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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1035 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Why are 55+ communities allowed? What are the perceived benefits of 55+ communities? https://x.com/LeahRain77/status/2079094767233745170 has blown up on X and I know I've seen 55+ communities when searching for houses. They usually come up on searches as less expensive and I guess I assumed they were assisted living facilities but looking at today's drama that's not the case.

It's weird to me that people are getting so offended at the idea of an almost-30 year old woman can continue living in the same home she lived in before her father passed away. What is at stake here to these people that is worth the expense of suing a woman out of her house?

I know we have a bunch of Catholic Church nerds on this forum. So I want to ask you all about the current relationship between the Church and China. What is the life of a congregant/decon/monk/nun/priest/bishop like in China? To what extent does the church exist above ground with the CCP's approval and to what extent does it exist below ground? To what extent is it oppressed?

Effortpost please :)

The current status is that there is an above ground church. Officials(clergy etc) in the above ground church are legally required to be members in the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a communist front group which picks bishops and disciplines priests for hewing too close to Catholic doctrines the CCP doesn’t like. Non-Chinese Catholics are generally agreed to be dispensed from mass attendance inside red China and the Vatican does not impose penalties on the CPCA.

China also has an underground church about which virtually nothing is known except that it was stronger when John Paul II let them consecrate underground bishops to replace the ones martyred. There may still be underground bishops being consecrated in technical violation of canon law; the Vatican is supremely uninterested in excommunicating them. Most Catholics in China attend underground services at least occasionally(unlike in the gulf countries, underground priests are largely local) but underground church only Catholics are agreed to be a minority.

the Vatican is supremely uninterested in excommunicating them

Unauthorised consecrations are a latae sententiae excommunication, so failing to publish the excommunications doesn't mean that people are not excommunicated (and given that we are dealing with the most observant Catholics, this probably matters). That said, it is entirely plausible that the Church has secretly authorised these consecrations.

I’m no expert on Catholicism, but IIRC the church still has in-the-vest bishops in China.

Is there anything I as an individual can do to push back against Flock cameras or broader mass surveillance in the US?

Reading 1984 as a sixth grader I was horrified by Big Brother and the authoritarianism illustrated in the book and always felt that if those things came to life it would be right and imperative to fight against them, and every year I’ve seen more and more authoritarian overreach that disturbs me.

I do not vote as I believe it’s a massive waste of time at best. I am not fond of solutions such as “call your congressperson” or “show up to your local council and demand change” because these are similarly time wasting activities in my opinion.

I am frustrated by the acceptance of the public for these technologies with terrible implications for the present and the future. I don’t want to break the law in order to fight them and don’t want to become more of a target, which seems inevitable if you want to speak against it publicly. I feel very disappointed in people around me and the modern west when I realize the state of mass surveillance today.

Flock is pretty expensive for cities and seems to have trouble clearly showing an impact on violent crime reduction. It is often hard to beat the financial argument, with equity/privacy being a great excuse. Without ceding the privacy grounds, I would suggest critiques based primarily on efficacy/cost.

Is there anything I as an individual can do to push back against Flock cameras or broader mass surveillance in the US?

As individual, fully legally (we are all law abiding citizens here)?

The effective altruist way: if you have high paying job, grind extra hard and donate the money to some trustworthy and effective organization fighting for privacy rights (no idea if there are any).

The less effective but more altruist way: drop your job and other obligations and become full time agitator for the cause. In modern world, it means shitpost on the internets (so far, AI will soon replace these jobs).

donate the money to some trustworthy and effective organization fighting for privacy rights

Ah, this is a good idea, I don't know why I didn't think of that myself. I'd love to know if anyone here who knows of any good places to donate for this sort of thing. The other night I did a little research on the topic and the ACLU had a long screed against Flock cameras but I know the right generally dislikes this organization. I'd be happier donating to a neutral or bipartisan org instead if anyone can recommend one.

You can shift public opinion to get other people to vote/go to council meetings/become elected officials by using techniques from public relations/propaganda. That is how Edward Bernays shifted the public perception around smoking to increase the amount of people that smoked.

Locally, I noticed that people seem to be able to stir up the issue on social media to get enough people to show-up to the council meetings to get the Flock contract not-renewed, but it kind of seems like a shell game where the government will quietly shift to a similar provider when the public pressure cools back down again when people inevitably switch their attention/efforts to other things.

