HOI4, DOD DLC just dropped

Likewise, if a man is kind to a woman he’ll generally be regarded with suspicion, like “what are you trying to get out of this?”

Maybe it is just me, but I don’t think I’ve been viewed with suspicion because of simply being nice. If you’re sincere and nice, then this typically doesn’t happen. If you’re known as kind of a dick and you switch to being nice, people will take notice. If you’re being seen as love-bombing, you will be seen as suspect. While I agree men should not be typecast as only sex driven, I’m curious how this part of your argument came into it…

I think he destroyed his mind with drugs, TBH. I think he was different to some degree back then. Still was an asshole, but not this asshole.

Are we in a better position to prevent government from doing horrible things? I’m honestly at a loss for what meaningful action the populace should be taking. We’ve been protesting. Largest single-day mass protests in country history during this term.

We’ve impeached this president (twice) and each time nothing happened because the elected senate blocked removal.

We do NOT have a strong history of general strikes, we simply don’t know how to do it since it has not been done here.

Our populace is not well positioned to fix this except hope that the midterms happen and aren’t sufficiently fucked that we sweep democrats back into power and put a check back on the system.

Militaries are only as strong as the country’s will to continue to fight. The US had great social upheaval for a relatively low casualty war in Vietnam (<60k dead in 8 yr). Compare the casualty rates from Vietnam with what Russia is experiencing in Ukraine (180-480k deaths in 3 yr).

I remember listening to Dan Carlin talk about how wars are typically won by the side that doesn’t know when to give up. Early Rome was this way. 1941 USSR was this way. 2026 USA is NOT going to win a drawn out, existential war. We would kill a lot of people, sure, thanks to all the weapons and guns but we don’t think we have what it takes to win a major power war anymore.

Am American. We (the broad majority) don’t want Canada. or Greenland. or Venezuela. Any of this fascist shit. I’m so fucking sick of this. I want to go back to politics being boring-ish and about deciding what taxes will and won’t pay for and having actual friends whom we aren’t actively bullying. I wish this scenario were laughable, but it’s not.

I have the feeling that this is where we are (and have been) regarding politics and national borders with the current population levels. Local politics has slowly, over the course of centuries, been losing to national/federal politics. I feel like democracy works best when it’s in the sweet spot for not being too big (where good ideas are easily drown out) and not being too small (not being able to effectualize good ideas on a scale that matters).

I sometimes think the world would be better served if we went back to a nation-state size that promoted regional powers instead of global superpowers. I don’t know it would necessarily always be better because eras of recent history where there is no clear dominant regional power, you tend to get more wars. :/

I wasn’t talking about AI slop. With “slop,” I meant mindless games that don’t take any position on anything.

IMHO, the best games are ones that make you feel something or question something critically. You can have games that make a political statement and are fun to play. Helldivers, GTA, BioShock, Disco Elysium, etc. If you’re uncomfortable with the point that a game is making, then that’s on you (and is the point of OPs comic).

There are certainly plenty of games that take no political stance on anything that I’m sure you can numb your mind with. Just play something else if you are feeling too judged.

If you want mindless slop, then play it. It certainly exists. Real art and proper storytelling makes you feel things and reflects the the world we live in.

Exactly! Almost everything in our lives that matters ultimately is reliant and depends on politics and policy. When people say “I don’t really care about politics,” what they are really saying is they don’t like thinking at all.

The lucky person who owns this account is swimming in gas rewards, I bet.

Yeah, it sucks though. It feels like building a PC has been inadvisable more often than not. Thanks to the GPU prices being ridiculous a while back. Now this. It’s crazy that you have to time building a PC between these stupid waves.

What is it actively doing now with AI? There is the ai sidebar, but if you don’t use that it isn’t used, right?

It works. I can tell you are annoyed because you ended your last sentence with a period. Otherwise I would have had no idea.

Only 11 more months before the midterms. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if congress does not punch back, this will be fodder for a house oversight committee to look into the failure to release the files in the way intended by the law.

I don’t know if you misread their comment, but that’s what they were saying. Keeping the names secret makes it (continue to be) a national security risk.

I think we are reaching a moment where corporate greed is pushing people towards a tipping point. It feels like people are getting squeezed on everything and are seeking areas where things are still customer friendly.

The whole IP is dead to me. It won’t get any of my attention, free or not.

She was such a bag of dicks, wan’t she? Pseudointellectual and edgy teenagers read it because it feels like a rite of passage to get through the bad writing and long drawn out meanderings, and it’s controversial. Then you realize she’s just an asshole…

I read it after seeing the movie. I didn’t think it was serious at first because the movie was obviously a military industrial complex/fascism parody, but the book plays it straight, in a bad way.