domain:ryandv.substack.com
Mantergeistmann
7m ago
Aside from overloading on strike damage and synergies just for them, I wound up being very conservative with my early turns - If they didn't get unstunned by the first few attacks, I'd just buff or pass turn with my remaining icons, then let loose in the second round. Made it slightly less frustrating than having to sit through their bullshit before I could hammer that rewind button.
If it's any consolation, you should be near the very end of the dungeon, if I recall. Just that last miniboss, then the boss (who isn't who you might expect, to avoid spoilering others reading this - the game teases an additional boss fight afterwards, with a save point and everything, but it's just a conversation, so no need to burn through recovery items).
ZanarkandAbesFan
9m ago
Most monarchs still don't/haven't chosen the peasant life instead, suggesting being a monarch is preferable.
thejdizzler
15m ago
I've been reading What hath God Wrought (Oxford History of the US from 1815-1848) and one thing I'm finding quite confusing is the animosity towards the Federalist Party in most of the country? What did this party stand for, and why did it become so hated outside of New England?
aldomilyar
18m ago
If you're going to get a tattoo make it a commitment to an actual lifestyle or longterm bond. I'll respect the signalling of MS13 or Yakuza membership over random pop culture shit.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
19m ago
It's not, the product is still not available. Which makes me suspect "entirely fake".
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
21m ago
I might not want to hang out with a Yakuza but I respect their commitment to their lifestyle more than I do 'oh I've got Milhouse smoking weed'
This is pretty much "I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos." Their "lifestyle" is organized crime, up to and including murder.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
23m ago
The cases that actually do still arise from legal drugs are "addict (i.e. end-user) runs out of money and becomes a career criminal to get his fix" and "stimulant-induced mania/psychosis". These are cases which are unambiguously "this is not due to prohibition; this is just due to drugs being available at all".
Both of these are made worse by prohibition -- the former by making the drugs more expensive, the latter because prohibition results in badly controlled doses leading to faster escalation towards mania-inducing doses.
There's also "drug user loses interest in anything but drugs, becomes criminal/welfare case" which I associate with pot. It's somewhat confounded by the fact that a lot of the people who ended up there would have been losers anyway, but I suspect that's not the only effect.
jake
28m ago
(Also plausible: he didn't intend for it to be successful but rather a 'cry for help' suicide, banked on the guards finding him in time and then he'd maybe be moved to better conditions or his lawyer could argue for clemency from the court due to his mental distress, but it didn't work out for him that way).
This is the (darkly) funniest possible explanation. Yeah, I can believe that completely. Will share.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
28m ago
Power is a curse, all those who actually tasted it will tell you. It eats at all of your life until nothing is left, and for what? In the end you only can make the decisions that allow you to maintain your station.
Does this describe Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, or Donald Trump? I don't think so. Vladimir Putin... LOL.
But what has humanity ever hoped for if not for someone else to deal with anarchy? Entire societies built just so we don't have to do this dirty work ourselves. Whole religions spent on dreaming someone is doing it for us when we are too weak.
A very Hobbesian view, but there are clearly many men (and a smaller but not insignificant number of women) who love power much.
manually reposting links across Reddit to farm karma
To continue her work in the giant psy-op that is reddit. This isn't a trivial affair. Reddit a bastion of progressivism and a key component in their narrative machine.
For my money, I don't view Epstein as a Mossad op. I view it as a joint operation between multiple countries' intelligence services where they each found benefit.
You continue holding the idea of these people behaving in predefined ways. They don't. You think they wouldn't use an account with their own last name. Yeah, they would. I wouldn't even say it for the tin foil "Triple bluff." No, they just don't actually think about these things. Opsec is often comically bad, it just sort of works out anyway because nobody gives a shit and people are actually really good at keeping their mouths shut. Though for what it's worth, what you are describing is in fact perfect opsec, because you've convinced yourself it couldn't possibly be her.
It was. Your priors are wrong, probability has her dead to rights.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
33m ago
Gatsby his way into the world’s elite
I do think that a reasonable intelligence agency might want to get into the social circles of a Gatsby character just for networking purposes, even if they weren't involved in the "mysteriously acquired fortune" part. And if they were open about the affiliation, it's not impossible to imagine Epstein a Gatsby character bragging about the contacts as a mark of social status (possibly to the consternation of agents trying to act quietly). Or that the "I have friends in the CIA" was quite grossly exaggerated from the truth: it's even possible someone else lied to him about such an affiliation and he ran with it.
That said, I don't have a strong idea on what actually went down in the Epstein affair, I just think it's important to consider all plausible avenues before jumping to conclusions.