Flock's strategy specifically revolves around grooming political candidates and running through executive branch work, so there's not a ton you can do on that side short of making their candidate contributions more visible and highlighting some of the company's sketchier spends. Rossman's been doing that a bit, albeit to mixed result, but that's a lot better than most. And destroying the physical cameras is less than useless; in some cases Flock ends up paid twice, but regardless they've got to have a replacement budget, just because building deployed cameras to be resilient is a loser's game.

The more... esoteric versions require looking at past successes, and with the caveat that I'm operating solely from public discussion:

Baltimore has a massive distributed camera and recording system, first in its class, combined with a massive shotspotter deployment, and... it's completely useless, and that's a policy decision. Video isn't stored for long to start with, the camera selection went heavy on PTZs and then set them up in an intentionally unfocused (literally and figuratively) sense, the privacy and compliance training means no one who's actually trying to solve serious crimes can get into the system, a few dozen other problems. Downside: it's only a past-facing decision: making it into the privacy nightmare opponents paint it as is a sub-million USD and sub-year project. But you can't undelete data (in this case). But you're stuck with Baltimore mayors to do it.

Carpenter and progeny, and courts willing to draw it to its most maximal ends. It's an ad-hoc general free-floating right to privacy, it's only really useful for the guilty, even its successful cases have a 'first hit's free' problem, and it's not exactly principled, but it covers any privacy question you want so long as it's nontrivial, and it has some bipartisan support.

And destroying the physical cameras is less than useless; in some cases Flock ends up paid twice

Sure, but on the limit some level of destruction will work. Will your city council replace the cameras 4 times each? 10? At some point it will be untenable. Flock is happy to replace the cameras and bill the city according to the "Camera Protection Plan". The city has some limit on what they will spend.

Can anyone explain the whole KDS - Kimi Derangement Syndrome that is going on? I kinda got the hype around deepseek - something that cheap to be that good. But Kimi i don't understand. It is quite expensive and it seems that no one is doing something interesting with open weights models once they are released from the labs. So what gives?

I think many people form an emotional bond with a model that happens to communicate on their wavelength. For me I particularly enjoyed talking to gemini 3.1 pro and gpt 4.1, even though there are more intelligent and truthful models out there. But those models are also great at gaslighting me. Once I asked a question to both 3.1 and gpt pro and thought 3.1's answer was sooo much better. But then I asked someone who worked in the field, who told me that gemini was mostly wrong.

Anyways back to the point less sophisticated users who buy into the hype are liable to mistake this smooth communication as a sign of exceptional intelligence. It's not.

Kimi might be the strongest open weight model right now but that title changes hands frequently. By no account is it leaps and bounds above its competitors. Some very noisy people just like the model.

So, what are you reading?

Reread Campbell's Dauntless. The writing could use a lot of work, but the basic idea works: the legendary Black Jack Geary wakes up to a universe where military discipline has been forgotten, and he has to work to restore it while saving the fleet. Despite the many problems with the writing, it has a quality that makes one want to read it again. Perhaps it is the authenticity of the military aspects combined with Geary's leadership style.

Not much progress on Taylor's A Secular Age.

Caugh up to Reverend Insanity. @self_made_human might be interested in this.

Biggest hangup (aside from things like bad prose, which I've reached the stage of acceptance with):

I think Fang Yuan's clones' alignment ought to have been addressed more. Do they not want eternal life, and if they do, are they not afraid that the original will not share? If they don't want it, why? Did Fang Yuan prune their will on creation so that they were effectively enslaved to the goals of the original? Is he simply substrate-agnostic enough to not care which one of him reaches eternal life? Are split souls magically loyal to each other and the original? There is no way he had not considered that he might betray himself, but there's nothing in the text regarding it.

Split souls are generally well aligned to their original. It's practically unheard of for them to act knowingly against the interests of the person who made them. It's a generic property of the process, though Fang Yuan, is, IIRC, willing to use them as backups if his main soul is KIA. They instinctively trust and coordinate with each other according to their shared understanding of their best interests.

But, there are exceptions. I'm not sure where this becomes relevant, and I suspect you've already reached this section if you're in the last third of the book:

Bo Qing was the most successful of Spectral Soul's split souls. He was entirely above board with the project to rescue the original from death, until he was love bombed by Love Hu, as used by Mo Yao. Then he lost his way, or gained independence.

I've reached the extent of what's currently written FWIW.

