domain:anarchonomicon.substack.com
TIRM
18hr ago
An opinion I've seen for years expressed in this image.
They really try to lay on the tears to get us to agree with their border policies. Like AOC's weeping photoshoot in front of that empty parking lot.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
Civ 7 heavily cribbed off competitors like Humankind, and for all the wrong reasons.
The ability to change civs could have been so good. All they needed to do was to be sensible about it.
Start as Rome in the Classical era? Become some kind of post-Roman state in the medieval era, be it Byzantium, France, Germany, England or, if you want to stretch it further, the Ottomans.
Go English? Get the option to remain that way post Enlightenment, or perhaps fork off to America.
You could add more leeway, especially for dead-end states, but avoid absurdities like Caesar running China, or America being a thing in the fucking Stone Age.
The idea of their being an ebb-and-flow to progression, with setbacks at the end of each era, that works great in theory for preventing rampant snowballing, but the current execution is utter ass.
Sigh. I'll go back and look lovingly at my copy of Civ 4. Last entry I wholeheartedly enjoyed.
FtSoA
18hr ago
Putin is not putting forces anywhere near other borders. He’s not issuing threats to anyone else.
Please be serious. Where Putin puts his forces after taking out Ukraine is the concern.
You can argue that the Europeans should shoulder the bulk of their own defense, but you seem to be arguing they are paranoid. I would be concerned were I a Moldovan.
The winners of this are not the Western powers, but the weapons manufacturers who made bank off of that money.
Personally I think that's a win-win since we have lost some key industrial capacities for munitions productions. Those are good factory jobs.
And for all that, we managed to turn a six week war into a two year war that went the way it was always going to go, except with more deaths and more destruction, more ordinance buried under now useless farmland.
Two years, huh? At least get your defeatism timeline right please.
France does ok on agriculture despite having the Iron Harvest.
And as far as the West goes, tensions between the West and BRICS wouldn’t be high at all if we’d simply minded our own business.
Just like Putin minded his?
Anyone pretending "BRICS" is a useful label because it represents an actual coalition is just ignorant about geopolitics. For starters, China and India don't get along very well. Who gives a fuck about Brazil or or South Africa as major geopolitical players?
Ironically, there's a far stronger natural argument for defending Ukraine against Russia than there is for defending a rogue Chinese province from its sovereign government. Given that Trump won't even ban TikTok, how on earth would he commit to a serious loss of life and risk of WWIII to defend an island where we have no formal obligation?
Russians didn’t have a problem with us, China didn’t
After the Cold War, the US and Russia have been at loggerheads way before the Ukraine invasion on a host of geopolitical issues.
Same with China. Issues with North Korea and Taiwan didn't begin yesterday.
Iran only hated us over Israel and really not that much.
What universe do you live in? "Only"? "Really not that much"???????????????????
"Death to America" was just for show then? Shame about all the Americans they've killed over the years. I suppose Trump et al have nothing to worry about from those assassination plots.
Zephyr
18hr ago
So one thing I think is very common in modern western countries is something like the following:
- No administration may bind a future administration to a promise.
- An administration has a deep, deep desire to do something that they think will take more years than they will be in power.
- So what they do is let themselves be "negotiated" into a position where breaking the promise that they made, although possible, is extremely costly.
If voters want to express a sentiment against something a government has done, sometimes the more rational option is to bite the bullet and do the costlier option, even if it'd be "easier" to not do so. I think for a lot of voters, they've hit that point with immigration.
That sounds like a fair definition for 'escalating pace.'
Not sure what can be done for Ukrainian morale if their sole foray into Russian Territory is now completely reversed. With, allegedly, 70k casualties? the scale of this war still blows my mind sometimes.
And man, a lot of westerners who have staked so much of their personality on the belief that Ukraine can win this thing will presumably be inconsolable for a while if Ukraine throws in the towel with Russia making actual territory gains.
Shrike
18hr ago
This is not an actual available option.
Why not?