HereAndGone
43m ago
Also sounds more like a stalker who followed her during periods of activity and went inactive when she was inactive? There's a lot of crazy people out there, someone obsessed with Ghislaine Maxwell who persuaded themselves into a fantasy life version of her (see the movie Single White Female for a fictional version of this) isn't the most implausible thing.
jake
44m ago
The reddit user stopped posting after Ghislaine Maxwell's arrest. From what I understand, this happened well after
It did not. maxwellhill's last post was June 30, 2020. Maxwell was arrested July 2, 2020. I would wonder if claims of harassment preceding maxwellhill's disappearance were propagated from the mods who claimed they were still active in modmail when, obviously, they weren't.
"Coincidence" has no explanatory power. "Reddit-type" is just wrong. If the account were made in 2014 it might, the account was made in 2006. This indicates a different category of person. It indicates someone very savvy in tech, which Maxwell is. The probability also isn't low. Bayes favors Ghislaine. The name is one bit of information, her lapses in activity is two, or four. It's true these examples could be cherry-picked, but the question isn't only how much the stopping coinciding with her arrest increases her probability, but how much it decreases the probability of it being someone else.
For Ghislaine herself, assuming the number of all users on reddit in 2020, which best I can tell was 600 million, the probability difference ranges from being >5 million times more likely to >150 million times more likely. The lack of probability for the others says enough. But we're not looking at everybody, we're looking at a specific subset of all people who stopped using reddit. For the definition of the power-user, the most probable explanation is an involuntary stop. That means death or incarceration. If it's incarceration, it's Ghislaine. If it's death, then we consider the probable causes for death for a user who posted every single day then abruptly and completely stopped. That's an instant death. Heart attack, blood clot, accident, manslaughter, homicide, suicide. That would narrow it to deaths on June 30 and July 1, but let's say we expand it out to a week, just because. That's 5500 people.
The probability of one person in a selection of 5500 deaths being skilled enough to be a Top 10 redditor is zero. We can round way up and say it's exactly one person. Ghislaine, or Rando, and with two options, their probability sums to 1. What's the probability Rando would be savvy enough to register an account in 2006? Probably high, given their acumen. What's the probability vs Ghislaine they would name themselves "maxwellhill?" Let's say indeterminate. What's the probability they would show similar interests? Again, probably high. What's the probability they would also have prior lapses in activity that could be tied to specific outings? Very low.
It's not 50/50, but even if it were, it's Ghislaine. It's 90/10 her favor. We rounded up so realistically it's 99/1. Super-realistically it's 100/0, which I know you can't actually say under Bayes. Fortunately in this little area of reality, we can say. It was her.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
44m ago
The real reason is that blaming the Jews is always popular, but Mossad in this case makes it easy by being an intelligence agency with plausible motive, means, opportunity, and most of all enough competence that it wouldn't leak.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
45m ago
He tried to engage with, rage-bait and jostle with the 4chan crowd to raise his standing I think, only for his lowly political aspirations to flop. Problem is that the 4chan crowd are just plain better at being rude and aggressive online.
That's not to say he lacks his own clapbacks. I recall an exchange along these lines:
Will Stancil’s 2011 NYE Rape Spree Groyper: We are going to do things to you that have never been done before
Will Stancil: I don't know, I thought you made your intentions perfectly clear
Not to mention Vril Stancil, Triumph of the Will, Stancilwaffen...
HereAndGone
48m ago
It might be easy for a "boy toy" to get himself in a good position, staying there isn't easy, and you've described a competent man.
I think Epstein was competent (he managed to get and hold that job at Bear Stearns) but he was also greedy and couldn't stop himself from ruining a good thing by trying to profit even more out of it. His fundamental untrustworthiness meant he couldn't hold down anything honest, and he got himself entangled in his whole web of fake stories, deceit, and trying to find shortcuts to easy money.
Did he really commit suicide or was he killed? Suicide is odd. He might indeed have done so, because even if he survived all the scandal, he was looking at years in prison and once he got out, he would have nothing left. No money, no contacts, no chance of rebuilding his fortune and status. This was not a man who would be content to live a poor, obscure life. Momentary despair and seeing no other way out? That's plausible.
(Also plausible: he didn't intend for it to be successful but rather a 'cry for help' suicide, banked on the guards finding him in time and then he'd maybe be moved to better conditions or his lawyer could argue for clemency from the court due to his mental distress, but it didn't work out for him that way).
HereAndGone
55m ago
Regarding Maxwell, I think that was two con men trying to exploit one another. As mentioned in the original post, Maxwell had few connections in the USA and his media empire was built on sand (see the pensions fund scandal) and he wanted to use Epstein's contacts to get a foothold in the US, and Epstein of course wanted to use another rich guy for whatever he could extract out of him.
