johnfabian
1d ago
It's longer, more difficult, more intense. But a lot of people consider the Long War mod to be the absolute pinnacle of strategy gaming.
johnfabian
1d ago
I've been playing a lot of the "Long War" mod for XCOM:EU this week. It's the best way to play the game, imo.
johnfabian
10d ago
Ha, I was going to comment that this novel really feels the most of the series like it starts and ends at arbitrary points (which I find charming, as no modern novelist would do so). Or maybe it was the previous, which literally cuts mid-scene. I thought they were really going to go to Chile in this novel, as it was set up as their next voyage in the previous. But come the end of the novel they still haven't got around to it!
johnfabian
10d ago
I read three books last week: The Letter of Marque, instalment 12? 13? in the Aubrey-Maturin series. Very fun book as usual, including maybe the funniest subplot about opioid addiction ever?
Also read A Canticle for Leibowitz, a sci-fi classic I had never got around to. My Dad mentioned he had it for assigned reading in grade 10 back in the day. Deserving classic, very interesting premise with great execution, handles multiple different tones very well and builds up to a terrific finale.
Also because of his death I read John Crowley's short fiction collection. Never read him before, sort of a "magical realist" along the lines of Borges or JG Ballard. Enjoyed it on the whole, especially the novella "The Great Work of Time."
johnfabian
13d ago
They actually overshot, and now the new leadership of Iran are woke transgender communists. More execution strikes may be necessary to bring them back to equilibrium.
johnfabian
14d ago
Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Marianas islands. The residents of these places are not slave races. They are not lower than me in terms of dignity. They don't get senators. Their Congressional representatives can't vote. They don't vote for president. That's fine. That's about right for Canada.
No thanks, and no thanks.
johnfabian
15d ago
I have to comment here because this is so absolutely mind numbingly wrong. The war was totally completely won, Afghanistan was completely pacified and the withdrawal was a political optics move planned by Trump and executed by Biden. There were literally 0 American casualties in Afghanistan in the year and a half leading up to the withdrawal and the coalition had control over any semi-urban or urban area in the country. No doubt the Taliban still existed, but that's about the worst you could say.
The Taliban were deliberately not targeting American forces because of the upcoming withdrawal. There was no reason to risk the men or the possible retaliation.
Likewise, one could conclude that the US had decisively beaten North Vietnam - there were only 29 American deaths in 1973, and just 1 in 1974!
johnfabian
15d ago
There's a very real problem right-wingers have modeling the beliefs of others, where if they don't subscribe to very specific elements of right-wing mythology and engage in performative flag-fondling then they must hate their country. It is not mystifying why Canadian resentment of the United States has abruptly skyrocketed, and the fact that it has does not reveal some prior hollowness in Canadian national identity.
I wouldn't even say this extends to right-wingers in general, which despite me not counting myself among them I think on the whole tend to a decent job of modeling others beliefs, better than their left-wing counterparts. This is a specific feature of the MAGA camp, which has ensconced itself in its own bubble of self-contradictory beliefs.
You don't need to look any further than this comment thread to see variations of Canada isn't a real country, they're ungrateful vassals, they wouldn't exist without us and frankly shouldn't - and why do they hate us when we're so nice to them?
johnfabian
17d ago
The added Faramir subplot also does two things that are important for the film medium: they introduce Osgiliath and also subtly rejig the timelines of the two plots so they are aligned
johnfabian
17d ago
Or that Aragorn sings Elendil's words when he came to Middle Earth at his coronation. IIRC that's even in the theatrical cut, and without subtitles. It's a baffling inclusion from the perspective of a studio exec that no fan would ever dream of making space for, but it's there.
johnfabian
20d ago
In the spectrum of movie adaptations, the Jackson movies (while I have my problems with them) were fairly faithful. You cannot set the standard at "nothing whatsoever is changed."
Certainly as a Tolkien überfan I wish that certain things had been done better, but there are some elements that one would never hope in a million years for that got included.
The notion that all social programs are just "gibs" is pretty silly. Like you can dislike Medicare or think there's a lot of waste in the program, but it's fundamentally very different than just mailing people a check.
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