If we have munitions capacity issues what better way to fix them.
Sure, if Ukraine/Europe can release funding to fund US munitions (which I do gather is happening, and that seems fine). But if the US has budget X and they can split it between the Pacific and Europe, or just spend it on the Pacific, the latter option is scarier for China.
What on earth does "bogged down" mean here? I'm not arguing we conduct military operations.
That ship has already sailed. The US has been conducting "non-kinetic" military operations in support of Ukraine's war effort for the duration of the war.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
Civ 3 was peak except for the stupid global warming mechanics. 4 was really good, especially with the live map editor. 5 and onwards have been sore disappointments for me, and the more I look at 7, the harder I gag.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
18hr ago
https://playclassic.games/games/turn-based-strategy-dos-games-online/play-sid-meiers-civilization-ii-online/play/
You can play 2 online, via this emulator I linked.
MathWizard
Good things are good
18hr ago
Meh. If someone's so thin-skinned that their response to "you don't know the context" is a passive aggressive "sorry to disturb you I'm leaving and never coming back" instead of lurking more and/or digging through to find context, or at bare minimum shrugging off the critique and ignoring it, then they're probably not a good fit anyway.
I don't think threats to leave, from new people, or old people, or in real life, should be met with begging "no please stay." That sets a bad precedent. As a matter of principle I think you call the bluff and either they stay or they leave and it's a win-win either way.
Shrike
18hr ago
Taiwan is a naval battle first; I don't think we've been supplying much naval weaponry to Ukraine.
I agree with this on the whole, but we have given Ukraine a fair amount of Patriot missiles, which would be very helpful defending against Chinese ballistic/cruise missiles, particularly for point defense around airfields.
ABigGuy4U
18hr ago
when we've been able to help hold back Russian forces for this long while barely even lifting a pinky.
Two trillion dollars, 20 percent of all existing Patriot systems, several dozen western and Warsaw Pact fighter aircraft, 700 Soviet pattern tanks donated by former Warsaw Pact NATO members, 250 NATO standard tanks donated by Western European NATO members, 100 modern MLRS systems, hundreds of tube artillery pieces, and 2000 light armored vehicles isn’t a Herculean effort, but it’s not “barely lifting a pinky” either.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
19hr ago
The erosion of shame as a social force is one of the biggest impacts of the Trump presidencies.
The erosion of shame as an asymmetric weapon is one of the biggest impacts of the Trump presidency; the right will no longer accept being shamed. Its use for anything but had long since died. McCarthy could be brought down with "have you no sense of decency, sir?"; while McCarthy himself probably didn't, others on his side did. The woke could not be shamed; when they brought down Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt based on a lie, or Hawaiian Shirt Scientist for no good reason at all, it was to thunderous applause.
Elon Musk's claim that empathy is the most dangerous force in society would be the peak example of this phenomenon.
Finding empathy to be dangerous has little to do with shame; Musk was talking about a phenomenon similar to what rationalists call "utility monsters".
As for Leon, I suspect the truth lies between "The story is completely fabricated and no such 82-year-old Allentown grandfather named Luis Leon even exists" and "82-year-old Allentown grandfather Luis Leon got his green card replaced because he needed it to take a trip to Guatemala, which he then did". Making up stories to shame people is certainly one way to immunize them against shame, and there's been a LOT of stories.
To be the devil's advocate here, that's not true in practice. Drunk driving without killing someone is punished because it could have lead to someone dying as a consequence, or at least severely increased the risk of an adverse outcome.
FtSoA
19hr ago
The US ditching Ukraine to prioritize Taiwan I think would actually spook China.
This is not an actual available option. Please try again. Trump won't even ban TikTok ffs.
The US doubling down on its commitments to Ukraine means fewer weapons in the Pacific
Prime the Pump. If we have munitions capacity issues what better way to fix them.
