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due to lack of interest the human race has been cancelled
It's TZD
User ID: 2892
spring
due to lack of interest the human race has been cancelled
11mo ago
I want to like Kidology, and I like that she's tried to position herself atop the culture wall. But Christ is she verbose, whenever I try to watch one of her videos I find myself skipping forward looking for some meat on the bone.
spring
due to lack of interest the human race has been cancelled
11mo ago
Sachs is making the same fundamental mistake the current administration has made and the next administration will likely make again, which is thinking that the US is in the driver's seat and all it needs to do is turn the wheel to get everyone going in the direction it wants. The war did not start on America's terms and unless it wants to intervene directly, it will not end on America's terms (a position Sachs is not advocating for, as I understand it).
NATO's enlargement was not, as Sachs seems to imagine, a result of an ever expanding American empire, but the manifesting of the strategic needs of the member states. Even if the US could wave it's magic wand and dissolve NATO tomorrow a new Euro-centric bloc would form as a symptom of the same strategic anxiety. Life in the Russkiy Mir is still within living memory of the majority of the former SSR and there is hurry to return to it. The Baltics are preparing for the worst and Poland's military buildup has gone into overdrive. Western Europe, which does not have the misfortune of sharing a border with Russia, has been slower to wake from its stupor.
Meanwhile at the Kremlin there appears to be no desire for a neutral Ukraine either. Putin et al shunned all offramps prior to Feb 2022 and have opined repeatedly that Ukraine is Russia. The Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson have been legally incorporated into Russia. After the sanctions placed on it in response to its seizure of Crimea, Russia made great efforts to reduce its reliance on the west and built up great wealth (which it is now spending to fund the war). Does Mr Sachs imagine that if Biden were to ask nicely that Putin would just pack up and leave?
Sachs is right about one thing though, America does have the means to end the war. Through violence.
spring
due to lack of interest the human race has been cancelled
11mo ago
As a relatively new user I made the jump to start frequenting the motte because the discussion at my former haunts had become increasingly shrill and monocultural. Moderation might be a little more hands off, but I see no such trend towards deeper and thoughtful discussion on the wider web.
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due to lack of interest the human race has been cancelled
1yr ago
And in this hypothetical the positioning of troops in Mexico and Canada was in direct response to USA's seizure of Nova Scotia.
The Baltics joined NATO in 2004, and didn't host any permanent NATO troops until the EFP was created in response to Russia's seizure of Crimea. The current force is ~10,000 in the Baltics, 11,600 in Poland. It doesn't take much historical acumen to understand that this is not a credible threat to Russia's continuity.
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due to lack of interest the human race has been cancelled
1yr ago
I can neither agree or disagree with such a vague assertion. When did the drop off happen? What are some notable examples of poor writing? What sort of games do you actively seek out and which do you avoid?
In creating my own mental shortlist of games I'd recommend on the strength of their writing, I find it starts in the early 00s and continues right up to the present day. This is pretty consistent with the transformation that happened around the turn of the millenium, where genres that had previously included only the bare minimum of writing suddenly had characters the audience cared about and plots that were more than just the connective tissue between levels. Naughty Dog went from Crash Bandicoot to Uncharted in less than a decade, and many studios went through similar if not quite so dramatic shifts.
If I had to offer an explanation as to why you feel writing is worse, it's because it's much, much harder to ignore now. In many games you simply cannot escape voiced dialogue unless the developer had the charity to offer a distinct volume slider for it. Audio logs are fucking everywhere, friendly NPCs chatter, disembodied voices give instructions and repetitive incidental dialogue just won't die (No one has as many friends as the man with many cheeses). Probably most egregious are the walk-and-talk segments that Ubisoft (I believe) pioneered, which are the worst incarnation of the unskippable cutscene yet. Maybe they're 'invisible' to the average player which is why they've become the expository vehicle of choice for titles like the new God of War.
Anyway if you're looking for some good writing in a scifi setting I'd recommend The Talos Principle.
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due to lack of interest the human race has been cancelled
1yr ago
why China would want to advance US foreign policy goals is unclear to me
My best guess: the US believe China has more to lose than gain if Russia were to use destructive satellite weaponry and that their Chinese counterparts will reach the same conclusion. Russia and China may have a 'special relationship', that doesn't meant they're on the same page.
spring
due to lack of interest the human race has been cancelled
1yr ago
Greg Egan's Dichronauts moreso for the strange non-Euclidean geometry of the setting, than the plot itself which is a relatively pedestrian Jules Verne-esque voyage into the unknown.
In your opinion what are these other things?
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