netstack
Texas is freedom land
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User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
That wiki article is almost as detached from reality as its subject. Love it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Sseth is…he’s iconic. I’ll go with that. I can’t believe the farming simulator bit was him!
My introduction to the genre was Train Simulator Bitch. Could have sworn it was originally posted by a League of Legends YouTuber, though?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Guilty as charged.
And an interesting idea. I’ll ask Zorba.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Yeah, I know what you mean. Seeing people “correct” others’ Space Age designs online, they’re basically scooping out the fun and replacing it with a vague sense of “correctness.” It defeats the whole point of having a fresh playground of puzzles.
You’re 100% right about Minecraft, too. I remember listening to all my friends argue about solar panel layouts and energy budgets and thinking to myself, “why did I just spend an hour planting 50 different crops?”
I guess the best I can do is try to avoid spoilers for the main progression. But the longer I take to play the actual game, the less likely that gets…
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
China doesn’t seek dominion over European civilization.
Neither does the U.S., and yet we continue to keep it aligned. Cooperative. The legacy of WWII was that you don’t have to literally occupy a territory to get value from it. Set up the right rules, and the subsequent international order serves your interests.
China would prefer a different set of rules. That’s why they’re reclaiming SCS islands, pushing the rules on international waters, and making passes at Taiwan, eroding the (admittedly weak!) rules about self-determination. The SCS connects major U.S. allies to the rest of the world. Handing those routes over to Chinese control would seriously damage the current order.
What matters is the cultural rot that has hollowed out the West,
I do not believe this can be done while abandoning the world stage. Hand-wringing over whether we’re worthy of dominating the planet is quintessential slave morality. Extending it down to surrendering our own borders and our own cities—isn’t that the source of most of your complaints?
China is responsible for relatively little of this [fecklessness].
I think that’s a difference of opportunity rather than one of character. Say what you will about modern Chinese urbanism; I draw the line at whitewashing the Cultural Revolution.
Waging a war against China would be an act of nightmarish self-harm.
Well…yes. I desperately hope it doesn’t come to this. If the CCP is rational, they hope it won’t, too. We can make it out of this without any nightmares.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
That particular massacre was less than 10 years after open English raids on the Powhatan. They clearly knew how to fight, even though they fell for the ploy.
Guilt is a luxury. The West is unusually luxurious. This dwarfs racial makeup when predicting the popularity of guilt-based policies.
women
Look, I happen to believe it’s moral and just to give women power, too. It still didn’t happen without struggle. Nearly bloodless, mind you, because we actually like women and want them to like us in turn. That’s the cost-benefit.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Odds are the shooter has a more personal connection than that, no?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Something like that, yeah.
Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not.
The Industrial Revolution gave unprecedented firepower to European empires. As it continued, that power was steadily diluted to their subjects. By WWII’s end, we’ve got the Maxim gun, but they have, too, not to mention the improvised explosives. The balance tips. Maintaining a garrison rapidly gets more expensive. Colonial policy has to tread ever more carefully. At a certain point, it’s no longer cost-effective to play at empire. Only the biggest can keep trying, and they’re usually pretty unhappy with the process.
So yeah, social pressure shies away from traditional colonialism. It’s expensive and keeps generating ugly pictures for our mass media. Every time someone bucks the trend, they take a bunch of casualties and then get accused of being fascists. Far better to find a reason to give up that imperial ambition.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
That’s absurd.
Every major belief system uses guilt as its feedback mechanism. The unusual thing about white people is that we’re running a system derived from Christianity. That tells us to feel guilty about a broader circle of concern. But if all the Christian guilt in the world circa 1700 didn’t stop white people from dominating, it can’t be the deciding factor now. Something else has changed the cost/benefit analysis.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Uh…
How does a totalitarian act by an American justify an act by a Korean? They can both be unjustified.
I suppose I’d also expect suspending civilian government to lead to interment, etc., while the converse is less likely.
And “high regard” doesn’t make someone an “exemplar” of something. A lot of those classical liberals probably think Che was pretty cool, too.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Tore through three of the Jutland chapters in Castles of Steel.
God damn. This book needs to be required reading for anyone smugposting about military strategy. Oh, why didn’t Russia do X? Surely the U.S. should have done Y! Forget military strategy—I want to suggest this to the sort of person who insists that a failure to adopt some specific tactic means their opponents are stupid, evil, and/or insincere.
Let me back up. For the unfamiliar: Jutland was the first and only major sea battle of WWI. The UK’s Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy had been prodding at each other for nearly two years without decisive action. At the end of May 1916, the Germans set a trap, but the British preempted it with one of their own. As with many actions in WWI, the result was a horrendously bloody method of preserving the status quo. It was also a long chain of failures, some of which were unavoidable, and others of which were COMPLETE BLUNDERS.
