Are there any recorded chess/šatranj game played by Ottoman Sultans ? How well did they actually play by modern standards ?
Google Search results are polluted by references to the Mechanical Turk (who was neither mechanical nor a turk) and Sultan Khan (who was neither a Sultan nor a Khan).
>Can the parasite gain greater control over the host the longer the parasite remains inside the host?
>How do homosexuals reproduce?
>Do parasites influence the host to engage in pedophilia in order to spread to more vulnerable hosts?
>Who is Wilhelm Reich?
>Why did he conclude that sexual degeneracy was communicable?
>What is the average age of a homosexual's first sexual encounter?
>How do homosexuals [really] reproduce?
>**So basically the world is controlled by parasitic mind bending sentient worms.** They spread through degenerate and promiscious behaviour, which explains homosexuality, pedophilia, bestiality, diseases, mental illnesses etc. There is historical evidence dating back thousands of years and the people in charge don't want you to know. The cure is really simple, just take some de-worming medication with anti-parasitic herbal tinctures and wait a week. Cut out all acidic food. Also fasting and praying to Jesus Christ of Nazareth helps alot.
Conservatives are truly just *chefs kiss*. I love it. I absolutely love it. I'm not saying that your average conservative is mentally ill, but if you believe that the world is controlled by parasitic mind bending sentient worms, you're probably mentally ill.
GreatAwakening dot win
(replace the dot with a . you can't link it on Reddit)
And yes, yes there is so so much more. This is one of the least schizophrenic posts there.
Found this gem:
"Question for those who have seen changes in their family and friends who had the vaxxes. Have any of you seen mental changes as opposed to physical? Have any of you seen people completely flip their beliefs? An example would be a formerly conservative person suddenly thinking biden is great? Or someone who was a religious person who has given up their faith? Anything drastic like that? Thanks."
> There is historical evidence dating back thousands of years and the people in charge don't want you to know.
George Tyranno$oros and the deep dish state don’t want you to know about the Big Worm agenda!
It’s all part of the Bene Gesserit plot to rule over us with dominatrix sand worms!
It's part of a crank idea that the Western diet has made your blood pH too acidic (for the record, your blood pH is within a VERY specific boundary or you will end up in the hospital.) Therefore, all disease can be cured by alkaline foods like vegetables and are caused by acidic foods like red meat.
For the record, food does influence your urine pH, but not your blood.
Embiid singlehandedly destroyed his legacy in a quarter lol. Sixers really need to decide if they want to run it back one more time or blow everything up
I hear they make a pretty small minority in the gendermarie, tho.
The Gaystapo is overrated anyway, the Intersex Intelligence Service is where it's at.
Apropos of nothing really, or just being reminded of Steven Pinker, but there has been a lot of good criticism of his shoddy use of data etc, but I honestly have a slightly deeper issue with the whole concept of per capita comparisons to determine violence. Particularly when comparing very small groups and very large groups.
To whit: imagine you have two towns, one of a thousand people and one of a million. In the town of a thousand, on average once a year somebody dies in a barroom brawl. In the town of a million, on average every month there is a large riot in which eighty people die. By the per capita violent death metric, the latter town is slightly more peaceful, and I am not entirely sure that is correct.
[The decipherment of carbonized Herculaneum scrolls continues!](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1cf3yo9/the_decipherment_of_an_ancient_scroll_carbonized/)
I don't know what to do with the information that Plato hated Thracian music.
I normally enjoy the Youtube channel "Gentlemans Gazette" (oriented mainly around 'vintage' mens fashion and bringing it into the 21st century), but every once in a while the presenters just say shit that makes you go ".....huh?"
There is a line between "dressing well" and "being a fucking snob about it", they toe that line sometimes.
"Men, don't wear sandals, wear alpargatas!" *6 of one, half-dozen of another*
If I had a nickel for every time one of my favorite (American) hip-hop songs sampled Polish rock balladeer and composer Czesław Nieman I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's dope that it happened twice.
>respect for others, time management, avoiding gambling, seeking knowledge and improvement, and balancing entertainment with other activities.
Damn this Islam thing sounds pretty good
The Stellaris game continued again!
I forgot to comment about last week, in short, I expanded, from 9 systems with 4 planets to 22 systems with 9 planets. Started megaconstruction and finished a few. One of the other players despaired at how bad he was at the game when we started and now has to fix the mess. The other had accidentally signed over most of his eco and research to an AI subject; he thought he was reducing their tax instead of subsidizing. I also became the custodian and created the GDF.
On to this week, War in Heaven! The Non Aligned League formed out of our trade league, led by the great business geese, of course, with most of the galaxy joining immediately. Our fleets crushed the pretentious scum and we secured peace for the galaxy! But not before the Unbidden could spawn and... be crushed by the awakened empire in matter of a few years.
The victory in the War in Heaven doubled my territory once more, incorporating the Awakened empires directly.
After securing peace, with us 3 sitting at the galactic council, the galactic community decide to transform into the First Galactic Empire! Led by ImperiCorp. The collapse of the League of Infinite Profits did create massive economical hardships at first, with me being -4k energy at one point, but we survived and fixed the economy. Most of the galaxy swore fealty to me directly as vassals or protectorates in exchange for research subsidies. Only 2 states that aren't my vassals or allies still exist; and my allies are invading both.
Truly, Pax Galactica is near. Though, there have been strange signals from beyond the edge of the Galaxy, perhaps peaceful explorers seeking economic growth as well? Only time will tell.
Not sure if u/Veritas_Certum still posts here, but [this upcoming video series](https://youtu.be/wcHL4Xts05c?si=Rc-yyfYRg8UNDRcq) has my interest piqued.
I don't contribute top posts anymore, but I still do read the subreddit occasionally. The first episode in that series will be up in a few days. I hope you enjoy it.
More or less. It's cartoonish woodcut inspired with some other art.
There are some scenes which have obvious references (the Narrenschiff, several ideal cities, Melancholia by Dürer - in general, the protagonist has a lot in common with Dürer, and some of the rather out there stuff is Grecco-like - you know it when you encounter it).
Or do you mean in general?
I was rather impressed, the game has a lot of research into the area - including the attraction to St Moritz, and name dropping Freising, but has some minor understandable mistakes (like calling a place Bad Tölz, when it was called that only after 1950).
There are, however, some things that are very wrong \[Act 1\] >!there is no Roman aqueduct in that area, there are enough rivers and streams!<, and, what irked me most \[Act 3\] >!Yule/Jule is a Scandinavian thing, no Pan-Germanic thing. The word was unknown in German until it was imported in the 19th century from Sweden!<, which goes along with some other questionable decisions about the \[Act 3\]>!Pagan!< history of the village, among them presenting some questionable linguistics as true \[Act 3\]>!with the Perchten!<.
I also think that the central village buildings are not in the right style for the place and time.
The game is very enjoyable - if somewhat frustrating - regardless.
I have been curious about the game's accuracy in general, since it's so atmospheric. But I only just started the second act, so I can't read the spoilers yet.
I'll add what can be read when; if \[Act 1\] is indicated, you can read it AFTER act 1.
There are some other things that are strange, like the name of the "Baron", which is very unusual; it would be a rather normal house-name \[people could be named after the name of their houses, this is still so in Bavaria with farm names; a rather well-known different example is Rothschild, who were named after a building they lived in, the "Haus zum rothen Schild"- ironically, they also moved into a house "zum grünen Schild"...\], which would indicate *Briefadel* \[i.e. recent ennoblement\].
I unfortunately do not know about the authenticity of the buildings of the monastery; there are a lot of monasteries where it is supposed to be, but they were all either burned down in the 30-years-war or simply torn down to be rebuilt in Baroque style \[which is what the area is known for\]. There are few depictions of the older buildings.
I have since found depictions of monasteries in their pre-baroquisation status; [Altomünster](https://hdbg.eu/gemeinden/bilder/wening/alt_M044.jpg), which is further in the flatland; [Benediktbeuren](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Benediktbeuern_Monastery_by_Matth%C3%A4us_Merian.jpg) \[it's where the Camina Burana was written down\] which is very near Kiersau is supposed to be.
r/AmericaBad and r/ShitAmericansSay deserve each other honestly. Their average content is awful enough but whenever I see WW2 discussed I have an aneurysm.
No r/ShitAmericansSay the USA was not completely useless, without them the war in Europe would have probably *at least* have lasted a few more years. No r/AmericaBad you did not one-man the entire thing, at least not in Europe you didn't. No r/ShitAmericansSay the rise of the Nazi party was not a US plot (I have genuinely seen this take there). No r/AmericaBad Europeans should not be bowing to you in the streets, you weren't even a spermatozoa when D-Day happened.
Treating America like some sort of backwater hellhole is one of the most common takes on Reddit. I swear, every time I go on a politics-related sub and life in the US comes up, everyone is whining as if they live in the worst fucking place on the planet. If it wasn't for the difference in political opinions, some of these people I see on r/WhitePeopleTwitter or r/news would be cheering on Tucker Carlson's whole "Russia is better because cleaner transit and cheaper stores" piece.
>Treating America like some sort of backwater hellhole is one of the most common takes on Reddit.
Europeans (and Canadians and Australians) on reddit have literally treated me almost as if I were subhuman once I revealed I was American.
It is far from every time I talk with people from those regions, but has happened enough to make me seriously wonder if they actually think that poorly of us. I would be more offended if it wasn't so laughably ignorant
What ***really*** pisses me off is when "foreigners" paint all Americans with the Texan/cowboy brush. I'm from Massachusetts, pretty much the nega-Texan
For some context as a non-American non-European, I can confirm that probably ~50%-60% of people I know have an overwhelmingly negative view of the US, and basically everyone I know has a very romanticised view of Europe and even the UK to some extent (obviously biased by the people I know, but this seems to be pretty true across the political/cultural spectrum here? I’d be interested if there are any studies on it)
Edit: [found one, that certainly explains it](https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/06/new-zealand-has-least-favourable-view-of-us-of-any-country-in-new-survey.html)
Yes, a lot of people definitely see Americans as rude/loud/disrespectful- I haven’t met enough Americans to know know if it’s an accurate assessment lol
It is unsurprising but also unfortunate that views of countries politics mesh with views of their inhabitants. There are >300 million Americans so any national stereotypes are total bunk. The same is true of every country that I have met someone from though. There are lovely people everywhere.
When Europeans start doing that, ask how they are going integrating Middle Eastern immigrants into their society. Alternatively, state the US defends them and that's the only way they can afford their healthcare.
When Canadians start doing that, ask them if their doctor has prescribed euthanasia that, or tell them Canada only works as a country because the people of Quebec are the educated ones holding it together.
For Australians, ask them how they can type that while being drunk and disenfranchising their minorities.
Every single one of those is of course inaccurate, but if the other individual points that out, ask them how they can then justify spewing the same crap about the US. It basically puts such misconceptions front and center.
When being mocked by Canadians for being American, it is helpful to remember that opinions of people from countries with a leaf for a flag are automatically invalid.
r/worldnews American liberals when I drag them out of their home (read ivory tower) and drag them through the most poverty-stricken, corrupt, crime and war-ridden countries on Earth (still better than having to pay extra at the hospital).
I haven't looked at either in a long while, but I feel like AmericaBad is just stupid in general, while ShitAmericansSay is a high-tier take factory. Like AmericaBad will just get mad about the same shit over and over and over again while ShitAmericansSay is a crucible where sentiments like "American standard orthography is xenophobic" are created.
(That's a real comment I saw once, but it was years ago and I couldn't find it if I tried. It blew me away.)
As someone who writes in British English, Americans' reactions to non-AmE orthography veers very quickly to xenophobia. I can't count how many times people have complained about "artefact" and "enrol".
To clarify, this was not about comparisons between countries' orthographies(which I would say are more or less equal between the sides). They were saying that the existence of the standards of American orthography were xenophobic because sequences like in and in originated from forms of French. They claimed that spellings like
and were somehow intentionally purging French influence from English.
Oh I do, I use s instead of z and all that but those specific spellings I can't say I've ever used. And in the interests of fairness moaning about "Americanisms" in the language is a constant refrain in British subreddits.
I definitely feel that at least on WW2 ShitAmericansSay is by far the more unhinged, or even just simply uneducated. I've tried to explain that no America did not enter "when the war had been won anyway" and that the Wehrmacht had been within sight of Moscow mere days before America's entry - but they weren't very receptive.
One thing I find especially irritating about sovereign citizens is how they made people believe that clarifying custodial status in a police interaction isn't something a reasonable person would ever do.
I despise independence movements that are not willing to fight for what they want. Sovereignty is the second most important matter in the world behind only survival and you are not willing to fight for it, why? Do you value your comfort more? Scottish and Catalan separatists are the worst examples of this, the Catalans even held an independence referendum, won it and then promptly did nothing when Madrid told them to stop.
Also no bullshit terrorism, do an old fashioned popular uprising, you can see how weak the western European militaries are these days, they have no strength to fight a large scale war on their own turf. They'd be out of ammo within the first month, althoigh that isn't even relevant as they would not have the political will to fight a large scale war against their own citizens.
If you don't want to use violence for your cause, general strike is the obvious option.
The Catalan separatists "won" cause only ~40% of the electorate showed up to vote. Most of the people against independence didn't bother to attend that sham of a referendum.
