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Notes -
About two months ago, I had a chat with @gattsuru about Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, which I had been struggling through at the time. I've since got on with it and finished Dawntrail's MSQ, and I promised to get back with some more thoughts then.
So, what do I think?
For a starting point, I'd have to grant that this is FFXIV's worst outing since 1.0, and I don't get the impression that this is particularly controversial? There's a clear decline in metascore (PC only, ARR is 83/7.0, HW is 86/8.0, SB is 87/7.5, SHB is 90/9.1, EW is 92/9.0, and DT is 79/5.3), and anecdotally my sense among fans has been that there's a sense that this is a slog. I occasionally chatted to people doing story dungeons, and never encountered pushback on the idea that this is a weaker outing. Fortunately, FFXIV is very good, so the worst FFXIV expansion is still potentially quite good relative to its competitors.
I found that the first 75% or so of Dawntrail's story really dragged. I think the primary issue for me was that neither the world nor the cast of characters I was exploring it with were particularly interesting, or revealed any compelling dramatic tensions. I'll talk about the characters a bit later, but Tural in general is not a very interesting place until you get to Mamook, because it's just a very peaceful place with no outstanding issues. The formula for most of the MSQ is that we visit a place, the locals are friendly and generous and tell us about their culture, Wuk Lamat appreciates that culture a bit, maybe one of our rivals does some Scooby Doo level prank to annoy us, we resolve it, and then we move on. Unfortunately the cultures we visit are all very superficial. The Pelupelu like trade and negotiation. The Hanuhanu have a harvest festival. The Moblins patronise craftsmen. The Xbr'aal like chili wrapped in banana leaves. It all feels like surface, and comes off badly compared to some of the cultures we met in previous expansions, almost all of which were complex, contained both sympathetic and unsympathetic traits, had their share of unresolved issues or tensions, and invited some level of engagement with them. Dawntrail improves a bit towards the end - I liked the Old West bit in Xak Tural, where for once there was an interesting domestic conflict, with crime springing up in the wake of a rapid economic and territorial expansion into the ceruleum fields of the north, and formal legal institutions clashing with the ad hoc codes of justice worked out by vigilantes on the frontier - but it doesn't measure up that well compared to the past.
The major exception for me was Mamook, which I did find interesting, but also tragically under-explored. I'd also like to add Mamook to the pile of evidence that FFXIV is secretly a quite conservative game, because to me at least the whole Mamook story felt like a blatant pro-life allegory. Even if it's not quite about abortion, it is very easy to read as being about IVF. The Mamool Ja are desperate for more blessed siblings to be born, mutant two-headed Mamool Ja of superior strength and power, and to accomplish this they've been mass-producing hybrid eggs, even though they know that the vast majority of these hybrids will die unborn, struggling in vain to break free of their own shells. Only one in a hundred of blessed eggs successfully hatches, and the survivors, like Bakool Ja Ja, carry the weight of this holocaust of the unborn. The Mamool Ja believe that they need blessed siblings to survive, but the guilt of this crime weighs on their entire community, a hidden torment that they cannot reveal to the rest of Tural. Naturally the heroic thing to do here is to convince them that they don't need to engage in this kind of eugenics, that it is not worth sacrificing so many lives for the sake of worldly, military power. A more blatant pro-life allegory I struggle to imagine!
Likewise when we get to the end of the expansion, well, it's a bit more subtle, and the script occasionally ventures that we shouldn't be too quick to judge another culture, but there's no disguising the fact that the narrative thrust of Dawntrail is strongly critical of Alexandria and the world of Living Memory. The soul-recycling of Alexandria and the unnatural immortality of the Endless are condemned. This too strikes me as remarkably amenable to a conservative interpretation - much like the world of the Ancients before it, Sphene's paradise is fundamentally flawed, and the right thing to do is to smash its memory banks, let these digital ghosts fade away, and encourage the living to return to the world.
But I've gotten ahead of myself. I do think the expansion picks up considerably once you reach Alexandria. I don't love Alexandria overall, and in particular its neon futuristic aesthetic is a pretty big clash with the rest of the setting, but since it's explicitly from another world, that helps a bit, and it seems likely to remain cordoned off to its own part of the setting. Still, I hope this isn't a sign that Eorzea may end up going the same way as Azeroth, with new, high-tech additions gradually building to the point where it becomes impossible to take the world seriously. Even so, Alexandria is better than most of Tural because it manages to be a portrayal of a society that's complicated. Alexandrians aren't bad people for the most part, and there may be much to admire in Alexandria, but even so, there are clearly deep issues in its society. The fact that we rapidly meet a group of Alexandrian dissidents who articulate some of their complaints helps with that as well.
Now let's talk about characters a bit as well...
This is probably the weakest part of Dawntrail, for me.
Some of the Scions are still around to help us, but for the most part they feel under-used or mis-used. Some of them are present but do almost nothing, and feel like they're just there to provide a familiar face or two. Alphinaud and Alisaie, Y'shtola, G'raha Tia, and Estinien all appear a few times, but none of them do anything in the story or contribute anything, and might as well not be in Dawntrail. Thancred and Urianger sort of have something interesting, and it's neat to see them mentoring Koana, but unfortunately most of that happens off-screen. Lastly Krile... should have had a chance to shine here, but unfortunately I feel she was screwed over a bit. She doesn't do much for most of the story, and then the discovery of Krile's parents and her discovery of her origins is rapidly shoehorned in at the very end of the story, in a way that honestly kind of ruins the pacing of the end as well. I feel Krile was done dirty here. For most of FFXIV before now, Krile has never really gotten a chance to shine, and she should have had it here, but she didn't. Perhaps some of the new characters got in the way?
Speaking of... well, I'll preface this by saying that I don't hate Wuk Lamat as a character, and I don't think the issue with her is the voice acting. Sometimes I switch the voices in FFXIV to Japanese and it doesn't substantially change how I feel about Wuk Lamat. The problem is that only a few local Tural characters, mostly Wuk Lamat but also Koana, need to carry most of the story, and it is too much for them. Wuk Lamat is not a particularly interesting or deep character and it means that the expansion spends way too long stretching out a character arc that just doesn't have much bite to it. Wuk Lamat is fundamentally an optimistic, cheerful, kind person who wants to be Dawnservant so she can protect her people's happiness, and her biggest character flaw is just that she's a bit naive and a bit prone to self-doubt, so her story is about gaining confidence. Koana is basically the same - he's a good guy, he wants to help, but he struggles with self-doubt. Add in that Wuk Lamat is basically the protagonist of this expansion, with the Warrior of Light primarily a helper, and a lot of the expansion comes off as just following around a not-massively-interesting person as she goes on a tour. I don't find Wuk Lamat particularly *dis-*likeable, but she's just not up to the task of carrying this story.
In a sense, it reminds me a bit of some of the criticisms of Dragon Age: The Veilguard for being far too positive - all the characters are friends, and rough edges are all sanded off. In this case, Wuk Lamat is nice to everyone, and the WoL and the Scions with her are also all very nice, and no significant conflicts ever emerge. Even the rivals end up quite friendly; Koana is also lovely, and Bakool Ja Ja is a jerk for five levels and then pulls an extremely rapid heel face turn and then he's our friend too. This just makes for a story that feels bland.
By comparison, let's look at some earlier expansions. One of my favourite parts of Heavensward was the Warrior of Light's trip into Dravania with Alphinaud, Estinien, and Ysayle. This was another small ensemble cast, and it worked really well because all of those characters have depth, and are full of complicated feelings and ambivalencies, and those feelings then bounce off each other and throw sparks, creating tensions. Alphinaud is a prodigy who had a brilliant scheme to create international peace, but has recently seen that whole scheme blow up in his face and end in disaster. He thought he could unite Eorzea through diplomacy, but treachery, greed, and violence have seemingly destroyed his dream. Estinien is a veteran warrior driven by a need for revenge against the dragons who slaughtered his family as a child, and stoically holds himself aloof from others. Ysayle is a heretic from the Ishgardian church, a dragon-sympathiser who believes that dialogue will make peace with the dragons possible, and a cult leader whose followers have been responsible for violence against innocents in the past. Together we are going to confront the leaders of the Dravanian Horde - Ysayle firmly believes that they will listen to us and be willing to make peace, and has agreed that, if this fails, we may have to use force; all while Estinien believes that Ysayle's hopes will fail and then we'll need to try it his way, and just kill the leader. You can see how Alphinaud is then in this interesting place between them, where he's been where Ysayle is now and seen it fail, but also doesn't want to embrace Estinien's bloody worldview. However, as the adventure progresses, evidence of a past age of human-dragon cooperation seems to validate Ysayle's view and Estinien perhaps has to re-evaluate his view of dragons, and meanwhile he's slowly developing a father- or older-brother-like relationship with Alphinaud, whom he's clearly taking a shine to. Ysayle's hopes grow, but are dashed when we do meet the dragons and they inform her that all her dreams are impossible, and she collapses in despair as we move on with Estinien's plan.