Understanding one's best interests doesn't mean they're aligned though! If only one body can achieve Fang Yuan's goal, then the best interest only goes as far as "cooperate until we must betray each other to gain eternal life, or merge if possible", which works well enough until all enemies are defeated and eternal life is in reach, yet at no point does FY or any of his clones seem to consider what is to be done at such a juncture. The problem of sharing non-fungible resources is so innate to any clone story in my opinion that it's a travesty for such an otherwise thoughtful author writing such a cynical story to ignore it and just treat the clones as free powerups.

Hoping to have finished de la Rochefoucald's maxims by lunchtime.

Just cracked open (electronically) LIght on the Other Side of Divorce: Discovering the New You by Dr. Elizabeth Cohen.

No reason.

It's nice to know I was right, but I sure wish I wasn't. I'm sorry to hear that bro.

Thanks, fellow Mottizen, I appreciate it. It's really been inevitable the whole time, I've just spent most of the last five years struggling to accept that. I had hoped that after our last separation that she'd be ready to try and make things work but she flat-out told me recently that she didn't want to deal with her issues, she hated them, and wanted them to go away. I seem to have done more soul-searching and changing than I gave myself credit for, because surprisingly enough, I'd actually rather build a new life and figure out what to do with myself now, rather than stay in a failed marriage which had been my entire identity for all those years. And as good as it could feel to play the White Knight, the uglier truth is that I've just been enabling her behavior by being overly empathetic and not setting boundaries and enforcing my limits because, of course, to do so would have threatened or even ended the marriage. Being on the other side of that, wanting to divorce before things get any worse after all this time and all that's happened, is a strange thing, but hardly the worst of things.

It sounds like you're in about as good a place mentally as you could hope for in these circumstances. If you don't mind my asking, do you have children?

I don't mind and no, we don't. Kids are a whole separate story, but tl;dr, my wife wasn't supposed to be able to have children but she nevertheless got pregnant early in our relationship and miscarried 20 weeks into the pregnancy, probably due to a partially detached placenta. She blames herself for the loss of our son and I'm sure that the trauma from that has had a significant negative impact on our relationship. Regardless, we tried off and on again to have another child for the next few years before she decided that the uncertainty was too much and opted for the copper IUD.

Reading Dad Brain. liking it so far.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I finally have a gaming PC. I am far behind on gaming. The newest console I have is from 2012. I never had a gaming PC. I am open to any games of any genre from the last 30 years. I love RPGs, but open to anything. Bonus if it’s cheap.

Welcome to the glorious PC master race. Protip: Steam is the best way to buy and play PC games. Always wait for a sale; never buy games at full price.

My recommendations:

Very strong agree with the top pick. Civ IV and SMAC are the best games in the Civ franchise, and Civ IV is a lot more accessible to new players. I am happy to defend this position if anyone wants to argue it.

Cursed Treasure 2 Evil Evolution Bundle ($1.46)

Worth noting that it's a remake/rebalance for a flash game, and you can get those for free https://flashpointarchive.org/

Coming out strong with Civ4 at the top.

Finishing weak with MtG Arena. (Free) you say, but I object.

Protip: Steam is the best way to buy and play PC games.

You forgot GOG.

Going to list my favourite lesser-knowns, all puzzle games;

Blue Prince, Chants of Senaar, Case/Rise of the Golden Idol, Strange Horiculture/Antiquities, Seance at Blake Manor, Return of the Obra Dinn.

I heartily recommend all of these! Although I think you meant Case/Rise of the Golden Idol (even if curse always feels appropriate).

I'd also add my favorite game, Outer Wilds, as well as The Witness.

D'oh. I was away from my PC while typing so I was going off memory. Thanks!

A bunch of RPGs from various subgenres that I have enjoyed playing:

  • Clair Obscur - French JRPG
  • Disco Elysium - no combat, lots of talking
  • Tyranny - the best Baldur's Gate-like from Obsidian
  • West of Loathing - a great Weird West-themed RPG
  • Ouroboros - an RPGMaker game about sequence breaking. Pity it has porn in it
  • Skyrim - open world dicking around
  • Fallout: New Vegas - probably the best 3D Fallout, needs a bunch of mods (Viva New Vegas)
  • Dragon Age: Origins - the best Baldur's Gate-like
  • Planescape: Torment - naff combat, lots of talking

Puzzle games:

  • The Witness - takes one mechanic (draw a path through a graph) and cooks it twenty different ways
  • World of Goo
  • Patrick's Parabox - the cleverest iteration on Sokoban
  • What the Golf?