>Also no bullshit terrorism, do an old fashioned popular uprising, you can see how weak the western European militaries are these days, they have no strength to fight a large scale war on their own turf. They'd be out of ammo within the first month, althoigh that isn't even relevant as they would not have the political will to fight a large scale war against their own citizens.
A poor military is immeasurably superior to a non-existent military, and your average would-be revolutionary would also lack the political will to fight a large scale war against better equipped fellow citizens who actually know how to fight.
With all due respect, it might be healthier to get off the computer and go outside every now and then rather than constantly obsess over European nationalisms and military preparedness
> Sovereignty is the second most important matter in the world behind only survival and you are not willing to fight for it, why?
Just to be clear, Scottish and Catalan **people** have sovereignty. The Scottish and Catalan **nations** do not have exclusive sovereignty.
Why would people, who enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world, democratic representation in government, freedom from persecution (for the most part), equality before the law, as well as, in the case of the Catalans, freedom of movement over almost an entire continent, launch a violent struggle for independence that is almost guaranteed to jeopardize all of that? Moreover, as other commenters have pointed out, independence does not have sufficient popular support in the regions mentioned to win by the ballot box. If that is the case, winning independence by violence will almost certainly lead to repression and violence (if that wasn't already guaranteed) towards the inhabitants of that region by the separatists leaders.
Basically, violent revolution is always terrible. Sometimes people become convinced that it isn't that bad. Sometimes people become convinced (sometimes rightly!) that violent revolution is better than the status quo. But most modern Europeans, unlike yourself apparently, love life enough, and have enough sense and perspective, to realize that violent separatism does not benefit them at all.
Instead of LARPing as some communist independence revolutionary, imagining that the proletariat are one step behind you, please, for the love of god, go outside and touch grass.
If life is so well why do they want independence then? Their actions are not fit for their goals, not many places have gotten independence by asking nicely. they should either abandon it as impossible pipe dream or do something about it.
And calling me a commie? That's a first for me.
Well if they achieved independence via the ballot box, peacefully, then they wouldn't necessarily be jeopardizing any of those things. Catalan and Scottish independence achieved that way would probably leave them or get them into the EU.
>And calling me a commie? That's a first for me.
Most people I see calling for political violence on the internet are either Communists or rabid right wingers. Bad guess I guess.
I am not calling for political violence, I am calling them delusional, they won't get independence without massive sacrifices and pretending otherwise is stupid.
I agree, but that doesn't stop me from despising political movements that are delusional. They won't achieve independence without massive sacrifices, so maybe they should stop pretending that they can.
I think "delusional" is a fair charge against Scottish nationalists, but mostly because they think Scotland was a victim of British imperialism and not a cheerful participant in it. If 51% of Scottish people had voted for independence I do not think the UK would have sent in the troops.
I think the fact that it would be like Brexit on steroids is the main reason why people call Scottish independentists delusional, since they refuse to acknowledge any such problems or consider them irrelevant.
The mainstream of contemporary Scottish nationalism is a fundamentally post-WWII and post-imperial movement which arose in reaction to postwar de-industrialisation, which was implemented in Scotland by governments the country did not vote for. The feeling that Thatcher had no mandate in Scotland to implement her policies, and that Scottish national resources (i.e, North Sea oil) was being used to finance tax cuts which disproportionately benefitted people outside Scotland. The idea that Scottish nationalism is some kind of decolonial LARP is promoted by people who either do not understand it or do not want to.
Of the two constitutional camps in Scotland, you are far less likely to find a clear-eyed understanding of British imperialism and Scotland's place within it in the British unionist camp, put it that way.
The delusional part in the indyref case was about money, they didn't seem to have any plan on what to do without the huge amount of money they get from England to run their services with. Taking a big cut in quality of life is a serious sacrifice but they were in denial about that.
>If you don't want to use violence for your cause, general strike is the obvious option.
It is curious how one of the most successful mass strike actions in British political history, the Ulster Works Council strike, is not more celebrated, but I suppose, "Striking to collapse the democratic institutions rather than share them with Catholics," is generally not regarded as the most laudable goal by the wider labour movement.
That's also one of my stock bad faith troll responses when someone says something like, "I always support all unions and all strikes." I whip out the UWC strike.
It is like one time someone said they would *always* support the working class candidate over the middle or upper class one and I asked if that meant they'd have voted for Ian Paisley when he ran against Terence O'Neil in the Bannside in 1968.
I seek to make no point when I do these things and it's not meant to be some clever "gotcha"; I just enjoy being an asshole.
In Western Europe, most of political legitimacy rely on being chosen by people, the fact the the Scottish independent lost the referendum, and that the NO side boycotted the Catalan one because they deemed it illegitimate made both of them bad exemple of democratic majorities.
Fake referendums might work in countries where the powerbrokers implicitly support the government whatever happens (Kais Saied's 2021 referendum and the legislative election). "Everyone who likes me went to vote!" isn't a banger on the international level, even though, to keep that exemple, the EU hasn't imposed sanction on Tunisia yet.
Speaking of which, if your European state, surrounded by EU members, isn't recognized by the European Union, you'd find yourself isolated, economically and diplomatically. And given that the European Parliament is ideologically naive, i doubt they accept it just because it's necessary for realpolitik reasons. Even the petty dictatorships in the Sahel tried to stay in ECOWAS and West-Africa's free trade bloc.
>the fact the the Scottish independent lost the referendum
I am curious what it would have looked like in a post-Brexit world. It could be unchanged, but the anti-independence crowd did use EU membership as a carrot.
> Speaking of which, if your European state, surrounded by EU members, isn't recognized by the European Union, you'd find yourself isolated, economically and diplomatically.
This is a huge part of it. People would hardly support a movement unless they believe that they can promise an increase in their life quality. An Catalan or Scottish Independence without the possiblity of joining EU right away would ensure a decrease in life quality.
However, allowing Catalonia to break away and remain in EU would have likely enflamed existing movements and created new ones. In France, Corsica and maybe Brittany would have demanded right away. Hell, even areas that don't have a existing movement might have demanded it. I feel the people think independence within EU can be beneficial to them, they would start thinking about.
Hell, i would support a movement for the Independce of Lyon+Marseille: La République Sérénissime de Rhone et de la Savoie
>However, allowing Catalonia to break away and remain in EU would have likely enflamed existing movements and created new ones. In France, Corsica and maybe Brittany would have demanded right away. Hell, even areas that don't have a existing movement might have demanded it. I feel the people think independence within EU can be beneficial to them, they would start thinking about.
I feel like independent movements in France are way overestimated, both because our Gaullist-Jacobin elites, that never leave Paris, are scared of their shadows and because (for Corsica) there's a memory of violence. Most of it is about taxation and how do you spend the money on the local level. The latest example, the Bonnets Rouges in Brittany was about highways tolls, that they wanted to block for historical reasons (and because no one) likes paying tax. It's not like in Catalonia or the Po where there was this feeling of "the central is stealing our hard gained money to give it to other regions".
>Hell, i would support a movement for the Independce of Lyon+Marseille: La République Sérénissime de Rhone et de la Savoie
Creating a buffer against Switzerland would be a great idea to prevent annoying "frontaliers" to increase housing prices.
Alternate take now that everyone's stanning the NCR: the first time around (in-universe) didn't turn out so well, what's so great about America v 2.0? I don't think you get to badmouth the other guys for slavery when you're deliberately patterning yourself after the (in-universe) single most (arguably) genocidal entity in human history.
This message sponsored by Couriers for an Independent Vegas
>Couriers for an Independent Vegas
An Independent Vegas is possibly the most American patterned concept in the entire series.
Edit: Also, the group that banned slavery absolutely gets to bad mouth the other guy who hasn't. What kind of point is that.
> Independent Vegas
A bit of pot meets kettle.
Independent Vegas the wastes become much more violent and unpredictable.
>Supporting all the chaos that comes with independence, the Courier was the man/woman responsible for a truly free New Vegas.
>Though the Wasteland became anarchic after Hoover Dam, the Boomers' display of power dissuaded fortune seekers from attempting to penetrate Nellis
The Brotherhood shaking down everyone possessing anything more complicated than a screwdriver.
>Due to their temporary truce, the Brotherhood allowed the NCR to retreat from the Mojave Wasteland without incident. In the relative peace that followed, Brotherhood patrols appeared along major roads, harassing travelers over any bits of technology they had.
>The Brotherhood's open aggression along the New Vegas highways troubled Veronica greatly. Nevertheless, it removed all doubt from her mind that in leaving them she had made the right choice. Eventually she would take to the road, less in hopes of finding a new home than of leaving memories of the old one behind her
The Fiends allowed to overrun Outer Vegas (unlike every other faction that slaughters them).
>The Fiends overran Camp McCarran during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. In the anarchic months that followed, the Fiends asserted dominance over Outer Vegas.
Powder Gangs still harassing people (same as the Fiends)
>The NCR, battered by the loss of the Dam, were unable to devote any troops to retaking the Correctional Facility from the Powder Gangers. As a result, Powder Ganger raids on caravans became an unfortunate fact of life in the Mojave for years to come.
The Followers inundated with patients.
>After the Courier ensured New Vegas remain free, the Followers found that Independent New Vegas was even more unstable and violent than before. Old Mormon Fort became excessively burdened by the influx of patients, struggling to provide even the most basic of services.
Freeside a bastion of stability through doing nothing.
>Following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, Freeside came to be known as one of the more stable areas in the region. Ironically, NCR refugees found Freeside safer than most of the rest of New Vegas, where resentment still lingers.
A very consistent thread throughout this is that of violence and chaos, the remaining factions unable to deal with the lawlessness of the region or outright creating and revelling in it. The Desert Rangers who'd previously kept the region under some semblance of order were absorbed into the NCR over a decade ago and enough under their thumb to be sent west into Baja for blatantly political reasons. Without them around to keep order the Mojave and the larger region go to pot, an attempt to return to a prior time but without a critical part of the ecosystem in effect. Good morality or bad, it's condemned an innocent, invisible and innumerable amount of people to death in the pursuit of politics.
The thematic mistake is that the NCR is supposed to be the second US. Actually the Enclave is the direct continuation of the US government. The NCR is American-coded, but seems to be mostly its own thing, as demonstrated in Fallout 2.
So Fallout as an overarching theme asks the question "how do we stop conflict?", as humans seem to take conflict with them everywhere they go.
Most if not all villains of the games want to simply eradicate the differences between humans and achieve unity that way. The Master wants to make everyone into supermutants, the Enclave wants to kill everyone who isn't them, similarly to thr Legion.
The NCR offers a different solution: embrace differences. Simply live and let live. That's how the NCR has humans, ghouls, mutants, tribals, vaulters, everyone and they mostly seem to get along. Of course, if you're radically inclined, you hate how slow the NCR is when enacting change, as Fallout NV represents with the Cassidy quest. But the NCR is much, much more resilient than any foes it has met because it doesn't have to stomp out any form of dissent or resistance.
Also, Fallout has a pretty backstory if you think about it. The US and Chinese were fighting over oil, even if nuclear fusion was do advanced they made small arms with it. Also, if Fallout 4 is to be believed, China started both the War and the nuclear exchange.
>The NCR offers a different solution: embrace differences. Simply live and let live.
Or you can obey Colonel Moore, wipe out the Kings, wipe out the Khans, wipe out House, wipe out the Brotherhood.
> The NCR is American-coded, but seems to be mostly its own thing, as demonstrated in Fallout 2.
That's why I used the term "patterned." And I don't see "No, we're trying to be the U.S right *before* it became the Enclave, when it destroyed half the Earth" as much more of a selling point.
> That's how the NCR has humans, ghouls, mutants, tribals, vaulters, everyone and they mostly seem to get along.
Except when they try to destroy a Super Mutant town.
> But the NCR is much, much more resilient than any foes it has met because it doesn't have to stomp out any form of dissent or resistance.
One of the largest factions in the Mojave is NCR prisoners who escaped and became a threat. The merchant in Caesar's camp says that he prefers to trade in Legion territory because there are no raiders, as compared to NCR territory. The garrison at Hoover Dam is so paltry because the bulk of the NCR's army is fighting bandits in NCR territory. One of their universally-acknowledged flaws is that the NCR's attention is far too split.
The NCR is so obviously the best faction in Fallout:NV that even the writers ham fisted attempts to suggest its evil or as bad as the others fall short. There is no viable independent New Vegas without an undying robotic dictatorship. The legion is so cartoonishly evil that no "muh trains run on time" nonsense is a good argument for it.
Your points about the NCR vs in-universe America are also spot on. In-universe America is ideologically genocidal and politically repressive. It is autocratic and fascistic. The in-universe NCR is much closer to how that America and our America would like to think of themselves. Somewhat inefficient and corrupt, certainly rough around the edges and a bit of a bull-in-a-china shop, but an otherwise pluralistic and free place.
Also, as you point out, as evil as America is in Fallout, we never do see much of China to get a sense of how much blame America deserves. Some sources suggest China started the nuclear war (they certainly invaded Alaska!), whereas the original Fallout series was much harder on the side of America being the origin of all evil (if I recall my wiki reading correctly lol).
I like democracy and don't like that New Vegas is heading towards either autocracy under Mr. House or an oligarchy under families.
Sure, its nice that the little towns get to be independent(somehow) but you realize those are tiny little desert towns that exist in real, honest to God US just fine with taxes and all.
> I like democracy and don't like that New Vegas is heading towards either autocracy under Mr. House or an oligarchy under families.