That's just a period of 2-3 levels in the middle of Heavensward, but I was drawn into it and fascinated because there's a huge amount of tension there - both internal tension, with three characters all of whom find their own beliefs challenged and need to undergo growth, and external tension, as the characters dispute what we must do with each other. And this was just one example. At FFXIV's best, we see these kinds of tensions again and again - think of Yugiri, Gosetsu, and Hien in Stormblood, or Fordola and Arenvald's growing friendship, or the way Shadowbringers built Emet-Selch into a beloved villain through a long period of travel like this, or the way we saw old characters challenged and recontextualised (like Alisaie's despair at seeing her friend become a monster, or G'raha struggling to bear the burden of an entire city's hopes, or Y'shtola becoming 'Master Matoya' and stepping into her old teacher's role). Ever since at least Final Fantasy IV back in 1991, Final Fantasy has been all about an ensemble cast of colourful characters interacting and growing.
That kind of cast is what I think is missing from Dawntrail.
But I'm not done with characters yet, because we need to talk about villains. Specifically, Zoraal Ja and Sphene, both of whom I think have a lot of potential, but both of whom I'm also ultimately a bit disappointed by.
Zoraal Ja has a lot of potential! There's a very obvious theme of fathers and sons going on with him, and measuring up to or exceeding his father, and I think it could work, except it has the one fatal flaw that we just don't see enough of Zoraal Ja. He is an extremely reserved character who almost never talks, and neither do we really meet or talk to people who know him well. Baby Gulool Ja is adorable and it would have been great to learn more about Zoraal Ja's time in Alexandria, how he came to have a son, and then how he came to abandon him, but we don't get to see any of that. Surely there must have been ways to write the MSQ to show us more of its central villain? (Sphene comes in too late, I think, to claim that role, even if she is the final boss.) This is a game in which the player character has the explicit superpower of seeing flashbacks of things that he/she did not witness personally! The Echo has been used quite hamfistedly at times, but surely if it's for anything, it's for this? It is an excuse to let the player just see visions of things that are narratively useful. Why not use it?
As for Sphene... I think Sphene is fine by herself, but is let down contextually for two reasons. The first is that we've already met Emet-Selch and he already did this story better. An ancient leader of god-like power who wants to sacrifice or doom our world in order to save/maintain/restore an ancient world that he/she believes is utopian and more worthy of existence. We've already seen that story, and Emet-Selch was built up for an entire expansion to try to give that story some emotional heft. Sphene comes in for the last 25% or so of Dawntrail to basically speedrun that story for a second time, and it just can't hit as hard as it did before.
The second is the relationship with the heroes. Good villains in FFXIV have often mirrored the heroes in some way. Nidhogg is compelling in large part because his feelings and motives are the same as Estinien's, to the extent that the two of them literally merge together for a bit. Heavensward is about vengeance and hatred and exacting retribution on the ones who dealt you an inconsolable loss, and both the heroes and the villains undergo that experience. Hopefully even the player does as well - that's why Haurchefant has to die, so that, like all the other major players in the story, we experience that need for vengeance. Zenos, meanwhile, has been presented as a superlative warrior yet one who suffers tremendous ennui, and only finds a purpose to life when fighting against the worthiest of foes, and Zenos explicitly draws a comparison between himself and the Warrior of Light, inviting you to see your own quest for martial excellence (because why are you playing an MMO anyway?) parallelled in his. It's then up to you to decide whether you accept or reject that comparison, and if so, why. Emet-Selch wants to doom your world to save his own - and of course you're in a position where you're going to let his world be lost forever in order to save your own. The blasphemies in Endwalker all played around in this space as well.
A disappointment I had with Dawntrail was that it didn't really explore this the way I hoped. Wuk Lamat talks a lot about understanding Sphene, and indeed this seems reasonable. Wuk Lamat and Sphere are both young queens with kind and compassionate dispositions who are fundamentally driven by the need to protect their people's happiness. Before we reach Alexandria, Wuk Lamat has spent the entire MSQ talking about how precious the people are to her and how she loves them and just wants them to be happy. Then we meet Sphene, who has the exact same motivation, but in Sphene's case, this leads her to ruthless and genocidal excess. You'd think that might be an excellent opportunity for Wuk Lamat to re-evaluate her ideals a little. Does a good leader need to have something more than love for her people? If so, what? Good judgement? Sense of justice? Meeting Sphene seems like it ought to provoke a bit of soul-searching, but alas, it never happens.
Ultimately, I think I come to the end of the MSQ not really sure what Dawntrail was trying to do or say. There were some interesting ideas in here, but they were often a bit rushed or incoherent, or just not explored as skilfully as FFXIV has handled similar issues in the past.
On the positive side, though, the environments and the music are still gorgeous as always, and the dungeon and trial designs are all great. So there is still material to like here, and I hope that with the next expansion FFXIV will be able to return to form.
Is the gameplay any good by modern standards? After a long hiatus from both, EverQuest felt horrible, but WoW Classic held up pretty well.
Pretty much the same as past expansions. If you play FFXIV for the mechanics and don't care about story, I recommend Dawntrail as more of the same.
If you haven't played FFXIV at all...
It is a WoW-style MMO, and specifically, modern-WoW-style, where party finder tools make it easy to engage in fundamentally linear mechanical challenges. It's not like classic WoW in that you do not experiment with different character builds or party comps much, since all class builds are pre-set, and party comp does not matter very much. It's also not a game for you if you enjoy the social challenge of MMOs, so if you're into classic WoW but dislike modern WoW, I'd suggest that FFXIV is probably not for you.
That said, if you like the WoW theme park model, with lots of directed challenges, FFXIV does that very well. The hardest challenges, though, are much more about optimisation and execution than they are about innovation or creativity.
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I will get around to playing Dawntrail one of these days, but honestly Endwalker left me feeling kind of meh on continuing with FF14. That's partly because they wrapped up the ongoing story so well that I feel sated and not really looking for more, but also partly due to how they handled some of the writing choices in the expansion.
Whenthey killed off Hydaelyn I was sad but it made sense, that was a fitting way to handle that character's story. But then when they killed off the Twelve it really left a bad taste in my mouth. I am kind of sick of the writers letting us finally meet cool, legendary characters just to kill them , and it honestly made me hope that we won't get to meet any characters like that in the future. Which is not a good thing when meeting characters like that should be half the fun! So it really put me off the game and I lost interest in pursuing the story after that.
Anyways, I'm sure at some point I'll get around to it but I just don't have that excitement like I used to. This was the first FF14 expansion I didn't rush out to pick up on day 1, but it is what it is.
I feel a bit conflicted about some of that, to be honest.
I beg your pardon for not using spoilers here, but since I already spoilered Dawntrail in the top level post and we're talking about the previous expansion, I'll assume it's okay. People worried about FFXIV spoilers should skip this!
So, on we go:
I take Shadowbringers/Endwalker as something of a duology, and one that noticeably retcons Hydaelyn, Zodiark, and the Ascians. If you take ARR at face value, its depiction of the Mothercrystal has different implications to what we eventually find. In ARR, the first glimpse we get of Hydaelyn comes with her introduction: "I am Hydaelyn. All made one." That is a strange thing to say in light of SHB/EW, where Hydaelyn instead becomes a being of division, fighting against Zodiark's mission to make all one. But she was clearly something different back then. It's just that most people don't care about this, because ARR-Hydaelyn was in the distant background and not very important, and SHB/EW knocked it out of the park story-wise.
However, it becomes even more evident with the Twelve, which disappointed me because previously they seemed to be portrayed quite positively (recall that 1.0 ended in an act of communal prayer to them!), and the religions around them were likewise presented sympathetically. Even the Ishgardian church, though flawed, didn't have those flaws reflect upon Halone herself, with the Scholasticate quests suggesting that the way forward is to be more true to Halone's teachings, not less. In general FFXIV has been quite positive and sympathetic towards religion (witness the militantly atheist Garleans who hate all things of faith, in contrast to the way the heroes are generally politely reverent, even with other people's religions, like the kami in Stormblood), so I hoped for that to continue.
Well, the Endwalker raid isn't hostile to the Twelve, as such. The Twelve are all genuinely good and presented sympathetically. However, I feel a bit that, like Hydaelyn herself, they are reduced by being suggested to be born of the Ancients, and the story of the raid itself isn't inspiring? The gods want to leave the world for... some reason... so they choose to vanish?
I interpret this as being related to a more general theme in Japanese games, and especially Final Fantasy - the death or at least vanishing of the gods. The espers and magic leave the world in FFVI. In FFVII, an evil corporation whose name is literally "captures gods" (神羅) plunders the spiritual realm for profit. In FFX, the dominant religion is false and the divine beings of this world need to be slain. In FFXII, the closest there are to visible gods, the Occuria, must be thrust back so that humans can take control of history. And so on. It's even more visible in other JRPGs, where killing god or the gods are common endgames.
My theory is that this is because of Japanese history and the shock of industrialisation. The kami were real, and the people were surrounded by these spirits of nature, and relationships with those spirits needed to be maintained for overall harmony. But then the Westerners come along, bringing new technology, Japan rapidly industrialises, and suddenly human power massively exceeds that of the kami. We don't need the spirits any more, and indeed we can do things they never dreamed of. It's a massive cultural shock. What is the place of the gods in the new Japan? Western industrialisation took a few centuries so there could be a process of adjustment, but for Japan it was a very rapid shock. Naturally a lot of Japanese media starts exploring questions like, "Are the gods gone? Is the time of the gods over? What does that mean for us now?"