Misc:

  • Aquaria - a very pretty underwater themed Metroidvania
  • Borderlands 2 - the best looter-shooter
  • The Wolf Among Us and Tales of the Borderlands - the best cinematic VNs
  • Hotline Miami 1 & 2 - top-down ultraviolence with a great soundtrack
  • Just Cause 2 - the best Just Cause
  • Limbo - a puzzle platformer
  • Portal 1 and 2 - the most famous first-person puzzle games
  • Talos Principle 1 and 2 - the best first-person puzzle games
  • RiME - the prettiest third-person puzzle/platformer
  • The Stanley Parable - the best metagame
  • Supraland - the best first-person puzzle/platformer

the best cinematic VNs

You've compiled a top-notch list in general, which makes the omission of (Telltale's) The Walking Dead here especially odd.

Don't like zombie games.

I give my highest recommendation to Valheim. It’s hitting 1.0 in a couple months, but do not miss this. I was in a very similar position as you a few years ago. New gaming pc after not gaming at all for 10 years.

If you’ve followed gaming trends at all you’ll have seen the whole survival sandbox genre explode in popularity. Valheim was one of the catalysts for that. It’s by far my favorite in the genre because it’s carefully designed. Boy just a bunch of shit thrown at the wall or giving players exactly what they say they want. I think the design of that game is a good example of “video games as art”. Certainly more so than the typical narrative I’ve slop that gets bandied about with that term.

WhiningCoil mentioned lots of good ones.

I would add Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (2003). If you've managed to avoid the spoilers all this time, you're in for a huge treat.

Hollow Knight is absolutely must play, though potentially you already have it on your console. It is every bit the equal of Super Metroid. Its sequel, Silksong, is better but also not as perfect.

Buddy, you are in for such a treat. If you are serious about anything from the last 30 years, you are in for a firehose of fun you can scarcely imagine.

But first, install Linux Mint, or CachyOS, or whatever your preferred form of Linux is. Microsoft Windows is over, and your computing experience will be much more pleasant (not to mention faster and more responsive) with any of the popular Linux distros. They all run windows games virtually out of the box these days.

Since everyone else is focusing on new trash from the last 10 years, let me offer a broader prespective.

  • StarCraft (1998) - I still think this might have one of the most finely honed RTS campaigns of all time. Just flawless.
  • Quake 2 (1997) - I consider this the peak of a form of shooter that died for a long time post Half-Life. It's all about rule of cool in the level design, and enemy attack patterns you can actually anticipate and dodge. Fun weapons too.
  • Might & Magic VI (1998) - Possibly the best Might & Magic ever. First one that didn't constrain movement to a grid, massive open world, tons of quests and loot, so many fun ways you can upgrade your characters, including quests for advanced classes. Might & Magic VII is better in some ways, some people liked that you got a castle. I never cared for the fact that the story put you on a deadline.
  • Half-Life (1998) - The FPS that completely redefined how FPS were made. Environmental story telling at it's best, and IMHO better than it's sequel.
  • Baldur's Gate (1998) - I replayed this a few years ago and absolutely adored it. A relatively low power AD&D powered RPG. It's a tight 10-20 hour experience with a little bit of everything you could possibly want in an RPG. See Icewind Dale if you want more of a dungeon crawl experience, and Planescape Torment if you lean more story and role play heavy.
  • Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns (2001) - My love for this game is inexplicable. Just a very unique take on an RTS. Kind of a left field pick I will admit.
  • Max Payne (2001) - The game that invented bullet time! And more or less set in stone the way Remedy Entertainment made games and told stories from this point on. If you like it, you'll probably like everything else Remedy made (Max Payne 2, Alan Wake, Control, etc)
  • Morrowind (2002) - Another possible high water mark for the Elder Scrolls games. Massive, and alien, open world. No level scaling in the world. Hits are determined by stats and not timing or player skill like later games. Probably the last pure RPG in the series before Oblivion moved it more in an action direction.
  • Arx Fatalis (2002) - A dungeon crawl RPG in the spirit of Ultima Underworld. Just you, an underground labyrinth, and whatever you can scrounge along the way. I never actually beat it now that I think about it.
  • Tron 2.0 (2003) - Probably a better sequel to the original movie than what we actually got. I remember really enjoying it, but it's been forever since I last played it. Another left field pick.
  • Painkiller (2004) - The first FPS where bunny hopping wasn't just a thing you could do, but actively required to handle the raw quantity of enemies, as well as get to certain areas. Fucking love it. Can't speak to the sequels though.
  • Darwinia (2005) - An indie game before indie games were really a thing. It changed a lot over the years. I still have an old CD-ROM copy with gesture controls and all sorts of nonsense, since that was hip at the time. I think if you get it now of GOG or something it has more traditional controls. Sort of an RTS? Sort of a god game? You'll see.
  • Titan Quest (2006) - Do you like action RPGs? Probably one of the last best ones. Then THQ went out of business and they all formed a new game studio and made Grim Dawn, which is also pretty damned good.
  • Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (2004) - I always found the campaigns for this game underwhelming, but the Dark Crusade expansion had a really fun campaign mode for all the playable factions. Something like 8 of them I think? It got a little out of control.
  • Sid Meier's Railroad (2006) - I never liked train games. Maybe this isn't even a very good train game for the people that really love train games. But it worked for me.
  • Legend of Grimrock (2012) - An old school grid based, real time dungeon crawler RPG, in the style of Dungeon Master. Strongly recommend.

