domain:alakasa.substack.com
FtttG
1yr ago
I wish there was a director's mode where you only get the best missions within a game and just get your "RPG powers" over the course of the missions
Some of the examples on this list might be what you're after: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StoryDifficultySetting
FtttG
1yr ago
*more dependent on an external intelligence and agency than you currently are
FtttG
1yr ago
Offhand I can't think of a single-player game in which the campaign takes the average player 100 hours to complete and which is consistently engaging throughout. Have you played any games meeting that description?
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1yr ago
For that reason, I think the decision is fairly sensible. If the President gets to appoint ambassadors, Congress cannot say "it's a felony not to appoint So-and-So as ambassador to France before August 1".
Is it okay for Congress to say "It is a felony to appoint an ambassador in exchange for a bribe"?
Given that the vast majority of prosecutions of elected office-holders for official acts after leaving office have been for bribery, and that the Court claimed they were making a rule for the ages, I think this point deserved more attention than it got. My read is that the majority opinion makes it effectively impossible to prosecute the President for bribery if the bribe-service falls within the express Constitutional powers (a pardon, an appointment, the surrender of a fort to the enemy etc.) and extremely difficult if the bribe-service is some other official act, such as the award of a federal contract.
Also he edited out the Ben Carson brain surgery question.
Huh? https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/11/16/hardball-questions-for-the-next-debate/
Maybe he did edit it out and then restored it, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that he'd be worried could get him in trouble.
TowardsPanna
1yr ago
Obviously.
ControlsFreak
1yr ago
It looks like campaign money can also go into charities/foundations and PACs.
I wondered if this was the case and looked it up just before reading your comment. I'm now also wondering if this is more common than we know. The analogy I have in mind is Wikipedia. At some point, someone was the first person to publicly point out that Wikipedia takes in vastly more donations than they need to actually run the site, and oh by the way, much of the extra money seems to get funneled into leftist causes. I don't know how widely spread that piece of information is (and frankly, I haven't checked into it, so I'm hoping I'm not falling into Scott's "too good to check"). But has anyone done a broad look at what percentage of campaign funds actually get spent on the campaigns, themselves? What, in practice, often happens with the leftovers? I imagine plenty of it gets recycled into future campaigns, but how much? How much gets rolled into 'charitable organizations'? How many of those are, like, actually spending the money on real charitable things, rather than being a hiring/holding location for party operatives, as a way to keep a bench of folks on some sort of payroll? Do the different parties have different mixes of how their funds get used? Etc.
zeke5123a
1yr ago
- I’m not sure your first paragraph is true. You might not want to hand your ballot to any random person. But imagine you live in a poor community. In that community, there is a kind activist who comes by regularly and helps out. You aren’t really politically motivated but you like the activist. The activist says “hey do you want to vote? I’ll make it really easy and drop off the ballot for you.” You don’t really care that much but you like the activist. So you agree.
Are we sure that doesn’t happen? There are of course other failure modes.
- We had in person voting for years and years. Covid measures were a major relaxation of those rules. I’m suggesting we simply go back to the status quo ante.
zeke5123a
1yr ago
Well the president’s power does not include the power to receive a bribe. Therefore there would be no immunity. The harder part is the evidentiary burden. But I think getting say bank records would be permissible. By the way cushy ambassadorships are already sold off for donors. There is just no explicit quid pro quo.
zeke5123a
1yr ago
It doesn’t fall within the core powers. First, receiving bribes is not with the core power. Second, it is clear that Congress has the constitutional power to punish the president for receiving bribes so at best it falls within the second category.
zeke5123a
1yr ago
They would give zero immunity. Read the first line of article II. The power is vested in the president; not the vice president. The latter does not implicate separation of powers.
2D3D
1yr ago
Its not Palestinian territory and never has been. The legal rights of Palestinians on Area A and B is dependant on the legal owners regarding land use rights as under the Ottomans and later the British. A bunch of squatters are free to stay on any piece of dirt until someone comes about with the right piece of paper and the guns to enforce the words on the paper. The Palestinians should direct their ire towards Jordan which disclaimed all claim to the West Bank and left the Palestinians truly stateless.