FFXIV does not consistently suggest that everything to do with the gods is gone forever. If you talk to the Watcher on the moon, he says that in a sense Hydaelyn will always be with you. The Twelve themselves, at the end of their raid, talk about returning to the Lifestream, but they also wish to be reunited with Oschon when he's ready to go too, so it doesn't seem like they're embracing annihilation. In this year's Rising, Deryk/Oschon cameos and says, "In every festival is imbued the hopes and dreams of mortal man. You implore the gods to listen to your pleas, and they hear you. They still do." So it hasn't gone quite as far as saying that the gods are all dead and now you're in an atheist cosmos. There may be something more (I remind myself again that Venat feels a kind of immanent divine presence, after all), but the game is not willing to authoritatively name that presence.
But it's still in this awkward place where it seems that faith is good, but any specific object of faith is undermined somewhat.
Anyway, I understand your disappointment, and I think I'd agree that FFXIV has already hit its highest point. Still, a decade is a pretty good lifespan for an MMO, especially if I compare FFXIV to what FFXI did with story, and sometimes a graceful winding-down is preferable to endlessly trying to escalate and becoming WoW.
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Cringe of the day: US military spawns yet another UFO investigation workgroup, logo contains a "Latin" motto seemingly made by butchering a stoic motivational poster quote.
I want to put this on the record to have a sign to tap anytime someone brings up "officials at the DoD" as a particularly trustworthy authority on anything. Consider what must have gone wrong for this to pass muster - the individual(s) in charge are so childish to think that slapping on a random Latin motto makes you look legit, they are not skilled or diligent enough to construct a motto that is actually correct, not resourceful enough to hire or ask someone who could do it right, nor capable of sufficient reflection to anticipate that they would fail at it and the result may be embarrassing. (It's not like show-offs like me trying to decipher random Latin is a rare occurrence!) If any other employees looked over the materials at all, either those people also failed the attention or skepticism check, or there is not enough of a culture of criticism that they could report it upwards. What sort of useful contribution can a group of people like that make on the topic of sifting through blurry and contentious footage and deciding if it is evidence of UFOs or some other explanation has been missed? All that is really evidenced is that under the aegis of the US military, there is space for amateurs to do whatever with little oversight.
(Fun thread because there isn't really much that falls along standard CW battle lines here. Happy to move if the implications are too contentious after all.)
OK, the US military is not well-endowed with the cerebral sort. Many abstract tasks like strategy or military-political coordination elude them. They have produced some real masterpieces of silliness in past years: https://x.com/DefenseCharts/status/1321799395571097601
But the US military do have powerful radars and cameras pointed at the skies. They have lots of space assets, they are very interested in space. There's no way of getting to the bottom of this without their resources.
To build, maintain, and coordinate these interests would imply a great deal of cerebral endowment. You may become king of the skies by luck, but you sure as hell don't keep the kingdom that way.
If they throw $800 billion or so around every year for decades and decades, they'll have all kinds of cool toys. Are they getting the right systems, are systems developed efficiently, are wars managed proficiently or planned out properly? Absolutely not. But if you're a big, rich incumbent, even regular blundering doesn't cause that much harm... until strong competitors emerge.
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It's somewhat relevant to the discussions about the federal government workforce. The federal government employs a lot of people, and those people aren't being spewed out by a magic high-IQ-only people factory; they're just regular people, from the regular population. Some are really smart and capable; others, less so. Different agencies have different dynamics that draw from different subsets of the population.
There is a legend in the research community of a new director taking charge of one of the national labs and saying in his first appearance in front of the workforce some form of, "We know that 50% of you don't want to do anything. That's fine. We're not going to make you; we won't fire you. Just don't get in the way of the other 50%."
The reason for this legend is not overly linked with any dynamic particular to the federal government, but it has a slightly special form in such places. There is a long, complicated story about the inherent difficulty of evaluating research efforts. In every industry, you'll have people who frankly do not have the skills or ability to contribute to the actual mission/bottom line, but they obviously don't want to have that figured out. They might lose their job! So, they try to make it kind of look like they're doing something, even if it's dumb/not productive. In industries where it's harder to evaluate whether something is actually contributing, there's a lot more room for this to flourish. Also in industries that are so bloody rich that they can sort of afford to scattershot all over the place a little and not worry too much about economy. See also the tech industry in some recent times. The federal government has a bit of both floating around. Depending on the agency, their mission may be more/less well-defined. Some pockets clearly think that their mission is approximately everything. Some defense orgs definitely think this, as it's extremely easy to slide down the slope of thinking that you have to account for literally every possible situation, every possible contingency, every idea that could be used against you or by you to gain an advantage.
Couple these two things (a workforce so large really isn't drawn from just the best and brightest) and such a broad mix of groups being more-or-less mission-focused and more-or-less clear on what contributes to that mission, and you inevitably get allllllllll sorts of pretty random crap. Some is really really good; some is, well.
I'm riffing on all this in part to say that there will definitely be some obvious low-hanging fruit for Elon/Vivek, but there is also just such a massive diversity of agencies that have such different missions, different needs, different levels-of-evaluability, that it will likely be a lot more difficult than Elon just rolling in to Twitter and saying, "Everybody bring the code you've written in the last year directly to Elon." Sure, if they have the time and inclination to scratch and sniff down to small groups like this, they'd find some set of people who say, "I take the Latin from the internet and put it in the goddamn logo!" But a lot of times, they'll get some mountain of hazy documentation about 'work' that is supposedly in line with a mission that may be extremely sprawling, unclear, and questionable in the first place. But it might actually be good-ish! Hard to tell without a deep dive and lots of expertise... multiplied over and over again in thousands of different domains that require all different sorts of expertise. Godspeed, Elon... godspeed.
I mean, there was a recent fiasco with a guy shooting his gun with the scope on backwards. And it wasn’t some low-ranking cannon fodder recruited for Operation Human Shield; he was captain of a big ship! And he wasn’t a diversity hire, either—he’s a white male!
Like, just ponder for a moment the level of smoothbrain it takes to do this: looking through the scope backwards would make your target smaller.
I would not trust these people to run a lemonade stand.
And then he was replaced by a lesbian, and many an article was written about it.
Surprised I never heard of this on the Motte.
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There used to be a standard for federal bureaucrats - IQ tests, essentially.
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Bunch of UFO unsolved mysteries science fiction fans grew up and joined the DoD / MIC / Congress, and now they’re powerful enough to commission and staff these “investigations” where they get to sperg over found footage and can demand to be taken on tours of Area 51 outbuildings to forage for aliens in long unopened refrigerators.
There is nothing more to it.
No. There are either aliens (or whatever) or there's a very deliberate and massive psyop to that effect underway, involving high ranking members of both parties, lying officers, fake footage, etc etc etc.
We're past the point of "nothing to see here." That's now just the uncomfortable noise people make when they figure there are no aliens but can't think of a reason for the psyop they feel like really getting behind.
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Nah, it's a grotesque postmodern psyop.
The psyop overproduction theory isn’t invalid, but it doesn’t explain the widespread genuine belief among some kooks in defense / the mic that aliens r real.
The belief is explained by people wanting to believe and the psyop.
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Senator Gillibrand recently said about UAPs: "We don't know whose they are. We don't know what propulsion they use. We don't know the tech. We don't know it. It's not off the shelf stuff."
Hearing in the senate on UAPs scheduled for the 19th of this month.
Exciting times!
Who's "we"? Is she supposed to know such things? I don't see in her assignments much that would require her being briefed on the latest propulsion tech, for example. So, she not knowing what it is may just not mean much. I don't think she even knows what stuff is on the shelf (not to be critical of her, most people that do not specialize on studying this probably wouldn't know, a lay person would know nothing about it) and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of stuff off the shelf being tested of which only select people are aware and know the details. She is on Armed Services committee but the military does a ton of stuff, and I doubt they brief every person on that committee about every single project - nobody would have time to follow on that, especially given it's not even their main or only job.
If somebody who really specializes on military R&D and propulsion systems and is fully knowledgeable on all current projects and technologies said something like that, it'd be interesting. But I am not sure Sen. Gillibrand, with all due respect, is that person.
For Gillibrand, another way to look at it is that is anyone were to be on a deception scheme, she'd be one of the best candidates to play along.
Gillibrand is not only on the Armed Services committee, she is specifically on the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, which is to say she has considerably influence on how the military gets to do research and development and against what. Gillibrand is also on the Senate's Select Intelligence Committee, which is to say she has far greater access than most Congressional leaders. She would be one of the highest cleared persons in the US Senate to know and access things, from both military and intelligence understanding, and while that doesn't mean she has exercised the power it would take quite a bit of exceptional circumstances to try and stop her.
It also means, however, that Gillibrand would have incentive to play along with any 'this totally isn't us' ploy. 'Oh, we don't know who's flying these things- that's why we need more money' is a basic needs-justification for her committees to get more influence over the budget, just to give one incentive. Not spoiling her relationship with her executive branch interlocuters is another.