That's probably enough for now. Have fun.

Great list. Surprised not to see Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) on the list, given that you've listed a lot of strategy and some other Sid Meier.

If @samesies wants to catch up on recent gaming history, it's probably worth playing a couple of "modern military shooters" to get a sense of what Doom 2016 was a reaction against and return too. Maybe add a modern boomer shooter too.

There's also a bunch of good remakes out these days, which might be a good way to pick up games you missed that might not run as easily. Many of LucasArts' classic adventure games now have remastered editions that run on modern machines. I'd recommend Day of the Tentacle, Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2, and Full Throttle from that set. I think System Shock 1 and 2 got decent remakes if you want to play through some pretty influential first-person horror.

Speculative not-necessarily-recommendations: Brutal Legend, Oni, maybe one of the Hitman games?

How well does Tron 2.0 run these days? I never could get my pirate version to launch on my machine when I was a broke student.

Great list. Surprised not to see Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) on the list, given that you've listed a lot of strategy and some other Sid Meier.

SMAC is a funny game to me. Very much a direct sequel to Civilization II specifically. So much so that, IMHO, you almost need to have played Civilization II first to have gotten you feet wet with the mechanics, before SMAC turns them up to 11. It's also from that era where you really probably should read the manual. Preferably all 200 pages of it. You could probably get by with wiki articles or modern strategy guides, or even watching youtubers tell you how to play. But that just all feels suboptimal to me.

I also haven't played it in forever, so it's just not really top of mind for me.

All true. I think I just have a soft spot for the worldbuilding and the faction leaders, and how much depth there is in there if you want to chase up all the references.

Alpha Centauri's writing is fucking incredible, but the gameplay is sadly outdated, with a lot of annoying micromanagement (units are supported by their home bases rather than by the faction as a whole, air units must return to a base every other turn or crash, etc.).

I don't mind the micro, but there are a bunch of balance issues which really detract from the depth, even without the expansion.

(Standard terraforming is supposed to be stronger but more time-consuming - and polluting - than forests, but forests are too strong for this to work. Condensors' bonus to their own square is too strong, so nobody ever uses their interesting rain effect in favour of simply spamming condensors everywhere. Air power is kinda OP. And there's an ICS problem later in the game because of the Hab Dome limit and then the one-unit-per-turn limit binding excessively-hard.)

I'll add a few split up by (non-traditional) genre:

  • Simulations: Interact with systems that are complex enough that you can't hold them in your mind, and require abstraction
    • Factorio, Kerbal Space Program,
  • Puzzles: Interact with systems that are simple enough that you can hold them in your mind, but require optimization
    • Opus Magnum, Portal,
  • Short term, single goal progression: You have (about) half an hour to improve and grow your character before facing the final challenge. Then you start again from (almost) nothing.
    • Slay the Spire, Binding of Issac, Hades
  • Cozy: low pressure, nice looking, slow paced with gentle progression and practically no consequences for "failure".
    • Stardew Valley, Book of Hours
  • Story: Explore a world with a character, and do things in it
    • Fallout (probably New Vegas, but the rest too), Cyberpunk 2077, Skyrim
  • Nostalgia bait: The same as the old games you played, but newer.
    • Xenonauts, Endless Sky, Stardew Valley

I'm going to immediately suggest a few "gold standard" games, since you missed them the first time around. They're all older, but either have staying power or inform a lot of newer games.

