FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
Which version do you play? Right now I'm just playing TBC Anniversary, but I think my old main WoW characters should still be there, albeit back at 80.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
Stormwind doesn't need to be the world police! I'm tired of this administration wasting our gold on fighting in places no one has ever heard of. Who cares about the Warsong Gulch? Why is it that I can't walk between two farms in Goldshire without getting robbed by the Defias Brotherhood, but we're sending our best soldiers overseas to fight in Kalimdor? Have you seen how much grinding it takes to make a Westfall stew today? Our great cities like Gnomeragen are becoming unlivable and the regime wants to blame all our problems on the Horde. I'm tired of talking about the Greenskins! They left, let them live over in Kalimdor if they can, we need to rebuild at home. I don't care if they blockade Ratchet, let the Goblins get the straits open again. Make Stormwind great again.
I don't want to see a single silver sent overseas to fight imagined foreign boogeymen until the government control all of Lakeshire. Support our troops, bring them home!
The conflict between the Horde and the Alliance is real enough, and justified enough, but it makes little sense that the Alliance has a presence in every zone in Azeroth, when they don't exercise a monopoly on violence in any of the zones. If they refocused, they might actually be able to win! But they can't do that, it would undermine the entire project, they exist to fight the Horde, to struggle for control of all Azeroth. Regionalism has no appeal.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6hr ago
But how does the morality or lack thereof of the targets influence minimizing the power of the Evil Empire? It seems like the relevant information is not provided.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7hr ago
Which one should the plucky rebels assassinate first?
Why does it matter who you strike first? Timeline doesn't seem like strong evidence of guilt or righteousness; the most guilty Nazis or Confederates weren't killed first.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
7hr ago
World of Warcraft as the Model for the Second American Civil War
On a play through of my childhood gaming favorite, I was thinking about the plot of World of Warcraft. I’ll note to start that I am commenting purely on World of Warcraft vanilla and The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, I never played anything after WotLK until TBC Classic the past two weeks or so.
The setting is post-apocalyptic, though it’s rarely presented as such, instead viewed as a standard fantasy setting. The original Warcraft set up an invasion of an otherwise organized fantasy Azeroth by demon fueled Orcs from another planet. Over succeeding games, the Orcs are defeated and enslaved by the humans, but then coming off that demonic alien invasion, they face a zombie plague which destroys the entire northern human kingdoms of both humans and elves, a slave revolt from the orcs, and a fresh demonic invasion leading to a tentative peace between the humans and orcs and a series of ententes signed between different races, the Horde and the Alliance.
Which brings us to World of Warcraft; The Burning Crusade, and its parallels to America. The Alliance is the red tribe coded grouping, the traditional fantasy heroes: religious normies (Humans), extractive industrialist miners and metalworkers (Dwarves), tech bro engineers (Gnomes), traditional ruralists (Night Elves), and a handful of weird fanatics from abroad (Dranei). The Horde is the blue tribe coded grouping, persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, the traditional fantasy villains reformed: liberated racialized slaves trying to regain some kind of culture after decades of subjugation (Orcs), Caribbean refugees (Trolls), the indigenous (Tauren), downtrodden burnout former criminals (the Forsaken), and metrosexual drug addicted faggy nu-males (Blood Elves). Notably, just like the Democratic Party, the Horde understands itself as symbolically lead by the liberated slaves, but its manpower largely comes from the faggy nu-males; while the Alliance understands itself as lead by the Humans, and the Humans make up the bulk of its manpower. An Orcish Ta Nehisi Coates or Ibram X Kendi would call the Horde the subaltern and the Alliance fascists and falangists; an Azerothian Dread Jim would call the Horde the bioleninist coalition.
