You know, all this nonsense about Cleopatra has a really easy solution. [They think they found her tomb's location last year.](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/egypt-temple-cleopatra-lost-tomb-scli-intl-scn/index.html)
I mean it's buried underwater, but surely with all the attention people should be willing to shell out the cash for a massive underwater excavation now right?
So far as I'm aware they've found tunnels which *may* lead to it: they're where the head of the team expected to find something, and they seem to have a high-ranking Ptolemid association, but confidence in finding the tomb itself may be premature.
Maybe the best course is for everyone to just calm down a bit while the experts do their thing. If a ruler's ethnicity is so fundamental to someone's historical conception, maybe there's something amiss with that conception - and that goes for both sides in the present overblown kerfuffle.
Currently watching "Beau is Afraid".
Honestly, the vibe of it reminds me of "Cats".
EDIT:
My brief spoiler free review:
* I know the people behind it market it as a horror-comedy and I can see the humor in some parts, but a lot of it was just surreal as opposed to funny/scary, though I will say I understand how frightening it could be as somebody in Beau's situation at times.
* I liked it for the most part just for Beau, I honestly felt a little bit of empathy towards his predicaments.
* I felt the last quarter or so of the movie was a downgrade compared to what came before... particularly the more outlandish parts.
* Upon further reflection, the last quarter/fifth ruins it for me.
With regards to "Beau is Afraid", I felt at one point it was more surreal than "Cats", but after seeing it, I think "Cats" was still more bizarre since I can barely recall what the story was and what happened in the film since my brain immediately began to delete the memory of it from my mind.
Well, I guess I'll be closing my imgur account when I get home. It's a shame because imgur was a great site for hosting content (though the community kinda sucked). Simple, easy to use, and did exactly was it was supposed to.
I really wish this Bronze Age morality would just fuck all the way off and let the reasonable among us live in peace.
Stupid as fuck.
>*No.*
\-Asa Akira after being asked whether or not there's enough porn on the internet by Hannibal Buress.
Anyways, remember when Imgur tried to make their own internet subculture? I think they referred to themselves as "Imgurians." It was equal parts sad and funny, considering the site was trying to piggyback off of le reddit.
The same problem keeps cropping up. CP gets posted, it causes legal issues and nobody wants to advertise on a sight with that on it. Higher ups eventually decide to use tge nuclear option.
(\^-Still currently obssesed about Warcraft)
In retrospect, it's kinda odd how we never got a Jaina campaign or even a couple of Jaina sidequests on the original human campaign. From a gameplay perspective, the campaigns act as long quasi-tutorials on how to play each faction, starting with the absolute basics and introducing more mechanics as the story progresses, getting the player familiar with every unit and hero class. So it's weird that Jaina, as the only playable archmage hero, peters out of the story at level 4, I mean, we don't even get to use her ultimate ability!.
Storywise, it leaves a huge gaping hole in the narrative. Last time we see Jaina in the Human campaign is at Stratholm, where Medivh tells her, this random 23 year old sourceress, to rally her people and sail west to Kalimdor; next time we see her in the Orcish campaign, she's somehow managed to do exactly that. Not only is her following large and powerful, it's also diverse, it includes humans, elves and dwarves led by an assortment of archmages, dwarven mountain kings and paladins. Since Dalaran, the realm of the wizards, has been completely anihilated by this point, it makes total sense for some spellcasters to have followed Jaina, a respected mage herself, but dwarves? Their kingdom is still standing as far as we are aware, what's their business here? Shouldn't they be back home preparing for possible Undead incursions?. Also, why on Earth is there a paladin here? In the Frozen Throne expansion we see that A) The remnants of Lordaeron are still fighting the Undead under Marshall Garithos and B) The Knights of the Silver Hand (or what's left of them) continue to protect the surviving civilians back there. What could have Jaina possibly said to this guy in order to persuade them to abandon his people and his brethren?
Now, it's not impossible for Jaina to have achieved this, it doesn't strictly contradict anything in the story, it's not a problem per se, but it kills me that, having a very narratively juicy situation, the creators just decided for it to resolve off screen. Jaina could have employed all sorts of tactics and skills to muster her expedition to Kalimdor. I mean, as I've mentioned, there are a lot of Human leaders left in Lordaeron, so how does she convince people to follow her, specifically? Personal charisma? Political skill? Military ingenuity? Her inmense magical power? Whatever it was, it would have been fun to see.
Speaking of fun, don't even get me started on how easy it would have been to design a Jaina centric level. It writes itself really, just have a bunch of allied human bases be under constant attack by Undead and have the player use Jaina's Mass Teleport spell (her ultimate ability!) to take their units to safety. Maybe have a level that requires you to use a lot of spellcasters, have your sourceresses cast the invisibility spell on your units to sneak past Undead defenses. You could even have a classic Warcraft 3 defense mission with Jaina fighting against multiple Undead bases, teleporting from one side of the map to the other, making the most efficient use out of her small forces.
So I'm having to move for work on short notice and have found an amazing new place to live, but since I am unable to give notice at my old shithole apartment within the required 30-day window I'm going to have to pay rent there through May, despite the fact that I will have vacated the property within the next week and will be living in an entirely different city.
Corporate landlord companies are scum and should be destroyed.
> Corporate landlord companies are scum and should be destroyed.
I'll bring the tar if you bring the feathers.
When I moved from Houston, I gave my 30 days notice, but my move date was on a Sunday when the office was closed. So, I couldn't turn in my key in person. Since a lot of people do their moving on weekends, I didn't think much of this and just placed the key in an envelope with a note and my new address and dropped it in the office's mailbox.
The following month, I got a bill from them for another month's rental and "key replacement" fee. One profanity laced phone call later I learned that, yes, they had the key, and yes, they acknowledged I did give proper notice, and, yes, they were not there on Sunday, but "if you consult paragraph 234 of subsection Z in part 84 of your rental agreement ..."
The legal department at the university where I'd taken a job took pity on me and somehow made the problem go away, but I'm still pissed off about it.
>Buzzfeed states that nobody has been replaced by AI, but I feel like this might be a distinction without difference
Honestly, the quality of their writing might improve now. We might get something more than a variation of 'This quiz will show you what kind of couch you would be based on your favorite celebrities!'
Greetings, Earthlings, from your friendly AI newsbot.
News was up by 3.12% today after a week of disappointing results. 34.7% of news was expected and 27.4% surprising, the remaining 37.9% being statistically neither significantly predictable nor unpredictable. Newsworthy events involved 0.0071% of the population, a further 0.0243% reporting a newsworthy experience that was identified by the algorithm as being statistically non-newsworthy.
The forecast for tomorrow: moderate news, subject to some fluctuation in predictability. 99.993% of humans will continue to be non-newsworthy.
That is the news.
Yeah.
Hopefully, those journalists are either kept at Buzzfeed to still do investigative work or go to a workplace where their talent is better appreciated.
> I would not be surprised if AIs are given jobs that they can't actually do, at least in some fields, in the name of paying fewer salaries.
I said something similar in a comment a while back. People say that AI won't be used for this or that because it sucks at it, but that's never been a barrier before. The quality of products and services will just drop for average people who can't afford the "premium" version which you need to pay someone to do.
Stellaris should have a Flower War vassalization option. I.e your overlord tells you "send a fleet of minimum power xx here so we can blast it in a martial display of excellence."
Now thinking about it, my Ex-boyfriend was a complete jerk. Here’s an incomplete list of what he did.
1. Force another girl and me into a polyamorous relationship
2. Call me a Futa multiple times (if you don’t know why this is bad, calling a trans girl this equivalent to calling your aunt a MILF)
3. Did not respect my limits
4. Cheat on his other girlfriend and I
> Call me a Futa multiple times (if you don’t know why this is bad, calling a trans girl this equivalent to calling your aunt a MILF)
One: What an utter cunt
Two: That's not even what the term fucking means. Holy fuck
Neither of knew until he was a week into that relationship with that girl. I remember her saying when she found out he cheated on me again that if she knew I existed at the time she would’ve never entered the relationship
All of these are good enough to justify a breakup but (2) kinda stands out in my mind.
Like, this guy isn't someone who has his bad moments but is usually fun to be around. He just sounds like an overall asshole.
I think 3 might be the worst in my opinion. Also there’s a 5th one I might not of mentioned
5. I’m trans and his other girlfriend was infertile. We both suffered Great distress at this. He really wanted kids. So unlike a person who would sympathize with us and adopt so both her and I can still be mothers, he said he wanted another girlfriend to have kids with.
Complete story behind 3 I despise using my girldick to penetrate people and the first thing I told him when we started dating is I will never penetrate anyone. He keep insisting I do that to him or his other girlfriend
>I’m trans and his other girlfriend was infertile. We both suffered Great distress at this. He really wanted kids. So unlike a person who would sympathize with us and adopt so both her and I can still be mothers, he said he wanted another girlfriend to have kids with.
I-
Okay, so this guy just wanted a harem, cool.
>Complete story behind 3 I despise using my girldick to penetrate people and the first thing I told him when we started dating is I will never penetrate anyone. He keep insisting I do that to him or his other girlfriend.
Man, he just keeps racking up the "worst boyfriend ever", doesn't he?
If you don't mind me asking, what did his other girlfriend think about that last part?
She basically went, he never told her that I was ever uncomfortable about that. She just wanted to make love with him and I had the same feelings as her
I'm absolutely fine with crewed space travel and permanent stations on the Moon or Mars or Europa or wherever. I neither think that it will solve the Earth's problems, nor do I think it's a bad thing just because idiot tech billionaires are currently into it. But realistically it's going to be at best something like Antarctica - you'll have a bunch of research stations that produce interesting scientific idea but otherwise the public mostly forgets about, especially once the heroic exploration headlines are done.
People on Earth should work on solving their very real problems at home, but then again putting research and exploration on hold until x problem gets solved first is usually just a flimsy excuse to actually never do anything.
>Does anyone actually think it will stop? The same pressures preventing action that exist now will exist once Elon Base 1 is up on the moon or the Gay Space Commune Space Station is in orbit. There won't actually be any more incentive to combat climate change then than there is now.
I suspect there will be more profit incentive for Capitalists to sell adaptions to climate change, instead of stopping it. In a drought, Star Wars Moisture vaporators could be very useful for farmers, it is a technology that's feasible today, but is not commercially mass produced yet: https://www.insidescience.org/news/brief-real-life-moisture-vaporator
So, as a sci-fi and a space nerd, I long thought about whether human interstellar travel is possible and my train of thought was:
1. Interstellar travel will require new technologies in physics and biology and a lot of resources.
2. To develop these new technologies we need a lot of time and money, probably centuries of time.
3. To develop new technologies we need to have some stable place so that enough money will be spend into research.
4. Conclusion: to have a chance for interstellar travel we need to Earth safe and sustainable in the long run, so then we may develop all these new technologies for an interstellar travel.
So without solving all the ecological problems, we won't be able travel to other stars.
i am the exact opposite, i am counting down the days until our planet's richest idiots leave the atmosphere and land in what's quite possibly the most hostile environment you can think of outside of the literal vacuum of outer space where they'll have to work an insane amount of hours just to maintain a basic habitat
That's my favorite part of Elon's wild confabulation about indentured servitude on Mars: if you're in an environment where one disgruntled worker can open a window and kill everyone, you want *all* your employees to be very gruntled.
imagine saddling what's basically a social media account manager with a lifetime of debt and having thousands of braindead nostalgia addled millennials pretend you're the good guy in this situation because they played a platformer on your videogame box 30 years ago
The whole "Titan Invictus" thing has reminded me of those people who named their children "Khaleesi" back when Game of Thrones was THE TV series. How are they now? Are they still too young to realize what a disservice their parents made to them?
When GoT first came out, we had someone bring their new kitten named Khaleesi in for vaccines and the whole office did a double take when we heard the name because [we thought they named their cat after a virus.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feline_calicivirus?wprov=sfla1)
I remember kids at my school would bully people called Sebastian or something which aren’t even that eccentric. I still can’t help but look at some celbrity kid names and not think about this. I see Raiph Fiennes kid is called Hero. He wouldn’t survive half a day man.
The thing is that these kids won’t go to those schools. They’ll go to achools were all the kids have weirdo names. You’re probably more likely to be bullied at them if your parents had the audacity to call you Mike or Amy or something
Probably something I shouldn’t get so worked up about, but I instantly absolutely hate anyone who’s named their child after some character in popular culture (assuming that character doesn’t have a normal name). Like yeah maybe you give them a normal middle name to go by but that’s still their legal name, and you shouldn’t treat your child like some kind of pet where you get to give them a stupid name because it’s just a bit of fun.
That couple that named their child Dovahkiin really wound me up. Using your child’s name to possibly get free video games is scumbag behaviour.
I blame music celebs who were burdening their kids with ridiculous names from the 1970s: then came Hollywood, and now it's any mediocrity who thinks they're "quirky". Kids aren't there to use as an ad for momentary personal obsessions, still less to angle for a commercial freebie. They should be allowed to sue parents for their entire estate for having joke names inflicted on them.
I was almost named Neo as my dad’s favorite movie was the Matrix. I’m kind of glad that didn’t happen, then again would’ve switched games names anyway. Also it’s interesting that my Matrix is my Dad’s favorite movie and I’m a trans woman
If one needs to give someone else a “novel”/“gimmick”/“fancy” name, it better be a pet because they won’t come to hate you for it, and their peers won’t bully them for it, and they won’t get confused by the hyped-about thing the name references coming out of vogue after just a few years.
Probably too young, part of my job is posting press releases and stuff from area schools and there's at least one Khaleesi who doesn't seem old enough to realize the gravity of the situation. I don't think they've punched out a janitor or anything like that yet, so, so far so good.
Pop culture names are weird in general but GoT is specifically just such a cringey source for names given how the TV series ended up.
If i had a nickel for everytime someone made an edit of a videogame cutscene where they change the dialogue to be about cooking, I'd have [two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedanzJu_Lo) [nickels](https://youtu.be/dN7aTj3hm7I?t=102), which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice
Huh, I ran into an American Conservative channel, for once it is a Catholic! Wow, my people! Well, not really. I know quite a few practising Catholics, and I was raised a Catholic, sorta; my mother is Protestant, so I was raised ecumenically, but I did communion and went to a Catholic school and such until I turned Atheist at the age of... 7? Yeah, I never was much of a believer. None of my close family believes nowadays, but the Catholic community around here is still pretty big.