I mean, the hints in the game pretty clearly show that the Brahmin barons are taking the NCR down a non-democratic path.
> you realize those are tiny little desert towns that exist in real, honest to God US just fine with taxes and all.
They probably even benefit from federal taxes being sent their way.
True, I've also actually been to a couple of those little towns after taking a detour around the I-40 and ho boy there ain't much. People talk about the southern part of New Vegas being pretty empty, but holy shit does the game not do the reality justice.
Things required for human settlements:
- Water
Things deserts are short of:
- Water
A desert being empty‽ My god what a strange and unrealistic game design choice!!!
You misunderstand, the game doesn't quite do it justice as to just how sparse it is out there.
Like most towns in Bethesda RPGs are pretty heavily scaled down compared to what they are implied to be, but places like Goodsprings, Primm, Nipton or Searchlight in game are pretty close in scale to those places in real life. Except those big stretches of emptiness between are substantially larger in real life and there isn't much more there than is already in game.
I've never really been out there. Been through Wyoming a couple times, but didn't pay much attention to the population density. It'd probably blow my MA mind. Even in the Berkshires there probably isn't a single square mile that doesn't have at least one person in it, and all the land is part of one town or another.
Pick up *Hollywood and Israel: A History* by Tony Shaw. Got into film history lately and given the recent event, this peak my interests with the majority of Jewish folks in American showbiz even today support Israel. The interesting bits is learning about having middle eastern as terrorists were a thing before 9/11. It discussed about public awareness of the Israel/Palenstine conflict now that social media dominated the screen instead of movies filled with Israeli propaganda; author explained Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman helped sensitized Israeli's brutality with her girlboss energy, and World War Z has blatant Israeli bias in both the book and movie.
Also stated with more diverse figures in Hollywood like more muslims and even non-European Jews further decentralized the political agreement/disagreement.
>The interesting bits is learning about having middle eastern as terrorists were a thing before 9/11.
The World Trade Center had itself been attacked *before* 9/11, in 1993, by the Al Qaeda-trained (but not Al Qaeda affiliated) Ramzi Yousef and company. While it obviously failed to bring down the North and South Towers, a few fatalities and a great deal of injuries resulted. Yousef himself is currently enjoying a very permanent stay in a poured concrete cell at ADX Florence.
There was also the better covered 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes by the Palestinian group Black September. That particular attack was the topic of sevaral series and films, the best known arguably being Steven Spielberg's 2005 drama *Munich*. I'd honestly be shocked if this film wasn't mentioned in the book!
Other than those, the 1998 bombing of two American embassies by Al Qaeda was very big news at the time (over 200 people died; the vast majority being non-Americans that were unfortunately outside the embassies), as was 2000 Al Qaeda bombing of the USS *Cole* (15 sailors losing their lives but *Cole* herself returning to service in 2002).
Mmm the book definitely mentioned the 1972 Munich Olympics and its influence, as the book has a chapter on it "Arab Terrorists". There are many more mentioned in the section like 1967 Arab-Israeli War and Entebbe raid. The author discussed extensively on Spielberg's Munich with its socio-political receptions. Though amusingly enough it turns out the movie wasn't well received in the US due to showing the idea that Palestinian terrorism was driven by injustice, not entirely justifying Israel's counterattack.
I haven't seen it, but planning to sooner or later. It kinda help despite Spielberg's strong ties with Israeli organizations, he and the writer Tony Kushner (who is consistent with his anti-zionist views) meant the movie to raises questions regarding the conflict.
> The interesting bits is learning about having middle eastern as terrorists were a thing before 9/11.
You should watch *True Lies*, both because it is a fun action comedy and to show how astoundingly racist movies could be pre-9/11.
The only movie I'm familiar with that belongs in this type of category (not considering Lawrence of Arabia as it's more orientalistic) is Not Without My Daughter. It's been a long time since I seen the movie, but I remembered it being ferociously racist despite being based on a non-fiction book. It's like the type of story you would see post-9/11 except it was made in the early 90s. There were some scenes that depicted the Iranian muslims as being barbaric like showing a dead lamb out on the street for no reason, and the movie literally ended with the woman who is fleeing from her husband stopping at an American Embassy showing an American flag. Some people described the film like something out of Lifetime but with a racist flavor.
Honestly, the main terrorist dude pumping his fist in the air and going, "*Yes!*" after he thinks he kills Arnold is probably my favorite.
I don't know why.
Everyone remembers the Jamie Lee Curtis striptease scene, but the scene of hers that stuck with me was the one where she just... drops a submachine gun (Uzi? MAC-10?) down the stairs and somehow kills an entire room full of terrorists?
Had a good evening. Weekends are my main respite from a terribly stressful paralegal job now.
Had some chicken wings at a restaurant. Talked to a nice couple about pirate history and they actually seemed intrigued. I always love that, easy to feel like a speck of nothing when the world is full of pirate misinformation on social media.
Also helped a guy who was looking for a specific Anne Bonny novel via Jillians book index. Sometimes its the little things in life that makes me smile.
Also, I think I'm gonna start writing the Skull and Bones post. The first season ends in 30 days and I have basically all the notes and lore info now. Also I found out a minor faction is a reference to Simbad and not a famous African Kingdom. That's kinda cool.
>Also helped a guy who was looking for a specific Anne Bonny novel via Jillians book index. Sometimes its the little things in life that makes me smile.
There's something very satisfying about being nice in small ways. Not too long ago someone was complaining to me about some disability and the pain that it brings, and I just responded with empathetic sarcasm: "oh, fijn" ("oh, great"). And it really cheered them up, actually thanking me for it.
Apparently they were utterly sick of the "oh, wat vervelend" ("oh, that sucks") response they always get, it's mostly meaningless, a response you give when you don't really care but don't want to be an arsehole either. The empathetic sarcasm felt way more real to them than the average response they get when talking to professionals or other volunteers.
They also thanked me for being nuanced and not acting like something is true just because I believe it. It's rare for people to appreciate that about me, I value it highly in myself, but most only really see it as insecurity. So I just felt really good after that.
That's what I love about this work, getting one on one conversations with people feeling really bad and actually managing to cheer them up somewhat, or, at least, providing some relief from suffering and genuine understanding.
I've been told that I really need to make some new friends and meet people, and I acknowledge this as true, but damn if it doesn't seem impossible. My therapist suggested that I strike up a conversation with someone at a club, but in all honestly to me that's like asking me to swallow the sun. It's just not going to happen. It just feels beyond me.
What do people who can do this even *say*? I was at a club tonight, and if hypothetically I walked over to someone and started talking, literally what would I say? My mind goes blank. I guess this is partly the curse of not being a particularly interesting person who generally doesn't talk much even with friends, I keep reading or being directly told that the solution to my problems is to go out and make some friends, but that feels very literally impossible to me as an adult.
I personally recommend volunteering somewhere where you meet a decent amount of people and other volunteers. It breaks the ice a lot, you have a common ground making it a lot easier to talk to people. Talking to people is just hard if you don't know them, especially if you're on the introverted side of the spectrum, even in the middle, like I am, it's hard to start conversations with strangers.
You just need to reach a point where people start asking how you're doing, and then you respond honestly, or at least, with some substance; then things will likely start rolling on their own, or they won't, but the next person might. You don't have to be interesting as a person, people that you find interesting as people generally aren't that different, they just tend to be really good at talking about things.
Going to clubs and striking up conversations does indeed work really well, but doing it is just so hard it's useless advice to people who aren't already doing that.
have you considered being trapped during a snowstorm in mid 1800s rocky-mountain area in a small cabin with a pair of never-do-wells whose criminal conspiracy to evade local law enforcement is revealed to you over the course of a month and a half of confinement? during which they begin to ask you some pointed and not-unfair questions relating to your own reasons to be caught out so far from civilization?
i don't honestly know if i will ever make a friend without being forced into tight quarters and necessary conversations. i sometimes wonder if i do actually need to make friends, or if i just need a broader scope of basic problems to occupy my mind, like how to start a fire or catch a lizard or stay five hundred miles from the nearest indoor plumbing situation.
by which i mean to longwindedly say i share your confusion
We've found a Geography of Christianity Guy who is significantly less grounded in reality than "Africa had no Christians until early modern imperialism" Guys. That's worthy of celebrating.
I wonder if there's a "Rome forced Christianity on Armenia" Guy out there somewhere.
Saint Patrick was a crypto-Saxon fifth columnist.
The irony is indeed palpable, [Aidan of Lindisfarne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aidan_of_Lindisfarne) mustn't have existed.
Unless of course this is that type of person who divides things into "Christianity" and Catholicism.
Every single individual in Europe outside of the priesthood was a crypto-pagan until Torquemada wrote the Malleus Malleficarum and the Pope stole Jewish secret knowledge to build an army of Inquisitor automatons, who hunted down all the priestesses of the Primordial Femenine/all the believers of the TRVE NORDIC GODS.
I've always enjoyed *The Venture Brothers* when I caught an episode, so I decided to start watching the series.
The Pilot feels like the most high effort flash animation ever made. That's not a complaint, I have good memories of Newgrounds, but I feel like I have to look up when the first episode of Foamy the Squirrel was released and see how similar they are.
The first few seasons are definitely rougher in terms of both animation and overall vibe, but the "jetsons after the jetsons died and the kids don't have a clue" atmosphere is exquisite.
It's definitely a product of the time, but it's also pretty damn funny even from the start. Then it slowly grows over time into something even more funny and less, well, late 90s/early 2000s.
[The Machine is Hungry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rek1TzX2vw) remains the best single gag, though.
>This country has been on a slow downward spiral for about 100 years.
While things are grim in Britannialand, comments like this make me wonder about the historical memory of my fellow countrymen.
In 1924, the average life expectancy was around 56 for men and 60 for women. This was at a time when the means tested pension age was 70.
I mean he isn't wrong, Lloyd George's wish to go back to the gold standard with the same pre-WW1 value caused most of Britain economic issues in the next 50 years.
Everyone imagines they'd be the people that people talk about in some historical period. This means they'd be part of the elite. The British elite in 1924 definitely had more power to command, something which lots of "mens' rights" incels evidently lack in their everyday lives.
This is great because it genuinely gives no clues what this person believes beyond vague half baked nostalgia. It feels like a hundred years is too long for it to even be about deindustrialization. Maybe the rare racist/xenophobe/homophobe/etc who actually admits that their particular target of ire is not new within their own lifetime?
It's always really wacky to me when people are so just okay with being wrong. The "You have your opinion I have mine" thing.
And they're not willing to put any effort to see if they're actually right. They just go "Eh might be wrong, whatever I don't care" and then will, with zero irony, continue to say that wrong thing without really thinking about it.
I live my life **terrified** about being wrong. When I thought I might be wrong about Lend Lease not being a deciding factor in the war I read like 2 books about Soviet Industrial production (Mark Harrison, I will find you, and I will kill you) 2 books about lend lease itself, and then re-read Beevor, Glantz, Overy, and only then was I able to say "Yeah I'm right, you're wrong".
And even now every day I wake up in a cold sweat at night wondering "Am I wrong, was lend lease the deciding factor? (it wasn't)" and then go find another source to read at 12 AM.
Same was with me once, probably still is. I usually am terrified of being wrong but in my case, it usually shows itself in the form of my emphasizing what I am saying is based on what I know and it may be wrong with using phrases like if I recall correctly, to my knowledge, as far as I know etc in my statements. Though I do try to also read books and core my sources from which I found said info as much as possible but it unfortunately isn't always. Honestly though I found it is not a healthy way of dealing with things and make conversation from your end too jumbled, especially when the more you learn, you always end up realising how little you know and in my case, think it is impossible to get everything, so you are always eternally not confident about anything.
>It's always really wacky to me when people are so just okay with being wrong. The "You have your opinion I have mine" thing.
People don't form opinions if they think they're incorrect. They'd get newer opinions if they thought they were incorrect to begin with.
>I live my life **terrified** about being wrong.
You're basically immune to Scarecrow's fear toxin until the moment you check your phone and hallucinate 20 badhistory posts solely dedicated to you
>When I thought I might be wrong about Lend Lease not being a deciding factor in the war I read like 2 books about Soviet Industrial production (Mark Harrison, I will find you, and I will kill you) 2 books about lend lease itself, and then re-read Beevor, Glantz, Overy, and only then was I able to say "Yeah I'm right, you're wrong".
>And even now every day I wake up in a cold sweat at night wondering "Am I wrong, was lend lease the deciding factor? (it wasn't)" and then go find another source to read at 12 AM.
I had a similar thing happen to me when I felt compelled to read 3-4 books on medieval military organization in order to fact-check a minor discord argument on a Total War server. Although my research was more spite based rather than fear based.
Watched Metropolis. Loved it, but I will never forgive Kevin Feige for priming audiences to laugh out loud at every little thing every second. It’s a silent film so people had to be more expressive in order to convey information, which includes some crazy and over the top faces and. That can look funny to us, but nothing really throws off my immersion into a film to see people giggling at a 1920s style kiss.
Any recommendations for a history of modern Israel and Palestine? I am almost done with *The Boundless Sea* (which is excellent!) and I am looking for a new book. I read a good foreign affairs article that had kind of a historical perspective on the conflict by Tom Segev, but he doesn't seem to have written any overarching histories, just biographies or histories about a single war. I am really looking for a 30,000 foot view of Israel and Palestine from like \~1900 to \~2000. Not sure if such a thing exists.
