domain:doyourownresearch.substack.com
ChickenOverlord
4d ago
I think Westwood, Blizzard, Maxis and id Software held out the longest.
At least for id, I think it's in large part because Carmack is both a workaholic and a genius, so even as he was buying Ferraris and starting space companies he never stopped grinding away. He never really let himself rest on his laurels. Rage is probably the worst game they ever put out (prior to Carmack's departure), and it was half decent.
ChickenOverlord
4d ago
Battlefield 6 actually looks like it's going to be a smash hit, based on how many people were playing the open beta a month ago. It basically feels like BF3 and BF4 again, instead of whatever crap they've been doing with the series in the last few years.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Taxes.
Diocletian is credited with starting the process of tying tenants to their land as part of a combined land/labor tax regime. So it’s technically the opposite.
I'm imagining a Captain on a British East India Company ship catching a crew member shaking a spoonful of nutmeg onto his rations and looking on in indignant disapproval as he orders 5 lashes. "Hands off the product, lads."
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
4d ago
Creativity is so idiosyncratic, I'm not sure you can ever distill any method or approach as yielding superior results to any other, because it's all just so dependent on the creatives involved, and the times they existed in.
That said, something clearly went very, very wrong with independent studios in the 90's. There seems to be a reoccurring theme where success begets failure. Where then a bunch of 20-something (probably autistic) manchildren find themselves with millions of dollars, they go down some incredibly terrible rabbit holes. They turn their offices into playgrounds, they endlessly chase some perfect creative vision, many lose the will to do actual work entirely.
I don't think it's as bad as the lottery curse or NFL millionaires. I think many of them walked away from the industry never having to worry about money again. But their successful creative prospects more or less died after their first life changing hit.
I think Westwood, Blizzard, Maxis and id Software held out the longest. I'm not sure why honestly. Possibly the 20-somethings who won the lottery were better prepared to handle the success. Which is not to say the quality of their games never tapered off. But you didn't see these catastrophic collapses the way you saw with Origin, Bullfrog, and others. Technically id Software still exists, if in a nakedly Ship of Theseus kind of way.
I mean if we're being fully clear, Somalis aren't Arabs either.
But its not a stretch to say they'd identify closer with Muslim Turks, or Muslim Palestinians, than Egyptian Christians. Ilhan Omar is a notable example there.
And my historical knowledge on this point is spotty, but the Ottomans are pretty much the direct proximate cause for the Kingdom of Saud arising as a unified Arab Muslim state (yes, the British intervened, but the region's fate had long been shaped by Ottoman influence by then).
All this to say, we've got historical examples of Italian stock assimilating with competing cultures (although co-existence with Germanics has been spotty), and historical examples of various strains of ethnic Muslims absolutely refusing to assimilate with competing cultures, and then going to war with those cultures at the earliest opportunity.
With the huge gaping counterexample of Indonesia, but I've not learned enough of their history to competently comment.
(That's kinda why I chose to broadly paint "Arab" Muslims as the particular discussion point, since there are a few strains that don't have the fearsome reputation).
Celestial-body-NOS
Supra tumulum tuum, astra nobis.
4d ago
It also means that they can start assimilating even before they arrive!
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
4d ago
100% agree. I am not in grizz country and have encounter all of the animals you've described -- 99% of the time by seeing their backside moving swiftly away from me.
But, again, I get tripped up by the catastrophic-low-probability event; rabid animals of any type - accidentally walking between a cub and mother at precisely the wrong time.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
4d ago
I'm a wannabe TradCath, so the bias is there.
But more to the point, I suppose I meant this in a "they were still culturally Christian" sense. Yes, protestant American wasn't thrilled with the initial influx of Catholics and, in some cases, were quite openly hostile to them.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
Coyotes and wolves will not come near you unless they have rabies. Mountain lions and black bears also very rarely hunt people.
As for deer- they’re strong but they’re going to run away. Feral hogs are not your friend but if they threaten you, you’ve got bigger problems.
Unless you’re in grizzly bear country, or particularly scared of snakes, you don’t need anything more than a hiking stick.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
4d ago
Aaaaaaand irrational rabies fear is back up to 11/10. Thanks.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
There are actually plenty of widely beloved British dishes, they’re just so widely adopted that they’re not considered uniquely English by most people(world spanning empire will do that to you) so distinctively British dishes are things like beans on toast, mushy peas, and warm beer.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
The actual Arab conquests were also full of forced conversion to Islam, arabization, etc.
SSCReader
4d ago
I think the answer is it is likely to be both. Small independent auteurs are notoriously bad at upscaling and dealing with success. Bailing them out to make mediocre sequels in a corporate environment is also a bad idea (from the point of view of quality video games). Let small studios churn and burn creating gems then destroying themselves as they get over-ambitious. At least sometimes you get some diamonds.
I'll take Kerberos as a relatively recent example (10 years ago ish). They made Sword of the Stars a 4X space sim, it was excellent for its budget and time. They did well and for the sequel promised the universe and delivered a buggy mess that did not do half the things they said it would (it is after a number of expansions and patches a solid game but still). You can manage ships in real time rotate them to switch armor facing, and armor is tracked per facing, and each weapon has a different penetration profile, and then outside the first few battles never have the time to do any of that because your fleets are too big. Each race has its own FTL method so they play very differently, but it was supposed to have espionage, political rivalries and much much more). If they were bought out after SotS1 (which was on the cards from Paradox I think, who in the end just became their publisher) I think the sequel would have been safer, less ambitious and probably at launch better (maybe laden down with 50 DLC's though) But shooting for the stars and mostly missing at least gave us something interesting. Where some of the game is like 10/10 and other parts are just..missing entirely.
