian: And how Emperors and others have used the Singular word to One; and how the word You came from the Pope.
Likewise some Examples, in the Polonian, Lithvanian, Irish, and East-Indian, together with the Singular and Plural words, thou and you, in Sweedish, Turkish, Muscovian, and Curlandian, tongues.
In the latter part of this Book are contained severall bad unsavoury Words, gathered forth of certain School-Books, which have been taught Boyes in England, which is a Rod and a Whip to the School-Masters in England and elsewhere who teach such Books
We should value our language.
WestphalianPeace
11mo ago
Your 'Magic Wand Thinking' term is eerily familiar. I've internally termed it some variation of 'Tribal Brain' or 'Shaman Brain'. Just that acute sense that how the world must work is that there is Good Stuff and Bad Stuff. You either need to find the good stuff and it will all be better, or you need to excise the bad stuff and it will all be better. "The Dose Makes The Poison" makes no sense in this magic world. Good things are absolutely good and more is always good. Bad things are absolutely bad and the smallest dose will ruin everything.
But it's hard for me to be too harsh, even if it's despairing. Because whenever I read of one of those obscure African tribes that attribute all ills to witches or cargo cults in the Pacific it just feels like that's basement humanity. That's what we all instinctually revert to if we don't have constant social pressure from birth, or predisposition luck, to be otherwise.
I think there is also a gigantic intuition in the brain to go with whatever is the local social default. Human despise figuring thing out from first principles over and over again. Whatever others are having must be what's normal. Whatever others are having must be what you personally should want. Which makes sense in an amazonian, PNG, or savannah tribal context. But portion sizes have shifted to ridiculous extremes and now everyone is trapped is a default = poison context.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
there used to be a very interesting article shared around on occasion about anti-suffragettes. Pointing out that a lot of suffragettes at the time used to assert ideas that expanding the vote would create World Peace because women would never vote for war and other now seemingly ridiculous claims. and that a lot of the actual convincing wasn't based around assuring people of the virtue of expansion so much as arguing the logical continuity of universal suffrage. A "might as well" convincement rather than a moral crusade. Or that there used to be a unique moral claim that women had when they did interefere because they were seen as apolitical. That the history of the movement as understand by the common man has been pretty much forgotten.
Of course I don't know whether it's true or not, but I've never been able to refind it. I'd love if anyone here still has a link to it.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
Has anyone here ever ran a Petrov Day celebration before?
I've no connection with the actual rat community, but I found the idea to be interesting. Held my first one last year (a small edit of the Jim Babcock version). It had rough patches but overall felt like there was a kernel of something there and I'd like to smooth it into something more satisfying. I'm curious if anyone else has ran one before and, if so, did you edit the program at all?
Also if anyone is in the Greater Philadelphia area and would be interested experiencing a cringe yet sincere rationalist ceremony I'd be happy to have guests.
WestphalianPeace
1mo ago
your link does not seem to work.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
dammit how did I know that would be a video of Kensington before I even clicked it.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
This is a very reasonable critique.
I should be clear that the Cadastral Map Bias lens is my strong prior of first resort for inexplicable behavior by companies. I am not well read enough on SBI to back up the truth of the grapevine claim.
What on earth is going on with the layoffs btw? Did the industry over hire? It seems really inexplicable from afar.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
There is certainly precedent for it
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
I just want to say that it's always a genuine joy to see what I write put up here on the AAQC. I am not a prolific poster and so it's a real honor to see my efforts nominated for the AAQC when I am moved to post.
WestphalianPeace
1yr ago
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.
WestphalianPeace
2yr ago
would definitely be very interested. even just spitballing the German fraternities part and then doing the modern day later would be fine.
WestphalianPeace
2yr 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
11mo ago
- the amount of calories in X doesn't count because 'it's good for you'.
- dividing 4 by 2 is too much math. calories counts are whatever it says in bold. checking serving amounts is an unreasonable and absurd ask
- "you can't expect me to just not socialize" when it's pointed that dieting and then a full meal at a restaurant twice a week is futile
This is excellent stuff! With this place off reddit, not advertising elsewhere, and slowly developing it's own jargon things like this are great for legibility for newcomers.
"Westphalian....From a series of treaties in 1648. We also have a member with this as part of his username."
Hey that's me! Hi everyone!
It's an honor to be a recognized name enough to make this list. I don't comment that often but I like to think that I have a pretty good AAQC-to-comment-ratio to compensate. Actually AAQC as shorthand should probably also make the list.
A "prominent people" list may also be useful at somepoint. If only to explain why everything is on the main thread and then suddenly this Kulak guy thinks he's important enough to justify his own thread that's just a link to his substack. Which makes sense in context but must seem kinda bizarre from afar.
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