China would prefer the US bogged down in Ukraine
What on earth does "bogged down" mean here? I'm not arguing we conduct military operations.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
19hr ago
Mr. Lee held the popular idea that language was a zero-sum game? No, Mr. Lee understood the commonsensical idea that your brain has limited storage capacity. Like anything else. Your brain is made of atoms. It is not made of magic. It is not made of godly dust. It is a material thing. It is, in a sense, a container of information, and information takes space. It obviously does in computers; pray tell, NYT, why the brain should have infinite capacity? It doesn't make sense.
The human brain is obviously finite, and doesn't have infinite capacity. Yet, I find the idea that merely learning additional languages has any risk of exhausting its stores to be highly unlikely.
The plausible range is vast, ranging from a mere 10 terabytes to tens of petabytes. Whatever the figure in question, languages definitely do not take up a significant fraction. Even tiny ass LLMs, with only a few billion parameters, are fluent in multiple languages. They are a tiny fraction of the complexity of the brain at best.
Further, the claims that learning new languages hampers fluency in the mother tongue is quite controversial. Not using a language for the majority of speech will obviously have deleterious effects, but language acquisition has steeply diminishing returns. Speaking English for 40 years will not make you twice as fluent as when you were 20.
I also find the claims about Singaporean English... questionable at best. There are all kinds of English derivatives and dialects, and it's no surprise that the locals learn those instead of standard English. That's what they're growing up hearing or speaking! Being fluent in Singlish is just as valid as being fluent in Anglosphere English.
To further hammer the point home, IQ doesn't seem to be that big of a factor. Africans tend to me trilingual or better, often speaking a mother tongue, another local language, and then a trade dialect such as English/French/Arabic or Swahili. They find that entirely normal and not a big deal.
Most people who suffer from additional language acquisition grew up in a linguistically impoverished context, just speaking to immigrant parents provides a much poorer experience than growing up in a country where most people speak the language. There's also the issue of the motivation to learn, which is often lacking. If you're thrown into a brand new country and have no choice but to start learning the language to survive, then you're going to be much better and faster than someone whiling away time on Duolingo.
Shrike
19hr ago
The US/West failing to sufficiently back Ukraine emboldens China and other would-be aggressors when they do their risk calculations.
The US ditching Ukraine to prioritize Taiwan I think would actually spook China. The US doubling down on its commitments to Ukraine means fewer weapons in the Pacific, unless the US also slashes its social services or something else to double down on walking and chewing gum. China would prefer the US bogged down in Ukraine, and the US openly abandoning them to their fate to focus on the Pacific would demonstrate that the US "ambiguous" policy towards Taiwan is actually one of total strategic commitment to Chinese containment.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
19hr ago
It's not an infrequent observation that nearly any diet is better than no diet just because you have to start paying attention.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
19hr ago
HFCS is IIRC pretty darn similar to honey in terms of sugar composition. And if you think fructose is the enemy specifically, there are "healthy, natural" options advertised with higher fructose content.
I ran into this a couple years back reading up on DIY endurance nutrition: the quick, cheap recommendation is usually a mix of maltodextrin (long-chain glucose polymers, used in home brewing fairly often) and something high in fructose (typically agave nectar) because the two metabolic pathways are largely orthogonal. That said, those results are largely applicable to specific circumstances resembling "how many calories can I usefully consume while running in warm weather", not general nutrition advice.
ABigGuy4U
19hr ago
It’s not a breakthrough yet. But Ukraine’s leverage is slowly decreasing and if there ever is a major rapid breakthrough it all goes out the window.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
19hr ago
Iran only hated us over Israel and really not that much.
Oh, come on. The US has been the Great Satan from Day 1.
Certainly we'd get along much better with Russia if we'd done nothing at all to stop them from rolling over Ukraine. I'm fairly sure this would have soured relations with Russia's other neighbors, however. And China would be a lot happier with us if we weren't the main obstacle to them taking Taiwan, but again, I don't think allowing them to do so nets out to a win.
As far as Taiwan, we gave a lot of money and weapons to Ukraine. If we keep doing that we won’t have enough in reserve to fight for Taiwan.