I think that's sometimes better than 7/10 COD X In Space. or whatever.
BahRamYou
4d ago
I agree with you, it's a recurring pattern. Partly just because of the convenience of food. You don't need to learn a foreign language or study its history to understand it, hell these days you don't have to leave your house. You can get ethnic food delivered to your door, and stuff it down your throat without a thought. It's easy and fun to try different foods that way, but also considered hip and high-status to try lots of exotic ethnic foods, the more exotic the better.
It takes a lot more effort to engage with other parts of foreign culture. Listening to something like Indian sitar music or Mongolian throat singing, and it probably sounds weird and boring to most of us who didn't grow up with it. Much easier to listen to something like Kpop which is engineered to sound exactly like Western pop music, even including some English phrases and Western-style clothes. It's even harder to sit on a multi-hour foreign religious service. I've tried that (for Buddhism and Mexican catholicism) and found myself thinking "wtf am I doing here..." I imagine it would be even worse for someone who's less open-minded than me and believes strongly in their own religion.
What I enjoy the most is to actually spend time with people from foreign cultures, talking to them in depth in real life, and really getting to know them. It's fascinating! But I rarely get the chance to do that even when I'm travelling- people are busy, there's the language barrier, and many people just don't want to open up about their life that much. A lot of Westerners now have sort of learned that it's impolite to talk about certain topics, so they just kind of run away from talking about them. Once I read an interview with a student from an African country studying at an American college, and she said it threw her off how little anyone wanted to talk about her country. She was expecting all sorts of curious questions, but everyone was either not interested or afraid of being offensive, so it left her with little to talk about. That made me sad.
But there's also the darker part. When you really learn about foreign cultures, it's not all tasty food and fun dances. In fact, most of it isn't. You don't have to dig much before you encounter something that makes you think "wow, that's awful." Well, awful by my standards, but of course there's lot of stuff in my American culture that they think is awful so.... we just have to live and let live. I can tolerate their extreme religion fanatacism if they can tolerate our incessant and disgusting advertising. Different cultures will also often have views way outside the Western mainstream norm on things like feminism, democracy, human rights, education, sexuality, or even just what foods are clean enough to eat.
For example: I've spent a lot of time in Seoul, and it always makes me laugh how awkward the tourism is there for western tourists. They come in expecting this fantasy land they saw in Kdramas and Kpop videos. They want to experience "traditional Korean culture," but in a way that makes for a cute instagram story. They're not prepared for stuff like:
- using corporal punishment to teach children
- expecting kids to study 12+ hours a day (or workers to work the same amount)
- eating chicken feet, dog meat, or any kind of organ meat
- prostitution
- absolute obediance to family elders or anyone above you in the workplace heirarchy
- really blatant homophobic jokes
- casually telling women "you look fat," and encouraging them to get cosmetic surgery
- old men drinking vast quantities of hard liquor, sometimes even outside
- going deep into debt to buy designer clothes so that you look acceptable
- mandatory cash payments to any friend or family member getting married
All of that is culture too! you take the bad with the good. But that's intolerable for most western tourists. Much more comfortable to just eat some rice and grilled meat, take a picture of yourself wearing a colorful robe at the palace, buy a fan, and let the culture stop there.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
For Somalia specifically, the whole ‘failed state because of perpetual multiple ongoing civil wars’ is probably a bigger factor in their poor infrastructure than the low human capital of the population.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
In Rome, you order pasta rather than pizza. The local specialities are arabiata, amatriciana, carbonara, and giricia.
In Bologna, the local pasta dishes are the heavier, meatier ones, with ragu the most famous (known outside Bologna as spaghetti bolognese). Bologna is also the spiritual home of filled pasta dishes like tortellini and ravioli.
faceh
4d ago
My tongue is mostly in cheek when I say this, but those items are generally not on the menu when I venture into an English Pub (here in America, to be clear).
Also Irish food is quite tasty, maybe owing to the need to get extremely creative when potatoes make up 80% of the diet, so I do respect UK food if we include that as well.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
How is Kiryas Joel, NY don't constantly fighting equal protection and/or discrimination cases?
This is not unique to them; there are FLDS owned towns that just blatantly violate the law all the time.
hydroacetylene
4d ago
I mean, I’m willing to believe this- but the Jewish lobby might not necessarily know that TikTok isn’t particularly antisemitic.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
Balti, Chicken Tikka Masala, Vindaloo. No spices in British food, no sir.
[For Americans not aware of the history, all of these dishes originated in the UK and are largely consumed by white British people]
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4d ago
It seems to me that occasional (over years or decades) medical expenses between the ages of 21 and 60 is a pretty realistic projection. In which case, why not have the money somewhere where it can both generate wealth and be spent tax-free?
Okay, but what makes you think the historians didn’t account for that already?
And you’re right; XXI has the weavers. XX has the “woman weavers of tunicas”.
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