  1. Portal 2
  2. Divinity original sin 2 (or baldurs gate 3 if you prefer dungeons and dragons)
  3. Spec Ops: The Line
  4. Fallout: New Vegas
  5. Skyrim
  6. Deep Rock Galactic
  7. Terraria

You missed Dark Souls!

It's such a wide universe that it's hard to really just dump a suggestion without any feelers for what you'd be interested in. Going off of RPGs and with a fairly wide variety

Path of exile(1 or 2): Diablo style top down click to move loot game with near infinite complexity and a deep market economy. Both games are popular and continue to have near quarterly large patches. It's an overwhelming amount of complexity that people either love or hate. poe 1 is free and poe2 has a $30 buy in until the end of the year when it goes out of early access. The buy in gets you store credit which you could use to buy stash tabs(good or organizing your loot) that apply to both games.

Baulder's gate 3: basically dungeons in dragons as a single player adventure, extremely well received. If you're at all interested in the dungeons and dragons experience this is worth a pick up.

Hades 1 and 2: this is a rogue lite(a genre where you start essentially new games repeatedly with random powerups to try and beat the story, lite means there are inter-run power ups and like means no inter-run powerups essentially) with good RPG themes, great if you like a quick self contained run game that leaves you wanting to play just one more.

slay the spire 1 and 2: sts1 kicked off a whole genre of turn based rogue likes. It's a card game in the rogue lite style.

Blue prince: Another rogue lite at a slower pace where you explore rooms and try to get deeper into an ever changing house as you piece together a neat story.

Clair Obscur: expedition 33: A French JRPG with great atmosphere, not really my type of game but really well received.

Doom: It's doom!

Factorio: Ok, not much of a role play game but you're on the motte, you'd probably like factorio. Build a factory to turn stuff into stuff you need to build a bigger factory.

Hogwarts Legacy: If you like harry potter then it's a very competently made RPG in that game. The game play isn't anything to write home about but it's an RPG set in hogwarts, what more do you want?

Binding of Isaac: Perhaps the GOAT of Rogue likes, old but holds up.

That's what I find scrolling through the last couple years of my steam library. I'm sure I've missed some. If you have any games you've particularly liked in the past or mechanics you're interested in I might be able to refine the search a bit.

Suggesting Dark Souls 2 over DS1, DS3, Bloodborne, or Elden Ring is so crazy and conspicuous that it might be bait. Explain yourself.

Dark Souls 2 is the only game in the "Soulsborne" ""series"" that I've actually played. I have significant nostalgia for it (without DLCs) on the PlayStation 3 a decade ago, and years afterward I accumulated 300 hours of playtime on PC.

  • I've never felt much need to try Dark Souls 1 or Demon's Souls when Dark Souls 2 is so awesome already. (I think my brother and I did also have those two games on PS3. I don't remember why I didn't play them at that time. Maybe I preferred to spend all my time on Dynasty Warriors Gundam 1, 2, and 3.)

  • It is my impression that Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring are "rollslop" in comparison to the more methodical gameplay of their predecessors.

  • As for Bloodborne and Sekiro, I prefer rolling to parrying.

You're in a rare window to have only played DS2, and I guess you're in the small but lively camp of DS2 defenders, while most consider it the black sheep of the series (though it does have its virtues and great points). For what it's worth, Elden Ring's big combat innovation was to get past to rollslop so that rolling is more strategic and timing based rather than spammy like in DS3 and Bloodborne. I highly recommend all the games, but you might like Elden Ring the best.

Cities: Skylines 2 (build cities) Mini Motorways (draw road networks) Freeways (draw highway interchanges)

I'm surprised you play other genres.

Don't forget that Bridge Constructor technically is in the same genre. Civil engineering is an extremely broad category.

Relevant incomplete webpages that I made years ago: 1 2

I noticed that error, and also expected that you'd be here to correct me before I could get to amending it. In return, I can recommend Dyson Sphere Program as something that might be to your taste. You might even learn to build that Space Elevator that's your true calling. To code.

Can anyone steel-man the Argentinian position re: the Falklands (Malvinas)? I got into a few heated arguments with an Argentinian women during my course about them, and the Argentinian position doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Argentine never actually had sovereignty over the islands, nor does the local population want them there.

You can't hold any ideology other than Rationalism if you believe only opinions that are justified by rationality. To hold any other ideology you must be willing to hold stupid, irrational opinions that might actively hurt you. Only an irrational opinion can be a costly signal that you hold the ideology, and being willing to look irrational is a relatively low cost symbol.