I respect your reasoning and you're not wrong to have skepticism, but in this context (a) she probably is among the best person in Congress best placed to know, and there are reasons who might not forthcoming even if she did. (If she does- it could also be that she doesn't.)
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I really don’t like this sudden government panic over UAPs. Either they really exist and the government has no clue what’s going on, or the government really wants us to think they exist. Both possibilities make me uneasy.
Next thing you know, they’ll be appointing antivaxxers and naming departments after crypto.
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More evidence for the dead internet theory. I saw this tweet which has a picture of two users discussing bluesky (https://x.com/crystalandqueue/status/1857526125401878582).
Based on the account names I would suspect those accounts are bots, but maybe boomers when picking account names try and pick what they want and then either the site auto-fills these number for them or they just mash the keyboard. But with the advent of LLMs presumably there are a lot of people just running bots even just for the lolz.
Are boomers actually moving sites? I figured they were still on Facebook.
I also observe that Twitter partisans have the same shitty incentives as, say, Libs of TikTok. Whether or not Bluesky is a bot-ridden 1984 hellscape, they’ll benefit from portraying it as such.
Absolutely. My Trump-booster boomer aunt and her Xer daughter were on facebook, quickly realized Gab was just a bunch of loons, were on Parler for a while, I'm sure they have Truth Social now. These are red tribers from the red tribe, from a small town in the middle of flyover country.
The internet is real life now. Even the boomers have realized that.
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Half-life 2 (as well as episodes one and two) are free to keep on Steam as a celebration of its 20-year anniversary. There's also a big update with bug fixes, slight graphics updates and 3.5 hours of new dev commentary.
Fuck me HL2 is so good. I literally replay it once every 2 years or so.
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The art style of Half-Life (and CS:S) is so much more interesting than the more photorealistic styles in today’s games.
Just play DayZ SA. Same thing essentially.
It's a quite chill game mostly, except when you're getting ambushed and killed.
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The art style of half life 2 is just a normal eastern european "bedroom community" full of brezhnevkas and other types of panel buildings.
It’s more than just the architectural style, it’s the lighting and shadows and saturation. I don’t know how to articulate it but it’s kind of like this. I was watching the HL2 documentary and the artists talked about spending years finding real life material for the game models, visiting abandoned areas etc, and that definitely rubs off in the aesthetic dimension that is different from other shooters that try to be “gritty”. There’s something dreamy and interesting about source engine aesthetic
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Essential:
https://www.nexusmods.com/halflife2/mods/60?tab=description
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Half life 2 is my favorite game. I feel old, even though I was 4 when it came out and played it at 19.
Games used to be good :')
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There is also a very good VR mod for all 3 episodes.
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Time for a music thread
Recession pop is a trend that's only obvious in hindsight. The specific label only took off this year. Does anyone remember it? You've definitely heard the songs. From 2008-2012, it was impossible to turn on the radio without hearing a song whose lyrics that were more or less "Heyyyy/ woooah/ let's have fun toniiiight/ have a good time toniiiiight/ drink and put your hands up". They were tonally different, and from different genres, but those lyrics basically encapsulate the trend. Music about drinking and partying your problems away and living for the moment, specifically, tonight. They almost all used the word "tonight". Many also said "woah-oah", sometimes the Millenial whoop. Once you hear it you really can't unhear it:
Lady Gaga - Just Dance (2008): "Just dance/ It'll be okay", "Control your poison, babe, roses have thorns, they say/ And they're all gettin' hosed tonight"
Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling (2009): "I feel stressed out, I wanna let it go/ Let's go way out, spaced out, and losin' all control", "I got a feelin'/That tonight's gonna be a good night"
Usher - DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love (2010): "So dance, dance like it's the last, last / Night of your life, life, gon' get you right / 'Cause baby, tonight / The DJ got us falling in love again "
Katy Perry - Teenage Dream (2010): "Let's go all the way tonight/No regrets, just love /We can dance, until we die/ You and I, will be young forever"
Pitbull - Give Me Everything Tonight (2011): "Tonight, I want all of you/ Tonight, give me everything/ Tonight, for all we know/ We might not get tomorrow"
LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem (2011): "Party rock is in the house tonight/ Everybody just have a good time (yeah)/ And we gonna make you lose your mind (woo)/ Everybody just have a good time (clap)"
The Wanted - Glad You Came (2011): "The sun goes down, the stars come out/ And all that counts is here and now/ My universe will never be the same/ I'm glad you came (Came, came, came)"
Hey, that last one actually manages to not use the word "tonight". But don't worry, we still get a reminder that "all that counts is here and now".
I turned 10 in 2008 so this was around when I was first starting to gain awareness of the wider music landscape. At the time, I thought, this is just what pop music is. Insipid electro-bangers about dancing the night away and living for the moment. But no, the music of pre-2008 sounded very different. I much prefer the music of 2016-2019 which is when I did most of my partying in college. You had a few stinkers but a lot of the rap hits of the time were actually pretty creative, Black Beatles and Bad N' Boujee come to mind. Are there any trends in the media now that don't have a label yet?
Bro, you're not even going to mention "Good Time" by Owl City? Perhaps it's just too easy.
I'm embarrassed I liked so many of these songs, though by 2011 I had started to get really sick of it and hated (for instance) "Give me Everything Tonight"
I missed more than a few I think, it was an enduring trend
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I bet you could get similar results for most any decade. I started to do so for a random 80s top 40, but it’s too messy to finish on my phone.
(Anybody want to write a script to automate this? Google the titles, grep for “tonight,” show a histogram?)
I’d say Maniac, Puttin on the Ritz, Rock of Ages, and Total Eclipse of the Heart have to count. China Girl and Human Nature are certainly more subdued even though they keep the phrasing. And Safety Dance captures the spirit even though it doesn’t specify “tonight.”
But this is the year that gave us 1999, which outdoes any recession-era apocalyptica.
The songs you mention don’t seem to fit the theme, and I only listed a few in the genre.
I dunno, I think the sentiment is pretty clear.
Oh I missed 1999, yeah I can see how the threat of nuclear war captures the same ethos
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A lot of music is about sex and liquor. It was jarring when I started noticing this 3 years ago lol. Not as aggressive as hip hop but pretty on the nose.
I am two years younger than you, the part about it being recession inspired is fairly obvious in hindsight, somehow you see music from that time being played more frequently in nightclubs than pop music made today.
I really think that music, modern mass produced music peaked in the late 2000s and early 2010s and 2020s barely saw anything distinct besides some people who took off due to having songs that won't stop playing when you open ig.
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Doubt it
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Still playing factorio space age. I think we've had a thread about it every Friday since its release. It deserves it though, solidly awesome game.
We finally made it to Aquilo. Kept feeling like every other planet still had minor things we needed to fix. Aquilo feels like the seablock mod a bit. You need to build your own land.
The high power costs of drones, and the requirement to use heating pipes adds some new challenges. Builds tend to look pretty different.
I'm also trying to build a massive space platform for some forms of production. Its almost 4500 tons so far. I expanded it from a ~1000 ton ship that was producing its own space platform. I think I want to see how ridiculous the space platforms can get.
Quality has also been a fun mechanic. Feels like burning massive amounts of resources for slightly better stuff. But factorio is all about using up massive amounts of resources. And usually the resource sink is science, but sometimes science isn't enough.
Are you playing in a group?
Yes, people from themotte, well just two of us really.
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I have probably 80-90 hours into my Space Age world, though I'm not into space yet (I'm right at the point where I can launch rockets though). I've been enjoying it, though obviously I don't really have access to most of the new content yet.
My biggest complaint so far is that quality seems half baked and that it makes the game more inconvenient. Just unlocking it meant that every "select a recipe" type dialog takes two clicks (select the recipe and hit OK), even for the vast majority of cases where I don't care about quality yet. And the logistics get more complicated, because you can't tell machines "take this quality or higher, I don't care". So quality parts will jam up your logistics unless you plan carefully. I like quality in principle, but the implementation doesn't hold up to the very high standards Wube has met in the past for how smooth the gameplay should be.
You want high quality modules, but even then, if you're properly scaling production, for a 10% decline in output you can get higher quality components. Having an entire whole line of production is no big deal as you don't need for everything and you can simply feed that into bot-based malls.
As to jamming up logistics -nothing is as simple as putting in circuit that says "if component X >10k then have the extra put into this requester chest for recycling".
The big problems happen when you stop recycling. Fulgora has ample energy from the lightning so just scaled up battery storage. And that's how we ended up with 300k pieces of ice and solid fuel.
I recommend burning that crap and really recycling. Good batteries and solar panels are invaluable for ships.
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Quality doesn't shine until Fulgora. I would almost advise avoiding it altogether on Nauvis.
Fulgora has you developing lots of sorting builds and figuring out how to avoid the jam ups that result. It's a good crash course in how to make safer quality builds, that don't gunk up your factories.
There are also only three use cases where I've found quality to be absolutely worth it: spaceships, personal items, and resource extraction devices (pump jacks and miners). Almost everything else is solvable more easily through the traditional factorio solution: make your factory bigger. The resource extraction devices preserve more resources at higher quality levels. Allowing you to tap mines and oil fields for longer. So they are sort of a convenience, but still ultimately ignorable with just "expand the factory more".