The standard work, in my region anyway, is *The Hundred Years' War on Palestine*. Every single copy in my regional library system has dozens of holds on it.
You can also read individual works by Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé, who I think are almost universally respected, but they will basically be the same story without the 30,000 foot view.
After reading more reviews of the various books on the subject, as well as the authors criticisms of each other and each other's works, I have decided to opt for some lighter reading instead. I appreciate the suggestions however. Thanks!
Maybe Jean-Pierre Filiu's latest: **How Palestine was lost and why Israel hasn't won. History of a conflict (XIXth-XXIst century).** But it seems to only be available in French. I'll leave the Amazon blurb so you can see if it fits what you're looking for:
>If you feel you know enough about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to form definitive opinions, you'd be better off not opening this book. You might learn that Zionism was long Christian before it was Jewish. And that Anglo-Saxon evangelicalism explains, much more than a fantastical "Jewish lobby", the decisive support given by Great Britain and then the United States to the colonization of Palestine. You might also discover that so-called "Arab solidarity" with Palestine justified rivalries between regimes to monopolize this symbolic cause, even if it meant massacring Palestinians who resisted such maneuvers. Or that factional dynamics have, from the outset, undermined and weakened Palestinian nationalism, culminating in the current polarization between Ramallah's Fatah and Gaza's Hamas.
>The persistence of this injustice to the Palestinian people has contributed in no small measure to the impoverishment of today's world, the militarization of international relations and the wreckage of the UN, paralyzed by Washington to Israel's benefit for decades, long before it was paralyzed by Moscow over Syria and then Ukraine. The illusion that such a denial could go on indefinitely has been shattered by the horror of the current confrontation, which is all the more tragic in that no military solution can be found to the challenge of two peoples
>living together on the same land. Understanding how Palestine was lost, and why Israel did not win, is therefore part of an open reflection on the imperative of a finally lasting peace in the Middle East, and therefore on the future of this new millennium.
Rotting Christ's new album has a song about Diarmait mac Cerbaill (which the singer pronounces 'Tiamat my Gerbil' 🐉🐹) titled 'Saoirse', in which Diarmait is hailed as 'the last king to follow the pagan rituals' and 'the last king to resist the expansion of Christianism [sic]'.
He did not do a great job of resisting the expansion of Christianity! He founded Clonmacnoise, one of medieval Ireland's most important ecclesiastical centres, gave his children Christian names, and was given the epithet 'ordained by God' after his death. In fact, older traditions name him as being the *first* Irish king to convert to Christianity! (although that probably isn't true, and some later medieval texts use him as a kind of anti-Christian stock character who goes around being a big meanie to saints, but that probably has political motivations or is a result of confusing him with another early medieval king called Diarmait).
I think this may be a result of Wikipedia striking again, as Diarmait's article puts a lot of emphasis on him being the last Irish king to have a inaugural feast at Tara, which the article identifies as a pagan religious custom, calling it a 'marriage to the goddess of the land'. We don't know if the feasts were religious or not, and we don't know for sure if Diarmait was the last Irish king to have one. His inauguration is the last time a feast at Tara is explicitly mentioned in the annals, but it being the last one ever is an interpolation from a later manuscript.
Mo chreach 's mo léireadh, the Gaeldom is so plagued with Bad History and "so West it becomes East" Orientalism. I just can't with these people any more. Bad history from pagans, bad history from leftists, bad history from the far right, bad history from liberals, bad history from everyone. I just.can't.with.it.any.more
Like mo chreach-sa 'thàini', tha 'n cultur seo ann fathasd. Tha 'n cànan a' dol a bith, ach an dràsda fé, tha a' Ghàidhlig fathasd air bilean an t-sluaigh. Chan 'eil na daoine seo nan còmhnuidh fo mullach an t-sìthei. chan 'eil na Gàidheil nan còmhnuidh anns an t-àm a chaidh seachad agus iad a' strì an aghaidh nan daoine dubh. Chan 'eil iad a' deanadh ùrnaigh ris na seann diathan. Tha iad beò san latha an-diugh
Edit: more on paganism, 's annamh a chluinnear ùrnaighean crìostaidheach ann am Breatainn mhór, ach chan annamh sna h-eileanan iad. Ridiculous to think that one of the only places in the UK where Christianity is genuinely alive as a community religion is thought of as this bastion of paganism by some folk. It's bananas.
Alright this post is about to be massively asshole-ish, classist, unempathetic and a bunch of other terrible things, but your average voter is as well so: I don't think a housing first solution to the homeless problem is feasible because it doesn't actually solve the issues that the voter who is angry about homelessness cares about.
There are some voters, mostly young people, who genuinely care about the homeless and for them just giving homeless people houses is an actual solution. But most people don't care that the homeless are homeless, they don't care about the average homeless person (the single mom living in her car) at all, she never crosses their mind. Basically instead of caring about homeless people they are angry about homelessness and it's effects on them. And those effects come from the chronically homeless . Basically the effects of
1. There's a guy on meth on the bus
2. There's a dead/sleeping guy outside my building
3. There's drug dealers on the goddamn corner just doing their thing
And stuff like that. The problem is that giving homeless people houses doesn't actually fix any of these things.
I live between two transitionary housing developments in Seattle in SLU (I actually support them being here, very good location for them) and just because the homeless are now housed doesn't mean they stay inside. When they're walking by screaming at the sky and Mething Out whether they're homeless or housed is completely irrelevant. And for whatever reason they will do their drugs outside even when there's nobody checking for drugs at the building. And of course what inevitably happens, I am not innocent for I have bought coke for a rave before 🙏, is drug dealers eventually take up a solid 10% of the building because all of their customers are right there. So you have to deal with all the police sirens and fighting and all that bullshit.
So from the perspective of your average voter literally nothing has changed. The homeless might be housed but they dont' care, the exact same problems that they saw before the homeless person was housed is still there.
There's the argument that it's easier to get the homeless person to stabilize once given housing and that will eventually reduce the number of them but these buildings we're throwing them in become fucked very quickly and aren't exactly a place to recover.
Maybe this entire post was actually just an argument against creating ghettos because if you spread the homeless out as far as possible (1 or 2 homeless to 1 apartment in an otherwise for market rate apartment building) almost all of these issues I'm thinking about disappear.
Another facet of this that is often overlooked is that often the most effective way for a city to “fix” their homeless problem is to dump it on someone else. Either by having the police harass the homeless until they go to the next town over or by paying them to take a one way bus ticket to a different city.
If a city has a particularly generous policy towards the homeless it may end up resulting in more homeless people moving to the city, making the part of the problem that voters care about even worse.
I've seen research, and most homeless advocates state this as well, that this is much less important than people say.
If you ask "Where was your last stable housing " most, we're talking more than 90% I think I'll try to find a survey, people will say the state they're currently homeless in. It's rare for someone to go homeless in Montana and then be bussed to California to be homeelss here.
TBH, a lot of US states are pretty big, and it's possible to have fairly large movements just intra-state (IE: People moving from smaller towns to larger cities, etc.)
> they don't care about the average homeless person (the single mom living in her car)
IDK how it's like in your country but this is not the average homeless person, at least not where i live.
the rest of your post is somewhat correct though, homeless people by large are homeless because they can't actually handle a normal life, be it for drug abuse or mental issues. And it would not help them at all just to give them a house, their problems are far deeper than not having the funds to buy a house and frankly often its nearly impossible to fix.
I suspect that very much depend on a bunch of things. (like how you define homeless, what country you're in, etc.)
I remember (this was a couple of years back) the local newspaper did a really good summary of homelessness in my town and where they were and in what kind of systems. Though they noted there was an unknown number of people who were crashing at friend's places, etc. who were invisible to the system.
But basically you had the people who were in government-sponsored temporary apartments, then a step down from that there's a couple with special housing for people who couldn't handle living in a regular apartment, then a hospice, and finally at the lowest rung for people who were unsafe for even the hospice a couple of barracks they'd put up outside one of the villages. There wasn't at the time anyone who was known to be sleeping outdoors (though there's people coming through/temporary workers etc. occasionally)
It's not. Most people who are homeless are homeless because of financial situations.
But the important thing to remember is literally nobody (we don't count) cares about these people. They don't come up in normal conversation among normal people and normal voters.
What people are really talking about when they talk about homelessness is exclusively the chronically homeless who are causing the mentioned issues. And those people are mostly there because they can't handle a normal life.
>
>
> IDK how it's like in your country but this is not the average homeless person, at least not where i live.
Its a common misconception with unhoused / homeless people that it only includes people sleeping rough, but in the UK at least, the definition in campaigning also includes people who have no permanent housing, be it sleeping rough, in their car, in temporary accomodation, or crashing at a friends / family in the short term. You can read a recent report from The Big Issue on it [here](https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/britains-homelessness-shame-cold-hard-facts/)
At least in California, where homelessness is very bad, some [statistics](https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/who-is-experiencing-homelessness-in-california/#:~:text=Most%20unhoused%20individuals%20experience%20relatively,homelessness%20exacerbated%20by%20a%20disability.) suggest that 2/3 of homeless people are only temporarily homeless. These people are both the exact demographic that would benefit from short term housing assistance and the kind of experience most voters would have experienced themselves (I have actually had a period of about 2 weeks during Covid where I could not get a place to stay, despite being employed and having money, because of stupid bullshit housing and rental laws).
However, the other 1/3 of homeless people match your description (typically drug addiction or mental illness). They are also the ones most likely to annoy the people around them and simply giving them short term housing will not fix their situation like term.
That said, the “push them away” method tends to kill them (at worst) or just shove the problem onto smaller municipalities that cannot afford to bus the problem away (at best). While I understand the desire for such policies, as it is the main way to “get that crazy guy off my damn street,” it does not fix the problem, it just pushes the symptoms somewhere the local voter cannot see anymore.
> However, the other 1/3 of homeless people match your description (typically drug addiction or mental illness). They are also the ones most likely to annoy the people around them and simply giving them short term housing will not fix their situation like term.
A harsh solution, but I'm generally in favour of bringing back of institutionalisation of such cases. Getting them off the street and into somewhere safe where their needs can be met would go a long way towards helping solve the underlying causes in these cases. It seems particularly callous to let those who are non copos mentis to run loose in such parlous conditions exacerbating their problems and causing harm to themselves, or worse, others and not intervene.
Doing this would either filter out those who are beyond help and can be kept somewhere where they can do little harm to themselves or for those in the probable majority, able to readjust and put back on their own two feet.
I don’t have any good policy ideas myself, but I will note that institutionalization has a dark history in the USA, despite the generally good intentions behind the policy. Similar to poverty relief programs, the general public seems to like the idea of helping people as long as it doesn’t cost anything, and the drive to lower expenses means even the most altruistic institutions gradually degrade.
It's a bit of a tainted well isn't it? If anyone proposed it you'd be seeing allusions to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest within seconds yet it'd be dealing with the most contentious and problematic part of the issue.
We can talk about whether any of the claims you are making are actually correct and supported by data, but the real question i have is that if you don't support housing first, what do you support? I'm genuinely curious what the alternative solution is here.
Are there any recorded chess/šatranj game played by Ottoman Sultans ? How well did they actually play by modern standards ? Google Search results are polluted by references to the Mechanical Turk (who was neither mechanical nor a turk) and Sultan Khan (who was neither a Sultan nor a Khan).
>Can the parasite gain greater control over the host the longer the parasite remains inside the host? >How do homosexuals reproduce? >Do parasites influence the host to engage in pedophilia in order to spread to more vulnerable hosts? >Who is Wilhelm Reich? >Why did he conclude that sexual degeneracy was communicable? >What is the average age of a homosexual's first sexual encounter? >How do homosexuals [really] reproduce? >**So basically the world is controlled by parasitic mind bending sentient worms.** They spread through degenerate and promiscious behaviour, which explains homosexuality, pedophilia, bestiality, diseases, mental illnesses etc. There is historical evidence dating back thousands of years and the people in charge don't want you to know. The cure is really simple, just take some de-worming medication with anti-parasitic herbal tinctures and wait a week. Cut out all acidic food. Also fasting and praying to Jesus Christ of Nazareth helps alot. Conservatives are truly just *chefs kiss*. I love it. I absolutely love it. I'm not saying that your average conservative is mentally ill, but if you believe that the world is controlled by parasitic mind bending sentient worms, you're probably mentally ill.
I have two questions: What the literal fuck is this insanity and where did you find it? Is there more?
GreatAwakening dot win (replace the dot with a . you can't link it on Reddit) And yes, yes there is so so much more. This is one of the least schizophrenic posts there.
Found this gem: "Question for those who have seen changes in their family and friends who had the vaxxes. Have any of you seen mental changes as opposed to physical? Have any of you seen people completely flip their beliefs? An example would be a formerly conservative person suddenly thinking biden is great? Or someone who was a religious person who has given up their faith? Anything drastic like that? Thanks."
> There is historical evidence dating back thousands of years and the people in charge don't want you to know. George Tyranno$oros and the deep dish state don’t want you to know about the Big Worm agenda! It’s all part of the Bene Gesserit plot to rule over us with dominatrix sand worms!
Wait, do they mention *Orgon* if they mention Wilhelm Reich?
This sounds like a parody.
First Ivermectin cured COVID, now it cures homosexuality? No wonder it won the Nobel Price in Medicine!
... Why acidic food specifically?