To be an Argentine Patriot one doesn't worry about the Steelman of the Malvinas, the Malvinas are Argentine because to be an Argentine Patriot is to believe the Malvinas are Argentine.

Otherwise one would run into the situation where another Argentine claims the Malvinas and you are there saying, well rationally according to international law it's a nuanced issue. Which isn't very patriotic of you.

The Argentine claim further functions as a signal that they, as Argentines, are allowed to make the claim even if they have no intention of following up on it. No one can stop them from saying it. This is a petty form of pride, but a valuable one. What kind of cuck refuses to insult his opponent because it is "irrational?"

It's impossible. Argentina loves pointless territorial claims. I present to you the Beagle conflict, in which Argentina demanded three worthless frozen islands in the Beagle Channel from Chile. First the two countries agreed to ask Queen Liz 2 to decide. She gave them to Chile and Argentina threw a hissy fit. Then they agreed to ask the fucking Pope. John Paul 2 gave them to Chile and Argentina threw a hissy fit again. Then finally Argentina got trounced by the British and finally decided having a mortal enemy across the Andes wasn't worth it.

Well geographically it seems to make sense. The current population of the island is 3k-ish English-speaking people who consider themselves to be British, so it's a non-starter politically.

What I don't get is, why doesn't Argentina send over a couple of poor struggling families with their adorable kids who just want to work as fishermen or ranchers or something instead of warships and soldiers. Just a couple get established, then a few more families come over, and they bring their extended families over too. Call anyone who objects racist. Next thing you know, presto, a simple majority of the population now wants to be Argentinian, and they can make a good case to take over the island without a shot fired. Even if you think the whole Great Replacement stuff is a "baseless conspiracy theory", what's to stop any interested party from doing it on purpose? At such a low population, it wouldn't take all that many people.

The Brits are wise to that strategy and there are significant restrictions to immigrate into the Falklands.

Insert obvious crack about the British being wise to that strategy on small islands across the Atlantic, but blind to it at home?

I didn't want to be glib, but yes.

IMO I think a lot of it is just that the Malvinas are basically the only war Argentina has ever fought. The early wars for Independence etc were when there were few people in Argentina and barely skirmishes. It’s the only war they’ve fought posts mass migration to Argentina so it’s basically the only thing they can talk about in their military history.

Geographically though it is there’s. And within 50 years it probably will be Argentinas because England is declining. Though this may depend on Trumpism and Milei’s long-term alliance. Their claim to it on geography is probably stronger than a bunch of Italians to Israel.

Argentina fought in multiple wars, but the Falklands/Malvinas are just the only recent one- they fought in the triple alliance, for example(the South American world war).

Yea but Argentina was tiny then. 1.8 million people. That was before any semblance of modern Argentina. Wikipedia does say 18k? Argentina casualties which is a semi-real conflict.

I think it’s seem fair to say real Argentina didn’t occur until the late 19th-early 20th century immigration waves. It’s even more extreme than pre-post Ellis Wave migration in America.

You're right that Argentina doesn't have a legitimate claim to the islands under standard liberal international relations theory, but there are other theories of international sovereignty. The Argentinian position is straightforward: Look at a map. They consider the Southwest Atlantic Ocean to be Argentinian. They also claim the Antarctic Peninsula.

The anticolonial aspect shouldn't be underestimated either. Under a strict interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States should have opposed British recapture of the islands.

Ah, the pretty borders theory of international relations, never to be underestimated.

It's pointless barely-justified jingoism of the sort that is very common in Latin America. But because the Argentines are white people behaving like Slavs and the counterparty is Britain, it's newsworthy.

International law wise, I don't think there is a case. The political reason is part sovereignty (not wanting a stronghold of a foreign power near your shores, kind of like Cuba in the times of the Soviet Union) and economic (by having the island, Britain gets a chunk of fishing rights and offshore drilling that would've been Argentinian otherwise).

The emotive reason (the one that really matters to most people) is sort of a sunk cost fallacy: we fought for them, and our people died for it, so it's sort of a disrespect to their memory to give up the claim, nevermind that the war was started by an illegitimate and unpopular military government.

It's also gotten more salient recently due to a couple of reasons:

  • The football team took up the cause as a part of their rallying cry, and since they won the world cup they're basically heroes.
  • The left wing is very third worldist, so a faction that would be anti-conflict instead took up the cause as anti imperialistic.
  • The right wing has become a lot more online, and there is a sense that the UK no longer deserves to hold the islands (due to their ongoing political crises)

So while before you could reasonably claim to not care about the islands and not be laughed out of the room, nowadays Milei gets flak for having expressed his admiration for Margaret Thatcher a decade ago.