The British
- could read German radio traffic, but underutilized it due to officer
dick-measuringinfighting. - tried to bring an early aircraft carrier for scouting, but accidentally left it at home.
- repeatedly failed at signaling in new and exciting ways. Flags, searchlights, radio, all botched at key points.
- didn’t bother to signal at all before pulling stupid maneuvers.
- kept screwing up their gunnery.
- allocated their fastest and most modern battleships with the scout force, which left them both vulnerable and underutilized.
- most famously, had more battlecruisers—until they didn’t, after two exploded from single hits.
Meanwhile, the Germans
- sauntered into the trap anyway, because they also…
- had no idea where the enemy was located.
- brought outdated and slow ships because their commander asked nicely.
- performed a secret and difficult maneuver with a long German name, turning the whole fleet 180 degrees…
- performed that maneuver again. Immediately. Sailing right back into the British fleet. Their commander tried to justify this as a surprise attack, but admitted to his friends that “it just sort of happened.”
- brought better-trained and more durable battle cruisers, but threw them at the enemy in a “death ride” to cover the main fleet’s escape.
- ultimately snuck behind the British fleet under cover of night, but weren’t caught, making it home with fewer casualties in men and materiel.
In the end, several thousand men died. The German fleet was never allowed to plan something like this again, which suited the Royal Navy fine. Their newfound free time was devoted to infighting. Someone had to be blamed for at least a few of their unforced errors.
Which brings me back to the modern day. As always, it’s tempting to abuse the power of hindsight: ah, the British ought to have known their ships were death traps. The Germans never should have sailed without a fix on their enemies’ positions. So on, so forth, until we remember that it’s called “fog of war” for a reason and rein in our expectations.
More insidious, though, are the fallacies of planning. Even when we recognize that they simply couldn’t have known what we know—we fail to apply this to the present. We ask questions without knowing they’re the right ones, give orders without realizing they’re ambiguous. Plans disintegrate not on contact with the enemy, but on contact with the air, falling apart even as they first escape our minds.
If you find yourself making a plan that relies on rigorous communication, on individual initiative, on specific reactions from outsiders: your plan will not be implemented as you envisioned it. That’s alright; you can still get a desirable result! But if you think it has to happen your way, you will be disappointed.
This goes double when you’re planning for someone else. You have less skin in the game. You probably have less information, too. So if you consider all this, and you still want to insist that a rational person would already have enacted your plan…
Read this book. Or, for efficiency’s sake, read longtime SSC commenter bean’s blog version. You won’t be disappointed.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
How do you mean?
All the examples that come to mind from the classical period have a ton of confounding factors. Were the Romans out of money because their tax base died of plague, or because they wasted too much on panem et circenses, or because they just had too many enemies?
By the Industrial Revolution, population is definitely less important than development, natural resources, etc. I think this probably dates back to the late medieval period, but I don’t know enough about the history to pick out key trends on graphs like these.
I guess I agree with the “all else equal” statement. It’s just rare.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Also, wow.
Is there any reasonable, by Western classical-liberalism standards, justification for this? Short of an external military crisis, it’s awfully hard for my American mind to think of a reason.
“I am declaring a state of emergency in order to protect the constitutional order based on freedom and eradicate shameful pro-North Korea anti-state groups, that are stealing freedom and happiness of our people,” Yoon said on the country’s YTN news channel. He added that this would protect the country “from the threats of North Korea’s communist forces.”
Yeah, it doesn’t sound like he bothered with an actual excuse. If there was some NK activity or scandal in recent months, it sure didn’t make American news.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
I don’t like that either.
Though I’d have pointed to Charles Kushner, or maybe to Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, rather than PMCs with no personal connection. Trump openly showers favors on people in his orbit; he has somehow passed this off as mundane instead of scandalous.
That doesn’t make me feel better about Hunter Biden.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Both options in the prisoner’s dilemma are known, too.
Pardoning your kids is eroding a common good to benefit yourself and yours.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
I wouldn’t say unacceptable. I’d say it’s not up to your usual standards.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Jumping up and down on the “defect” button is not the kind of humanity I appreciate.
And while I agree that our Trump stans would bend over backwards to justify such a pardon, I don’t find it admirable.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Man, I want to argue with you on the merits, but I can’t get past the smug disdain.
You know better than this. Talk about specific groups. Steelman their positions. Add more commentary than “haha, other team bad!”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
Well, if by “visceral response” you mean “heuristic.” Hearing someone choose the word “females” usually says a lot about their worldview. It’s the same sentiment that makes most men cringe at “male fantasy” or “male privilege”: you immediately know what you’re getting.
Oh, yeah, I'm not trying to avoid spoilers for planets/mechanics. I'm trying to avoid the posts which cross the line from "tips" to "guides." Optimizes the fun out of it for my slow ass.
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