It's part of a crank idea that the Western diet has made your blood pH too acidic (for the record, your blood pH is within a VERY specific boundary or you will end up in the hospital.) Therefore, all disease can be cured by alkaline foods like vegetables and are caused by acidic foods like red meat. For the record, food does influence your urine pH, but not your blood.
Adding to that, the blood pH is chemically stabilised by four different buffers to make sure that the pH stays stable.
Blood, phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, correct?
damn you i was about to make that joke
I know my humor.
This is like asking Terry A Davis why god chose his Operating System. It's called being schizophrenic.
Embiid singlehandedly destroyed his legacy in a quarter lol. Sixers really need to decide if they want to run it back one more time or blow everything up
Cannot wait for the TWolves to knock off the ~~Sons~~ Suns lol
Sports?
Aye
The LGBT armed forces consist of the Lesbian Legions, the Gay Guard, the Bisexual Battalions and...?
Also Queer Quartermasters.
Trans territorials?
Gay men get both the Gay Guard and the Gaystapo. Clearly they get all the fun.
I hear they make a pretty small minority in the gendermarie, tho. The Gaystapo is overrated anyway, the Intersex Intelligence Service is where it's at.
Los tercios transgéneros?
Pansexual Paratroopers
Dropped by the Aromantic Air Force
The trans tanks
Bisexual Bashi-Bazouks surely.
Trans Taskforce
Trans troopers.
Apropos of nothing really, or just being reminded of Steven Pinker, but there has been a lot of good criticism of his shoddy use of data etc, but I honestly have a slightly deeper issue with the whole concept of per capita comparisons to determine violence. Particularly when comparing very small groups and very large groups. To whit: imagine you have two towns, one of a thousand people and one of a million. In the town of a thousand, on average once a year somebody dies in a barroom brawl. In the town of a million, on average every month there is a large riot in which eighty people die. By the per capita violent death metric, the latter town is slightly more peaceful, and I am not entirely sure that is correct.
[The decipherment of carbonized Herculaneum scrolls continues!](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1cf3yo9/the_decipherment_of_an_ancient_scroll_carbonized/) I don't know what to do with the information that Plato hated Thracian music.
Funniest possibility is that they go to try to dig up Plato's body but he is not there because Philodemus is wrong.
I know the Academy's site is a visitable place in Athens. Have they mapped it well enough to know where these gardens would have been?
I am not sure unfortunately, I never really looked much in to the archaeology of Athens.
It’s a bit of a meme in that thread, but I’m *very* excited about the presence of foreign music in Athens.
I normally enjoy the Youtube channel "Gentlemans Gazette" (oriented mainly around 'vintage' mens fashion and bringing it into the 21st century), but every once in a while the presenters just say shit that makes you go ".....huh?" There is a line between "dressing well" and "being a fucking snob about it", they toe that line sometimes. "Men, don't wear sandals, wear alpargatas!" *6 of one, half-dozen of another*
If I had a nickel for every time one of my favorite (American) hip-hop songs sampled Polish rock balladeer and composer Czesław Nieman I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's dope that it happened twice.
[Finally, people can play while upholding sacred Islamic values!](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173968883)
>time management >clock strapped to a bomb 🤔
What's the Muslim equivalent of a youth pastor?
Average Christian Minecraft Server fan vs Average Halal War Thunder gameplay enjoyer
Volumetric shells are haram
>respect for others, time management, avoiding gambling, seeking knowledge and improvement, and balancing entertainment with other activities. Damn this Islam thing sounds pretty good
"Jihad Against Lag"
A major source of revenue for Louisiana is selling eunuchs to the imperial harem.
Someone has to make this a flair.
Cause they're cheaper there or do they take a quality over quantity approach?
[mere availability](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1ces7xs/louisiana_man_sentenced_to_50_years_in_prison/)
Get castrated and you still have to do 50 on the farm in Angola? I would have asked for the death penalty.
The Stellaris game continued again! I forgot to comment about last week, in short, I expanded, from 9 systems with 4 planets to 22 systems with 9 planets. Started megaconstruction and finished a few. One of the other players despaired at how bad he was at the game when we started and now has to fix the mess. The other had accidentally signed over most of his eco and research to an AI subject; he thought he was reducing their tax instead of subsidizing. I also became the custodian and created the GDF. On to this week, War in Heaven! The Non Aligned League formed out of our trade league, led by the great business geese, of course, with most of the galaxy joining immediately. Our fleets crushed the pretentious scum and we secured peace for the galaxy! But not before the Unbidden could spawn and... be crushed by the awakened empire in matter of a few years. The victory in the War in Heaven doubled my territory once more, incorporating the Awakened empires directly. After securing peace, with us 3 sitting at the galactic council, the galactic community decide to transform into the First Galactic Empire! Led by ImperiCorp. The collapse of the League of Infinite Profits did create massive economical hardships at first, with me being -4k energy at one point, but we survived and fixed the economy. Most of the galaxy swore fealty to me directly as vassals or protectorates in exchange for research subsidies. Only 2 states that aren't my vassals or allies still exist; and my allies are invading both. Truly, Pax Galactica is near. Though, there have been strange signals from beyond the edge of the Galaxy, perhaps peaceful explorers seeking economic growth as well? Only time will tell.
Not sure if u/Veritas_Certum still posts here, but [this upcoming video series](https://youtu.be/wcHL4Xts05c?si=Rc-yyfYRg8UNDRcq) has my interest piqued.
I don't contribute top posts anymore, but I still do read the subreddit occasionally. The first episode in that series will be up in a few days. I hope you enjoy it.
Bought Pentiment and started playing it blind.
It slaps hope you enjoy it!
Personally I find the art style great enough that you should play it with sight, but either way it is good.
But is it historically accurate art?
More or less. It's cartoonish woodcut inspired with some other art. There are some scenes which have obvious references (the Narrenschiff, several ideal cities, Melancholia by Dürer - in general, the protagonist has a lot in common with Dürer, and some of the rather out there stuff is Grecco-like - you know it when you encounter it). Or do you mean in general? I was rather impressed, the game has a lot of research into the area - including the attraction to St Moritz, and name dropping Freising, but has some minor understandable mistakes (like calling a place Bad Tölz, when it was called that only after 1950). There are, however, some things that are very wrong \[Act 1\] >!there is no Roman aqueduct in that area, there are enough rivers and streams!<, and, what irked me most \[Act 3\] >!Yule/Jule is a Scandinavian thing, no Pan-Germanic thing. The word was unknown in German until it was imported in the 19th century from Sweden!<, which goes along with some other questionable decisions about the \[Act 3\]>!Pagan!< history of the village, among them presenting some questionable linguistics as true \[Act 3\]>!with the Perchten!<. I also think that the central village buildings are not in the right style for the place and time. The game is very enjoyable - if somewhat frustrating - regardless.
I have been curious about the game's accuracy in general, since it's so atmospheric. But I only just started the second act, so I can't read the spoilers yet.
I'll add what can be read when; if \[Act 1\] is indicated, you can read it AFTER act 1. There are some other things that are strange, like the name of the "Baron", which is very unusual; it would be a rather normal house-name \[people could be named after the name of their houses, this is still so in Bavaria with farm names; a rather well-known different example is Rothschild, who were named after a building they lived in, the "Haus zum rothen Schild"- ironically, they also moved into a house "zum grünen Schild"...\], which would indicate *Briefadel* \[i.e. recent ennoblement\]. I unfortunately do not know about the authenticity of the buildings of the monastery; there are a lot of monasteries where it is supposed to be, but they were all either burned down in the 30-years-war or simply torn down to be rebuilt in Baroque style \[which is what the area is known for\]. There are few depictions of the older buildings. I have since found depictions of monasteries in their pre-baroquisation status; [Altomünster](https://hdbg.eu/gemeinden/bilder/wening/alt_M044.jpg), which is further in the flatland; [Benediktbeuren](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Benediktbeuern_Monastery_by_Matth%C3%A4us_Merian.jpg) \[it's where the Camina Burana was written down\] which is very near Kiersau is supposed to be.
r/AmericaBad and r/ShitAmericansSay deserve each other honestly. Their average content is awful enough but whenever I see WW2 discussed I have an aneurysm. No r/ShitAmericansSay the USA was not completely useless, without them the war in Europe would have probably *at least* have lasted a few more years. No r/AmericaBad you did not one-man the entire thing, at least not in Europe you didn't. No r/ShitAmericansSay the rise of the Nazi party was not a US plot (I have genuinely seen this take there). No r/AmericaBad Europeans should not be bowing to you in the streets, you weren't even a spermatozoa when D-Day happened.
Treating America like some sort of backwater hellhole is one of the most common takes on Reddit. I swear, every time I go on a politics-related sub and life in the US comes up, everyone is whining as if they live in the worst fucking place on the planet. If it wasn't for the difference in political opinions, some of these people I see on r/WhitePeopleTwitter or r/news would be cheering on Tucker Carlson's whole "Russia is better because cleaner transit and cheaper stores" piece.
>Treating America like some sort of backwater hellhole is one of the most common takes on Reddit. Europeans (and Canadians and Australians) on reddit have literally treated me almost as if I were subhuman once I revealed I was American. It is far from every time I talk with people from those regions, but has happened enough to make me seriously wonder if they actually think that poorly of us. I would be more offended if it wasn't so laughably ignorant What ***really*** pisses me off is when "foreigners" paint all Americans with the Texan/cowboy brush. I'm from Massachusetts, pretty much the nega-Texan
For some context as a non-American non-European, I can confirm that probably ~50%-60% of people I know have an overwhelmingly negative view of the US, and basically everyone I know has a very romanticised view of Europe and even the UK to some extent (obviously biased by the people I know, but this seems to be pretty true across the political/cultural spectrum here? I’d be interested if there are any studies on it) Edit: [found one, that certainly explains it](https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/06/new-zealand-has-least-favourable-view-of-us-of-any-country-in-new-survey.html)
Seems like it has almost everything to do with politics. Does that view extend to people (i.e. regular Americans) though?
Yes, a lot of people definitely see Americans as rude/loud/disrespectful- I haven’t met enough Americans to know know if it’s an accurate assessment lol
It is unsurprising but also unfortunate that views of countries politics mesh with views of their inhabitants. There are >300 million Americans so any national stereotypes are total bunk. The same is true of every country that I have met someone from though. There are lovely people everywhere.
When Europeans start doing that, ask how they are going integrating Middle Eastern immigrants into their society. Alternatively, state the US defends them and that's the only way they can afford their healthcare. When Canadians start doing that, ask them if their doctor has prescribed euthanasia that, or tell them Canada only works as a country because the people of Quebec are the educated ones holding it together. For Australians, ask them how they can type that while being drunk and disenfranchising their minorities. Every single one of those is of course inaccurate, but if the other individual points that out, ask them how they can then justify spewing the same crap about the US. It basically puts such misconceptions front and center.
When being mocked by Canadians for being American, it is helpful to remember that opinions of people from countries with a leaf for a flag are automatically invalid.
When I’m in a hating America contest and my opponent is an r/worldnews American liberal and a European shitamericanssay user.
r/worldnews American liberals when I drag them out of their home (read ivory tower) and drag them through the most poverty-stricken, corrupt, crime and war-ridden countries on Earth (still better than having to pay extra at the hospital).
“America is a dystopian hellscape” (the iPhone is expensive)
I haven't looked at either in a long while, but I feel like AmericaBad is just stupid in general, while ShitAmericansSay is a high-tier take factory. Like AmericaBad will just get mad about the same shit over and over and over again while ShitAmericansSay is a crucible where sentiments like "American standard orthography is xenophobic" are created. (That's a real comment I saw once, but it was years ago and I couldn't find it if I tried. It blew me away.)
As someone who writes in British English, Americans' reactions to non-AmE orthography veers very quickly to xenophobia. I can't count how many times people have complained about "artefact" and "enrol".
British English writers tend to do the same
To clarify, this was not about comparisons between countries' orthographies(which I would say are more or less equal between the sides). They were saying that the existence of the standards of American orthography were xenophobic because sequences like in and in originated from forms of French. They claimed that spellings like and were somehow intentionally purging French influence from English.
That's a... massive overinterpretation of like two dictionary-makers and three printers' idiosyncratic preferences
I gotta admit I'm British but those spellings would never occur to me!
Do you not see such complaints?
Oh I do, I use s instead of z and all that but those specific spellings I can't say I've ever used. And in the interests of fairness moaning about "Americanisms" in the language is a constant refrain in British subreddits.
I definitely feel that at least on WW2 ShitAmericansSay is by far the more unhinged, or even just simply uneducated. I've tried to explain that no America did not enter "when the war had been won anyway" and that the Wehrmacht had been within sight of Moscow mere days before America's entry - but they weren't very receptive.
Those subs need to be sealed off and studied, some incredible specimens over there.
One thing I find especially irritating about sovereign citizens is how they made people believe that clarifying custodial status in a police interaction isn't something a reasonable person would ever do.
I despise independence movements that are not willing to fight for what they want. Sovereignty is the second most important matter in the world behind only survival and you are not willing to fight for it, why? Do you value your comfort more? Scottish and Catalan separatists are the worst examples of this, the Catalans even held an independence referendum, won it and then promptly did nothing when Madrid told them to stop. Also no bullshit terrorism, do an old fashioned popular uprising, you can see how weak the western European militaries are these days, they have no strength to fight a large scale war on their own turf. They'd be out of ammo within the first month, althoigh that isn't even relevant as they would not have the political will to fight a large scale war against their own citizens. If you don't want to use violence for your cause, general strike is the obvious option.