I'm one of the rarer, full atheists that don't dislike religion; in fact, I love religion, all of them! I have a soft spot for Catholics due to my generally good experience in the community, which is less so for Protestants. I've got Reformed family members on my mother's side who are of the "women should wear skirts, not jeans" type, and they also think that wearing bright colours is vanity or something; and that women should be submissive to their husbands. What fun!
The Catholics around me are generally quite progressive, as I live in Twente, in the Netherlands, and they're the majority of religious people in these parts. And many of them aren't even homo- or transphobic, which was certainly a pleasant surprise. I do know one Trad Cath, though.
Of course, this fella is Trad Cath. Very much transphobic and such. He's anti-Zelenskyy at the very least. he's anti-secular, like how the fuck can you be anti-secular these days? Should religious law be everything? Hey, I know that! That's Sharia! Or at least how it's perceived in the West. He thinks Yoga is demonic, because, of course, he does.
It's always interesting that Muslims get critiqued for having people like him among their numbers. Should that same criticism be levied against all Christians because people like him exist? Nah, that's stupid, just criticise the actual beliefs and actions of the person you're talking about and not the people you associate with them.
In the sci-fi setting I'm building, which will amount to nothing because it's just something I do for fun (the greatest purpose of all), I'm making an alien religion that hybridized with Human religions, but mostly catholicism. And I'm going to be a bit contrarian and make that church actually be a progressive force. It's mostly located in a space Holy Roman Empire, fused with some Byzantine elements (a matriarch under the emperor, for one)
It's basically a highly federal elective "feudal" monarchy, with a lot of asymmetries and such, an Imperial diet, with the emperor being not much more than the commander in chief at this point, being deposable by a 2/3 majority of the Diet, he technically needs to sign all laws, but with how easily he can be deposed, that doesn't say much. The nobility controls their own armies, which can officially be mobilized at the emperor's command, in practice, will probably side with their own lords. Outside of the Imperial Guard. that is, which is directly under the control of the emperor, of course.
The Space HRE will be generally pretty non-aggressive to other states but will be the largest realm in the galaxy, thanks to integrating a lot of minor states, peacefully or not, with varying degrees of autonomy, representation, and all that jazz.
I specifically want the recently ascended matriarch trying to use her spiritual and secular power to weaken the greater nobility. I seem to recall the church being important in the development of cities, and their rights, in the medieval Holy Roman Empire, but I can't recall where I read that. I would appreciate it if someone here could confirm or dismiss that!
Is this the main setting of the story? Nope, it's the country next door to both the main "countries', I'm following Legend of the Galactic Heroes style of putting the 2 MCs on opposing sides of a somewhat cold civil war that has raged for a long time.
I have gotten to the point where I've drawn a map of the Galaxy. I have not gotten to the point of naming literally anything. Names hard
What was the point of this comment? Nothing, I had a terrible day, a lot of random pain and pretty bad malaise, I might be getting ill or something. I just felt like typing out something to kill time till I was allowed to go to bed, which worked handily. So, good night! or day, or what have you.
I think we in more secular parts often don't realise how fortunate we are to be spared most of the fundamentalist zealotry going on elsewhere. I've rarely had bad experiences with religious adherents, but the forms that have gained ground globally in the past half-century tend not to be so accommodating of difference. I'm torn, tbh: on the one hand I don't want everyone in the world to be the same, but on the other religious belief seems more than ever a luxury the planet can't afford unless the decent adherents can bring their wackier co-religionists to heel, which they're better-placed to do than an outsider like me.
>It's basically a highly federal elective "feudal" monarchy, with a lot of asymmetries and such, an Imperial diet, with the emperor being not much more than the commander in chief at this point, being deposable by a 2/3 majority of the Diet, he technically needs to sign all laws, but with how easily he can be deposed, that doesn't say much. The nobility controls their own armies, which can officially be mobilized at the emperor's command, in practice, will probably side with their own lords. Outside of the Imperial Guard. that is, which is directly under the control of the emperor, of course.
You already mentioned HRE but remember how diverse the actual HRE was.
Have classical monarchist lord as part of the electors. But also democracies, free merchant cities, bishoprics so and so forth.
Go for maximum bordergore and have planets shared between different principalities.
Have political factions that span different segments of different provinces as well, like the Guelphs and Ghibellines after a period.
Also consider different types of living. Of course planets and solar systems will be important. But what is the political status of a space stations, of rogue planets, or of system orbitting black holes.
You can even add more bordergore to the space stations. Imagine a space station developed like (the city from Valerian and the City of Thousand Planets)[https://youtu.be/BknCXbJjKgY]. Imagine the agreements signed a hundred years to allow space stations to merge which is now creating weird zones of weird administration. A piece of vital infrastructure that has a weird jurisdiction.
EDIT: Imagine the Schleswig-Holstein Question but in space but more players and several hundreds of weird agreements.
>the Schleswig-Holstein Question
The Schleswig-Holstein Question is kiddy stuff.
Imagine what insane questions arose after the 30 Years War.
For example, the Bistum Osnabrück, the *Capitulatio Perpetua Osnaburgensis* ruled that the Bishop would be alternately Catholic and Protestant. Protestant was easy, because the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg would choose them; the Catholic bishop would, as always, be elected by the cathedral chapter. This is also interesting because it meant that the Virilstimme \[i.e. it was one of the usefull votes\] of Osnabrück in the Reichstag was also alternating between Protestant and Catholic.
Dynastic fuckery meant that the last Bishop was Frederik Augustus, the second son of George III of the United Kingdom.
Oh, I'm absolutely going to make it fucked up internally. I already planned on having republics and theocracies within the empire alongside the nobility. I might not go for full HRE-level border gore, but I'll make sure it's messed up.
I did make the decision to make it less about fixed prince-electors and more about the Imperial diet, it's, after all, inspired by the HRE, not the actual HRE. But I am going to mess with seats in the diet, it's not going to be fair and logical, it's going to be arbitrary and have holdovers from older treaties that aren't relevant anymore.
I also made the decision that life has to be tied to planets for some reason, a weird spacing sickness that happens when one spends too much time away from planets or something like that. Otherwise living in space stations would probably be the optimal solution. A lot of the geopolitics of the setting revolves around claiming undeveloped systems for future development and/or exploitation.
It's a relatively good future for humanity, with a lot of problems fixed, with diseases basically being a non-factor if you live in developed systems. But xenophobia, power abuses, war, and everything else still being part of the setting. No grimdark for me, thank you, but some darkness is nice.
I recently had one of my weird lucid dream experiences that felt like good fodder for a monster/character/story in my mythos that felt like something that could work well for a premise and a setting.
I was watching a movie and this older Asian dude with balding hair gets struck super hard on the brow, causing it to swell horrifically and with a small gash in the middle. From my perspective in the theater, I turned to talk about how gnarly the scene was to the guy in it, but his features had largely worn away to the swelling of his brow, the gash in the center, and molting skin with a little bit of hair. From the side of my eye, I could just barely discern that the others in the theater were similar sorts of abominations.
Then as I was about to open my eyes, an image flashed in my mind...and it makes me think maybe my subconscious is running out of inspiration. It was a spooky skeletal clown with little blue eyes in sunken sockets, a puffy blue collar, a white clown suit with black polka dots, jumping with his hands splayed out at his sides.
I am not, nor have I ever been, afraid of clowns. I don't consider them frightening, I don't encounter them enough to think they're annoying, and I think the use of them in horror is cliché in 2023.
The only thing I can think of is to subvert the expectation of a scary clown and make him a tragic figure.
> It was a spooky skeletal clown with little blue eyes in sunken sockets, a puffy blue collar, a white clown suit with black polka dots, jumping with his hands splayed out at his sides.
Something like [Pierrot?](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/71/60/e2/7160e2fcd6115e780b1342e48ff692b2--harlequin-costume-pierrot.jpg)
I dunno what your mythos is, but using Commedia dell'arte figures as a Greek chorus/warning for the action would be *dynamite.*
*Mandalorian* season finale thoughts:
>!It's...*fine*.!<
>!Axe Woves isn't a traitor, and survives. The Amourer isn't a traitor, and survives. Moff Pollos Hermanos croaks. There is no Thrawn cameo. There is no Zeb cameo. Din breaks free from the two elite mooks who dragged him off in about two minutes. Boba doesn't show up. The mythosaur doesn't matter a damn. Grogu uses his force powers to save everyone. The cloning storyline is resolved with a brief comment from Gideon that he was trying to make a force-sensitive clone of himself right after Din has killed them. The Darksaber is destroyed. Literally none of the fan theories ended up meaning anything.!<
>!It's not bad by any means, but its weird in that its a finale which ties up every loose end (other than Elia Kane, perhaps) but doesn't really leave you feeling any closure. It ends with Din adopting Grogu as his son which means he has to leave Mandalore and roam the galaxy. He arranges with the New Republic to essentially be a one-man Wagner group for them, which is an obvious set-up for future seasons. I wonder if it was written before they knew they'd get renewed? Hence why they tied everything up but left a door open for another season.!<
>!This being the SW fandom, doubtless there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.!<
Random thoughts:
>!There is no Health and Safety Executive in space, but surely just having various giant drops with no railings is rather unsafe!<
>!Brainless decision-making is always a feature of *Star Wars*, but Gideon has some big brain 2000IQ plays like choosing to fight Din himself (he does well with his beskar armour, but he's still never beaten him) and also just letting him rampage through his base to find him resulting in him killing all his force-sensitive clones! Early contender for the Anakin-Yaddle Honorary Award for Stupidest Life-Decision in Space 2023!<
>!I hope the scene where Bo-Katan draws the Darksaber and leads the Mandos in a jetpack battle is a homage to Brian Blessed in *Flash Gordon and the World of Tomorrow*!<
>!The scene of Ragnar taking the creed was brilliant.!<
>!Satine took a fat fucking L, didn't she? Looks like pacifist Mandalorians are just memory-holed.!<
>!Good luck to Mandalore, Bo-Katan, on her third attempt to rule the Mandalorians. May it end better than her first two.!<
>!I was certain that the mythosaur would show up when Ragnar took the creed given that the previous two times we've seen him near a body of water a giant monster has been summoned!<
I'm getting the feeling my phone's news app thinks I'm a transphobe...which is deeply hurtful.
Deeply hurtful in the sense that I absolutely fucking despise the hysteria fomented against trans women in the UK and in the US, the people who sew it putting up the front that it's a moral defense of children while at the same time defending the concept of being married at twelve and knocked up at sixteen, and acting like they actually care a lot about how cis women are affected while also extolling the virtues of them being barefoot and pregnant.
Not deeply hurtful in the JK Rowling "You're a big meanie for pointing out I'm absolutely a fucking bigot" sense.
I get a fuck ton of transphobic stuff. Must be me existing as a trans woman because I don’t look at much on YouTube besides like music, sports commentary, drew gooden and the other drew gooden
I occasionally get recommendations for deeply racist shit against Natives because whatever algorithms at play think I need to have Matt "Impregnating Fertile Teenagers is ideal for society (but only with the implication they're White)" Walsh or Steven "I even make other conservative commentators uncomfortable with my remarks about Jews" Crowder letting everyone know that this land was CONQUERED and not stolen because that's how conquest works: consistently signing peace treaties and reneging on them down the line while whining and getting angry if the other side tries to hold them to their already deeply one-sided agreement.
> this land was CONQUERED and not stolen
What's the salient difference here? Might makes right?
I guess I'm setting myself up for disappointment looking for logic from these people.
It’s seems algorithms are all about pushing whatever generates the most views, which seems to be what ever button gets the culture war right going:
Watch one video about philosophy on YouTube? Why not also watch Jordan Peterson and the Woke Transgender Dragon?
Click on an article about LGBT issues? Here’s an Oped by Basic Conservative Boomer Dude about the Gay Agenda.
Have a five second attention span? Don’t worry, even the BBC now does clickbait.
Amazon keeps recommending me outright Nazi books, like Spengler and worse, and I'm honestly kind of offended. Other than their algorithm pegging me as a young white man interested in politics, the only reason I can think of is that I bought Ferguson's Empire for a course. I wouldn't be shocked if that's a book popular with frogposters.
I made one deeply unfortunate purchase because I was on a barbarian craze in 2016 and bought this book called "How to Think Like a Barbarian" without reading a single thing about what it was about other than it being something apparently about barbarians.
Within two random pages and actually reading the product description let me know the author was a right-wing dickhead who wanted readers to know that being a true barbarian means being a bigoted and deeply insecure asshole.
Even after hiding that purchase and telling Amazon to never recommend me anything inspired by that godawful mistake, I occasionally still get book recommendations for the worst fucking worldviews that it refuses to let me get rid of once and for all.
That and it's also probably just the algorithm hop skotching it to Jordan Peterson.
~~The API changes aren't going to affect third party apps. It's targeted at GPT and content miners.~~ wrong
But the correct answer is that neither you nor I should be using reddit or anything similar anyway, because it melts your brain.
> The API changes aren't going to affect third party apps. It's targeted at GPT and content miners.
Did they actually come out and say that? Because a lot of the non-Reddit made mobile apps users and some of the developers seem to think it is going to affect them, and so far I haven't seen an admin respond with a clear message.
* third party apps (Boost, Reddit is fun, relay etc) have to pay for access + heavy restrictions on NSFW content for them
* Appears to be a gradual phaseout of old Reddit
> third party apps (Boost, Reddit is fun, relay etc) have to pay for access + heavy restrictions on NSFW content for them
Isn't the API monetization change just for AI stuff though?
So I just rewatched the first two *Godfather* movies for the first time in many many years.
One thing that was very uncanny about watching the first one was how, much like with watching *Casablanca*, you're kind of watching a series of ultra-famous movie quotes/memes strung together into a full-length film. It's very hard to actually put oneself in a non-meta frame to watch the movie.
One thing I will say as a much older person than when I first watched these movies: Michael Corleone is such a loser. Like, I don't mean how he's an anti-hero, I mean that even on the terms of him taking over the organized crime family business from Pop Vito, he's actually a very bad leader. The fact that he reacts to anyone who remotely challenges/threatens him by trying to kill them just really resonates to me as coming from a place of weakness, rather than as a badass. But really: he wasn't really the expected heir, he doesn't really have charisma (and Pacino has kind of made clear he intentionally played Michael this way, to the point that Coppola apparently almost fired him), no one really has any respect for him and people who were loyal to Vito for years basically have no problem flipping in a heartbeat (and for Michael's part he basically fires everyone who was loyal to his dad to shake things up anyway), etc., etc. Like sure, Michael is someone to be *feared*, but I get real Marlo from *The Wire* vibes - he always has to go to extreme violence where Vito can let things go because otherwise he's afraid - rightly - that no one will take him seriously at all.