That being said, I don't think anything will come out of it in the short term, and in the long one it'll be settled with some sort of shared ownership deal, that maybe phases the UK out eventually, if anything.

World Cup predictions? I expect Argentina to win off late scoring goals while the first 70 minutes is basically keep away by both teams.

Spain was the pre-match favorite at about 60/40 and so far they've been playing like it. I'm rooting for VArgentina to induce additional seethe amongst the types who complain about #ArgentinaSoWhite and Argentine fans being meanies toward blacks.

I've already been pleased with France and England getting knocked out the semifinals, thus resulting in the file-drawering of a thousand prewritten "What the World Cup final has to teach us about the importance of immigration"-type articles. An Argentina victory would be the cherry on top and would prevent such articles getting salvaged if Yamal scores in a Spanish win.

Good to see Cucurella (cool name) carrying Puyol's torch of at least one Spanish player caveman-maxxing. From Tom Cruise's speech to the halftime performance, this love and unity feelgood hugboxy circlejerk is all so tiresome, though.

Yamal was born in Spain and lived there his whole life from what I can tell. I view Argentina and Spain as among the teams doing the very least fudging about nationality.

Argentina’s tactics are extremely sketchy and dark arts which is the main reason I’m rooting against them. Also the spain team is quite white…

I think Spain takes it unless Argentina scores a goal early that throws them off, they're extremely disciplined and have a top tier midfield, so I don't think they'll fall for the classic Argentinian antics.

  1. Spain plays too cautiously and loses the match.

  2. Lamine Yamal gets his WC goal but only after the match is out of reach.

  3. Spain red card around the 70th minute.

  4. Messi principally attacks the box through the center, knowing that Spain will be protecting the wings to prevent crosses.

  5. Winning goal for Messi or Alvarez either after the 80th minute or in the second half of extra time. No penalties.

  6. Mamdani is spotted in Trump’s luxury box mid-conversation with the POTUS, both laughing heartily.

I was hoping for the Mamdani sighting, but alas this was all completely off.

Any bass players here?

I'm making some progress on a project bass and I'm about to put some new strings on. I've always used Labella Deep Talkin' Flats, but for this bass, I'm going to do a BEAD tuning and the DTF B string is terrible.

I've been looking at some of the more exotic options like TIs or Dunlops, but I'm not sure if I want to drop $100 on an experiment. If anybody has tried them, I'd like to know your opinions.

If your problem is tone or slack feel of the low B string, changing string brand is unlikely to help as any such problems in tone come from basic physics: the combination of string thickness, scale length and tuning.

I think the specific issue is that the DTFs are stiff, hexagonal core strings. It makes it hard to get the intonation right. I'm wondering if the round core flats would help with that, since they tend to be more flexible.

I doubt it has anything to do with "flexibility" unless the strings get physically caught in the bridge / nut slots (in which case the slots may need repair work). Bass strings just don't work all that well if the tension is too low. Have you tried recording a single note and checking the spectrum?

Here is what quick googling returned as one possible cause for issues that might be perceived as intonation problems: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-020-2391-2 (string inharmonicity).

See if you can buy a regular cheaper non-hex core bass string and try if that also suffers from intonation issues. That is at least a cheap test and being flatwound vs roundwound should make no difference to that (at least I can’t come up with any physical basis for one).

I'm mainly a guitarist, but whenever I have to record bass I usually go for Ernie Ball.

What are your views on Kimi? How seriously should we take benchmark claims, eg how rig-proof are the benchmark criteria which decide the performance comparisons of AI models?

I haven't been able to access the models on their free plan, which means I have no opinion. I've heard people I respect say it's a bit benchmark-maxxed, but the fuck would I know myself?

All I can say is that I don't see a particular use case for it. I have paid plans for ChatGPT and Max for Claude. Those have the bleeding edge models, and I always use the best I can get away with it. I rarely (but not never) need token-churning agentic work, where $/task is a strong constraint. I technically retain access to Gemini 3.1 Pro, but it is a sad model, and I'm not going to touch the family till they fix things with 3.5 Pro.

Chinese models are, in general, not very useful for me. I don't need them. I used R1 etc back when they did something useful for me, and I haven't been tempted back in the last half year.

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