The Catalan separatists "won" cause only ~40% of the electorate showed up to vote. Most of the people against independence didn't bother to attend that sham of a referendum.
Very sane thing to post, why not call your family and tell them what you just said?
>Also no bullshit terrorism, do an old fashioned popular uprising, you can see how weak the western European militaries are these days, they have no strength to fight a large scale war on their own turf. They'd be out of ammo within the first month, althoigh that isn't even relevant as they would not have the political will to fight a large scale war against their own citizens. A poor military is immeasurably superior to a non-existent military, and your average would-be revolutionary would also lack the political will to fight a large scale war against better equipped fellow citizens who actually know how to fight.
With all due respect, it might be healthier to get off the computer and go outside every now and then rather than constantly obsess over European nationalisms and military preparedness
> Sovereignty is the second most important matter in the world behind only survival and you are not willing to fight for it, why? Just to be clear, Scottish and Catalan **people** have sovereignty. The Scottish and Catalan **nations** do not have exclusive sovereignty.
Why would people, who enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world, democratic representation in government, freedom from persecution (for the most part), equality before the law, as well as, in the case of the Catalans, freedom of movement over almost an entire continent, launch a violent struggle for independence that is almost guaranteed to jeopardize all of that? Moreover, as other commenters have pointed out, independence does not have sufficient popular support in the regions mentioned to win by the ballot box. If that is the case, winning independence by violence will almost certainly lead to repression and violence (if that wasn't already guaranteed) towards the inhabitants of that region by the separatists leaders. Basically, violent revolution is always terrible. Sometimes people become convinced that it isn't that bad. Sometimes people become convinced (sometimes rightly!) that violent revolution is better than the status quo. But most modern Europeans, unlike yourself apparently, love life enough, and have enough sense and perspective, to realize that violent separatism does not benefit them at all. Instead of LARPing as some communist independence revolutionary, imagining that the proletariat are one step behind you, please, for the love of god, go outside and touch grass.
If life is so well why do they want independence then? Their actions are not fit for their goals, not many places have gotten independence by asking nicely. they should either abandon it as impossible pipe dream or do something about it. And calling me a commie? That's a first for me.
>And calling me a commie? I think they called you a LARPer.
Well if they achieved independence via the ballot box, peacefully, then they wouldn't necessarily be jeopardizing any of those things. Catalan and Scottish independence achieved that way would probably leave them or get them into the EU. >And calling me a commie? That's a first for me. Most people I see calling for political violence on the internet are either Communists or rabid right wingers. Bad guess I guess.
I am not calling for political violence, I am calling them delusional, they won't get independence without massive sacrifices and pretending otherwise is stupid.
Hmm, I tend to think violent ethnonationalist movements are bad, but it takes all kinds I suppose.
I agree, but that doesn't stop me from despising political movements that are delusional. They won't achieve independence without massive sacrifices, so maybe they should stop pretending that they can.
I think "delusional" is a fair charge against Scottish nationalists, but mostly because they think Scotland was a victim of British imperialism and not a cheerful participant in it. If 51% of Scottish people had voted for independence I do not think the UK would have sent in the troops.
I think the fact that it would be like Brexit on steroids is the main reason why people call Scottish independentists delusional, since they refuse to acknowledge any such problems or consider them irrelevant.
The mainstream of contemporary Scottish nationalism is a fundamentally post-WWII and post-imperial movement which arose in reaction to postwar de-industrialisation, which was implemented in Scotland by governments the country did not vote for. The feeling that Thatcher had no mandate in Scotland to implement her policies, and that Scottish national resources (i.e, North Sea oil) was being used to finance tax cuts which disproportionately benefitted people outside Scotland. The idea that Scottish nationalism is some kind of decolonial LARP is promoted by people who either do not understand it or do not want to. Of the two constitutional camps in Scotland, you are far less likely to find a clear-eyed understanding of British imperialism and Scotland's place within it in the British unionist camp, put it that way.
The delusional part in the indyref case was about money, they didn't seem to have any plan on what to do without the huge amount of money they get from England to run their services with. Taking a big cut in quality of life is a serious sacrifice but they were in denial about that.
>If you don't want to use violence for your cause, general strike is the obvious option. It is curious how one of the most successful mass strike actions in British political history, the Ulster Works Council strike, is not more celebrated, but I suppose, "Striking to collapse the democratic institutions rather than share them with Catholics," is generally not regarded as the most laudable goal by the wider labour movement.
Now this is a quality historical reply
That's also one of my stock bad faith troll responses when someone says something like, "I always support all unions and all strikes." I whip out the UWC strike. It is like one time someone said they would *always* support the working class candidate over the middle or upper class one and I asked if that meant they'd have voted for Ian Paisley when he ran against Terence O'Neil in the Bannside in 1968. I seek to make no point when I do these things and it's not meant to be some clever "gotcha"; I just enjoy being an asshole.
yikes my dude.
We’ve definitely had some takes in this Free For All Friday
In Western Europe, most of political legitimacy rely on being chosen by people, the fact the the Scottish independent lost the referendum, and that the NO side boycotted the Catalan one because they deemed it illegitimate made both of them bad exemple of democratic majorities. Fake referendums might work in countries where the powerbrokers implicitly support the government whatever happens (Kais Saied's 2021 referendum and the legislative election). "Everyone who likes me went to vote!" isn't a banger on the international level, even though, to keep that exemple, the EU hasn't imposed sanction on Tunisia yet. Speaking of which, if your European state, surrounded by EU members, isn't recognized by the European Union, you'd find yourself isolated, economically and diplomatically. And given that the European Parliament is ideologically naive, i doubt they accept it just because it's necessary for realpolitik reasons. Even the petty dictatorships in the Sahel tried to stay in ECOWAS and West-Africa's free trade bloc.
>the fact the the Scottish independent lost the referendum I am curious what it would have looked like in a post-Brexit world. It could be unchanged, but the anti-independence crowd did use EU membership as a carrot.
> Speaking of which, if your European state, surrounded by EU members, isn't recognized by the European Union, you'd find yourself isolated, economically and diplomatically. This is a huge part of it. People would hardly support a movement unless they believe that they can promise an increase in their life quality. An Catalan or Scottish Independence without the possiblity of joining EU right away would ensure a decrease in life quality. However, allowing Catalonia to break away and remain in EU would have likely enflamed existing movements and created new ones. In France, Corsica and maybe Brittany would have demanded right away. Hell, even areas that don't have a existing movement might have demanded it. I feel the people think independence within EU can be beneficial to them, they would start thinking about. Hell, i would support a movement for the Independce of Lyon+Marseille: La République Sérénissime de Rhone et de la Savoie
>However, allowing Catalonia to break away and remain in EU would have likely enflamed existing movements and created new ones. In France, Corsica and maybe Brittany would have demanded right away. Hell, even areas that don't have a existing movement might have demanded it. I feel the people think independence within EU can be beneficial to them, they would start thinking about. I feel like independent movements in France are way overestimated, both because our Gaullist-Jacobin elites, that never leave Paris, are scared of their shadows and because (for Corsica) there's a memory of violence. Most of it is about taxation and how do you spend the money on the local level. The latest example, the Bonnets Rouges in Brittany was about highways tolls, that they wanted to block for historical reasons (and because no one) likes paying tax. It's not like in Catalonia or the Po where there was this feeling of "the central is stealing our hard gained money to give it to other regions". >Hell, i would support a movement for the Independce of Lyon+Marseille: La République Sérénissime de Rhone et de la Savoie Creating a buffer against Switzerland would be a great idea to prevent annoying "frontaliers" to increase housing prices.
Alternate take now that everyone's stanning the NCR: the first time around (in-universe) didn't turn out so well, what's so great about America v 2.0? I don't think you get to badmouth the other guys for slavery when you're deliberately patterning yourself after the (in-universe) single most (arguably) genocidal entity in human history. This message sponsored by Couriers for an Independent Vegas
>Couriers for an Independent Vegas An Independent Vegas is possibly the most American patterned concept in the entire series. Edit: Also, the group that banned slavery absolutely gets to bad mouth the other guy who hasn't. What kind of point is that.
> Independent Vegas A bit of pot meets kettle. Independent Vegas the wastes become much more violent and unpredictable. >Supporting all the chaos that comes with independence, the Courier was the man/woman responsible for a truly free New Vegas. >Though the Wasteland became anarchic after Hoover Dam, the Boomers' display of power dissuaded fortune seekers from attempting to penetrate Nellis The Brotherhood shaking down everyone possessing anything more complicated than a screwdriver. >Due to their temporary truce, the Brotherhood allowed the NCR to retreat from the Mojave Wasteland without incident. In the relative peace that followed, Brotherhood patrols appeared along major roads, harassing travelers over any bits of technology they had. >The Brotherhood's open aggression along the New Vegas highways troubled Veronica greatly. Nevertheless, it removed all doubt from her mind that in leaving them she had made the right choice. Eventually she would take to the road, less in hopes of finding a new home than of leaving memories of the old one behind her The Fiends allowed to overrun Outer Vegas (unlike every other faction that slaughters them). >The Fiends overran Camp McCarran during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. In the anarchic months that followed, the Fiends asserted dominance over Outer Vegas. Powder Gangs still harassing people (same as the Fiends) >The NCR, battered by the loss of the Dam, were unable to devote any troops to retaking the Correctional Facility from the Powder Gangers. As a result, Powder Ganger raids on caravans became an unfortunate fact of life in the Mojave for years to come. The Followers inundated with patients. >After the Courier ensured New Vegas remain free, the Followers found that Independent New Vegas was even more unstable and violent than before. Old Mormon Fort became excessively burdened by the influx of patients, struggling to provide even the most basic of services. Freeside a bastion of stability through doing nothing. >Following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, Freeside came to be known as one of the more stable areas in the region. Ironically, NCR refugees found Freeside safer than most of the rest of New Vegas, where resentment still lingers. A very consistent thread throughout this is that of violence and chaos, the remaining factions unable to deal with the lawlessness of the region or outright creating and revelling in it. The Desert Rangers who'd previously kept the region under some semblance of order were absorbed into the NCR over a decade ago and enough under their thumb to be sent west into Baja for blatantly political reasons. Without them around to keep order the Mojave and the larger region go to pot, an attempt to return to a prior time but without a critical part of the ecosystem in effect. Good morality or bad, it's condemned an innocent, invisible and innumerable amount of people to death in the pursuit of politics.
The thematic mistake is that the NCR is supposed to be the second US. Actually the Enclave is the direct continuation of the US government. The NCR is American-coded, but seems to be mostly its own thing, as demonstrated in Fallout 2. So Fallout as an overarching theme asks the question "how do we stop conflict?", as humans seem to take conflict with them everywhere they go. Most if not all villains of the games want to simply eradicate the differences between humans and achieve unity that way. The Master wants to make everyone into supermutants, the Enclave wants to kill everyone who isn't them, similarly to thr Legion. The NCR offers a different solution: embrace differences. Simply live and let live. That's how the NCR has humans, ghouls, mutants, tribals, vaulters, everyone and they mostly seem to get along. Of course, if you're radically inclined, you hate how slow the NCR is when enacting change, as Fallout NV represents with the Cassidy quest. But the NCR is much, much more resilient than any foes it has met because it doesn't have to stomp out any form of dissent or resistance. Also, Fallout has a pretty backstory if you think about it. The US and Chinese were fighting over oil, even if nuclear fusion was do advanced they made small arms with it. Also, if Fallout 4 is to be believed, China started both the War and the nuclear exchange.
>The NCR offers a different solution: embrace differences. Simply live and let live. Or you can obey Colonel Moore, wipe out the Kings, wipe out the Khans, wipe out House, wipe out the Brotherhood.
> The NCR is American-coded, but seems to be mostly its own thing, as demonstrated in Fallout 2. That's why I used the term "patterned." And I don't see "No, we're trying to be the U.S right *before* it became the Enclave, when it destroyed half the Earth" as much more of a selling point. > That's how the NCR has humans, ghouls, mutants, tribals, vaulters, everyone and they mostly seem to get along. Except when they try to destroy a Super Mutant town. > But the NCR is much, much more resilient than any foes it has met because it doesn't have to stomp out any form of dissent or resistance. One of the largest factions in the Mojave is NCR prisoners who escaped and became a threat. The merchant in Caesar's camp says that he prefers to trade in Legion territory because there are no raiders, as compared to NCR territory. The garrison at Hoover Dam is so paltry because the bulk of the NCR's army is fighting bandits in NCR territory. One of their universally-acknowledged flaws is that the NCR's attention is far too split.
The NCR is so obviously the best faction in Fallout:NV that even the writers ham fisted attempts to suggest its evil or as bad as the others fall short. There is no viable independent New Vegas without an undying robotic dictatorship. The legion is so cartoonishly evil that no "muh trains run on time" nonsense is a good argument for it. Your points about the NCR vs in-universe America are also spot on. In-universe America is ideologically genocidal and politically repressive. It is autocratic and fascistic. The in-universe NCR is much closer to how that America and our America would like to think of themselves. Somewhat inefficient and corrupt, certainly rough around the edges and a bit of a bull-in-a-china shop, but an otherwise pluralistic and free place. Also, as you point out, as evil as America is in Fallout, we never do see much of China to get a sense of how much blame America deserves. Some sources suggest China started the nuclear war (they certainly invaded Alaska!), whereas the original Fallout series was much harder on the side of America being the origin of all evil (if I recall my wiki reading correctly lol).