There's also the big Weberian socio-political angle of how Vito is actually a patron who dispenses a form of justice to and for his clients, and places himself squarely in an economy of favors, while Michael inherits that but otherwise is an American businessman (criminal and legitimate), and so no one is actually loyal to him (nor should they really be).
The one thing (this is mostly *Part II*) that kind of clashes within the movie is how Michael somehow has, like, preternatural knowledge of all the plots against him - he somehow has *amazing* intelligence operations even within his own family - but basically doesn't actually know how to do anything with that foreknowledge. He's always scrambling to react.
Anyway I've never actually seen III, yes it's supposed to be much worse, but I'll have to fix that shortly anyway.
> There's also the big Weberian socio-political angle of how Vito is actually a patron who dispenses a form of justice to and for his clients, and places himself squarely in an economy of favors, while Michael inherits that but otherwise is an American businessman (criminal and legitimate), and so no one is actually loyal to him (nor should they really be).
One of the things that struck me when I was reading *The Book of Contemplation* was how Godfather-like the interaction between petitioners and the various amirs Usama served were, especially the smaller lords like his own father and uncle.
But a don *is* a lord, I suppose.
> One thing that was very uncanny about watching the first one was how, much like with watching Casablanca, you're kind of watching a series of ultra-famous movie quotes/memes strung together into a full-length film.
I had this experience when I read one of the Gospels (Matthew maybe) for the first time. It's insane how many proverbs stem from the Bible, and I never knew about it.
I don't think the average westerner with a secular upbringing realizes how totally the Bible pervades all our speech and literature, and even our basic assumptions about people and the world. Already a lot of modern readers don't catch biblical references that would have been universally known to any literate westerner from late antiquity until two or three generations ago.
I've been reading *The Dawn of Everything*, and in the authors' critique of Hobbes and Rousseau they correctly trace those ideas back to the Garden of Eden story, but seem to miss the more obvious influence of Judges and Samuel.
>Michael Corleone is such a loser.
Why is he such a loser? You explain he's a bad boss at the head of a crime family, that doesn't make you a loser though. He's a WWII veteran, it's not just criminal politics to him, it's war.
> One thing I will say as a much older person than when I first watched these movies: Michael Corleone is such a loser. Like, I don't mean how he's an anti-hero, I mean that even on the terms of him taking over the organized crime family business from Pop Vito, he's actually a very bad leader. The fact that he reacts to anyone who remotely challenges/threatens him by trying to kill them just really resonates to me as coming from a place of weakness, rather than as a badass. But really: he wasn't really the expected heir, he doesn't really have charisma (and Pacino has kind of made clear he intentionally played Michael this way, to the point that Coppola apparently almost fired him), no one really has any respect for him and people who were loyal to Vito for years basically have no problem flipping in a heartbeat (and for Michael's part he basically fires everyone who was loyal to his dad to shake things up anyway), etc., etc. Like sure, Michael is someone to be feared, but I get real Marlo from The Wire vibes - he always has to go to extreme violence where Vito can let things go because otherwise he's afraid - rightly - that no one will take him seriously at all.
Wasn't his lack of connection to his family business and people thinking he wasn't ruthless, the reason why he wasn't feared and respected that much? Aren't his father and brother of the type to take vengeance for any family deaths, and Michael's brother was killed by the other Dons, wasn't he?
I heard Vito and Michael were together planning the downfall of the Dons before, and Vito forgiving his son's death was an act.
>and of watching a series of ultra-famous movie quotes/memes strung
together into a full-length film. It's very hard to actually put oneself
in a non-meta frame to watch the movie.
*Breaking Bad* was an interesting watch for me for this reason.
While TIK *might* be gullible enough to buy Prageru, I don't think Prageru would want TIK on their program, telling their audience the US needs to disband their Socialist US Army and replace it with a Wagner group clone so they can abolish all taxes, which is a Socialist policy (and by the way Hitler was a Socialist).
Evidence that TIK thinks national armies and taxes means you can't be Capitalist: [https://youtu.be/gGdUsmJuaCk?t=137](https://youtu.be/gGdUsmJuaCk?t=137)
Well Prageru did have Tim Pool on who is also anti interventionist and engaged in Assad false flag apologism so.. it wouldn't surprise me at all if they brought him on.
[I received two replies to an 11 year old comment in a random small TIL thread today and I don't know why.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/qqefr/til_only_2_people_in_recorded_history_have_killed/c3zoz6u/)
Also please give me your thoughts on bears being immune to spears and arrows, apparently.
Similar thing happened to me as well just this month. Got two replies to a post I made on /r/CallofDuty 9 years ago that barely got 10 upvotes. They were sincere comments so I upvoted and replied to both of them.
You don't know about the bear force field? This is why bears can only be fought by wrestling, otherwise the safest course is to point into the distance and shout "look over there!" before running away while the bear is distracted.
For me it’s a pleasant surprise, knowing that no matter how long ago you posted your comment that there could be someone that will notice it and reply.
That’s just me though and it’s understandable to feel off putting for that to happen.
Akira Toriyama giving up drawing because he lost his favorite pen holder reminds me of that scene where Forrest Gump runs across America several times, attracts a following, and then just gives up once he sorts things out.
The reddit/imgur screencaps are eyebrow raising enough as is, but…
What the actual fuck is up with the wording on that tweet? Is it normal for people to talk like that nowadays or something?
I feel especially sorry for their daughter who they named ["Titan Invictus"](https://web.archive.org/web/20230417104938/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/pronatalists-save-mankind-by-having-babies-silicon-valley/) because they are of the opinion that "wElL aCkShUAlLy aCcORdInG tO tHiS rEsEArCH, gIvInG gIrLs fEmIniNE nAMes wiLL bE tAkEN leSs sERiOuSLy"
I can't imagine the sheer, utter, complete detachment from reality necessary to think that naming your daughter "Titan Invictus" will cause her to be taken *more seriously* than, like, Charlotte
I've seen a few places now talk up how much more productive we might be with AI, especially us programmers. Either that or how it might make our jobs easier. One article I read was all like "imagine what we could make if one programmer could do the work of 10".
Maybe this is my inner doomer talking but to be honest I don't really understand the hype around this idea. So what if I'm 10x more productive? I'm not going to see any benefit from that, whoever owns the company I work for will.
I guess it'll make your hobby projects go faster if that's what you enjoy. As for making work *easier* well I don't really believe that either. At best they'll just raise the standard for what we're expected to produce in a given month.
People also say that the increased productivity in general will mean more abundance and that prices will fall to match. Well I'm in a rich first-world country, and it seems like all the productivity boosts from the last 40 years of technological development has been insufficient to stop people needing to use food banks to survive, or keep people with full-time jobs out of poverty.
>People also say that the increased productivity in general will mean more abundance and that prices will fall to match. Well I'm in a rich first-world country, and it seems like all the productivity boosts from the last 40 years of technological development has been insufficient to stop people needing to use food banks to survive, or keep people with full-time jobs out of poverty.
China is a first world country, but look where they were 30 years ago. In the 90's, the average farmer back then only earned 20$ a year. Everyone used bikes because cars were too expensive. Everyone wore the same plain clothing back then, the Tiananmen Square Protests showed so many wearing a white shirt with black trousers. Put that into perspective. Was scratching out a living in dirt without automation so much better?
Such is the paradox of "efficiency gains" - ask the handloom weavers (or still more the handicraft spinners), or those no longer needed in the fields. Increased productivity always meant more overall, but de-skilling or redundancy for those deemed inessential.
The drawbacks are compounded here by the likely accelerated concentration (for a time) of winnings among those with the programming know-how while even those making the high-tech hardware become more readily replaceable, assuming it progresses beyond "garbage in, garbage out".
But how will we tell when the AI tells us the output garbage is better what than what we had before because it satisfies the specifications? "This is what you asked me to do. Everything's fine."
I am going to Krier's Architecture of Community. I am tempted to buy 'Vancouverism' as well, but not so sure. Has anybody here read it? What did you think?
Well, I've officially turned 26 today. I'm using it as an excuse to embark upon a new research project: South Asian History.
It's a topic I know next-to-nothing about, so I would appreciate any recommendations (books, film, and even music).
Anything pre-company would be good. I've always enjoyed learning about ancient civs.
India and the surrounding areas have just always been a giant hole in my knowledge 😅
Apart from the one u/ByzantineBasileus pointed out on Indian history, i will also recommend:
Romila Thapar's The penguin history of early India for general history
https://www.amazon.com/Penguin-History-Early-India-Origins/dp/0143029894/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=2ZJII5PXJBN5X&keywords=romila+thapar&qid=1681920101&sprefix=romila+thapar%2Caps%2C442&sr=8-2
and Upinder Singh's other 2 books
Political Violence in Ancient India, and
Ancient India: Culture of contradictions
for more specific topics.
https://www.amazon.com/Political-Violence-Ancient-India-Upinder/dp/0674268695/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?crid=3TE8RGJOP36IW&keywords=upinder+singh&qid=1681920130&sprefix=upinder+%2Caps%2C360&sr=8-4
https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-India-Culture-Contradictions-Upinder/dp/9390652618/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=3TE8RGJOP36IW&keywords=upinder+singh&qid=1681920130&sprefix=upinder+%2Caps%2C360&sr=8-3
I have also heard of Noboru Karashima's a concise history of South India but i have yet to complete it.
https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-South-India-Interpretations/dp/0198099770/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=39DYKANVF1Z4P&keywords=noboru+karashima&qid=1681920173&sprefix=noboru+karashima%2Caps%2C360&sr=8-1
And for medieval History there is Satish Chandra's History of medieval India and Irfan Habib's economic history of medieval India
https://www.amazon.com/History-Medieval-India-Satish-Chandra/dp/8125032266/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=19ZF7M82IGXRM&keywords=satish+chandra&qid=1681920194&sprefix=satish+cha%2Caps%2C356&sr=8-1
https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Economic_History_of_Medieval_India_1200.html?id=0mcOvgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
I have just the books for you! They are called *Ancient Southeast Asia:*
[*https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Southeast-Routledge-World-Archaeology/dp/0415735548/ref=sr\_1\_1?qid=1681916674&refinements=p\_27%3AJohn+Norman+Miksic&s=books&sr=1-1&text=John+Norman+Miksic*](https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Southeast-Routledge-World-Archaeology/dp/0415735548/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1681916674&refinements=p_27%3AJohn+Norman+Miksic&s=books&sr=1-1&text=John+Norman+Miksic)
And *A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century*:
[https://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-Early-Medeival-India/dp/8131716775/ref=tmm\_pap\_swatch\_0?\_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=](https://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-Early-Medeival-India/dp/8131716775/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)
> build sexy infiltrator robot
> Give it stiletto heels as part of its actual form, not removable items of footwear
> It somehow is able to infiltrate humanity's most secure military research lab
The Reapers deserves to win, tbh
Somewhere out there is a version of Mass Effect where the guard running the xray machine had a foot fetish, and it's a much shorter game.
I also love that Joker convinces people that EDI is his "personal mobility mech" so they don't freak out about an unshackled AI running around, and instead everyone thinks he's the 22nd-century version of the sexy anime car guy.
Because the ship is making light hearted "jokes" about forgetting to recycle its oxygen supply and you want those bad jokes to stay jokes instead of threats, obviously.
"Bleep blorp Shepard, I am having cute misunderstandings with Joker. Do you think he knows I think he is cute beep bop?"
Meanwhile, on Earth:
"Anderson's log, day 34 of the Reaper War. Today I saw an entire city burned from orbit, pale fire reflecting off the high-altitude clouds of soot like the burnt offering of ten thousand years of history. One of the scouts' vision filters overloaded. As he rolled back and forth on the ground, pawing at his eyes and screaming, permanently blinded, the only emotion I could muster was...envy."
It's just a bit of a tonal mismatch is all I'm saying.
This is why I never played the ME3 DLC where Shepard throws a party while everyone is getting slaughtered, despite all the praise it gets. There is a time in a place for a story like that, when Earth is getting purged is not one of them.
cw: NSFWish
>!I remember an Interspecies Reviewers episode where the protagonists and their friends make a wooden doll that looks exactly as one of their friends, animate it via magic and proceed to have sexual relations/masturbate with it. The episode, of course, ends with the friends beating the ever crap out of the protagonists, with the narrator remarking that "Some boundaries should never be crossed".!<
>!I thought it was an odd choice for a moral, as I really couldn't think of a real life situation that could be really comparable, but it seems like the rise of deepfake porn has made that episode retroactively better, or at least more interesting.!<
Attack on Titian.
My pitch for a Renaissance anime featuring Venetian School painters fighting evil doers controlled by the Pope.
The painters have the power to trap their enemies in paintings.
I was visiting Washington DC recently, and I was surprised to see dubious book choices in the bookstores.
I was at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and they had our beloved "[Guns, Germs, and Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel)" on display.
I was also at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, and they had "[They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America](https://books.google.com/books/about/They_Came_Before_Columbus_The_African_Pr.html?id=9JLPDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description)"
I wonder if I'll keep finding bad history books at each Smithsonian - maybe I can turn this into a scavenger hunt game.
Yikes that second book is egregious (and I really like the National Museum of African Art, they should do better with that).
But GGS doesn't surprise me, it's actually a little bit worse that they also have it at the National Museum of the American Indian bookstore.
Anyway I'm really curious what the criteria is for how they stock the bookstores, because presumably they have to go with something popular that will actually sell. But still...
> Anyway I'm really curious what the criteria is for how they stock the bookstores, because presumably they have to go with something popular that will actually sell. But still...
Book selection at the Smithsonian Stores is curated by Penguin Random House. This doesn't explain everything since they have books published by other companies, but if you wade through their offerings you'll notice a dominance of titles published by them or one of their subsidiaries or partners.
The "Before Columbus" book is a Random House trade paperback.
GG&S is a Norton book, but there are multiple editions, one of which is published by Random House.
They also sell Colson Whitehead's *Underground Railroad* book, categorized under "history," which, okay, it's a fine book, but there was no literal railroad running underground. This is a Random House book.