HereAndGone
59m ago
I agree that Epstein was a fabulist so we can't trust any claims he might have made. I think if there was any 'intelligence gathering' it was more akin to him trying to shop gossip around to anyone who would pay for it ("hey I have all these connections with rich and important people, you might be interested in what I can find out") because he was that sort of untrustworthy little toad, and that the best/only connections he had as contacts were Mossad or somebody who knew somebody who was connected to Mossad, and they might have bought bits'n'scraps because hey, why not? this guy might turn out to be useful sometime if he ever does stumble across anything important or we can finally find a use for him (I have no doubt, for instance, that they'd be happy to gather blackmail material on the Royal Family via 'Randy Andy' just because).
Dean
Flairless
1hr ago
And rightly so. Please keep that link and reminder on hand. It is certainly a good example of AlexanderTurok's bad faith characterizations of past arguments.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
Yes but they also import 60% of their calories which means they can focus on growing the 40% that's easiest to mechanize.
I will also note that Japan has some of the highest food costs in the OCED, at an index (avg=100, USA is at 94) of 126 in 2025.
Japan also doesn't seem to have great farm labor wages either
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
It seems like we agree on the knock on effects more than I initially thought
If you're all for redistributing wealth from the middle class down then we are brothers in arms
I think that would end up being very unpopular, but c'est la vie
Lots of duty based systems eg confucianism lasted long term. I'm not sure how well adapted they are to modern day life, where a lot of the scaffolding¹ that helps maintain the systems is crumbling. But these systems usually specifically have moral parables about people behaving virtuously — dutifully — even when they're reciprocated not just with nothing but with active ingratitude and disrespect.
Confucianism is an explicitly reciprocal duty-based system. It was often explicitly modeled both in terms of father-son relationships, where the son's obedience to the father is contingent on the father being a virtuous enough patriarch to be worth respecting, and between subject and sovereign, where a sovereign's failure to maintain virtue is the basis for losing the mandate of heaven and being replaced by someone else who will appriopriately fill the duties required.
Confucianism and deontological religions have a commonality in that the duty-based system is based on relationships that are reciprocal. Religious deontology works from the premise of virtue's relationship, and thus duty to, one's own god. Doing so brings you closer to your god / earns good karma / etc. from your metaphysical duty-obligator. More secular Confucianism works from the premise of the duty to natural relationship of [child] and [parent]. Doing so brings you more harmonious relationships with the other part of the relationships.
No major deontology system has ever worked from a premise of a duty towards an action outside of the context of the relationship. Even when the Christians preach charity to one's enemies, it is based from the premise of the relationship of the charitable practioner to their god. When the virtue-ethicists like Aristotle talk about balancing bravery between cowardliness and foolhardiness, it is in the context of its effects on, and the relationship of the practitioner to, others.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1hr ago
A lot of pro choicers also call it a “clump of cells,” not a baby.
A "clump of cells" can't kick its mother.
otherwise this false on the face of it.
Then give me an example of a pro-choicer telling a woman the late-term baby she wants to give birth to is a clump of cells, not a baby. Shouldn't be difficult if this is something they really say.
shoeonfoot
1hr ago
Thanks. I was going off my vague recollection of these kinds of articles:
In a 2021 interview about their book Trump's Democrats, Stephanie Muravchik and Jon A. Shields noted that many Obama–Trump voters likewise voted for Trump in the 2020 election, in some counties in even larger numbers than in 2016. Muravchik and Shields assessed that these "flipped" Democrats would continue to be a key factor in future elections.
Paedophilia is the term that needs definition. There have been some extreme claims of 12-14 year olds being raped, but it seems in the main to be more "underage by American law" which is "not 18 yet" (in other countries, age of consent is 16, for example).
So he was operating off "all men are attracted to hot young things" and throwing parties where there would always be a supply of attractive young women to pay attention to the guests and to act as arm candy. Pimping them out? Yeah, that's the big question here. If you're at one of these parties and the attractive young woman expresses interest in being your one night stand, do you take that as "this is a sex worker operated by my host" or the general "yeah attractive young women do throw themselves at me because I'm rich/important"?
Epstein was a creep, and he was recruiting vulnerable young women to exploit, and he probably wasn't adverse to gathering intelligence/kompromat on the people he invited to those parties as blackmail material and insurance. Epstein himself probably liked them young, and the younger the better (see the rumours about him as a teacher at that private school). But was he deliberately pimping out underage girls to people who knew they weren't 18/17/16? That is the entire rationale for the scandal and the conspiracy theories and the "he didn't really commit suicide" allegations, and that is what remains to be proven.
Similar cases of accusations of child sex abuse against high profile people in the UK have been tainted by fraudsters such as Carl Beech and by an atmosphere of over-correction, where police forces swung from dismissing accusations against celebrities to taking prosecutions on the basis of flimsy accusations which later collapsed.
Things such as the following - how credible are they? Could they have happened? Were they just people trying to jump on the bandwagon like Beech did in the UK?
They should be able to find out if 12 year old French triplets flew in and flew out of Florida, but did anyone do so?
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