Given the vileness of how Palestinians treat each other, much less Israelis, the burden of proof for innocence lies on the Palestinians. If the PA does not record crimes committed by Palestinians until it comes time to pay the bounties of the martyr fund, then Palestinians are innocent eternally. Given the strong support for Oct 7 in the West Bank
I seriously doubt the 'victims' of settler violence are innocent lambs free of sin.
Not to say the settlers are themselves necessarily justified. But the Israelis are actually willing to hold their criminals accountable. The Palestinians throw parades and demand the criminals be free to commit more crimes... like Haniyeh.
benny
1yr ago
I don't play games for the story, I play games for the individual missions, scenarios or gameplay segments.
Having them contextualized with a small story is fine, but I'm mainly there for the interaction.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1yr ago
It is an empirical fact that the list of entities which are admissible into our disease ontology changes over time.
We used to believe in medical conditions like neurasthenia and hysteria, but now we don’t. When presented with the same physical and psychological symptoms, we might just say that it’s part of normal variation, or we might just attribute it to a bad episode, or we could bring the symptoms under the heading of a different disease category altogether - either way, the old categories have been abandoned.
Merely being able to identify a clear biological antecedent to a trait is not sufficient for that trait to be conceived of as a medical condition. It’s reasonable to think that the Big Five personality traits have a substantial basis in genetics, but no one thinks that being extraverted (within reason) is a disease. Extraversion is not medicalized.
The ask is that “I’m intersex” should provoke the same social response as “I’m extraverted” - an “oh, I see” rather than a “wow that’s crazy, what’s that like?” It should be seen as part of normal human variation, rather than conceived of as a wholly distinct category.
Whether this is feasible or desirable is a separate question. But that’s how I understand the request.
2D3D
1yr ago
The UK has certainly at no point in history stood against an aggressor at the expense of its own economic interests, and the UK does not hold defiant resistance against European warmongers as a central aspect of its national character. Appeasement famously is extremely popular in the UK and the proponents of appeasement are feted in the history books as wise pacifists whose counsel averted further war.
Sarcasm aside, Reform is firstly an antimigrant party, and it captures the right wing cranks just like the Greens capture the left wing cranks. The difference is that Reform can accept anti Russian elements in their ranks, while the Greens have to be in perfect lockstep with Gaza, Energy and Trans stuff. It is likely that being anti-Russia is part of the anti-EU stance, which is common to much of the Right, but that still doesn't mean being pro-Russia is a vote winning position. The only thing Farage needs to do is promise to deport all muslims, and he will probably be allowed to fly the hammer and sickle in Clapton.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
What were the actual sharings-in-bad-faith or misrepresentations that he was worried about?
He never offered any explanation to my best research. About a year ago he updated the first essay with "I beg you to read anything else I've written other than this piece. I beg you", followed by deletion in December.
2D3D
1yr ago
Power plants are surprisingly hard to destroy and for all the early smugness about vulnerabilities in Ukrainian rolling stock and transformers leading to total collapse early on, the internal logistics for Ukraine are simply robust enough to withstand missile strikes. Saturation attacks to overwhelm air defense still must hit something valuable, and the hardening of soviet legacy infrastructure built to communist standards (cheap, hardy, not reliable) means the energy grid does not suffer that much.
It really has to be emphasized that aerial bombardments of built up environs is really difficult. The US has made it look easy, but standoff weapons have terrible Circular Error of Probability and can never reliably hit a single specific target, and scoring only five to twelve hits per target is pretty poor.
As for specific towns falling, this is to be expected and will happen more going forward. Chasiv Yar was expected to fall back in April following Adviivka, and the Ukrainian defense is shockingly bad for such an obvious attack vector. The Russians should aim to capture Kramatorsk to achieve their highwater mark in the 2014 war, but resources wasted at Vovchansk are surprisingly high. After Ukraine fumbled their much vaunted 2023 counteroffensive, enthusiasm has definitely fallen. NYT has covered Ukrainian failures before, and will continue to do so because the Ukrainians are only victims of Russian aggression, not a protected class which can do no wrong. White on white violence holds no value for journos, even if the whites are slavs.