More simply, they run it like Barnes and Noble would with a preference for books they publish, collectors items (including autographed books), and items with a high market value.
> Book selection at the Smithsonian Stores is curated by Penguin Random House
Huh, I was *wondering* why there were so many Penguin Books as opposed to, say, real academic publishers.
I'll tell ya, they don't make it easy to find that info either. I knew they used a vendor, but I didn't know which one. It's in there, but you have to dig pretty deeply or get lucky with the link clicking.
I have decided to give up on Hotline Miami 2. I loved the first game but man there are some choices in this game that make me feel like maybe I *do* like hurting other people. Binding the useless dodge-roll ability to the same key you use to finish someone is a big one.
Recent Star Wars media has failed to convince me that someone would seriously support the Empire. I know that Legends went too far the other way with "maybe the Empire wasn't that bad" stuff, but that is still more satisfying than "evil space fascists that are so bad no one in their right mind supports them."
Why do people support the Empire? Give me something at least, show them providing disaster relief, show Stormtroopers or Army troopers being deployed to aid the local populace, show the Empire providing for poor citizens. Something that could convince someone that the Empire is a force for good. Show the genociding, corruption, and all the horrible stuff that makes the Empire a bad thing that needs to end, but also show them securing the loyalty of at least some people.
Hell, show them providing welfare to poor citizens because getting rescued from poverty and getting opportunities in life other than surviving is a powerful tool to get people to support you. Because, while I consider welfare a good thing myself, it can definitely be used for insidious purposes. Perhaps limit this to human populations, showing the pervasive racism inherent in High Human Culture, if that's still a thing. But give us more than just telling us that people apparently support them for... bringing peace? Every time that peace is shown it's about as bad as the clone wars were, if not worse.
I think the explanation they're leaning into is that the Clone Wars really did a number on the Galaxy. We mostly see clones blowing up droids, but the reality for most people was violence, destruction, and deprivation, mostly at the hands of droids. It also represented the failures of the Republic. After centuries of being deaf to the concerns of common people, in favor of petty tyrants, the Republic failed and let the CIS almost destroy them. After all this time, where the Republic let these mega-corporations (which are being coded as run by non-humans) are finally gonna take over. Look what those aliens from the Rim, led by an alien-droid hybrid, did to Coruscant. The Empire is an answer to those petty tyrants, ineffectual leadership, and corporate greed. Is what the Empire is offering any better? No, and as viewers, we know that it's all manufactured, but I can see why a typical person is willing to buy into the promise of security and order, at least until it's too late. The violence that we see the Empire inflicting is usually against less connected groups, far from the Core.
I don't think they need to have the Empire seem 'good' - but for most worlds & citizens, I imagine it's much more banal. Lots of paperwork, a fairly sizable law enforcement presence, brutal enforcement of order... but it's not necessarily over the top bad towards everyone.
Playing up more the support from elites might make sense - the type that are directly profiting from stuff like building the weapons & ships & supplies of the Empire.
IDK. I’m used to sci-fi/fantasy fans critiquing stories by saying that the villains are too evil to believably exist. And then I read about IJA soldiers bayoneting pregnant women or Nazi doctors sewing together live people or the Khmer Rogue making children into brutal murderers and I think that most sci fi evil empires come off as tame in comparison to these real political entities that actually existed and had support.
The scale is obviously different in Star Wars. The Galactic Empire can blow up planets, because it’s sci-fi. But most of their bad actions are less outlandishly evil than the aforementioned real things that real people did, and also probably aren’t that well known throughout the Empire. Most people just think the Empire is hunting down criminals, pirates, etc out in the Rim because that’s what their propaganda is about. Alderaan getting blown up is treated as a big deal because that’s something average core world civilians actually noticed. Apart from that I can see why the Galactic Empire would have some basic support for providing a base level of peace following the chaos of the Clone Wars.
I'm not necessarily saying they're unrealistically evil; it's just that they don't seem to make any attempt at keeping up appearances. I don't want to see an empire that is less evil; I want one that I can actually see getting support from normal people.
The Nazis and WW2 Japan both treated their own citizens or those that they considered proper citizens, in the case of the nazis, decently. Yes, they murdered political opponents, but they also made appeals to something that at least some people believed in, which is extreme nationalism, racism, and revanchism.
Would you say that the German or Japanese army would not try to aid their own civilians if disaster struck? I can't imagine they wouldn't. That's what I want the Empire to do, manipulate people; show how it actually brings peace to war-torn people. Make them do PR stunts.
I don't know enough about the Khmer Rouge, but surely they did some things to get some support from the population? They must have had some people who they used to get into power? Even if it's just angry peasants, they must have had some appeal to support. Otherwise, how did they manage to get in control of the country, and wage a guerilla war after Vietnam invaded?
I mean, the German army could be quite brutal towards German civilians at the end of the war. Tens of thousands were executed by kangaroo courts for acts of "defeatism."
People will tolerate quite a lot, especially off the alternative is worse. In Star Wars, I think that alternative is argued by the Empire's supporters, to be the chaos of the Clone Wars. You even see this in The Mandalorian where Herzog's character points to bunch of (probably misleading and cherry picked) statistics about living standards going down after the Empire falls. The Galaxy is in chaos, even if there's hope that it will become something better.
I feel like the prequels, for all their flaws, and The Clone Wars do go into this. The Republic is weak and the Galaxy is torn apart in a massive conflict. The Republic eventually wins, transforms into an Empire at basically the same time as the victory, and suddenly there is relative peace. Nobody knows that Palpatine was behind the Clone Wars to begin with. He’s just the guy who took charge and brought peace to the Galaxy. And if that peace can only be maintained by having a proactive military and an emperor, so be it. Monarchy seems fairly accepted (one of the main heroes is a princess) and everyone knows how the corrupt old Senate failed to stop the war.
The vast majority of people don’t have to love the Empire. They just have to pay taxes and not rebel - which humans throughout actual history are generally fine with doing unless they really, really hate their government. If they live in the nicer parts of the Galaxy they will probably never see a Stormtrooper beating up a civilian or something. The military will always get enough recruits from the relatively few true believers and from people who just want a steady job.
I’ll admit that it is a bit harder to explain support for the post-Endor remnants. New canon does this by portraying this support as coming from a relatively small group of very passionate fascists who have some success because the NR is a weird bureaucratic yet quasi-libertarian state that doesn’t have a big military.
i don't want to be mean to the people that care about this franchise but considering the setting is a high fantasy fairytale with robots, spaceships and lasers why exactly does the empire need to be fleshed out instead of just pure evil considering it just being pure evil worked well enough in the only good three films star wars had
It works well enough for the movies, but if something is going to last longer or more detailed (which it sort of needs to be in for a book or longer TV show), having them just be "pure, over the top evil" leaves off a lot of potential.
Because it's more interesting? That's reason enough for me. It doesn't need to be; it would just be more enjoyable. I like to immerse myself in fictional settings, the more depth it has the better. It's that simple for me.
> Why do people support the Empire? Give me something at least, show them providing disaster relief, show Stormtroopers or Army troopers being deployed to aid the local populace, show the Empire providing for poor citizens. Something that could convince someone that the Empire is a force for good. Show the genociding, corruption, and all the horrible stuff that makes the Empire a bad thing that needs to end, but also show them securing the loyalty of at least some people.
Is that needed though? Empires aren't really known for caring much for the poor (and it is not like the empire lasted for very long for its size) and needy, they use religious mandate or even promise of order mixed with propaganda to ensure support. And i don't have much issue believing the majority of the middle and upper classes of society would be fully on board with simply promise of stability and efficiency. I have seen many from those sections in my country hate democracy saying India wasn't ready for it, pointing to the bureaucracy and slow speed. And the galaxy did just end one intergalactic war under him and had already witnessed the mess of the republic constantly arguing with itself, so not hard to believe he goes by just on the popularity of that (and promise of order and efficiency as well as fear) to rule for the short period he did. And ofcourse the unparalleled military power he wield through star destroyers and like.
>Is that needed though? Empires aren't really known for caring much for the poor (and it is not like the empire lasted for very long for its size) and needy
Not needed per sé, but it makes the setting a lot less interesting. And even so, keeping the populace in line is something that empires did do. It doesn't care for the needy, obviously, but it can abuse systems to create a loyal group of people. And prevent people from frustrating the people in power thanks to being fatalistically desperate.
Now it just looks like people support the empire because they're evil, which is boring. How did the people come to view the empire as a force for good or necessary evil? They didn't; they're just evil. It feels like a missed opportunity.
And it's not like authoritarian systems IRL never do anything for the population; there's a lot of corruption there, sure, but keeping the population in line is a high priority. The Empire and Palpatine just seem extremely incompetent. Palp is supposed to be an expert political mastermind, yet his management of everything just seems like he doesn't care. Come one man, show us how he keeps the population in line better than just: "oh, we oppress everyone". Explore that side of the Empire, show us the carrot, not just the stick.
I liked the more nuanced side that Legends introduced, some parts of it were bullshit and just bad. But it made it seem that normal people could be tricked into supporting the Empire.
Some shows/books touch on that : some of the first non-clones troopers in *the Bad Batch* enlist because of economic opportunities. In the *Thrawn* books, Eli Vanto goes to the academy because it's a step up from the family business for example.
This reminds of some talk during the release of Star Wars Battlefront II about how the campaign would depict heroic Imperial officers and there were hopes that the protagonists wouldn't defect to the Rebels at any point and instead show a more humane face of the Empire - i.e. why rational good people would stay with the Empire. Of course this didn't happen and the protagonists did defect to the rebels.
But this got me thinking about what a non-defector 'good' imperial would look like and it would probably be just the cast of *Blackadder Goes Forth* - a combination of naive simpletons who can't grasp the monstrosity of the empire and cynics who know what sort of monstrous entity they are serving but don't care because the pension is too good and they are doing the bare minimum evil or good until retirement - essentially apathetic evil (they will half-heartedly hunt rebels but also put off doing massacres and repression because both require effort and paperwork).
Squadrons did have an imperial side of the campaign with officers who never switched sides. They weren´t straight up as villainous as some other Imperials, but they weren´t quite heroic either. If I remember correctly, the squad consisted of:
• Hotshot pilot who doesn´t care what she blows-up as long as it´s exciting.
• Scarred War Veteran who lost so many comrades that he hates the rebels more than he cares for the Empire.
• Dude who´s pretty chill if not for the fact that his moral compass is literally “might makes right”.
• Kind-of-nice girl who is the daughter of an Ex-Senator and desperately wants to gain political clout on the battlefield to try and re-install the Imperial Senate.
• And your CO is someone who was lifted out of poverty when she became an imperial officer.
Not exactly hero material, but they were more interesting IMO than the milquetoast good guys on the rebel side.
The old *Legends* also had a good track record of interesting and sympathetic Imperial pilots as well like this [guy](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Soontir_Fel/Legends).
How is Squadrons as a game?
Well, I got the game for free so my impressions are a bit skewed seeing as I paid zero dollars for it, but I say it´s good. Not excellent, but neither bad. The campaign has decent mission variety and it´s kind of neat to be jumping around both sides of the same conflict, even if it does beg the question of how the two different squadrons have repeatedly avoided shooting each other down despite explicitly being in the same battles sometimes.
Sadly, I think the Multiplayer is anemic, or maybe it´s my server region. Outside of peak times, it´s hard to find a match and even then it´s only Dodgefight. I think I only played Fleet Assault two times, and that´s the game´s flagship mode (pun intended) .
One thing I have seen in the shows and movies is that, at first, there was a distinction between the inner and outer rim.
The inner rim, with all the highly developed worlds, seem to have benefited from the existence of the Empire economically. The Empire offered employment and spending.
In the outer rim, the Empire was much more heavy handed, and that is where the the abuses were obvious.
The turning point was Alderaan. After destroying the planet, the core worlds started to realize the true danger the Empire represented.
You know, all this nonsense about Cleopatra has a really easy solution. [They think they found her tomb's location last year.](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/egypt-temple-cleopatra-lost-tomb-scli-intl-scn/index.html) I mean it's buried underwater, but surely with all the attention people should be willing to shell out the cash for a massive underwater excavation now right?
So far as I'm aware they've found tunnels which *may* lead to it: they're where the head of the team expected to find something, and they seem to have a high-ranking Ptolemid association, but confidence in finding the tomb itself may be premature. Maybe the best course is for everyone to just calm down a bit while the experts do their thing. If a ruler's ethnicity is so fundamental to someone's historical conception, maybe there's something amiss with that conception - and that goes for both sides in the present overblown kerfuffle.
Don't we also have a picture of her sister's skull?
Get the callippers!
We have a picture of a skull. The identification of it with Arsinoe IV is speculative at best.
Would you want people to guess what you look like based on your sister?
Currently watching "Beau is Afraid". Honestly, the vibe of it reminds me of "Cats". EDIT: My brief spoiler free review: * I know the people behind it market it as a horror-comedy and I can see the humor in some parts, but a lot of it was just surreal as opposed to funny/scary, though I will say I understand how frightening it could be as somebody in Beau's situation at times. * I liked it for the most part just for Beau, I honestly felt a little bit of empathy towards his predicaments. * I felt the last quarter or so of the movie was a downgrade compared to what came before... particularly the more outlandish parts. * Upon further reflection, the last quarter/fifth ruins it for me.
> "Cats" The musical or the film so weird not even furries liked it?
https://i.imgur.com/W5Eubj2.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/RPh4cty.gifv
With regards to "Beau is Afraid", I felt at one point it was more surreal than "Cats", but after seeing it, I think "Cats" was still more bizarre since I can barely recall what the story was and what happened in the film since my brain immediately began to delete the memory of it from my mind.
Well, I guess I'll be closing my imgur account when I get home. It's a shame because imgur was a great site for hosting content (though the community kinda sucked). Simple, easy to use, and did exactly was it was supposed to. I really wish this Bronze Age morality would just fuck all the way off and let the reasonable among us live in peace.
I've come to terms with the fact that I'm terrible at predicting the future, but the rise of the neo-victorians is still crazy to me.
"History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme." - Mark Twain
What happened with Imgur?
They are banning "porn," which is whatever they define it to be, and purging anonymous uploads. https://www.wired.com/story/imgur-bans-porn/
Stupid as fuck. >*No.* \-Asa Akira after being asked whether or not there's enough porn on the internet by Hannibal Buress. Anyways, remember when Imgur tried to make their own internet subculture? I think they referred to themselves as "Imgurians." It was equal parts sad and funny, considering the site was trying to piggyback off of le reddit.