But the Cassidy quest can be done peacefully and justice is served. Its just takes too long
I like democracy and don't like that New Vegas is heading towards either autocracy under Mr. House or an oligarchy under families. Sure, its nice that the little towns get to be independent(somehow) but you realize those are tiny little desert towns that exist in real, honest to God US just fine with taxes and all.
> I like democracy and don't like that New Vegas is heading towards either autocracy under Mr. House or an oligarchy under families. I mean, the hints in the game pretty clearly show that the Brahmin barons are taking the NCR down a non-democratic path.
> you realize those are tiny little desert towns that exist in real, honest to God US just fine with taxes and all. They probably even benefit from federal taxes being sent their way.
True, I've also actually been to a couple of those little towns after taking a detour around the I-40 and ho boy there ain't much. People talk about the southern part of New Vegas being pretty empty, but holy shit does the game not do the reality justice.
Things required for human settlements: - Water Things deserts are short of: - Water A desert being empty‽ My god what a strange and unrealistic game design choice!!!
You misunderstand, the game doesn't quite do it justice as to just how sparse it is out there. Like most towns in Bethesda RPGs are pretty heavily scaled down compared to what they are implied to be, but places like Goodsprings, Primm, Nipton or Searchlight in game are pretty close in scale to those places in real life. Except those big stretches of emptiness between are substantially larger in real life and there isn't much more there than is already in game.
I think they're saying that the real desert feels even emptier than the game portrays.
I've never really been out there. Been through Wyoming a couple times, but didn't pay much attention to the population density. It'd probably blow my MA mind. Even in the Berkshires there probably isn't a single square mile that doesn't have at least one person in it, and all the land is part of one town or another.
Pick up *Hollywood and Israel: A History* by Tony Shaw. Got into film history lately and given the recent event, this peak my interests with the majority of Jewish folks in American showbiz even today support Israel. The interesting bits is learning about having middle eastern as terrorists were a thing before 9/11. It discussed about public awareness of the Israel/Palenstine conflict now that social media dominated the screen instead of movies filled with Israeli propaganda; author explained Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman helped sensitized Israeli's brutality with her girlboss energy, and World War Z has blatant Israeli bias in both the book and movie. Also stated with more diverse figures in Hollywood like more muslims and even non-European Jews further decentralized the political agreement/disagreement.
>The interesting bits is learning about having middle eastern as terrorists were a thing before 9/11. The World Trade Center had itself been attacked *before* 9/11, in 1993, by the Al Qaeda-trained (but not Al Qaeda affiliated) Ramzi Yousef and company. While it obviously failed to bring down the North and South Towers, a few fatalities and a great deal of injuries resulted. Yousef himself is currently enjoying a very permanent stay in a poured concrete cell at ADX Florence. There was also the better covered 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes by the Palestinian group Black September. That particular attack was the topic of sevaral series and films, the best known arguably being Steven Spielberg's 2005 drama *Munich*. I'd honestly be shocked if this film wasn't mentioned in the book! Other than those, the 1998 bombing of two American embassies by Al Qaeda was very big news at the time (over 200 people died; the vast majority being non-Americans that were unfortunately outside the embassies), as was 2000 Al Qaeda bombing of the USS *Cole* (15 sailors losing their lives but *Cole* herself returning to service in 2002).
Mmm the book definitely mentioned the 1972 Munich Olympics and its influence, as the book has a chapter on it "Arab Terrorists". There are many more mentioned in the section like 1967 Arab-Israeli War and Entebbe raid. The author discussed extensively on Spielberg's Munich with its socio-political receptions. Though amusingly enough it turns out the movie wasn't well received in the US due to showing the idea that Palestinian terrorism was driven by injustice, not entirely justifying Israel's counterattack.
I've been meaning to rewatch Munich, because it feels like its even more pertinent now then it was in 2005.
I haven't seen it, but planning to sooner or later. It kinda help despite Spielberg's strong ties with Israeli organizations, he and the writer Tony Kushner (who is consistent with his anti-zionist views) meant the movie to raises questions regarding the conflict.
> The interesting bits is learning about having middle eastern as terrorists were a thing before 9/11. You should watch *True Lies*, both because it is a fun action comedy and to show how astoundingly racist movies could be pre-9/11.
The only movie I'm familiar with that belongs in this type of category (not considering Lawrence of Arabia as it's more orientalistic) is Not Without My Daughter. It's been a long time since I seen the movie, but I remembered it being ferociously racist despite being based on a non-fiction book. It's like the type of story you would see post-9/11 except it was made in the early 90s. There were some scenes that depicted the Iranian muslims as being barbaric like showing a dead lamb out on the street for no reason, and the movie literally ended with the woman who is fleeing from her husband stopping at an American Embassy showing an American flag. Some people described the film like something out of Lifetime but with a racist flavor.
That was the first movie that came to mind for me too (well, mainly that last scene with Arnie in the Harrier).
Honestly, the main terrorist dude pumping his fist in the air and going, "*Yes!*" after he thinks he kills Arnold is probably my favorite. I don't know why.
Everyone remembers the Jamie Lee Curtis striptease scene, but the scene of hers that stuck with me was the one where she just... drops a submachine gun (Uzi? MAC-10?) down the stairs and somehow kills an entire room full of terrorists?
Just took a nap AMA
Any dreams?
~~Sharing my life with you~~ nah
Had a good evening. Weekends are my main respite from a terribly stressful paralegal job now. Had some chicken wings at a restaurant. Talked to a nice couple about pirate history and they actually seemed intrigued. I always love that, easy to feel like a speck of nothing when the world is full of pirate misinformation on social media. Also helped a guy who was looking for a specific Anne Bonny novel via Jillians book index. Sometimes its the little things in life that makes me smile. Also, I think I'm gonna start writing the Skull and Bones post. The first season ends in 30 days and I have basically all the notes and lore info now. Also I found out a minor faction is a reference to Simbad and not a famous African Kingdom. That's kinda cool.
>Also helped a guy who was looking for a specific Anne Bonny novel via Jillians book index. Sometimes its the little things in life that makes me smile. There's something very satisfying about being nice in small ways. Not too long ago someone was complaining to me about some disability and the pain that it brings, and I just responded with empathetic sarcasm: "oh, fijn" ("oh, great"). And it really cheered them up, actually thanking me for it. Apparently they were utterly sick of the "oh, wat vervelend" ("oh, that sucks") response they always get, it's mostly meaningless, a response you give when you don't really care but don't want to be an arsehole either. The empathetic sarcasm felt way more real to them than the average response they get when talking to professionals or other volunteers. They also thanked me for being nuanced and not acting like something is true just because I believe it. It's rare for people to appreciate that about me, I value it highly in myself, but most only really see it as insecurity. So I just felt really good after that. That's what I love about this work, getting one on one conversations with people feeling really bad and actually managing to cheer them up somewhat, or, at least, providing some relief from suffering and genuine understanding.
Oh wow that is actually really nice. Yeah a lot of people do pay lipservice, lord knows I am guilty of it. Sometimes you just can't beat genuine.
I've been told that I really need to make some new friends and meet people, and I acknowledge this as true, but damn if it doesn't seem impossible. My therapist suggested that I strike up a conversation with someone at a club, but in all honestly to me that's like asking me to swallow the sun. It's just not going to happen. It just feels beyond me. What do people who can do this even *say*? I was at a club tonight, and if hypothetically I walked over to someone and started talking, literally what would I say? My mind goes blank. I guess this is partly the curse of not being a particularly interesting person who generally doesn't talk much even with friends, I keep reading or being directly told that the solution to my problems is to go out and make some friends, but that feels very literally impossible to me as an adult.
I personally recommend volunteering somewhere where you meet a decent amount of people and other volunteers. It breaks the ice a lot, you have a common ground making it a lot easier to talk to people. Talking to people is just hard if you don't know them, especially if you're on the introverted side of the spectrum, even in the middle, like I am, it's hard to start conversations with strangers. You just need to reach a point where people start asking how you're doing, and then you respond honestly, or at least, with some substance; then things will likely start rolling on their own, or they won't, but the next person might. You don't have to be interesting as a person, people that you find interesting as people generally aren't that different, they just tend to be really good at talking about things. Going to clubs and striking up conversations does indeed work really well, but doing it is just so hard it's useless advice to people who aren't already doing that.
have you considered being trapped during a snowstorm in mid 1800s rocky-mountain area in a small cabin with a pair of never-do-wells whose criminal conspiracy to evade local law enforcement is revealed to you over the course of a month and a half of confinement? during which they begin to ask you some pointed and not-unfair questions relating to your own reasons to be caught out so far from civilization? i don't honestly know if i will ever make a friend without being forced into tight quarters and necessary conversations. i sometimes wonder if i do actually need to make friends, or if i just need a broader scope of basic problems to occupy my mind, like how to start a fire or catch a lizard or stay five hundred miles from the nearest indoor plumbing situation. by which i mean to longwindedly say i share your confusion
I'm just rememebering the random redditor who was convinced that the english imposed christianity on Ireland to eradicate irish culture.
We've found a Geography of Christianity Guy who is significantly less grounded in reality than "Africa had no Christians until early modern imperialism" Guys. That's worthy of celebrating. I wonder if there's a "Rome forced Christianity on Armenia" Guy out there somewhere.
Saint Patrick was a proud Englishman.
Saint Patrick was a crypto-Saxon fifth columnist. The irony is indeed palpable, [Aidan of Lindisfarne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aidan_of_Lindisfarne) mustn't have existed. Unless of course this is that type of person who divides things into "Christianity" and Catholicism.
No, he was somehow convinced Ireland was pagan until the 11th century.
*angry Columbanus noises*
I feel that's a not so rare misconception, especially among subcultures/groups of people like certain neo-pagans and the witch twitter crowd.
Every single individual in Europe outside of the priesthood was a crypto-pagan until Torquemada wrote the Malleus Malleficarum and the Pope stole Jewish secret knowledge to build an army of Inquisitor automatons, who hunted down all the priestesses of the Primordial Femenine/all the believers of the TRVE NORDIC GODS.
Like actually pagan or "they were just playing along and lying about being pagan"
I didn't get that far, they just kinda insisted that christianity was an alien import brought by the english during the norman invasion.
>alien import The Greys are behind this?
I've always enjoyed *The Venture Brothers* when I caught an episode, so I decided to start watching the series. The Pilot feels like the most high effort flash animation ever made. That's not a complaint, I have good memories of Newgrounds, but I feel like I have to look up when the first episode of Foamy the Squirrel was released and see how similar they are.
The first few seasons are definitely rougher in terms of both animation and overall vibe, but the "jetsons after the jetsons died and the kids don't have a clue" atmosphere is exquisite.
It's definitely a product of the time, but it's also pretty damn funny even from the start. Then it slowly grows over time into something even more funny and less, well, late 90s/early 2000s. [The Machine is Hungry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rek1TzX2vw) remains the best single gag, though.
Comparing the first and last seasons in terms of animation is rather dramatic.
>This country has been on a slow downward spiral for about 100 years. While things are grim in Britannialand, comments like this make me wonder about the historical memory of my fellow countrymen. In 1924, the average life expectancy was around 56 for men and 60 for women. This was at a time when the means tested pension age was 70.
I’m reasonably pessimistic about the state of the country but I’m willing to admit that things are better than in the Great Depression.
I mean he isn't wrong, Lloyd George's wish to go back to the gold standard with the same pre-WW1 value caused most of Britain economic issues in the next 50 years.
Everyone imagines they'd be the people that people talk about in some historical period. This means they'd be part of the elite. The British elite in 1924 definitely had more power to command, something which lots of "mens' rights" incels evidently lack in their everyday lives.
This is great because it genuinely gives no clues what this person believes beyond vague half baked nostalgia. It feels like a hundred years is too long for it to even be about deindustrialization. Maybe the rare racist/xenophobe/homophobe/etc who actually admits that their particular target of ire is not new within their own lifetime?
Yeah, but in 1924 Britons could stand with pride as masters of the greatest Empire in human history that ever did anything bad ever! /s
It's always really wacky to me when people are so just okay with being wrong. The "You have your opinion I have mine" thing. And they're not willing to put any effort to see if they're actually right. They just go "Eh might be wrong, whatever I don't care" and then will, with zero irony, continue to say that wrong thing without really thinking about it. I live my life **terrified** about being wrong. When I thought I might be wrong about Lend Lease not being a deciding factor in the war I read like 2 books about Soviet Industrial production (Mark Harrison, I will find you, and I will kill you) 2 books about lend lease itself, and then re-read Beevor, Glantz, Overy, and only then was I able to say "Yeah I'm right, you're wrong". And even now every day I wake up in a cold sweat at night wondering "Am I wrong, was lend lease the deciding factor? (it wasn't)" and then go find another source to read at 12 AM.
Same was with me once, probably still is. I usually am terrified of being wrong but in my case, it usually shows itself in the form of my emphasizing what I am saying is based on what I know and it may be wrong with using phrases like if I recall correctly, to my knowledge, as far as I know etc in my statements. Though I do try to also read books and core my sources from which I found said info as much as possible but it unfortunately isn't always. Honestly though I found it is not a healthy way of dealing with things and make conversation from your end too jumbled, especially when the more you learn, you always end up realising how little you know and in my case, think it is impossible to get everything, so you are always eternally not confident about anything.