I'd recommend just trying to go to space, and maybe even Vulcanus before you feel fully ready. Just get Nauvis to a defensible position, or shut most of it down to minimize pollution while you are gone.
Just wanna say I'm really enjoying the commentary. I've been ignoring quality in my playthrough so far, but just started working on it last night thanks to the explanations here laying out how to think about it and why it's valuable.
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A lot of what I've spent time on is fortifying Nauvis. I had the misfortune to get a desert world, so I set about building walls and turrets basically first thing. Then the biters were evolving to the point normal ammo wasn't enough, so I had to get red ammo, turret upgrades, etc. Then by that time my starter resources were low so I had to expand the walls to include new resources... you know how it goes. I would say I probably spent half of the time in my save either building defenses or researching defense upgrades.
But hey, I am going to go to space today unless things really go sideways. The defenses are solid, I have machines building rocket launch pads and fuel, I'm finally ready. It'll be nice to finally get to Vulcanus (my planned first planet)!
Vulcanus is a great first planet. It is most similar to Nauvis gameplay, but even lower maintenance. You can basically get infinite copper, iron, and sulfuric acid within the drop zone.
Meta is go big and build massive factories. Which is good cuz the enemies on the planet require an extensive expenditure of resources.
There is also some minor opportunity for space mining. Little asteroids will come at you above Nauvis. Early game that just means iron, carbon, and ice. But a free trickle of iron after an initial investment isn't bad.
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I'd start quality right away. Zero downside to quality-ing module production (and you need infinite prod1s for purple science). Same with lots of finished products. Assem2s, split off qual+, combine with qual+ speed1s= guaranteed uncommon/rare assem3s for platforms or maximizing return on your first prod3s.
Beacons are amazing too. All this stuff is basically free and goes right back into boosting the high end of the value chain that multiplies everything else.
Having your prod2 era science running at 1.28x1.14 (46%) vs 1.24x1.12 (39%) productivity while you're handling off-world science is a big speed boost for zero time or resource cost, unlike trying to scale your mining before getting artillery.
The big problem is that you want a madzuri/mojod style automall so that everything you request is being done by one assembler with your highest quality quality modules. And the 2.0 version of that is bleeding edge combinator tech I dont have time to learn.
I haven't had time to play much. Took 6 hours just to get space science up, and I'm not organized enough to take the next step yet.
I love how flexible the game is. It does feel like they designed things with certain play styles and strategies in mind. But you can usually just overwhelm the "optimal" path with enough resources.
We did not optimize on Nauvis. I went after it with three players initially which is almost overkill for the early gameplay. Someone working on core factory, someone working on resource gathering and extraction, and then someone killing bugs.
I feel like if you are naming build strategies and talking about complex circuit network setups then you are at the top of the play curve.
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Sorry for being unavailable, by the way. My excuses are kid's joining Kindergarten and I started at a new time-consuming job.
..yeah it's definitely not a game for people with both kids and time-consuming jobs. Unless they know it there and back and can just speed run it - something like 75% of the time is just tweaking stuff.
I joined up the game after seeing the ad. I've been meaning to use use it to finally build up my vanilla megabase using circuit-logic based crude train logistic network I never finished.
It's really simple, based on I think Nilaus's video for inspiration and I'm not sure if it'll scale to the skies but we'll see.
There's 3 kinds of stations: intake (train gets unloaded, source where it gets loaded, and depot where it is if nothing is needed to get done).
Intake station is open if all is true:
Source station is open if all is true:
It's not that efficient, but it does work. The big problem was first time around I never really settled on a single design for the circuits so I had a whole mess and couldn't keep track of which actually worked. Solved that problem...
Looking at Factorio blog that came up since, it seems you can just now get away with 2 types of trains: liquid and item ones. https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-389
The train logistics rework has changed things massively, and the new systems are going to be radically different and much fancier.
It's unfortunate the space logistics came out so half baked. I think that's going to get reworked, because a lot of high profile players have been
complaining attalking to the devs about it.It seems perfectly adequate... ? Within the simplified framework of the game. Obviously you'd try to use reusable vehicles if possible etc, but .. operations-wise it seems okay.
You can just add some circuit logic to it and it's golden. Doesn't ask for more stuff than there is etc.
The only downside is only one cargo pad per surface and that IMO there's no materials requirement for getting stuff down.
Unless they've fixed it, a space platform asking for 2 inserters, 1 blue inserter and a combinator will get a full rocket load of each. And there's not a way to set the load with combinators.
You mean you can't custom-load rockets with multiple things using circuit combinators because.. there's no way of accessing Space Platform demands ?
near as I can tell, the best way to handle things at the moment is to go to your platform, make a note of all the things you need, then place a requester chest on the ground one space away from the rocket, set requests for the items and amounts, wait for them to be delivered, replace the requester with a steel chest, add an inserter, and then launch the rockets until the chest is empty. There's probably a way to do it better with circuit networks, but getting the correct amounts into the rocket is a pain to do manually, and you need to switch to the platform and open the hub to get a summary of what is actually needed. It definitely could use some serious improvement.
There might be a way to do it better with combinator witchcraft, but I do not worship Satan.
Seems like a small matter.
Honestly with how generous the game is and the benefits to scaling, this doesn't seem like a big deal. If you're exporting stuff, it's single commodities. If you're exporting components for ship, you're probably wanting to get enough for spares and all that so..
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The combinator witches have been complaining because the system doesn't expose a way for them to do it either, which is encouraging because those are the people with a direct line to the devs. Plus the spedrunners who are just as frustrated by it.
It's not the only half baked thing about the rocket logistics either. They had to quickly fix a frequent double launch bug, where stuff would get requested again after delivery.
You get the feeling from this and the dev log that a lot of stuff was being worked on (and fought over) right up until release day, like the last minute "better to ask forgiveness" change to the entire fluid system.
Typical "team expands, collaborative consensus management style fails to adapt" stuff.
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No worries someone else from themotte has been super available, they also like trains a bunch. So you'll be happy to know we aren't neglecting the trains like I would.
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https://old.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/1gogaq0/fair_and_balanced/
who said the left couldn't meme
Yeah, they still can't. It makes zero sense.
It makes sense to me. I think it's a stupid message, but as a meme it works well enough.
What even is the message?
To add to @SubstantialFrivolity's point, the message is that Trump's slightly less hawkish attitude towards the war in Ukraine will effectively lead to a massive defeat for Ukraine in the war. There's also the implication that Trump is less hawkish on Ukraine because he's literally in bed with dictators (a phrase you'll often see in American media), meaning that he actually loves and supports Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-Un. The idea is that Trump will align himself with Russia and China and North Korea, and maybe even take actual steps towards allowing Russia to conquer Ukraine, China to conquer Taiwan, and North Korea to conquer South Korea. Hence why those are the flags on the small balls being attacked by Russia, China, and North Korea joined by the United States.
It's not a good meme, and its message is ludicrous, but it's a memetic distillation of what warhawk Americans in the media think Donald Trump believes. Or perhaps more accurately, what their propaganda is intended to communicate.
The people making this meme don’t think he’s “slightly less hawkish.” They think he’s outright sympathetic to Putin and will explicitly, not just effectively, lead to Ukrainian defeat. Hence side-switching and not, I dunno, kicked for griefing.
Also, I don’t think anyone says he’s “literally in bed with dictators.”
That was an injection of my own thoughts, I can see how it could be confusing. I was simply trying to gesture at Trump's differences of opinion on foreign policy from the mainstream.
Sigh. Here we go again.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-06/trump-is-back-and-out-for-blood-his-opponents-need-to-build-a-structure-to-defend-america
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-military-generals-hitler/680327/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/opinions/trump-dictators-putin-xi-erdogan-ben-ghiat/index.html
From the Kamala Harris compaign:
https://www.facebook.com/KamalaHarris/videos/harris-vs-trump-harris-walz-2024/1092590845847573/
Also, from the first Trump administration, who could forget SNL making a joke about Putin fucking Trump:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/snls-homophobic-trump-putin-jokes-need-to-stop/
Maybe "admires dictators" is different, but at least one of those pieces expliclitly said "in bed with dictators," and the implication was all over the past year of the campaign -- let alone the first Trump presidency.
Perhaps I made some mistakes in my presentation, but I was simply trying to provide my best understanding of the meme in terms that people who disagree with it might be able to understand. I would not have posted, particularly in the friday fun thread, if I thought I were going to create a debate over all this. It's a silly polandball meme.
For what it's worth, I thought it was an excellent meme, quite amusing, and certainly fit for a fun thread.
They're good memes brent
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I didn't post the meme originally, but several people had just expressed they didn't understand it and I was just trying to be helpful.
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I saw no warhawk ever saying Trump would attack South Korea and Taiwan on behalf of China and North Korea. This is literally something nobody believes in. That's what makes it such a bad meme - instead of being based in reality, it just goes "what's the worst thing I can say about person I hate"? That's not how good meme is done, you can't just say maximum vile shit, it should be based on something recognisable and draw from the truth even in exaggeration.