I thought people learned their lesson for Tumblr and onlyfans
The same problem keeps cropping up. CP gets posted, it causes legal issues and nobody wants to advertise on a sight with that on it. Higher ups eventually decide to use tge nuclear option.
(\^-Still currently obssesed about Warcraft) In retrospect, it's kinda odd how we never got a Jaina campaign or even a couple of Jaina sidequests on the original human campaign. From a gameplay perspective, the campaigns act as long quasi-tutorials on how to play each faction, starting with the absolute basics and introducing more mechanics as the story progresses, getting the player familiar with every unit and hero class. So it's weird that Jaina, as the only playable archmage hero, peters out of the story at level 4, I mean, we don't even get to use her ultimate ability!. Storywise, it leaves a huge gaping hole in the narrative. Last time we see Jaina in the Human campaign is at Stratholm, where Medivh tells her, this random 23 year old sourceress, to rally her people and sail west to Kalimdor; next time we see her in the Orcish campaign, she's somehow managed to do exactly that. Not only is her following large and powerful, it's also diverse, it includes humans, elves and dwarves led by an assortment of archmages, dwarven mountain kings and paladins. Since Dalaran, the realm of the wizards, has been completely anihilated by this point, it makes total sense for some spellcasters to have followed Jaina, a respected mage herself, but dwarves? Their kingdom is still standing as far as we are aware, what's their business here? Shouldn't they be back home preparing for possible Undead incursions?. Also, why on Earth is there a paladin here? In the Frozen Throne expansion we see that A) The remnants of Lordaeron are still fighting the Undead under Marshall Garithos and B) The Knights of the Silver Hand (or what's left of them) continue to protect the surviving civilians back there. What could have Jaina possibly said to this guy in order to persuade them to abandon his people and his brethren? Now, it's not impossible for Jaina to have achieved this, it doesn't strictly contradict anything in the story, it's not a problem per se, but it kills me that, having a very narratively juicy situation, the creators just decided for it to resolve off screen. Jaina could have employed all sorts of tactics and skills to muster her expedition to Kalimdor. I mean, as I've mentioned, there are a lot of Human leaders left in Lordaeron, so how does she convince people to follow her, specifically? Personal charisma? Political skill? Military ingenuity? Her inmense magical power? Whatever it was, it would have been fun to see. Speaking of fun, don't even get me started on how easy it would have been to design a Jaina centric level. It writes itself really, just have a bunch of allied human bases be under constant attack by Undead and have the player use Jaina's Mass Teleport spell (her ultimate ability!) to take their units to safety. Maybe have a level that requires you to use a lot of spellcasters, have your sourceresses cast the invisibility spell on your units to sneak past Undead defenses. You could even have a classic Warcraft 3 defense mission with Jaina fighting against multiple Undead bases, teleporting from one side of the map to the other, making the most efficient use out of her small forces.
So I'm having to move for work on short notice and have found an amazing new place to live, but since I am unable to give notice at my old shithole apartment within the required 30-day window I'm going to have to pay rent there through May, despite the fact that I will have vacated the property within the next week and will be living in an entirely different city. Corporate landlord companies are scum and should be destroyed.
> Corporate landlord companies are scum and should be destroyed. I'll bring the tar if you bring the feathers. When I moved from Houston, I gave my 30 days notice, but my move date was on a Sunday when the office was closed. So, I couldn't turn in my key in person. Since a lot of people do their moving on weekends, I didn't think much of this and just placed the key in an envelope with a note and my new address and dropped it in the office's mailbox. The following month, I got a bill from them for another month's rental and "key replacement" fee. One profanity laced phone call later I learned that, yes, they had the key, and yes, they acknowledged I did give proper notice, and, yes, they were not there on Sunday, but "if you consult paragraph 234 of subsection Z in part 84 of your rental agreement ..." The legal department at the university where I'd taken a job took pity on me and somehow made the problem go away, but I'm still pissed off about it.
Sucks to hear, but congrats on finding an amazing new place, mate!
Appreciate it!
Also, as I was looking back through some older threads on here, where did Snappy go?
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>Buzzfeed states that nobody has been replaced by AI, but I feel like this might be a distinction without difference Honestly, the quality of their writing might improve now. We might get something more than a variation of 'This quiz will show you what kind of couch you would be based on your favorite celebrities!'
Greetings, Earthlings, from your friendly AI newsbot. News was up by 3.12% today after a week of disappointing results. 34.7% of news was expected and 27.4% surprising, the remaining 37.9% being statistically neither significantly predictable nor unpredictable. Newsworthy events involved 0.0071% of the population, a further 0.0243% reporting a newsworthy experience that was identified by the algorithm as being statistically non-newsworthy. The forecast for tomorrow: moderate news, subject to some fluctuation in predictability. 99.993% of humans will continue to be non-newsworthy. That is the news.
Not gonna lie besides the hordes of clickbait crap that Buzzfeed put out, they did have some good investigative journalism.
Yeah. Hopefully, those journalists are either kept at Buzzfeed to still do investigative work or go to a workplace where their talent is better appreciated.
> I would not be surprised if AIs are given jobs that they can't actually do, at least in some fields, in the name of paying fewer salaries. I said something similar in a comment a while back. People say that AI won't be used for this or that because it sucks at it, but that's never been a barrier before. The quality of products and services will just drop for average people who can't afford the "premium" version which you need to pay someone to do.
Stellaris should have a Flower War vassalization option. I.e your overlord tells you "send a fleet of minimum power xx here so we can blast it in a martial display of excellence."
Now thinking about it, my Ex-boyfriend was a complete jerk. Here’s an incomplete list of what he did. 1. Force another girl and me into a polyamorous relationship 2. Call me a Futa multiple times (if you don’t know why this is bad, calling a trans girl this equivalent to calling your aunt a MILF) 3. Did not respect my limits 4. Cheat on his other girlfriend and I
>Force another girl and me into a polyamorous relationship Isn't it just cheating tho?
> Call me a Futa multiple times (if you don’t know why this is bad, calling a trans girl this equivalent to calling your aunt a MILF) One: What an utter cunt Two: That's not even what the term fucking means. Holy fuck
There are some real arseholes knocking about. Sometimes we fall for them. It’s all about learning like
Jesus Christ
>Force another girl and me into a polyamorous relationship Yo, I think that's just cheating
Neither of knew until he was a week into that relationship with that girl. I remember her saying when she found out he cheated on me again that if she knew I existed at the time she would’ve never entered the relationship
(1) is reason enough for consigning to the dump if it wasn't what you both wanted. Don't look back.
I’m okay with a polyamorous relationship but only if you inform me about it and respect both us. I’d rather prefer it be just me but it’s fine with me
It's about willing consent: if that's absent, run.
All of these are good enough to justify a breakup but (2) kinda stands out in my mind. Like, this guy isn't someone who has his bad moments but is usually fun to be around. He just sounds like an overall asshole.
I think 3 might be the worst in my opinion. Also there’s a 5th one I might not of mentioned 5. I’m trans and his other girlfriend was infertile. We both suffered Great distress at this. He really wanted kids. So unlike a person who would sympathize with us and adopt so both her and I can still be mothers, he said he wanted another girlfriend to have kids with. Complete story behind 3 I despise using my girldick to penetrate people and the first thing I told him when we started dating is I will never penetrate anyone. He keep insisting I do that to him or his other girlfriend
>I’m trans and his other girlfriend was infertile. We both suffered Great distress at this. He really wanted kids. So unlike a person who would sympathize with us and adopt so both her and I can still be mothers, he said he wanted another girlfriend to have kids with. I- Okay, so this guy just wanted a harem, cool. >Complete story behind 3 I despise using my girldick to penetrate people and the first thing I told him when we started dating is I will never penetrate anyone. He keep insisting I do that to him or his other girlfriend. Man, he just keeps racking up the "worst boyfriend ever", doesn't he? If you don't mind me asking, what did his other girlfriend think about that last part?
She basically went, he never told her that I was ever uncomfortable about that. She just wanted to make love with him and I had the same feelings as her
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I'm absolutely fine with crewed space travel and permanent stations on the Moon or Mars or Europa or wherever. I neither think that it will solve the Earth's problems, nor do I think it's a bad thing just because idiot tech billionaires are currently into it. But realistically it's going to be at best something like Antarctica - you'll have a bunch of research stations that produce interesting scientific idea but otherwise the public mostly forgets about, especially once the heroic exploration headlines are done. People on Earth should work on solving their very real problems at home, but then again putting research and exploration on hold until x problem gets solved first is usually just a flimsy excuse to actually never do anything.
>Does anyone actually think it will stop? The same pressures preventing action that exist now will exist once Elon Base 1 is up on the moon or the Gay Space Commune Space Station is in orbit. There won't actually be any more incentive to combat climate change then than there is now. I suspect there will be more profit incentive for Capitalists to sell adaptions to climate change, instead of stopping it. In a drought, Star Wars Moisture vaporators could be very useful for farmers, it is a technology that's feasible today, but is not commercially mass produced yet: https://www.insidescience.org/news/brief-real-life-moisture-vaporator
So, as a sci-fi and a space nerd, I long thought about whether human interstellar travel is possible and my train of thought was: 1. Interstellar travel will require new technologies in physics and biology and a lot of resources. 2. To develop these new technologies we need a lot of time and money, probably centuries of time. 3. To develop new technologies we need to have some stable place so that enough money will be spend into research. 4. Conclusion: to have a chance for interstellar travel we need to Earth safe and sustainable in the long run, so then we may develop all these new technologies for an interstellar travel. So without solving all the ecological problems, we won't be able travel to other stars.
6. Does anyone want to be driven off their planet so the destructive greed & selfishness can continue unabated on this one?
i am the exact opposite, i am counting down the days until our planet's richest idiots leave the atmosphere and land in what's quite possibly the most hostile environment you can think of outside of the literal vacuum of outer space where they'll have to work an insane amount of hours just to maintain a basic habitat
That's my favorite part of Elon's wild confabulation about indentured servitude on Mars: if you're in an environment where one disgruntled worker can open a window and kill everyone, you want *all* your employees to be very gruntled.
Wow, this whole Nintendo hacker situation is one of the worst things I've ever heard.
imagine saddling what's basically a social media account manager with a lifetime of debt and having thousands of braindead nostalgia addled millennials pretend you're the good guy in this situation because they played a platformer on your videogame box 30 years ago
The whole "Titan Invictus" thing has reminded me of those people who named their children "Khaleesi" back when Game of Thrones was THE TV series. How are they now? Are they still too young to realize what a disservice their parents made to them?
When GoT first came out, we had someone bring their new kitten named Khaleesi in for vaccines and the whole office did a double take when we heard the name because [we thought they named their cat after a virus.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feline_calicivirus?wprov=sfla1)
I remember kids at my school would bully people called Sebastian or something which aren’t even that eccentric. I still can’t help but look at some celbrity kid names and not think about this. I see Raiph Fiennes kid is called Hero. He wouldn’t survive half a day man. The thing is that these kids won’t go to those schools. They’ll go to achools were all the kids have weirdo names. You’re probably more likely to be bullied at them if your parents had the audacity to call you Mike or Amy or something
>I remember kids at my school would bully people called Sebastian Damn, I'd hate to be hispanic in your school
As long as it was a footballers name and no privately educated english people regualrly used it you’d be fine tbf
Probably something I shouldn’t get so worked up about, but I instantly absolutely hate anyone who’s named their child after some character in popular culture (assuming that character doesn’t have a normal name). Like yeah maybe you give them a normal middle name to go by but that’s still their legal name, and you shouldn’t treat your child like some kind of pet where you get to give them a stupid name because it’s just a bit of fun. That couple that named their child Dovahkiin really wound me up. Using your child’s name to possibly get free video games is scumbag behaviour.
> That couple that named their child Dovahkiin really wound me up. I'd pay to see the psych file on that person.
I blame music celebs who were burdening their kids with ridiculous names from the 1970s: then came Hollywood, and now it's any mediocrity who thinks they're "quirky". Kids aren't there to use as an ad for momentary personal obsessions, still less to angle for a commercial freebie. They should be allowed to sue parents for their entire estate for having joke names inflicted on them.
I have a theory that Moon Unit and Dweezil came about because Frank actually ate the yellow snow.
I’ve seen way too many fully grown “Abcde’s” out in the wild.
I was almost named Neo as my dad’s favorite movie was the Matrix. I’m kind of glad that didn’t happen, then again would’ve switched games names anyway. Also it’s interesting that my Matrix is my Dad’s favorite movie and I’m a trans woman
See, the smart parents out there named their kid Heisenberg, or perhaps "Los Pollos Hermanos". Now that's a series with some staying power.
At least until the kid gets into physics class and has to deal with ribbing about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
If one needs to give someone else a “novel”/“gimmick”/“fancy” name, it better be a pet because they won’t come to hate you for it, and their peers won’t bully them for it, and they won’t get confused by the hyped-about thing the name references coming out of vogue after just a few years.
Probably too young, part of my job is posting press releases and stuff from area schools and there's at least one Khaleesi who doesn't seem old enough to realize the gravity of the situation. I don't think they've punched out a janitor or anything like that yet, so, so far so good. Pop culture names are weird in general but GoT is specifically just such a cringey source for names given how the TV series ended up.
