life back then mustv been crazy people just thought whatever

People still just think whatever tho.

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas.

The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumour campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows.

"Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitchh deny it.”

This is absolute lies and propaganda written by a bloodthirsty psychopath.

The attack on Iran was an unprovoked act of aggression, and one that countless US political figures have been pushing for for years - although plenty of them want a full scale ground invasion exactly like the pointless bloodbaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. The author is flipping aggressor and victim, it is Iran that is constantly showing patience and restraint to blatant acts of provocation, like the assassination of Soleimani before. It is the US that is constantly testing them to see what they can get away with.

It would be far more accurate to say that there are only Iran hawks in US politics and no doves, to say the opposite is outrageously false.

On the one hand it’s not a great sign about which way the winds are blowing, but on the other hand my mind is just so much more at ease not seeing the cursed pride logos of Raytheon and the Pinkertons.

“You look surprised, Blackadder”

“I certainly am! I wasn’t aware the Knesset had any ethics rules.”

“Well of course they do! How else do you think their politicians are kept in line?”

“Their politicians are kept in line, sir?”

“Of course they are! They’re kept in line according to the Grand Plan!”

“Would this be the plan to continue with total slaughter until everyone’s dead?”

“Great Scott! Even you know the plan!”

Pirating Andor bc Disney+ is on the BDS list. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen but I’d sooner drop it than violate the boycott, even if money was no object. As things stand, piracy is the only ethical way to watch it.

CP violation in weak interactions

Weak force, why don’t you have a seat over there

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Algae rock? Yeah, what about it?

I see, thank you. That provides important additional context that we’re talking about a company using a shell company to employ people in shitty conditions, which is a valid criticism of international corporations of all countries.

Trolling is when you ask for sources because you base you beliefs on evidence. Not trolling is when you respond to requests for sources with insults and accusations. Fascinating perspective.

Although I guess in reality, it’s more like, “Trolling is whenever anyone expresses a belief different from mine in any way for any reason.”

I’ll take that as a resounding “no” lmao.

Do you have any source for that “fact?” Like, whatsoever?

I’ve just discovered Unicorn Overlord, a spiritual successor to the classic Ogre Battle games, where you form teams of units to send around the map. Story’s a bit bland but I like the gameplay and the complexity curve that gradually introduces more unit types and bigger formations, making it very approachable, and I’m not aware of another game in that style since Ogre Battle 64.

Ofc there’s a lot of Fire Emblem games, and many of the older ones hold up just fine. Awakening (3DS), Path of Radiance (Gamecube), and Blazing Blade (GBA) are solid all around. Radiant Dawn (Wii) is ambitious and jumps between groups which tells a fairly complex story and keeps the game fresh, but some groups (the starting one in particular) have much weaker units that you probably won’t want to use later on. The SNES ones (Genealogy and Thracia 776) are good, both are very distinctive (Genealogy was strangely my introduction to the series, and remains a personal fav), but use a guide. The other GBA ones (Binding Blade and Sacred Stones) are fine but personally I didn’t get hooked; Fates seemed like it had amazing gameplay but I couldn’t stomach the level of incest/anime tropes; the early games and their remakes are a bit bland imo (though Shadow Dragon gives you a lot of flexibility in reclassing characters which was neat).

The Front Mission series has a similar format to the tactics games you mentioned, but instead of fantasy it’s mechs. The original SNES game got a remake (Front Mission 1st) and I’ve only played the original but it’s really good, you get a lot of different customization on how to put together your team of mechs.

Kinda deviating from the premise but the Shadowrun games are good. Dragonfall is my favorite, but Hong Kong and Shadowrun Returns are good too. Lots of character depth and challenging tactical gameplay.

Honorable mentions: Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark is ok, it’s heavily inspired by FFT and it does a pretty good job imitating it while introducing some new stuff but it’s hard not to compare the two and it doesn’t quite live up to it. Wildermyth is worth mentioning, the sidestories are very artsy and it kinda works in what it sets out to do which is giving your random characters distinctive feels and stories, but tbh it’d probably be better if the characters just weren’t random. Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (GBA) is pretty good imo but I haven’t played LUCT so idk how it compares. I haven’t played Triangle Strategy but it’s on my list, ditto for Tactics Ogre: Reborn.

But isn’t that the whole reason that the concept was developed in the first place? It’s not very sound to come up with a hypothesis to explain an observation and then rely on that same observation to support the hypothesis. The concept needs to be able to predict and explain new observations, or else it has no utility and is still essentially just a placeholder.

You talked about, like, “vibes-based reasons,” but is there a reason to accept the explanation of dark matter aside from vibes? If it’s just about feeling satisfied that you have an explanation for the phenomenon, that’s vibes. Like, relativity, you have to accept and account for or GPS wouldn’t work nearly as accurately as they do. But everyone could reject the hypothesis of dark matter and it wouldn’t really change anything.

Explanations for things are a dime a dozen. There’s no real value in having an explanation (other than personal satisfaction, i.e. vibes) for something unless that explanation helps you to make predictions or manipulate objective reality in some way. That’s not to say that it couldn’t, at some later date, meet those requirements, but at this point dark matter is barely anymore useful than saying a wizard did it - a hypothesis that also explains the observations perfectly well while being only slightly less congruous with the rest of our understanding of physics.

Dark matter is a case of giving a phenomenon a name and then thinking that because it has a name you’ve explained it. Dark matter isn’t really an explanation, it’s essentially just a placeholder to say, “Our equations suggest there should be matter here but there isn’t, so maybe there’s some kind of matter we can’t observe? Or something?” It’s not an answer or an explanation, it’s just a term for an unexplained phenomenon that guesses vaguely about it what might be, and until we can verify the existence of dark matter through other means and explain why it defies other observations, it’s little more than a placeholder and cannot be treated as settled science. This isn’t really out of line with the mainstream view, the mainstream view is just that there aren’t any better explanations (yet) so that’s what we’re stuck with (for now).

Lol I heard they were removing stuff but I was expecting, like, actionable threats of violence. This is just, like, “It’s against the rules to fail to sufficiently mourn your cruel overlords.”