The "recognizable" thing is all the media pieces talking about Trump "being in bed with dictators." And the point for people who believe in that is they believe Trump will allow the dictators to attack, and the idea that the US will actually attack is the humorous exaggeration that "draws from the truth" as the people who like the meme understand it.
I agree it's not a good meme, I'm not saying it is, this is not an apologetic. But it doesn't make literally 0% sense to me, I have enough understanding of the point of view behind it that I get what they're saying and why they're saying it, despite disagreeing with great intensity.
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Basically that America has become a totalitarian state on par with Russia, etc. I imagine that it was prompted by the re-election of Trump, because people love to claim he's literally Hitler. But regardless of the inspiration, that's the message.
As a meme, it fits with the general form of Polandball memes. I don't particularly think those are good memes, but I suppose it's a matter of taste.
Well obviously Trump is hitler because it's on the left. But what is that crap with balancing and nuking South Korea? Trump never not only wanted to do anything like that but was accused about anything like that. Same for Taiwan. Worst that was said about him that he may cut off aid to Ukraine, but that is far from what is being displayed, as if Trump is going to do worse that Russia, China and North Korea taken together, by far. This is just stupid.
Upon reading the comments in the reddit thread, it seems that this meme is also a reference to Team Fortress 2 online multiplayer having a "team rebalancing" function that's intended to keep things fun by fixing imbalanced matches but routinely fails at evaluating player quality and thus often makes matters worse.
So the meme-maker was just going a bit wild with that analogy.
This discussion reminds me of another culture-war-adjacent meme referencing TF2 autobalancing (which I personally find a lot funnier)
Okay, yeah, that's pretty good.
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Oh yeah, I should've mentioned that. But you are correct. Lots of multiplayer games (TF2 but also others) have balancing mechanisms to even out the number of players on each team if they get too lopsided. So all of a sudden you can find yourself playing on the other team. The reference isn't meant to be taken literally, because obviously there isn't an algorithm switching allegiances around IRL. It's really just a jokey way to say "America has switched sides".
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I don't agree with the substance, but the style is certainly there
I don't think I agree. If I saw a similar-looking meme from the right when Biden had taken office I would have cringed. There's a joke there, it's a tiny bit funnier than one of those braindead and overly-labeled political comics you'd see in a newspaper, but barely. It's a step in the right direction, but it's lacking....heart? authenticity?
Truth. It's lacking the "it's-funny-because-it's-true" bit. And I suppose 50% of that is simply me not agreeing with the substance, but 50% of that is just pure made up. Like, even for a left-winger who does believe Trump is authoritarian and is sympathetic to the other dictators, I don't think any of them genuinely believe he is going to join them and have the U.S. declare war on Ukraine. And also South Korea, and Taiwan for some reason. Who thinks Trump is pro-China???
Again, if the right had made a meme about the U.S. bombing Taiwan in 2020 because of the Biden-China connections, I would have cringed. This is not a good meme.
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Place; Place, Japan
So, I'm currently planning a holiday in South Korea over the Christmas period, and when researching it's common to come across posts on social media asking whether SK or Japan is a better place to visit. The outcome is always the same: regardless of the comparison, Japan is virtually always touted as the best destination in East Asia. Note - I don't want this to be any kind of anti-Japanese post, since I actually quite enjoy Japanese food, culture, etc quite a bit, and see how it would be attractive to a tourist. However, I'm not quite certain why it is that Japan gets hyped up to this degree, compared to other Asian countries.
I am a very archaeology and history-focused person, so keep this in mind when reading this post.
The arguments many travellers make in favour of the pro-Japan position primarily rely on historical significance: there's the characterisation of Japan as being a uniquely cultural place, filled with ancient historical shrines, palaces and temples that can't be found elsewhere in East Asia - Korea in specific is considered to be generally devoid of meaningful culture as compared to Japan due to the history of destruction in the country from the Imjin War onwards. But once you've looked further into this Japan begins to look more and more like any other East Asian country: it certainly wasn't unscathed by wars and destruction, and because many of its buildings are wooden it's been repeatedly ravaged by fires, bombs and so on that have destroyed many of its cultural sites, most of which have been rebuilt repeatedly over time.
Here are a handful of examples:
Senso-ji. This is one of the most significant temples in Tokyo and a major tourist site. It was destroyed during the extensive WW2 firebombing in 1945, and the buildings still standing today are reconstructions dating to about 1951-1973. These buildings are undoubtedly beautiful, but certainly not old - the famous five-storied pagoda is younger than Nicholas Cage. Additionally, they're also made of concrete, unlike the original wooden structures, so as to prevent the thing from burning down again. Not very authentic.
Osaka Castle + Nagoya Castle + any number of other "historical" castles in Japan. These are probably some of the most egregious examples, considering that they're unashamed ferroconcrete pastiches of the original castles. Osaka Castle was destroyed in the Boshin War in 1868 and Nagoya Castle was destroyed in WW2 in 1945. The current reconstructions hail from 1931 - 1959, with the insides being tourist-trap museums complete with lifts and other modern amenities.
Kinkaku-ji. Probably the most obvious and recent example of a reconstruction in Kyoto - this reconstruction was built in 1955 after a schizophrenic, suicidal monk burned the original structure down, and now it draws so many tourists that it's definitely suffering from overtourism. You can hardly see the temple for the most part, because of the throngs of tourists lining up to get even the slightest glimpse of the (admittedly very beautiful) golden pavilion.
Nijo Castle. Let me be clear, this palace is incredible. The Ninomaru Palace is wonderful and truly historic. While I bet it's been thoroughly Ship-Of-Theseused over the years due to the need for constant renovations and upkeep, it is a structure that's persisted continuously over the years and its construction was fully completed in 1626. Many of the other structures in Nijo Castle, however, are not like this - the actual Honmaru Palace was burned to the ground in the 1700s, and the current structure standing there today is actually a completely separate building taken from the Kyoto Imperial Palace.
Kyoto. Yes, Kyoto. This is attacking a steelman, since Kyoto is the historic city of Japan, but even that's not an ancient city - 90% of the city was burned to the ground during the Great Fire of 1788, and as a result in the bounds of the old city there are not more than 10 to 12 buildings pre-dating 1788. Of course, this doesn't mean the city isn't historically or culturally significant - but most of Kyoto is not older than the Edo period.
There are many more examples I could offer - Kiyomizu-dera is a temple hailing from the late Nara period but which had to be rebuilt in 1633, To-ji Temple was rebuilt in 1644, and so on. I'm sure you can find some truly old structures in Japan - the opulent Golden Hall of Chuson-ji comes to mind, a structure that was built in the 11th century and remains extant up to this day. But as a general rule, most of the structures in Japan are generally not that old.
It's necessary to note that Japan has a different viewpoint surrounding "authenticity" than the West does. As Douglas Adams notes on his visit to Kinkaku-ji: “I remembered once, in Japan, having been to see the Gold Pavilion Temple in Kyoto and being mildly surprised at quite how well it had weathered the passage of time since it was first built in the fourteenth century. I was told it hadn’t weathered well at all, and had in fact been burnt to the ground twice in this century. “So it isn’t the original building?” I had asked my Japanese guide. “But yes, of course it is,” he insisted, rather surprised at my question. “But it’s burnt down?” “Yes.” “Twice.” “Many times.” “And rebuilt.” “Of course. It is an important and historic building.” “With completely new materials.” “But of course. It was burnt down.” “So how can it be the same building?” “It is always the same building.” I had to admit to myself that this was in fact a perfectly rational point of view, it merely started from an unexpected premise. The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building. The intention of the original builders is what survives. The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself.”
It is a not-uncommon East Asian view that buildings can be demolished and rebuilt and still be the same structure, just as long as it sits on the same site and serves the same purpose. Many believe that changes to the structure are another step in its evolution, and this is perfectly okay - the Japanese answer to the Ship of Theseus is in fact "yes, it's the same ship". Ise Shrine, in fact, gets ceremoniously demolished and rebuilt every 20 years in an event called Shikinen Sengu. But this results in weird, unintentionally misleading marketing, where buildings that are barely older than the 20th century get marketed as "ancient", which leads a Westerner to think that the actual extant building in fact does date back to the 5th century or something when in fact it's newer than some New York buildings.
The historicity of South Korean buildings, in this light, seems not that different to that of Japanese ones. Here are a couple of notable examples:
Changdeokgung. This incredible Joseon palace was finished in 1412, but multiple wars and fires have resulted in a wildly differing age distribution among the structures of the palace. All of it was destroyed during the Imjin War in 1592, except Geumcheongyo Bridge which dates back to 1411. The palace was restored in 1609, and the oldest proper building (the Donhwamun Gate) can be traced back to this date. Other structures date from the 18th to the 20th century, though the reconstruction generally seems to have been fairly authentic. The secret garden, located north of the palace complex itself, is generally quite authentic - the buildings and gardens there have sustained their original forms from around the end of the Joseon Dynasty.