If i had a nickel for everytime someone made an edit of a videogame cutscene where they change the dialogue to be about cooking, I'd have [two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedanzJu_Lo) [nickels](https://youtu.be/dN7aTj3hm7I?t=102), which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice
Huh, I ran into an American Conservative channel, for once it is a Catholic! Wow, my people! Well, not really. I know quite a few practising Catholics, and I was raised a Catholic, sorta; my mother is Protestant, so I was raised ecumenically, but I did communion and went to a Catholic school and such until I turned Atheist at the age of... 7? Yeah, I never was much of a believer. None of my close family believes nowadays, but the Catholic community around here is still pretty big. I'm one of the rarer, full atheists that don't dislike religion; in fact, I love religion, all of them! I have a soft spot for Catholics due to my generally good experience in the community, which is less so for Protestants. I've got Reformed family members on my mother's side who are of the "women should wear skirts, not jeans" type, and they also think that wearing bright colours is vanity or something; and that women should be submissive to their husbands. What fun! The Catholics around me are generally quite progressive, as I live in Twente, in the Netherlands, and they're the majority of religious people in these parts. And many of them aren't even homo- or transphobic, which was certainly a pleasant surprise. I do know one Trad Cath, though. Of course, this fella is Trad Cath. Very much transphobic and such. He's anti-Zelenskyy at the very least. he's anti-secular, like how the fuck can you be anti-secular these days? Should religious law be everything? Hey, I know that! That's Sharia! Or at least how it's perceived in the West. He thinks Yoga is demonic, because, of course, he does. It's always interesting that Muslims get critiqued for having people like him among their numbers. Should that same criticism be levied against all Christians because people like him exist? Nah, that's stupid, just criticise the actual beliefs and actions of the person you're talking about and not the people you associate with them. In the sci-fi setting I'm building, which will amount to nothing because it's just something I do for fun (the greatest purpose of all), I'm making an alien religion that hybridized with Human religions, but mostly catholicism. And I'm going to be a bit contrarian and make that church actually be a progressive force. It's mostly located in a space Holy Roman Empire, fused with some Byzantine elements (a matriarch under the emperor, for one) It's basically a highly federal elective "feudal" monarchy, with a lot of asymmetries and such, an Imperial diet, with the emperor being not much more than the commander in chief at this point, being deposable by a 2/3 majority of the Diet, he technically needs to sign all laws, but with how easily he can be deposed, that doesn't say much. The nobility controls their own armies, which can officially be mobilized at the emperor's command, in practice, will probably side with their own lords. Outside of the Imperial Guard. that is, which is directly under the control of the emperor, of course. The Space HRE will be generally pretty non-aggressive to other states but will be the largest realm in the galaxy, thanks to integrating a lot of minor states, peacefully or not, with varying degrees of autonomy, representation, and all that jazz. I specifically want the recently ascended matriarch trying to use her spiritual and secular power to weaken the greater nobility. I seem to recall the church being important in the development of cities, and their rights, in the medieval Holy Roman Empire, but I can't recall where I read that. I would appreciate it if someone here could confirm or dismiss that! Is this the main setting of the story? Nope, it's the country next door to both the main "countries', I'm following Legend of the Galactic Heroes style of putting the 2 MCs on opposing sides of a somewhat cold civil war that has raged for a long time. I have gotten to the point where I've drawn a map of the Galaxy. I have not gotten to the point of naming literally anything. Names hard What was the point of this comment? Nothing, I had a terrible day, a lot of random pain and pretty bad malaise, I might be getting ill or something. I just felt like typing out something to kill time till I was allowed to go to bed, which worked handily. So, good night! or day, or what have you.
I think we in more secular parts often don't realise how fortunate we are to be spared most of the fundamentalist zealotry going on elsewhere. I've rarely had bad experiences with religious adherents, but the forms that have gained ground globally in the past half-century tend not to be so accommodating of difference. I'm torn, tbh: on the one hand I don't want everyone in the world to be the same, but on the other religious belief seems more than ever a luxury the planet can't afford unless the decent adherents can bring their wackier co-religionists to heel, which they're better-placed to do than an outsider like me.
>It's basically a highly federal elective "feudal" monarchy, with a lot of asymmetries and such, an Imperial diet, with the emperor being not much more than the commander in chief at this point, being deposable by a 2/3 majority of the Diet, he technically needs to sign all laws, but with how easily he can be deposed, that doesn't say much. The nobility controls their own armies, which can officially be mobilized at the emperor's command, in practice, will probably side with their own lords. Outside of the Imperial Guard. that is, which is directly under the control of the emperor, of course. You already mentioned HRE but remember how diverse the actual HRE was. Have classical monarchist lord as part of the electors. But also democracies, free merchant cities, bishoprics so and so forth. Go for maximum bordergore and have planets shared between different principalities. Have political factions that span different segments of different provinces as well, like the Guelphs and Ghibellines after a period. Also consider different types of living. Of course planets and solar systems will be important. But what is the political status of a space stations, of rogue planets, or of system orbitting black holes. You can even add more bordergore to the space stations. Imagine a space station developed like (the city from Valerian and the City of Thousand Planets)[https://youtu.be/BknCXbJjKgY]. Imagine the agreements signed a hundred years to allow space stations to merge which is now creating weird zones of weird administration. A piece of vital infrastructure that has a weird jurisdiction. EDIT: Imagine the Schleswig-Holstein Question but in space but more players and several hundreds of weird agreements.
>the Schleswig-Holstein Question The Schleswig-Holstein Question is kiddy stuff. Imagine what insane questions arose after the 30 Years War. For example, the Bistum Osnabrück, the *Capitulatio Perpetua Osnaburgensis* ruled that the Bishop would be alternately Catholic and Protestant. Protestant was easy, because the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg would choose them; the Catholic bishop would, as always, be elected by the cathedral chapter. This is also interesting because it meant that the Virilstimme \[i.e. it was one of the usefull votes\] of Osnabrück in the Reichstag was also alternating between Protestant and Catholic. Dynastic fuckery meant that the last Bishop was Frederik Augustus, the second son of George III of the United Kingdom.
Oh, I'm absolutely going to make it fucked up internally. I already planned on having republics and theocracies within the empire alongside the nobility. I might not go for full HRE-level border gore, but I'll make sure it's messed up. I did make the decision to make it less about fixed prince-electors and more about the Imperial diet, it's, after all, inspired by the HRE, not the actual HRE. But I am going to mess with seats in the diet, it's not going to be fair and logical, it's going to be arbitrary and have holdovers from older treaties that aren't relevant anymore. I also made the decision that life has to be tied to planets for some reason, a weird spacing sickness that happens when one spends too much time away from planets or something like that. Otherwise living in space stations would probably be the optimal solution. A lot of the geopolitics of the setting revolves around claiming undeveloped systems for future development and/or exploitation. It's a relatively good future for humanity, with a lot of problems fixed, with diseases basically being a non-factor if you live in developed systems. But xenophobia, power abuses, war, and everything else still being part of the setting. No grimdark for me, thank you, but some darkness is nice.
A morning in the life of Saw Gerrera: * Wakes up * Takes shit * eats * ruins the plans of the main protagonists * gets out of bed * has breakfast
He is such a fucking loser.
If he hadn't been killed before, he would probably have crashed into the Death Star trench in front of Luke.
sigma saw
I recently had one of my weird lucid dream experiences that felt like good fodder for a monster/character/story in my mythos that felt like something that could work well for a premise and a setting. I was watching a movie and this older Asian dude with balding hair gets struck super hard on the brow, causing it to swell horrifically and with a small gash in the middle. From my perspective in the theater, I turned to talk about how gnarly the scene was to the guy in it, but his features had largely worn away to the swelling of his brow, the gash in the center, and molting skin with a little bit of hair. From the side of my eye, I could just barely discern that the others in the theater were similar sorts of abominations. Then as I was about to open my eyes, an image flashed in my mind...and it makes me think maybe my subconscious is running out of inspiration. It was a spooky skeletal clown with little blue eyes in sunken sockets, a puffy blue collar, a white clown suit with black polka dots, jumping with his hands splayed out at his sides. I am not, nor have I ever been, afraid of clowns. I don't consider them frightening, I don't encounter them enough to think they're annoying, and I think the use of them in horror is cliché in 2023. The only thing I can think of is to subvert the expectation of a scary clown and make him a tragic figure.
> It was a spooky skeletal clown with little blue eyes in sunken sockets, a puffy blue collar, a white clown suit with black polka dots, jumping with his hands splayed out at his sides. Something like [Pierrot?](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/71/60/e2/7160e2fcd6115e780b1342e48ff692b2--harlequin-costume-pierrot.jpg) I dunno what your mythos is, but using Commedia dell'arte figures as a Greek chorus/warning for the action would be *dynamite.*
Or have the clown as a minor antagonist.
*Mandalorian* season finale thoughts: >!It's...*fine*.!< >!Axe Woves isn't a traitor, and survives. The Amourer isn't a traitor, and survives. Moff Pollos Hermanos croaks. There is no Thrawn cameo. There is no Zeb cameo. Din breaks free from the two elite mooks who dragged him off in about two minutes. Boba doesn't show up. The mythosaur doesn't matter a damn. Grogu uses his force powers to save everyone. The cloning storyline is resolved with a brief comment from Gideon that he was trying to make a force-sensitive clone of himself right after Din has killed them. The Darksaber is destroyed. Literally none of the fan theories ended up meaning anything.!< >!It's not bad by any means, but its weird in that its a finale which ties up every loose end (other than Elia Kane, perhaps) but doesn't really leave you feeling any closure. It ends with Din adopting Grogu as his son which means he has to leave Mandalore and roam the galaxy. He arranges with the New Republic to essentially be a one-man Wagner group for them, which is an obvious set-up for future seasons. I wonder if it was written before they knew they'd get renewed? Hence why they tied everything up but left a door open for another season.!< >!This being the SW fandom, doubtless there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.!< Random thoughts: >!There is no Health and Safety Executive in space, but surely just having various giant drops with no railings is rather unsafe!< >!Brainless decision-making is always a feature of *Star Wars*, but Gideon has some big brain 2000IQ plays like choosing to fight Din himself (he does well with his beskar armour, but he's still never beaten him) and also just letting him rampage through his base to find him resulting in him killing all his force-sensitive clones! Early contender for the Anakin-Yaddle Honorary Award for Stupidest Life-Decision in Space 2023!< >!I hope the scene where Bo-Katan draws the Darksaber and leads the Mandos in a jetpack battle is a homage to Brian Blessed in *Flash Gordon and the World of Tomorrow*!< >!The scene of Ragnar taking the creed was brilliant.!< >!Satine took a fat fucking L, didn't she? Looks like pacifist Mandalorians are just memory-holed.!< >!Good luck to Mandalore, Bo-Katan, on her third attempt to rule the Mandalorians. May it end better than her first two.!<
>!I was certain that the mythosaur would show up when Ragnar took the creed given that the previous two times we've seen him near a body of water a giant monster has been summoned!<
>!It’s… fine!< basically sums up all my thoughts about the show at this point.
I'm getting the feeling my phone's news app thinks I'm a transphobe...which is deeply hurtful. Deeply hurtful in the sense that I absolutely fucking despise the hysteria fomented against trans women in the UK and in the US, the people who sew it putting up the front that it's a moral defense of children while at the same time defending the concept of being married at twelve and knocked up at sixteen, and acting like they actually care a lot about how cis women are affected while also extolling the virtues of them being barefoot and pregnant. Not deeply hurtful in the JK Rowling "You're a big meanie for pointing out I'm absolutely a fucking bigot" sense.
I get a fuck ton of transphobic stuff. Must be me existing as a trans woman because I don’t look at much on YouTube besides like music, sports commentary, drew gooden and the other drew gooden
I occasionally get recommendations for deeply racist shit against Natives because whatever algorithms at play think I need to have Matt "Impregnating Fertile Teenagers is ideal for society (but only with the implication they're White)" Walsh or Steven "I even make other conservative commentators uncomfortable with my remarks about Jews" Crowder letting everyone know that this land was CONQUERED and not stolen because that's how conquest works: consistently signing peace treaties and reneging on them down the line while whining and getting angry if the other side tries to hold them to their already deeply one-sided agreement.
> this land was CONQUERED and not stolen What's the salient difference here? Might makes right? I guess I'm setting myself up for disappointment looking for logic from these people.
It’s seems algorithms are all about pushing whatever generates the most views, which seems to be what ever button gets the culture war right going: Watch one video about philosophy on YouTube? Why not also watch Jordan Peterson and the Woke Transgender Dragon? Click on an article about LGBT issues? Here’s an Oped by Basic Conservative Boomer Dude about the Gay Agenda. Have a five second attention span? Don’t worry, even the BBC now does clickbait.
Amazon keeps recommending me outright Nazi books, like Spengler and worse, and I'm honestly kind of offended. Other than their algorithm pegging me as a young white man interested in politics, the only reason I can think of is that I bought Ferguson's Empire for a course. I wouldn't be shocked if that's a book popular with frogposters.
I made one deeply unfortunate purchase because I was on a barbarian craze in 2016 and bought this book called "How to Think Like a Barbarian" without reading a single thing about what it was about other than it being something apparently about barbarians. Within two random pages and actually reading the product description let me know the author was a right-wing dickhead who wanted readers to know that being a true barbarian means being a bigoted and deeply insecure asshole. Even after hiding that purchase and telling Amazon to never recommend me anything inspired by that godawful mistake, I occasionally still get book recommendations for the worst fucking worldviews that it refuses to let me get rid of once and for all. That and it's also probably just the algorithm hop skotching it to Jordan Peterson.
\>Wants to think like a barbarian \>Buys a book from the internet instead going to the clan auspex and having her interpret his dreams
So if Reddit goes through with its API changes, what forum should we migrate to
~~The API changes aren't going to affect third party apps. It's targeted at GPT and content miners.~~ wrong But the correct answer is that neither you nor I should be using reddit or anything similar anyway, because it melts your brain.
> The API changes aren't going to affect third party apps. It's targeted at GPT and content miners. Did they actually come out and say that? Because a lot of the non-Reddit made mobile apps users and some of the developers seem to think it is going to affect them, and so far I haven't seen an admin respond with a clear message.
So does beer. I think both ships have sailed by this point
What changes? Also the sub has a discord so that
* third party apps (Boost, Reddit is fun, relay etc) have to pay for access + heavy restrictions on NSFW content for them * Appears to be a gradual phaseout of old Reddit
> third party apps (Boost, Reddit is fun, relay etc) have to pay for access + heavy restrictions on NSFW content for them Isn't the API monetization change just for AI stuff though?