I agree that normies love stability. the problem is a bland democrat is the same is a bland republican.
Can the GOP front a bland republican? It seems to me the Democrats are fairly successful at channeling their radical wing's energy into bland-seeming manager politicians. By contrast, the MAGA wing will veto non-MAGA candidates, who in turn spook the normies; this is to my eyes what happened in 2022 with the red wave that never materialized.
The core difference is that, for all of BLM and antifa's blustering about the revolution, the American red tribe is a whole lot angrier about the state of politics. Psmith is only somewhat exaggerating here when he says 100% of the revolutionary energy in our own society is on the right today. Blue tribe meanwhile knows it's playing defense.
Just this week in the UK, the MAGA equivalent in Britain blew up 14 years of Conservative rule to vote for the radical populist Reform, allowing Labour to waltz into power with a laughable third of the vote. This is what I expect in the US if 2028 Republicans try to field a Nikki Haley or Mitt Romney-like.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1yr ago
The UN unofficially considers the dissolution of Israel to be one of its core missions. The above may have actually happened in some form, but there's no reason to consider UN reporting on anything related to Israel any more reliable than the white house's statement's on Biden's mental state.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Edit: Another point not about lately is Kamala Harris best shot to be president is just to be elected vice and then wait for him to die in office which is not that implausible. And she gets no negatives if the election is lost and is in a strong position for 2028.
Very much not, I would think. It's looking very much like she will not be elected vice-president again, barring some immense turnaround in the polls. If she goes into a primary in 2028 I would not think she is going to finish among the five top vote-getters. Her unique advantage and only asset is that at this point she is the candidate the Dems can pivot to without risking fragmentation, especially if Biden gives her the Official Blessing.
So her best play to be President at this point is to sit back and let others push Biden out, and then gracefully (if mock-regrettingly!) accept the scepter.
sliders1234
1yr ago
Secret ballot principles are violated. It’s been when discussed here. Every organization that defines what makes a good Democracy before 2020 said mail-in ballots had issues. After 2020 it’s all good.
We probably do have the technology today to make mail-in voting fine. You could have an IPhone do facial ID and watch you vote in secret.
sliders1234
1yr ago
“And if the expanse of mass mail-in voting had caused him to win in a landslide, you'd be saying the election was illegitimate and stolen from Biden, yes”
- yes. I’m autistic. I’ve flipped on positions before when the data points in that direction. Which does include flipping from Trump is a bad clown show POTUS only doing decent because McConnell is good to believing Trump has great judgement.
“There are obvious parallels with Russiagate truthers constantly asserting that Trump only won because of sketchy Facebook ads from Russian accounts!!! targeting swing voters, something something Cambridge Analytica.“
- Perhaps I am wrong on this but when I looked at the data the Russian troll farms did not reach a lot of people and the people they did reach were mostly core MAGA. I don’t believe the quant argument is strong that it could flip the election.
This is also different because it’s external versus internal. It’s different when Russia plays some games we don’t have the tools to prevent and our own CIA decides to back candidate X. The CIA interfering in an election is bad. Especially when they are spreading known false information. They have done this during war times but during an election is different.
sliders1234
1yr ago
We have seen radical wings not do these things. Anti-abortion people don’t do this. They just win thru institutions. Milton Friedman is as much of a weirdo as any of those people. Even today the very libertarian people are the weirdos. And he crushed his competition over decades which is completely provable because you can go on Reddit and stop in neoliberal and see that his enemies adopted his labels (before undermining).
Forgotpassword
1yr ago
As in not be nominated for the upcoming cycle? I don't really see any reason for Biden to turf her out, nor is there really a heir apparent. Her best shot to be President is either Biden resignation after winning, or getting essentially handed the nom by an exiting Biden now. It'd be very surprising if she won the nomination in a 2028 primary.
I saw a poster yesterday which read "Demedicalise intersex people".
This is a policy demand I simply don't understand. I don't mean I understand what it means, but I think it's unworkable or impractical or self-defeating: I mean I literally do not understand what is being requested. Could anyone enlighten me?
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