Jongmyo Shrine. This is a Joseon-era Confucian shrine housing the spirit tablets of Joseon monarchs, initially built in 1394 but (unfortunately) burned down during the Imjin War. The spirit tablets were saved by hiding them in a commoner's house, and the current reconstruction dates all the way back to 1601. Note: This shrine is old enough that its reconstruction is as old as the aforementioned Ninomaru Palace in Japan.
Haeinsa Temple. This remarkable place houses the Tripitaka Koreana, a series of 81,258 wooden printing blocks with over 50 million Hanja characters inscribed on them - they constitute one of the most complete Buddhist canons ever, one that's 750 years old. The buildings themselves were first established in 802 AD, but most of it was destroyed by fire in 1818 and rebuilt shortly after. The Janggyeong-panjeon (the storage hall housing the Koreana), however, is very old, and while it's not known exactly how ancient it is it's probably original, having survived both the fire and the highly destructive Imjin War.
Seokguram Grotto. This is an artificial grotto facing the East Sea with a truly monumental statue of Seokgamoni-bul (the Historical Buddha) inside it. Its construction dates all the way back to 742, at the height of the Unified Silla kingdom. The structure fell into ruin over the years, and while there were some repairs over the Joseon period, disrepair continued because of their suppression of Buddhism. During the Japanese colonial period, there were attempts to repair the Buddhist sites around Gyeongju (including Seokguram) as an attempt to establish a sort of pan-Asian buddhism to unite their colonies and distinguish themselves from the Joseon Dynasty, and their photos here from 1922 suggest that the statue of Seokgamoni-bul is ancient.
I could go into more, but this post is already long enough with the histories of random East Asian buildings and artefacts, so I'll move on. Maybe it's the amount of historical sites in each country that are informing people's evaluations. But I don't see South Korea as having less in this regard either, at least not if you conduct any amount of cursory research. There are historic tombs and burial mounds all over the country, including in Seoul, Gyeongju and so on. The Namsan mountain south of Gyeongju alone boasts over 100 Silla buddhist sites, many of which are spectacular like the Chilburam buddha sculptures (8th century) or the Sambulsa statue triad (7th century). There is just so much to find once you dig a bit deeper beyond the Instagram-friendly sites.
Choosing SK as a point of comparison is also making it harder for me than it really needs to be. Comparing Japan with the big granddaddy of East Asia, China, makes proving my point that Japan isn't the be-all-end-all of East Asia trivially easy: there's the ancient walled city of Pingyao that looks like something out of a fantasy movie, the Mogao cave temples, etc, there's so many truly epic sites there it's really hard to know where to start. The Cultural Revolution, try as it might, couldn't erase everything; China was a huge stable empire for most of its history and its historical sites are appropriately spectacular.
Note I'm not bashing Japan, again I quite like it and think it's a very nice place to visit. It's just always baffled me to see the amount of esteem it receives over... well, pretty much any other travel destination. Perhaps the explanation is just that it was a big cultural and tech exporter during the 20th century, and that's kind of rippled through our cultural consciousness and resulted in Japan being The Place To Be.
EDIT: accuracy
In addition to what @bonsaii observed about being first—it was also the most accessible to the U.S. following the war. While we were bombing Korea and refusing to talk to China, we were actively occupying Japan. While we were bombing Vietnam and trying to get an in with China, we were still using and trading with Japan. By the time we had regular relations with the majority of East Asia, Japan was coming into its own electronics and heavy industry, securing its position in the West-dominated economy. That’s when tourism really started to take off.
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Japan had a 20 year modernization head-start over South Korea, which in turn had a 20 year head-start over mainland China. Korea only very recently entered mainstream Western consciousness (only 2 decades ago Hank Hill's "so are you Chinese or Japanese?" was a pretty accurate depiction of the median American conception of East Asia) and mainland China is widely considered an authoritarian enemy-state.
Japan's hold is largely a function of it having been the first, and for a long period of time only, "developed" but "non-Western" place in the world. So it planted its flag as the premiere "exotic" destination that still had all of the first world comforts.
I'd agree that today Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and certain parts of mainland China all have comparable tourist options to offer Western visitors with incredible safety, transportation, and other conveniences to boot. I often work with videos like this in the background on a second screen and it makes me want to quit my job and spend a year or two just traveling China in particular. But the power of having been the first is a lot to overcome, so I doubt we'll see a "place, China" effect take anywhere as deep of a root.
I pretty much agree with this. In the specific case of South Korea, I also think people come away with bad impressions of SK as a worse Japan because they approach it wrong - they typically weight their trip in favour of large metropolitan sprawls such as Seoul and Busan and expect it to feel polished and put-together and historic in the same way that they would expect from Kyoto and Tokyo. This, I think, is the wrong way to structure one's trip there. Korea was downright catapulted into modernity after a long period of poverty, destruction and war during the 20th century, and the modernisation effort under Park Chung-Hee was haphazard and quick - the sole aim was accelerated industrialisation at all costs, without too much regard about how the cities would turn out. SK's metropolises reflect this - many buildings were cheap and utilitarian constructions, and they certainly look it. This was a good move that made Seoul into the "miracle on the Han River", but the result of this is that their large cities have less of a glossy feel than that of Japan's. Outside of the Joseon palace complexes in Seoul, there just aren't too many truly historic things to see within the metropolis proper (though there are a handful of very pretty historic-looking neighbourhoods, such as Bukchon Hanok Village).
This isn't to say that SK doesn't have a historic feel! But you have to look elsewhere outside of the megacities to find that old South Korea. Old villages and temples are everywhere, but they're typically located deep in the countryside, such as the UNESCO-listed Hahoe and Yangdong folk villages which still preserve that old Korean spirit; down to retaining their clan-based social structure. There's pavilions, study halls, traditional Confucian academies for learning and so on, and they often run traditional folk festivals out of these villages. They're not tourist traps or outdoor museums, these are actual places that people have lived in ever since the days of the Joseon Dynasty. These aren't the only ones either, though they're certainly the best known - Naganeupseong, Oeam, Hangae, Goesi-ri and so on are other living folk towns which are lesser known. Stationing yourself in some smaller towns in the countryside and using them as a base to explore a certain area, such as Gyeongju, is also a good idea if you want to see a lot of historic stuff. As noted, the mountain just south of Gyeongju was sacred to the Silla Dynasty and has over a hundred Buddhist sites that can be found just by walking aimlessly through its trails. Bulguksa Temple and Seokguram Grotto, located on Mount Tohamsan, can also be accessed from there via a short bus ride. I've located so many spectacular historical sites in easy distance of that town in my research (much of which is poorly marked and practically hidden within the mountains). Suncheon and Gwangju are also good jumping off points, I've heard.
I feel like when planning holidays, most people don't really care to do this work. They typically want to situate themselves in a really big and famous city and walk around and explore neighbourhoods without having to research too much, and in South Korea this approach just doesn't work quite as well as it does in Japan since most of its attractions are in the countryside. It also doesn't help that SK seems to want to make everything as hard as possible - in order to navigate and find out bus timetables and train routes you can't use Google Maps, you have to use Naver Maps, which has an awful UI and is in Korean. The only way you can use Naver Maps in English is on the fucking mobile app, and even then using it is still a pain. Granted, they're doing this out of security concerns, but it makes it more difficult to plan one's trip. Many sights are just missing from tourism sites, such as the Buddha sculptures at Gunwi Grotto and Sanginam Grotto or the pagoda stonework and statuaries at Unjusa Temple or the views of Boriam Hermitage or complete oddities like the placenta chambers of King Sejong's sons (you heard me). I think SK gets shafted relative to Japan despite having an equally large heritage to boast about (relative to land area, at least; SK is a quarter of the size of Japan) partially because of these factors.
With regards to the character of its cities, this seems to perhaps be changing. In 2000 the Korean government began to subsidise hanok projects, and more and more traditional hanok villages have been built in the surrounding areas of Seoul and other big cities (Eunpyeong Hanok Village, for example, was built in 2017). Lots of new traditional architecture is appearing all the time in Korea. A law involving a restoration project for the core historical relics of the Silla Dynasty, named the "Special Act on the Restoration and Maintenance of Core Ruins of the Silla Royal Capital", was passed in 2019, and this will probably make the city of Gyeongju proper have even more of a historical feel. In this sense, it's not too different to Japan, where most of their historical buildings are not, in fact, historical but regardless help contribute to the feel of the city. I guess we'll see how this all turns out.
EDIT: a word
I agree with all of this. I would add that, in my experience, Korea is not very good at advertising its more interesting places to foreign places. It just sort of shunts us all to the same basic places ("here, look at some kimchi being made. Here, rent a hanbok and walk around an empty palace ground"), while you have to really do research and plan a bus trip to the countryside to see the more interesting places.
That said, there are some fascinating neighborhoods in Seoul. Not really "historic," but you can really see how some places were just build up crazy fast in the 80s and 90s, with some incredibly weird (and sometimes dangerous) choices of how to fit them in to the hilly terrain.
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Sure, I agree. If you want ancient go to China.