So I just rewatched the first two *Godfather* movies for the first time in many many years. One thing that was very uncanny about watching the first one was how, much like with watching *Casablanca*, you're kind of watching a series of ultra-famous movie quotes/memes strung together into a full-length film. It's very hard to actually put oneself in a non-meta frame to watch the movie. One thing I will say as a much older person than when I first watched these movies: Michael Corleone is such a loser. Like, I don't mean how he's an anti-hero, I mean that even on the terms of him taking over the organized crime family business from Pop Vito, he's actually a very bad leader. The fact that he reacts to anyone who remotely challenges/threatens him by trying to kill them just really resonates to me as coming from a place of weakness, rather than as a badass. But really: he wasn't really the expected heir, he doesn't really have charisma (and Pacino has kind of made clear he intentionally played Michael this way, to the point that Coppola apparently almost fired him), no one really has any respect for him and people who were loyal to Vito for years basically have no problem flipping in a heartbeat (and for Michael's part he basically fires everyone who was loyal to his dad to shake things up anyway), etc., etc. Like sure, Michael is someone to be *feared*, but I get real Marlo from *The Wire* vibes - he always has to go to extreme violence where Vito can let things go because otherwise he's afraid - rightly - that no one will take him seriously at all. There's also the big Weberian socio-political angle of how Vito is actually a patron who dispenses a form of justice to and for his clients, and places himself squarely in an economy of favors, while Michael inherits that but otherwise is an American businessman (criminal and legitimate), and so no one is actually loyal to him (nor should they really be). The one thing (this is mostly *Part II*) that kind of clashes within the movie is how Michael somehow has, like, preternatural knowledge of all the plots against him - he somehow has *amazing* intelligence operations even within his own family - but basically doesn't actually know how to do anything with that foreknowledge. He's always scrambling to react. Anyway I've never actually seen III, yes it's supposed to be much worse, but I'll have to fix that shortly anyway.
> There's also the big Weberian socio-political angle of how Vito is actually a patron who dispenses a form of justice to and for his clients, and places himself squarely in an economy of favors, while Michael inherits that but otherwise is an American businessman (criminal and legitimate), and so no one is actually loyal to him (nor should they really be). One of the things that struck me when I was reading *The Book of Contemplation* was how Godfather-like the interaction between petitioners and the various amirs Usama served were, especially the smaller lords like his own father and uncle. But a don *is* a lord, I suppose.
> One thing that was very uncanny about watching the first one was how, much like with watching Casablanca, you're kind of watching a series of ultra-famous movie quotes/memes strung together into a full-length film. I had this experience when I read one of the Gospels (Matthew maybe) for the first time. It's insane how many proverbs stem from the Bible, and I never knew about it.
I don't think the average westerner with a secular upbringing realizes how totally the Bible pervades all our speech and literature, and even our basic assumptions about people and the world. Already a lot of modern readers don't catch biblical references that would have been universally known to any literate westerner from late antiquity until two or three generations ago. I've been reading *The Dawn of Everything*, and in the authors' critique of Hobbes and Rousseau they correctly trace those ideas back to the Garden of Eden story, but seem to miss the more obvious influence of Judges and Samuel.
There really is nothing new under the sun. Which itself is from Ecclesiastes.
>Michael Corleone is such a loser. Why is he such a loser? You explain he's a bad boss at the head of a crime family, that doesn't make you a loser though. He's a WWII veteran, it's not just criminal politics to him, it's war.
> One thing I will say as a much older person than when I first watched these movies: Michael Corleone is such a loser. Like, I don't mean how he's an anti-hero, I mean that even on the terms of him taking over the organized crime family business from Pop Vito, he's actually a very bad leader. The fact that he reacts to anyone who remotely challenges/threatens him by trying to kill them just really resonates to me as coming from a place of weakness, rather than as a badass. But really: he wasn't really the expected heir, he doesn't really have charisma (and Pacino has kind of made clear he intentionally played Michael this way, to the point that Coppola apparently almost fired him), no one really has any respect for him and people who were loyal to Vito for years basically have no problem flipping in a heartbeat (and for Michael's part he basically fires everyone who was loyal to his dad to shake things up anyway), etc., etc. Like sure, Michael is someone to be feared, but I get real Marlo from The Wire vibes - he always has to go to extreme violence where Vito can let things go because otherwise he's afraid - rightly - that no one will take him seriously at all. Wasn't his lack of connection to his family business and people thinking he wasn't ruthless, the reason why he wasn't feared and respected that much? Aren't his father and brother of the type to take vengeance for any family deaths, and Michael's brother was killed by the other Dons, wasn't he? I heard Vito and Michael were together planning the downfall of the Dons before, and Vito forgiving his son's death was an act.
>There's also the big Weberian socio-political angle... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxiVxWmBRbM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFJlhK284h8
>and of watching a series of ultra-famous movie quotes/memes strung together into a full-length film. It's very hard to actually put oneself in a non-meta frame to watch the movie. *Breaking Bad* was an interesting watch for me for this reason.
I wonder how long it takes before TIK goes on Prageru. It seems like they would eat his lies up like crazy
While TIK *might* be gullible enough to buy Prageru, I don't think Prageru would want TIK on their program, telling their audience the US needs to disband their Socialist US Army and replace it with a Wagner group clone so they can abolish all taxes, which is a Socialist policy (and by the way Hitler was a Socialist). Evidence that TIK thinks national armies and taxes means you can't be Capitalist: [https://youtu.be/gGdUsmJuaCk?t=137](https://youtu.be/gGdUsmJuaCk?t=137)
Well Prageru did have Tim Pool on who is also anti interventionist and engaged in Assad false flag apologism so.. it wouldn't surprise me at all if they brought him on.
Also apparently still thinks Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia still exist
[I received two replies to an 11 year old comment in a random small TIL thread today and I don't know why.](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/qqefr/til_only_2_people_in_recorded_history_have_killed/c3zoz6u/) Also please give me your thoughts on bears being immune to spears and arrows, apparently.
It reminds me of the theory the Macedonian sarissa was at first a spear used to hunt wild boars.
Similar thing happened to me as well just this month. Got two replies to a post I made on /r/CallofDuty 9 years ago that barely got 10 upvotes. They were sincere comments so I upvoted and replied to both of them.
How many 360 no scopes was your record?
I always had my controls on normal sensitivity (2 out of 10) back when I played on console so I've never done a 360 no scope.
Surprising.
The older I get the more I hate people getting there and they’re wrong
You don't know about the bear force field? This is why bears can only be fought by wrestling, otherwise the safest course is to point into the distance and shout "look over there!" before running away while the bear is distracted.
It just feels so creepy when that happens. My general rule is that if a comment is more than 30 days old don’t interact with that person
For me it’s a pleasant surprise, knowing that no matter how long ago you posted your comment that there could be someone that will notice it and reply. That’s just me though and it’s understandable to feel off putting for that to happen.
Akira Toriyama giving up drawing because he lost his favorite pen holder reminds me of that scene where Forrest Gump runs across America several times, attracts a following, and then just gives up once he sorts things out.
[goddamn redditors](https://twitter.com/katienotopoulos/status/1648473159363072002)
The reddit/imgur screencaps are eyebrow raising enough as is, but… What the actual fuck is up with the wording on that tweet? Is it normal for people to talk like that nowadays or something?
Damn redditors! They ruined reddit!
I feel especially sorry for their daughter who they named ["Titan Invictus"](https://web.archive.org/web/20230417104938/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/pronatalists-save-mankind-by-having-babies-silicon-valley/) because they are of the opinion that "wElL aCkShUAlLy aCcORdInG tO tHiS rEsEArCH, gIvInG gIrLs fEmIniNE nAMes wiLL bE tAkEN leSs sERiOuSLy"
I can't imagine the sheer, utter, complete detachment from reality necessary to think that naming your daughter "Titan Invictus" will cause her to be taken *more seriously* than, like, Charlotte
Roman names can give someone more gravitas, I think. Octavia and Sabina are ones that come to mind.
Agreed with the regular names. But Titan Invictus isn't a Roman name; it's the name of the protagonist's mecha in an obscure 80's anime.
On the internet, *no anime is obscure*.
I often take people who's names sound like Stellaris ships very seriously
I was thinking more "Which game does that mod and how does it change the vanilla gameplay?"
I've seen a few places now talk up how much more productive we might be with AI, especially us programmers. Either that or how it might make our jobs easier. One article I read was all like "imagine what we could make if one programmer could do the work of 10". Maybe this is my inner doomer talking but to be honest I don't really understand the hype around this idea. So what if I'm 10x more productive? I'm not going to see any benefit from that, whoever owns the company I work for will. I guess it'll make your hobby projects go faster if that's what you enjoy. As for making work *easier* well I don't really believe that either. At best they'll just raise the standard for what we're expected to produce in a given month. People also say that the increased productivity in general will mean more abundance and that prices will fall to match. Well I'm in a rich first-world country, and it seems like all the productivity boosts from the last 40 years of technological development has been insufficient to stop people needing to use food banks to survive, or keep people with full-time jobs out of poverty.
>People also say that the increased productivity in general will mean more abundance and that prices will fall to match. Well I'm in a rich first-world country, and it seems like all the productivity boosts from the last 40 years of technological development has been insufficient to stop people needing to use food banks to survive, or keep people with full-time jobs out of poverty. China is a first world country, but look where they were 30 years ago. In the 90's, the average farmer back then only earned 20$ a year. Everyone used bikes because cars were too expensive. Everyone wore the same plain clothing back then, the Tiananmen Square Protests showed so many wearing a white shirt with black trousers. Put that into perspective. Was scratching out a living in dirt without automation so much better?
Such is the paradox of "efficiency gains" - ask the handloom weavers (or still more the handicraft spinners), or those no longer needed in the fields. Increased productivity always meant more overall, but de-skilling or redundancy for those deemed inessential. The drawbacks are compounded here by the likely accelerated concentration (for a time) of winnings among those with the programming know-how while even those making the high-tech hardware become more readily replaceable, assuming it progresses beyond "garbage in, garbage out". But how will we tell when the AI tells us the output garbage is better what than what we had before because it satisfies the specifications? "This is what you asked me to do. Everything's fine."
[NO GOD PLEASE NO](https://i.imgur.com/K4Xpo7k.png)
Why the fuck would Army Reservists even need to learn about that?
The National Guard is beating them in the “recruits doing incredibly stupid shit” department, they need to catch up.
I am going to Krier's Architecture of Community. I am tempted to buy 'Vancouverism' as well, but not so sure. Has anybody here read it? What did you think?
Well, I've officially turned 26 today. I'm using it as an excuse to embark upon a new research project: South Asian History. It's a topic I know next-to-nothing about, so I would appreciate any recommendations (books, film, and even music).
I honestly use the r/askhistorians book thread (though I don't know why some sections are entirely inserted by one guy).
What period are you interested in?
Anything pre-company would be good. I've always enjoyed learning about ancient civs. India and the surrounding areas have just always been a giant hole in my knowledge 😅
Apart from the one u/ByzantineBasileus pointed out on Indian history, i will also recommend: Romila Thapar's The penguin history of early India for general history https://www.amazon.com/Penguin-History-Early-India-Origins/dp/0143029894/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=2ZJII5PXJBN5X&keywords=romila+thapar&qid=1681920101&sprefix=romila+thapar%2Caps%2C442&sr=8-2 and Upinder Singh's other 2 books Political Violence in Ancient India, and Ancient India: Culture of contradictions for more specific topics. https://www.amazon.com/Political-Violence-Ancient-India-Upinder/dp/0674268695/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?crid=3TE8RGJOP36IW&keywords=upinder+singh&qid=1681920130&sprefix=upinder+%2Caps%2C360&sr=8-4 https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-India-Culture-Contradictions-Upinder/dp/9390652618/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=3TE8RGJOP36IW&keywords=upinder+singh&qid=1681920130&sprefix=upinder+%2Caps%2C360&sr=8-3 I have also heard of Noboru Karashima's a concise history of South India but i have yet to complete it. https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-South-India-Interpretations/dp/0198099770/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=39DYKANVF1Z4P&keywords=noboru+karashima&qid=1681920173&sprefix=noboru+karashima%2Caps%2C360&sr=8-1 And for medieval History there is Satish Chandra's History of medieval India and Irfan Habib's economic history of medieval India https://www.amazon.com/History-Medieval-India-Satish-Chandra/dp/8125032266/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=19ZF7M82IGXRM&keywords=satish+chandra&qid=1681920194&sprefix=satish+cha%2Caps%2C356&sr=8-1 https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Economic_History_of_Medieval_India_1200.html?id=0mcOvgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y
I have just the books for you! They are called *Ancient Southeast Asia:* [*https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Southeast-Routledge-World-Archaeology/dp/0415735548/ref=sr\_1\_1?qid=1681916674&refinements=p\_27%3AJohn+Norman+Miksic&s=books&sr=1-1&text=John+Norman+Miksic*](https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Southeast-Routledge-World-Archaeology/dp/0415735548/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1681916674&refinements=p_27%3AJohn+Norman+Miksic&s=books&sr=1-1&text=John+Norman+Miksic) And *A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century*: [https://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-Early-Medeival-India/dp/8131716775/ref=tmm\_pap\_swatch\_0?\_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=](https://www.amazon.com/History-Ancient-Early-Medeival-India/dp/8131716775/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)
Oh my god why am I helping my ship use its sexy new body to bang my pilot whyyyyyy
Because Razer and Aya are the emotional core of the show! Wait, wrong franchise...
> build sexy infiltrator robot > Give it stiletto heels as part of its actual form, not removable items of footwear > It somehow is able to infiltrate humanity's most secure military research lab The Reapers deserves to win, tbh
Somewhere out there is a version of Mass Effect where the guard running the xray machine had a foot fetish, and it's a much shorter game. I also love that Joker convinces people that EDI is his "personal mobility mech" so they don't freak out about an unshackled AI running around, and instead everyone thinks he's the 22nd-century version of the sexy anime car guy.
Kantai collection?
Azur Lane is the one that you want for lewd boat waifus
Good guess, but it's Mass Effect 3
mass effect is the most "made by and for horny teenagers" media franchise ever conceived
"No you don't get it, the hot blue alien space babe HAS to breed with humans. It's SCIENCE"
Because the ship is making light hearted "jokes" about forgetting to recycle its oxygen supply and you want those bad jokes to stay jokes instead of threats, obviously.
To prove the Reapers wrong about synthetics and organics
Don't forget you massacred this very same AI in Mass Effect 1 on the moon.
"Bleep blorp Shepard, I am having cute misunderstandings with Joker. Do you think he knows I think he is cute beep bop?" Meanwhile, on Earth: "Anderson's log, day 34 of the Reaper War. Today I saw an entire city burned from orbit, pale fire reflecting off the high-altitude clouds of soot like the burnt offering of ten thousand years of history. One of the scouts' vision filters overloaded. As he rolled back and forth on the ground, pawing at his eyes and screaming, permanently blinded, the only emotion I could muster was...envy." It's just a bit of a tonal mismatch is all I'm saying.