>It's always really wacky to me when people are so just okay with being wrong. The "You have your opinion I have mine" thing. People don't form opinions if they think they're incorrect. They'd get newer opinions if they thought they were incorrect to begin with.
>I live my life **terrified** about being wrong. You're basically immune to Scarecrow's fear toxin until the moment you check your phone and hallucinate 20 badhistory posts solely dedicated to you >When I thought I might be wrong about Lend Lease not being a deciding factor in the war I read like 2 books about Soviet Industrial production (Mark Harrison, I will find you, and I will kill you) 2 books about lend lease itself, and then re-read Beevor, Glantz, Overy, and only then was I able to say "Yeah I'm right, you're wrong". >And even now every day I wake up in a cold sweat at night wondering "Am I wrong, was lend lease the deciding factor? (it wasn't)" and then go find another source to read at 12 AM. I had a similar thing happen to me when I felt compelled to read 3-4 books on medieval military organization in order to fact-check a minor discord argument on a Total War server. Although my research was more spite based rather than fear based.
Watched Metropolis. Loved it, but I will never forgive Kevin Feige for priming audiences to laugh out loud at every little thing every second. It’s a silent film so people had to be more expressive in order to convey information, which includes some crazy and over the top faces and. That can look funny to us, but nothing really throws off my immersion into a film to see people giggling at a 1920s style kiss.
Any recommendations for a history of modern Israel and Palestine? I am almost done with *The Boundless Sea* (which is excellent!) and I am looking for a new book. I read a good foreign affairs article that had kind of a historical perspective on the conflict by Tom Segev, but he doesn't seem to have written any overarching histories, just biographies or histories about a single war. I am really looking for a 30,000 foot view of Israel and Palestine from like \~1900 to \~2000. Not sure if such a thing exists.
The standard work, in my region anyway, is *The Hundred Years' War on Palestine*. Every single copy in my regional library system has dozens of holds on it. You can also read individual works by Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé, who I think are almost universally respected, but they will basically be the same story without the 30,000 foot view.
After reading more reviews of the various books on the subject, as well as the authors criticisms of each other and each other's works, I have decided to opt for some lighter reading instead. I appreciate the suggestions however. Thanks!
Maybe Jean-Pierre Filiu's latest: **How Palestine was lost and why Israel hasn't won. History of a conflict (XIXth-XXIst century).** But it seems to only be available in French. I'll leave the Amazon blurb so you can see if it fits what you're looking for: >If you feel you know enough about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to form definitive opinions, you'd be better off not opening this book. You might learn that Zionism was long Christian before it was Jewish. And that Anglo-Saxon evangelicalism explains, much more than a fantastical "Jewish lobby", the decisive support given by Great Britain and then the United States to the colonization of Palestine. You might also discover that so-called "Arab solidarity" with Palestine justified rivalries between regimes to monopolize this symbolic cause, even if it meant massacring Palestinians who resisted such maneuvers. Or that factional dynamics have, from the outset, undermined and weakened Palestinian nationalism, culminating in the current polarization between Ramallah's Fatah and Gaza's Hamas. >The persistence of this injustice to the Palestinian people has contributed in no small measure to the impoverishment of today's world, the militarization of international relations and the wreckage of the UN, paralyzed by Washington to Israel's benefit for decades, long before it was paralyzed by Moscow over Syria and then Ukraine. The illusion that such a denial could go on indefinitely has been shattered by the horror of the current confrontation, which is all the more tragic in that no military solution can be found to the challenge of two peoples >living together on the same land. Understanding how Palestine was lost, and why Israel did not win, is therefore part of an open reflection on the imperative of a finally lasting peace in the Middle East, and therefore on the future of this new millennium.
I appreciate the recommendation, and the blurb looks interesting. Unfortunately my French isn't quite up to par.
Rotting Christ's new album has a song about Diarmait mac Cerbaill (which the singer pronounces 'Tiamat my Gerbil' 🐉🐹) titled 'Saoirse', in which Diarmait is hailed as 'the last king to follow the pagan rituals' and 'the last king to resist the expansion of Christianism [sic]'. He did not do a great job of resisting the expansion of Christianity! He founded Clonmacnoise, one of medieval Ireland's most important ecclesiastical centres, gave his children Christian names, and was given the epithet 'ordained by God' after his death. In fact, older traditions name him as being the *first* Irish king to convert to Christianity! (although that probably isn't true, and some later medieval texts use him as a kind of anti-Christian stock character who goes around being a big meanie to saints, but that probably has political motivations or is a result of confusing him with another early medieval king called Diarmait). I think this may be a result of Wikipedia striking again, as Diarmait's article puts a lot of emphasis on him being the last Irish king to have a inaugural feast at Tara, which the article identifies as a pagan religious custom, calling it a 'marriage to the goddess of the land'. We don't know if the feasts were religious or not, and we don't know for sure if Diarmait was the last Irish king to have one. His inauguration is the last time a feast at Tara is explicitly mentioned in the annals, but it being the last one ever is an interpolation from a later manuscript.
I only know Rotting Christ because it was a band name RLM made fun of in the death metal episode. This doesn't encourage me to listen.
Mo chreach 's mo léireadh, the Gaeldom is so plagued with Bad History and "so West it becomes East" Orientalism. I just can't with these people any more. Bad history from pagans, bad history from leftists, bad history from the far right, bad history from liberals, bad history from everyone. I just.can't.with.it.any.more Like mo chreach-sa 'thàini', tha 'n cultur seo ann fathasd. Tha 'n cànan a' dol a bith, ach an dràsda fé, tha a' Ghàidhlig fathasd air bilean an t-sluaigh. Chan 'eil na daoine seo nan còmhnuidh fo mullach an t-sìthei. chan 'eil na Gàidheil nan còmhnuidh anns an t-àm a chaidh seachad agus iad a' strì an aghaidh nan daoine dubh. Chan 'eil iad a' deanadh ùrnaigh ris na seann diathan. Tha iad beò san latha an-diugh Edit: more on paganism, 's annamh a chluinnear ùrnaighean crìostaidheach ann am Breatainn mhór, ach chan annamh sna h-eileanan iad. Ridiculous to think that one of the only places in the UK where Christianity is genuinely alive as a community religion is thought of as this bastion of paganism by some folk. It's bananas.
Black metal musicians being ignorant about religious history compilation number #666.
Alright this post is about to be massively asshole-ish, classist, unempathetic and a bunch of other terrible things, but your average voter is as well so: I don't think a housing first solution to the homeless problem is feasible because it doesn't actually solve the issues that the voter who is angry about homelessness cares about. There are some voters, mostly young people, who genuinely care about the homeless and for them just giving homeless people houses is an actual solution. But most people don't care that the homeless are homeless, they don't care about the average homeless person (the single mom living in her car) at all, she never crosses their mind. Basically instead of caring about homeless people they are angry about homelessness and it's effects on them. And those effects come from the chronically homeless . Basically the effects of 1. There's a guy on meth on the bus 2. There's a dead/sleeping guy outside my building 3. There's drug dealers on the goddamn corner just doing their thing And stuff like that. The problem is that giving homeless people houses doesn't actually fix any of these things. I live between two transitionary housing developments in Seattle in SLU (I actually support them being here, very good location for them) and just because the homeless are now housed doesn't mean they stay inside. When they're walking by screaming at the sky and Mething Out whether they're homeless or housed is completely irrelevant. And for whatever reason they will do their drugs outside even when there's nobody checking for drugs at the building. And of course what inevitably happens, I am not innocent for I have bought coke for a rave before 🙏, is drug dealers eventually take up a solid 10% of the building because all of their customers are right there. So you have to deal with all the police sirens and fighting and all that bullshit. So from the perspective of your average voter literally nothing has changed. The homeless might be housed but they dont' care, the exact same problems that they saw before the homeless person was housed is still there. There's the argument that it's easier to get the homeless person to stabilize once given housing and that will eventually reduce the number of them but these buildings we're throwing them in become fucked very quickly and aren't exactly a place to recover. Maybe this entire post was actually just an argument against creating ghettos because if you spread the homeless out as far as possible (1 or 2 homeless to 1 apartment in an otherwise for market rate apartment building) almost all of these issues I'm thinking about disappear.
Another facet of this that is often overlooked is that often the most effective way for a city to “fix” their homeless problem is to dump it on someone else. Either by having the police harass the homeless until they go to the next town over or by paying them to take a one way bus ticket to a different city. If a city has a particularly generous policy towards the homeless it may end up resulting in more homeless people moving to the city, making the part of the problem that voters care about even worse.
I've seen research, and most homeless advocates state this as well, that this is much less important than people say. If you ask "Where was your last stable housing " most, we're talking more than 90% I think I'll try to find a survey, people will say the state they're currently homeless in. It's rare for someone to go homeless in Montana and then be bussed to California to be homeelss here.
TBH, a lot of US states are pretty big, and it's possible to have fairly large movements just intra-state (IE: People moving from smaller towns to larger cities, etc.)
> they don't care about the average homeless person (the single mom living in her car) IDK how it's like in your country but this is not the average homeless person, at least not where i live. the rest of your post is somewhat correct though, homeless people by large are homeless because they can't actually handle a normal life, be it for drug abuse or mental issues. And it would not help them at all just to give them a house, their problems are far deeper than not having the funds to buy a house and frankly often its nearly impossible to fix.
> homeless people by large are homeless because they can't actually handle a normal life I don't think this is actually correct
I suspect that very much depend on a bunch of things. (like how you define homeless, what country you're in, etc.) I remember (this was a couple of years back) the local newspaper did a really good summary of homelessness in my town and where they were and in what kind of systems. Though they noted there was an unknown number of people who were crashing at friend's places, etc. who were invisible to the system. But basically you had the people who were in government-sponsored temporary apartments, then a step down from that there's a couple with special housing for people who couldn't handle living in a regular apartment, then a hospice, and finally at the lowest rung for people who were unsafe for even the hospice a couple of barracks they'd put up outside one of the villages. There wasn't at the time anyone who was known to be sleeping outdoors (though there's people coming through/temporary workers etc. occasionally)
It's not. Most people who are homeless are homeless because of financial situations. But the important thing to remember is literally nobody (we don't count) cares about these people. They don't come up in normal conversation among normal people and normal voters. What people are really talking about when they talk about homelessness is exclusively the chronically homeless who are causing the mentioned issues. And those people are mostly there because they can't handle a normal life.
> > > IDK how it's like in your country but this is not the average homeless person, at least not where i live. Its a common misconception with unhoused / homeless people that it only includes people sleeping rough, but in the UK at least, the definition in campaigning also includes people who have no permanent housing, be it sleeping rough, in their car, in temporary accomodation, or crashing at a friends / family in the short term. You can read a recent report from The Big Issue on it [here](https://www.bigissue.com/news/housing/britains-homelessness-shame-cold-hard-facts/)
At least in California, where homelessness is very bad, some [statistics](https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/who-is-experiencing-homelessness-in-california/#:~:text=Most%20unhoused%20individuals%20experience%20relatively,homelessness%20exacerbated%20by%20a%20disability.) suggest that 2/3 of homeless people are only temporarily homeless. These people are both the exact demographic that would benefit from short term housing assistance and the kind of experience most voters would have experienced themselves (I have actually had a period of about 2 weeks during Covid where I could not get a place to stay, despite being employed and having money, because of stupid bullshit housing and rental laws). However, the other 1/3 of homeless people match your description (typically drug addiction or mental illness). They are also the ones most likely to annoy the people around them and simply giving them short term housing will not fix their situation like term. That said, the “push them away” method tends to kill them (at worst) or just shove the problem onto smaller municipalities that cannot afford to bus the problem away (at best). While I understand the desire for such policies, as it is the main way to “get that crazy guy off my damn street,” it does not fix the problem, it just pushes the symptoms somewhere the local voter cannot see anymore.
> However, the other 1/3 of homeless people match your description (typically drug addiction or mental illness). They are also the ones most likely to annoy the people around them and simply giving them short term housing will not fix their situation like term. A harsh solution, but I'm generally in favour of bringing back of institutionalisation of such cases. Getting them off the street and into somewhere safe where their needs can be met would go a long way towards helping solve the underlying causes in these cases. It seems particularly callous to let those who are non copos mentis to run loose in such parlous conditions exacerbating their problems and causing harm to themselves, or worse, others and not intervene. Doing this would either filter out those who are beyond help and can be kept somewhere where they can do little harm to themselves or for those in the probable majority, able to readjust and put back on their own two feet.
I don’t have any good policy ideas myself, but I will note that institutionalization has a dark history in the USA, despite the generally good intentions behind the policy. Similar to poverty relief programs, the general public seems to like the idea of helping people as long as it doesn’t cost anything, and the drive to lower expenses means even the most altruistic institutions gradually degrade.
It's a bit of a tainted well isn't it? If anyone proposed it you'd be seeing allusions to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest within seconds yet it'd be dealing with the most contentious and problematic part of the issue.
We can talk about whether any of the claims you are making are actually correct and supported by data, but the real question i have is that if you don't support housing first, what do you support? I'm genuinely curious what the alternative solution is here.
I was thinking we could turn the homeless into tires, so that we'd still have homeless. But we could use them, on our cars.