But in defense of Japan, they view time differently. This is damn hard to explain if you're not really familiar with Asian cultures, but imagine a piece of taffy stretched out to infinity, and then suppose this taffy is infinitely divisible, and that you live on a random notch somewhere on this taffy, and that's how Japanese view time. There is a natural sense of eternity there, as if you're just a little ink blot on the letter of some word of a grand page in a grand book you know nothing about, and can never read or decipher. But you don't care, because things are safe and cozy and beautiful, and if there's anything you like it'll be around a long time. Driving to work, warm coffee, pleasant tunes. All of it will last.
AFAIK, caring about quantitative time is a Westerner thing. Even the ancient Greeks had a very different conception of it, where the past is like infinitely far away even for events that occurred 10 years ago, and you have dudes getting labeled demigods while their grandkids still walk around town.
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With regards to Ship of Theseusing buildings, I'm definitely on team Japan. Who cares if the actual wood is new? Fetishising the materials themselves leads to craziness like this.
There are degrees of "Ship of Theseus-ing".
The original version: Hundreds of pieces are replaced one by one over many years, with physical continuity above 99 percent at each replacement
The grandfather's-ax version: Just two or three pieces are replaced one at a time, with physical continuity of only one-half or two-thirds at each replacement
This Japanese version: The entire edifice is destroyed and remade all at once, with no physical continuity at all
Or the Spanish version, where decayed parts are replaced by jarringly ugly alternatives, because this is somehow more 'authentic' or 'honest'.
From the perspective of the tourist or resident, the first three options are basically the same, right? The building looks traditional and beautiful, and is built with new materials. The only way options 1 or 2 are superior to 3 would be if the old materials pass on some ineffible essence to the new materials.
Except that in the case of OP's castles, the new construction is made with reinforced concrete rather than wood, which, despite maybe looking the same, must feel rather different.
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FWIW, the last 1-2 years has been a nightmare of overtourism. I've been living and traveling here for over a decade and it's never been this bad in Tokyo. So maybe visit somewhere else and come back after the boom is over. Don't worry, the yen is probably permanently ruined so it'll stay cheap.
It's probably never getting better. Global airline passengers per year has increased at a rate of roughly 5% per year since WWII. And of course China is on Japan's doorstep and is just discovering international travel. God help us if Indians ever start traveling in mass.
That said, I've really enjoyed traveling in Europe by visiting second-tier cities which get many fewer tourists.
Are there equivalent places in Japan which are fun to visit that actually might benefit from some American tourist buxx?
I believe the answer to this is basically anywhere other than Tokyo, Kyoto and Okinawa.
If you can deal with cold, I had friends recently visit Hokkaido (Sapporo for sure, think other places as well) and they reported it was comparatively bereft of tourists.
For warmer climes, I've generally heard that Kyushu isn't as flooded with foreign tourists as Honshu while still having plenty of impressive natural and historical sites.
Shikoku in particular should also satisfy @jeroboam. I'd hazard a guess that it's probably the main Japanese island that sees least tourists. In terms of places to see, there's quite a bit; perhaps visiting a handful out of the 88 temples on the Shikoku pilgrimage route might appeal. There's also Dogo Onsen, the oldest operating onsen in Japan, and Kochi Castle, an actually non-tourist-trap Japanese castle - many of the extant structures were rebuilt last in the 1700s and it is considered one of the last twelve original castles in Japan with an intact main keep. Much more authentic than the ever-so-famous Osaka Castle, I'd say.
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I do genuinely feel bad for the people who have to live close to the over-touristed sites in Japan. A lot of the temples and neighbourhoods that get traffic are places where people actually live and work, and I can't imagine living in, say, Kyoto and getting exposed to this absolute bullshit. Even as a tourist I hate it, I wouldn't be able to handle it in my day-to-day.
If I'm ever going to Japan, I'm almost certainly picking somewhere out of the way, like Koyasan and their Shingon Buddhist temples. Too much of Japan suffers issues with overtourism, and it just kills the vibe of these places which are ostensibly supposed to feel quiet and calm.
I remember the same feeling walking through the alleys and courtyards of Venice. Couldn't imagine what it would be like to step outside your door every day and have someone speak indecipherable gibberish to you while waving a camera.
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My siblings have been insisting on a Japan trip and I've been reluctant because of this
I think the risk/concern here is that it eventually enters an inflationary spiral like Argentina/Turkey. It doesn't seem likely, but if people on the inside don't trust the currency...
I think the BOJ has been far more concerned with deflation than inflation over the last several decades. And it's not that people don't trust the currency, it's that the BOJ prefers a gradual, managed decline that preserves pensions and lifelong employment to any sort of economic dynamism, so a weak yen is fine to them as long as the largest voting blocs ("old people" and "very old people") can still push paper around for a mediocre wage/receive their pensions and can afford to buy rice, tofu, vegetables, and cigarettes.
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Listened to some more music from the past. Pendulum recently uploaded their cover of the taylor swift song anti-hero. Electronic music peaked in the early 2010s given how little new stuff we have coming out that is any different.
More music is being made today, but somehow it sounds less creative and generally worse. I am not old and feel like my dad when I say this. My dad famously only listens to music pre-90s since and he was my age in the 90s lol. Art forms peak and decline, electronic music might be this way.
It's commonly believed that music tastes crystallize around age 13-18. Whatever music you listened to then determines what you'll like for the rest of your life. "Not old" can mean a lot of things, but unless you were born after around 2005 your experience tracks with my own and many others.
Side note: I still have that teenager somewhere in me who wants to act too cool for anything made by a pop artist, but Anti-Hero (both original and its variants) is one I can't help but find genuinely enjoyable.
Pendulum is encapsulates two genres of music from the 2000s, rock and drum n bass. I first heard them at age 13 in 2013, I'm glad they still make music, though like all bands that reunite, they do seem past it.
Its early 2010s in a capsule, I'm glad they are still together. I do wish to listen to real deal classical music. Mozart, Bach, some Hindustani classical stuff too. I had this cringe notion f wanting to appear higher status and never danced or listened to music or learnt to play any instruments despite my parents begging me to. I wish I listened to them instead now.
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I remember how sudden that change was. When I was a college student, music was one of the key parts of your identity: you could always talk about that new album you had discovered, genres you listened to defined who you were friends with, etc.
Then I graduated and got a job and on my first ever lunch break asked my colleagues what they listened to. The silence that followed was polite, but deafening. It was suddenly such a nonsensical question. Who cares what people listen to? Do they even have time to really listen to music?
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Any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans out there? 5 days until release of the long-awaited sequel. The newly updated system requirements dashed my hopes for launch, unfortunately.
But GAMMA's latest update is launching on december 3rd, and it's a big one. Huge changes to artifacts, gear, damage system. And tooltips that are actually accurate and descriptive, for the first time ever.
God, I hope they won't make it political.
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I never should have uninstalled GAMMA.
Never buckled down to install it.
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Damn, those recommended requirements! I treated myself to what was a decently high end gaming computer at the start of 2021, with an RTX 3070 (non Ti), thinking I'll be good for a 5-6 years, and now it's already starting to fall outside of recommended requirements for new games.
Fellow 3070 enjoyer here. I feel your pain. I was looking at the $2k top end graphics cards on the market and crying into my cornflakes today.
The main problem with the GPU market today is that you can't buy a 3080 equivalent new for 400 USD. That's what people have been wanting since the 4000-series came out, but what they actually got for that cash was... the fourth release of a card equivalent to the GTX 1070/1080.
The 3070 was always a dead-end product; it was just supposed to be a 2080Ti but for a significantly less asking price than the 2080Ti was at that time. The 3080 was/is quite literally twice the card.
If it makes you feel any better, know that because the 1070 is still a mid-range GPU today, anything faster than a 1070 will work reasonably well. Sure, you might need to drop to 1080p or not get the fullest out of your high refresh rate monitor, but it's still going to work.
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Just search "is gtx970 good for gaming 2024 reddit" and you'll feel much better about your situation.
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Those sysreqs sound like they're giving up on their traditional audience playing games on PCs salvaged from an eastern bloc computer lab. Unless I'm behind the times and all the Estonians are rocking 3090s now.
Original Stalker was pretty brutal, don't you remember? I had a 'gaming' laptop and it ran like shit. I don't think that 'audience' played it around release.
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I enjoyed the original pretty happily during initial release (and played and enjoyed with caveats Clear Sky), though I never got too heavily into the modded sphere. There was always a bit of tension between the different gameplay components -- the full Roadside Picnic where impatience was your worst enemy, the horror bits of a bloodsucker popping up out of nowhere, and the 'puzzle' of 'use sniper on guy' outdoor warfare always ground a bit at the edges -- but it was pretty enjoyable for what it was.
Not sure if I'll get the sequel any time soon, but good to keep in mind.
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Guess I'll need a new gpu first. Frickin Unreal Engine. Might look pretty good but never runs great. I might hate it even after the gpu upgrade. Something always feels subtly off about UE's first person camera.
I've bought an AMD Ryzen 9800X3D and will be building a pretty monstrous pc soon, but will wait until the Nvidia 5000 series before getting a new gpu.
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I like the idea of Stalker far more than I enjoy playing it, though, to be fair, I've only played the Anomaly mod which is a markedly different experience from vanilla in many regards.
Still, I expect that the devs have probably taken a hint from the things the community tinkered with over the decades since the last release, and I look forward to giving it a go.