Taiwan is a naval battle first; I don't think we've been supplying much naval weaponry to Ukraine.
Rosencrantz2
19hr ago
The erosion of shame as a social force is one of the biggest impacts of the Trump presidencies.
You see pretty often in this forum and in right-wing circles people expressing pride that they have got free of the distorting power of empathy and shame. Elon Musk's claim that empathy is the most dangerous force in society would be the peak example of this phenomenon. As a result of this, they go even beyond biting the bullet of e.g. it being disgraceful that an old man has been wrongly deported. They actually enjoy said bullet like a delicious amuse bouche, and imply that it is a GOOD sign if it's true that he has been deported and that his family wrongly told he was dead, because it implies the administration is acting at speed and focusing on the big picture, not worrying overly about individual liberty.
I'm pretty sure those who embrace this conclusion are making a major strategic mistake that will come back to haunt them. By thinking they can jettison the concept of shame, they are storing it up to be brought down on their asses in much larger quantities later. Shame is not a force humans can, ultimately, live without.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
19hr ago
And I mean what exactly has happened to make any of that credible? Putin is not putting forces anywhere near other borders. He’s not issuing threats to anyone else. It’s just not there and as such anyone claiming that “Ze Ruzzan tanks will shortly roll across the Baltics” just isn’t dealing in the facts on the ground. It’s an excellent excuse to pour more treasure into Ukraine to the tune of trillions in weapons. The winners of this are not the Western powers, but the weapons manufacturers who made bank off of that money. And for all that, we managed to turn a six week war into a two year war that went the way it was always going to go, except with more deaths and more destruction, more ordinance buried under now useless farmland.
And as far as the West goes, tensions between the West and BRICS wouldn’t be high at all if we’d simply minded our own business. Russians didn’t have a problem with us, China didn’t, Iran only hated us over Israel and really not that much. Us propping up Ukraine and fighting that proxy war in Ukraine and trying to cut Russia off from tge world banking and market systems told those countries that those markets were merely used to reinforce Western hegemony and that anyone who didn’t play by our rules showed them not to trust our markets or banks. Had we stayed out, Russia would be just fine with the status quo.
As far as Taiwan, we gave a lot of money and weapons to Ukraine. If we keep doing that we won’t have enough in reserve to fight for Taiwan.
faceh
19hr ago
This is kind of why I despise the inherent Pro-Ukraine bias of most western reporters/forums, they can't reliably report on Russian successes since that reads as treason to the good guys, even if its more accurate as to the situation on the ground.
That and the tendency to outright lie. I still remember the Ghost of Kyiv story, and that was just the most egregious of several from that time.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
19hr ago
I was more saying that the forum can be perceived as a "right wing secret club" because, for example, a feminist might consider some of the writings about feminism to be boo outgroup, only there are no feminists here.
To some extent this is grounded in the objective facts of the matter. We were chased off of two different subreddits because we allowed discussion of controversial views. The controversial views that the authorities took issue with were, invariably, right wing.
The mods try their best to be neutral but they’re only human. There is a set of consensus views here, that does affect the moderation and it affects how users perceive different types of posts, and that’s simply going to be an unavoidable fact of any discussion space you ever enter ever.
This is the problem though. Large parts of the right now won't accept being shamed full stop, by either side. They won't be shamed by the left. And they won't shame themselves. Trump has identified accepting shame of any kind as weakness; I suspect it would be soul death for him to think of himself as having done something wrong or acknowledge contrition. With the regulation that shame provides gone from both directions, nothing can stop awful things being happily written off as costs worth paying in the name of a bigger cause such as lowering immigration.
To my mind a wise right wing person would accept shame for something like this story, if true. They are then welcome to e.g. turn the tables and say it's the left who should be really ashamed for not taking immigration seriously in the first place. That'd be a stronger response, one that keeps shame in play, versus claiming oneself to have moved beyond shame altogether.
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