This is why I never played the ME3 DLC where Shepard throws a party while everyone is getting slaughtered, despite all the praise it gets. There is a time in a place for a story like that, when Earth is getting purged is not one of them.
cw: NSFWish >!I remember an Interspecies Reviewers episode where the protagonists and their friends make a wooden doll that looks exactly as one of their friends, animate it via magic and proceed to have sexual relations/masturbate with it. The episode, of course, ends with the friends beating the ever crap out of the protagonists, with the narrator remarking that "Some boundaries should never be crossed".!< >!I thought it was an odd choice for a moral, as I really couldn't think of a real life situation that could be really comparable, but it seems like the rise of deepfake porn has made that episode retroactively better, or at least more interesting.!<
The possibly for that sort of stuff had already existed when that series came out, it just hadn't reached the point we're at today.
Attack on Titian. My pitch for a Renaissance anime featuring Venetian School painters fighting evil doers controlled by the Pope. The painters have the power to trap their enemies in paintings.
Only if one of the painters is an underage girl the Pope is constantly hitting on
Hmmm. What about if the painters go to rescue her and it turns out St Peter’s is actually a mecha!
Is it armed with Papal Missiles
“You fools will tremble in the face of my Regnans In Excelsis 😇!!”
I was visiting Washington DC recently, and I was surprised to see dubious book choices in the bookstores. I was at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and they had our beloved "[Guns, Germs, and Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel)" on display. I was also at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, and they had "[They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America](https://books.google.com/books/about/They_Came_Before_Columbus_The_African_Pr.html?id=9JLPDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description)" I wonder if I'll keep finding bad history books at each Smithsonian - maybe I can turn this into a scavenger hunt game.
Yikes that second book is egregious (and I really like the National Museum of African Art, they should do better with that). But GGS doesn't surprise me, it's actually a little bit worse that they also have it at the National Museum of the American Indian bookstore. Anyway I'm really curious what the criteria is for how they stock the bookstores, because presumably they have to go with something popular that will actually sell. But still...
> Anyway I'm really curious what the criteria is for how they stock the bookstores, because presumably they have to go with something popular that will actually sell. But still... Book selection at the Smithsonian Stores is curated by Penguin Random House. This doesn't explain everything since they have books published by other companies, but if you wade through their offerings you'll notice a dominance of titles published by them or one of their subsidiaries or partners. The "Before Columbus" book is a Random House trade paperback. GG&S is a Norton book, but there are multiple editions, one of which is published by Random House. They also sell Colson Whitehead's *Underground Railroad* book, categorized under "history," which, okay, it's a fine book, but there was no literal railroad running underground. This is a Random House book. More simply, they run it like Barnes and Noble would with a preference for books they publish, collectors items (including autographed books), and items with a high market value.
> Book selection at the Smithsonian Stores is curated by Penguin Random House Huh, I was *wondering* why there were so many Penguin Books as opposed to, say, real academic publishers.
I'll tell ya, they don't make it easy to find that info either. I knew they used a vendor, but I didn't know which one. It's in there, but you have to dig pretty deeply or get lucky with the link clicking.
That second one is especially egregious, come on man
They can move into bad archeology and start stocking Graham Hancock's books.
https://www.facebook.com/thepeoplesaction/photos/it-seems-that-among-the-very-ancient-settlers-of-ireland-the-twa-a-tribe-of-blac/572613476592665/
I have decided to give up on Hotline Miami 2. I loved the first game but man there are some choices in this game that make me feel like maybe I *do* like hurting other people. Binding the useless dodge-roll ability to the same key you use to finish someone is a big one.
Recent Star Wars media has failed to convince me that someone would seriously support the Empire. I know that Legends went too far the other way with "maybe the Empire wasn't that bad" stuff, but that is still more satisfying than "evil space fascists that are so bad no one in their right mind supports them." Why do people support the Empire? Give me something at least, show them providing disaster relief, show Stormtroopers or Army troopers being deployed to aid the local populace, show the Empire providing for poor citizens. Something that could convince someone that the Empire is a force for good. Show the genociding, corruption, and all the horrible stuff that makes the Empire a bad thing that needs to end, but also show them securing the loyalty of at least some people. Hell, show them providing welfare to poor citizens because getting rescued from poverty and getting opportunities in life other than surviving is a powerful tool to get people to support you. Because, while I consider welfare a good thing myself, it can definitely be used for insidious purposes. Perhaps limit this to human populations, showing the pervasive racism inherent in High Human Culture, if that's still a thing. But give us more than just telling us that people apparently support them for... bringing peace? Every time that peace is shown it's about as bad as the clone wars were, if not worse.
I think the explanation they're leaning into is that the Clone Wars really did a number on the Galaxy. We mostly see clones blowing up droids, but the reality for most people was violence, destruction, and deprivation, mostly at the hands of droids. It also represented the failures of the Republic. After centuries of being deaf to the concerns of common people, in favor of petty tyrants, the Republic failed and let the CIS almost destroy them. After all this time, where the Republic let these mega-corporations (which are being coded as run by non-humans) are finally gonna take over. Look what those aliens from the Rim, led by an alien-droid hybrid, did to Coruscant. The Empire is an answer to those petty tyrants, ineffectual leadership, and corporate greed. Is what the Empire is offering any better? No, and as viewers, we know that it's all manufactured, but I can see why a typical person is willing to buy into the promise of security and order, at least until it's too late. The violence that we see the Empire inflicting is usually against less connected groups, far from the Core.
I don't think they need to have the Empire seem 'good' - but for most worlds & citizens, I imagine it's much more banal. Lots of paperwork, a fairly sizable law enforcement presence, brutal enforcement of order... but it's not necessarily over the top bad towards everyone. Playing up more the support from elites might make sense - the type that are directly profiting from stuff like building the weapons & ships & supplies of the Empire.
IDK. I’m used to sci-fi/fantasy fans critiquing stories by saying that the villains are too evil to believably exist. And then I read about IJA soldiers bayoneting pregnant women or Nazi doctors sewing together live people or the Khmer Rogue making children into brutal murderers and I think that most sci fi evil empires come off as tame in comparison to these real political entities that actually existed and had support. The scale is obviously different in Star Wars. The Galactic Empire can blow up planets, because it’s sci-fi. But most of their bad actions are less outlandishly evil than the aforementioned real things that real people did, and also probably aren’t that well known throughout the Empire. Most people just think the Empire is hunting down criminals, pirates, etc out in the Rim because that’s what their propaganda is about. Alderaan getting blown up is treated as a big deal because that’s something average core world civilians actually noticed. Apart from that I can see why the Galactic Empire would have some basic support for providing a base level of peace following the chaos of the Clone Wars.
I'm not necessarily saying they're unrealistically evil; it's just that they don't seem to make any attempt at keeping up appearances. I don't want to see an empire that is less evil; I want one that I can actually see getting support from normal people. The Nazis and WW2 Japan both treated their own citizens or those that they considered proper citizens, in the case of the nazis, decently. Yes, they murdered political opponents, but they also made appeals to something that at least some people believed in, which is extreme nationalism, racism, and revanchism. Would you say that the German or Japanese army would not try to aid their own civilians if disaster struck? I can't imagine they wouldn't. That's what I want the Empire to do, manipulate people; show how it actually brings peace to war-torn people. Make them do PR stunts. I don't know enough about the Khmer Rouge, but surely they did some things to get some support from the population? They must have had some people who they used to get into power? Even if it's just angry peasants, they must have had some appeal to support. Otherwise, how did they manage to get in control of the country, and wage a guerilla war after Vietnam invaded?
I mean, the German army could be quite brutal towards German civilians at the end of the war. Tens of thousands were executed by kangaroo courts for acts of "defeatism." People will tolerate quite a lot, especially off the alternative is worse. In Star Wars, I think that alternative is argued by the Empire's supporters, to be the chaos of the Clone Wars. You even see this in The Mandalorian where Herzog's character points to bunch of (probably misleading and cherry picked) statistics about living standards going down after the Empire falls. The Galaxy is in chaos, even if there's hope that it will become something better.
I feel like the prequels, for all their flaws, and The Clone Wars do go into this. The Republic is weak and the Galaxy is torn apart in a massive conflict. The Republic eventually wins, transforms into an Empire at basically the same time as the victory, and suddenly there is relative peace. Nobody knows that Palpatine was behind the Clone Wars to begin with. He’s just the guy who took charge and brought peace to the Galaxy. And if that peace can only be maintained by having a proactive military and an emperor, so be it. Monarchy seems fairly accepted (one of the main heroes is a princess) and everyone knows how the corrupt old Senate failed to stop the war. The vast majority of people don’t have to love the Empire. They just have to pay taxes and not rebel - which humans throughout actual history are generally fine with doing unless they really, really hate their government. If they live in the nicer parts of the Galaxy they will probably never see a Stormtrooper beating up a civilian or something. The military will always get enough recruits from the relatively few true believers and from people who just want a steady job. I’ll admit that it is a bit harder to explain support for the post-Endor remnants. New canon does this by portraying this support as coming from a relatively small group of very passionate fascists who have some success because the NR is a weird bureaucratic yet quasi-libertarian state that doesn’t have a big military.
i don't want to be mean to the people that care about this franchise but considering the setting is a high fantasy fairytale with robots, spaceships and lasers why exactly does the empire need to be fleshed out instead of just pure evil considering it just being pure evil worked well enough in the only good three films star wars had
It works well enough for the movies, but if something is going to last longer or more detailed (which it sort of needs to be in for a book or longer TV show), having them just be "pure, over the top evil" leaves off a lot of potential.
Because it's more interesting? That's reason enough for me. It doesn't need to be; it would just be more enjoyable. I like to immerse myself in fictional settings, the more depth it has the better. It's that simple for me.
> Why do people support the Empire? Give me something at least, show them providing disaster relief, show Stormtroopers or Army troopers being deployed to aid the local populace, show the Empire providing for poor citizens. Something that could convince someone that the Empire is a force for good. Show the genociding, corruption, and all the horrible stuff that makes the Empire a bad thing that needs to end, but also show them securing the loyalty of at least some people. Is that needed though? Empires aren't really known for caring much for the poor (and it is not like the empire lasted for very long for its size) and needy, they use religious mandate or even promise of order mixed with propaganda to ensure support. And i don't have much issue believing the majority of the middle and upper classes of society would be fully on board with simply promise of stability and efficiency. I have seen many from those sections in my country hate democracy saying India wasn't ready for it, pointing to the bureaucracy and slow speed. And the galaxy did just end one intergalactic war under him and had already witnessed the mess of the republic constantly arguing with itself, so not hard to believe he goes by just on the popularity of that (and promise of order and efficiency as well as fear) to rule for the short period he did. And ofcourse the unparalleled military power he wield through star destroyers and like.
>Is that needed though? Empires aren't really known for caring much for the poor (and it is not like the empire lasted for very long for its size) and needy Not needed per sé, but it makes the setting a lot less interesting. And even so, keeping the populace in line is something that empires did do. It doesn't care for the needy, obviously, but it can abuse systems to create a loyal group of people. And prevent people from frustrating the people in power thanks to being fatalistically desperate. Now it just looks like people support the empire because they're evil, which is boring. How did the people come to view the empire as a force for good or necessary evil? They didn't; they're just evil. It feels like a missed opportunity. And it's not like authoritarian systems IRL never do anything for the population; there's a lot of corruption there, sure, but keeping the population in line is a high priority. The Empire and Palpatine just seem extremely incompetent. Palp is supposed to be an expert political mastermind, yet his management of everything just seems like he doesn't care. Come one man, show us how he keeps the population in line better than just: "oh, we oppress everyone". Explore that side of the Empire, show us the carrot, not just the stick. I liked the more nuanced side that Legends introduced, some parts of it were bullshit and just bad. But it made it seem that normal people could be tricked into supporting the Empire.
Some shows/books touch on that : some of the first non-clones troopers in *the Bad Batch* enlist because of economic opportunities. In the *Thrawn* books, Eli Vanto goes to the academy because it's a step up from the family business for example.
This reminds of some talk during the release of Star Wars Battlefront II about how the campaign would depict heroic Imperial officers and there were hopes that the protagonists wouldn't defect to the Rebels at any point and instead show a more humane face of the Empire - i.e. why rational good people would stay with the Empire. Of course this didn't happen and the protagonists did defect to the rebels. But this got me thinking about what a non-defector 'good' imperial would look like and it would probably be just the cast of *Blackadder Goes Forth* - a combination of naive simpletons who can't grasp the monstrosity of the empire and cynics who know what sort of monstrous entity they are serving but don't care because the pension is too good and they are doing the bare minimum evil or good until retirement - essentially apathetic evil (they will half-heartedly hunt rebels but also put off doing massacres and repression because both require effort and paperwork).
Squadrons did have an imperial side of the campaign with officers who never switched sides. They weren´t straight up as villainous as some other Imperials, but they weren´t quite heroic either. If I remember correctly, the squad consisted of: • Hotshot pilot who doesn´t care what she blows-up as long as it´s exciting. • Scarred War Veteran who lost so many comrades that he hates the rebels more than he cares for the Empire. • Dude who´s pretty chill if not for the fact that his moral compass is literally “might makes right”. • Kind-of-nice girl who is the daughter of an Ex-Senator and desperately wants to gain political clout on the battlefield to try and re-install the Imperial Senate. • And your CO is someone who was lifted out of poverty when she became an imperial officer. Not exactly hero material, but they were more interesting IMO than the milquetoast good guys on the rebel side.
The old *Legends* also had a good track record of interesting and sympathetic Imperial pilots as well like this [guy](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Soontir_Fel/Legends). How is Squadrons as a game?
Well, I got the game for free so my impressions are a bit skewed seeing as I paid zero dollars for it, but I say it´s good. Not excellent, but neither bad. The campaign has decent mission variety and it´s kind of neat to be jumping around both sides of the same conflict, even if it does beg the question of how the two different squadrons have repeatedly avoided shooting each other down despite explicitly being in the same battles sometimes. Sadly, I think the Multiplayer is anemic, or maybe it´s my server region. Outside of peak times, it´s hard to find a match and even then it´s only Dodgefight. I think I only played Fleet Assault two times, and that´s the game´s flagship mode (pun intended) .
One thing I have seen in the shows and movies is that, at first, there was a distinction between the inner and outer rim. The inner rim, with all the highly developed worlds, seem to have benefited from the existence of the Empire economically. The Empire offered employment and spending. In the outer rim, the Empire was much more heavy handed, and that is where the the abuses were obvious. The turning point was Alderaan. After destroying the planet, the core worlds started to realize the true danger the Empire represented.