((So narratively, we’re going to assume that “level” is largely if not entirely a gameplay concept divorced from storytelling. Else the entire narrative concept collapses: the first twenty levels of the human game are spent oriented around the Defias Brotherhood, their headquarters is the first big group dungeon of the game for Alliance players, by level 50 you could solo it in a few minutes, and it’s a two minute jog from the major human city of Stormwind, so why don’t they just deal with it once and for all in an afternoon and protect two major provinces along the way? It’s an inherent flaw in the RPG story telling method, which can’t be fixed easily or completely, but can safely be dismissed as “Willing Suspension of Disbelief” for our purposes, as otherwise there is no story to examine, and there very clearly is a story being told.))
From the moment the story starts, regardless of faction or race chosen, you begin in a world at war(craft). The safe zones you begin for the first five levels all feature some level of dangerous threat from demon worshippers, rebellious criminals, or monstrous chthonic races. After level 5, it only increases, by level 20 you’re in zones where the vast majority of the land in any area is not controlled by Horde or Alliance forces, instead by any of dozens of other groups. The war between the Horde and Alliance is in theory a bitter struggle for control of Azeroth, in game it is mostly a footnote, PVP is relatively unimportant to gameplay and more of a sideshow from a design perspective. But more than that, both the Horde and Alliance face bigger problems, even in their putative homelands they lack a legitimate monopoly on violence, and instead face rebellion and subversion and invasion across two continents. The Horde and the Alliance do not make up a majority of the forces in Azeroth, not combined and certainly neither individually.
Rather what distinguishes the Horde and Alliance from all the other factions is that they are trying to be a legitimate government of all of Azeroth. Most of the other factions are either regional criminal players or omnicidal maniacs, but both the Horde and the Alliance want to achieve something like normalcy. The conflict between the Horde and the Alliance mostly, after a while, just seems kind of stupid. Why are we even doing this when there are demon worshipping omnicidal religious cults around every corner? And there’s not really a good answer to that question that isn’t, well there’s a long history of racial hatred we’re dealing with here, somebody killed somebody’s grandfather, etc. Sins of the past, lack of forgiveness. Fighting a war that has long become irrelevant in a world we’ve lost control of.
The handful of NGO factions that are neutral, the Argent Dawn and the Cenarion Circle or the Capitalist Goblins, would clearly be able to lead a better world, but no one wants to put them in charge, least of all those factions themselves.
And I think that’s what a second American civil war will look like. Not true balkanization with Texas and New England and California and Appalachia as countries, there are too many blue tribers in red states and too many red tribers in blue states. Rather, a patchwork of war from coast to coast, with every state having bases of both sides and a million small regional violent interests to worry about on top of it all. A world of war.
You know, I'm doing the most "real" gaming I've done in years, I downloaded World of Warcraft TBC Classic Anniversary, 20 years after playing the original. And mostly I'm loving it and realizing that it's just the game for me. But Blizzard has made tons of little QoL changes, little things to make the game smoother and easier, and it's not that they ruin things, it's the way that the original was so intricately designed that even small changes throw things off.
Leveling is I think someone said around 30% easier in classic than it was in the original. Which itself is good, and for what it's worth I'm not sure that I'd play as much if I were grinding out one level at a time rather than blazing through, I'm not a bored bone idle teenager with no friends anymore I'm a busy adult who wants to relax for an hour or so. I'm not trying to prove anything or be better than anyone, so there's no reason for me to care. Except, and especially if you park your toon in an inn when you log out and get the 2x rested xp bonus, leveling faster makes questlines and areas all wrong. Especially if, like me, you love doing a PUG 5 man dungeon as basically the highest expression of WoW as a game; with rested XP you can basically gain a level running an instance, plus sometimes ending up on the wrong side of the world, and as a result you level right past the questing area you were in the middle of, and what was a pretty good storyline is ruined or cut short, because by the time I get to the final bit I'm 2-3 levels too high and not getting XP for it.
Another example: you get your mount much earlier. Which is good, nobody likes toddling along slowly to get to the summons in the southern barrens when your nearest fight point is ashenvale, but it also throws off the rhythm because at that level you have less time to save the gold up, especially with faster leveling, and I had to go back and power level herbalism to catch it up to my current zones and raise auction house cash, because otherwise I'd find myself unable to earn the gold necessary. Which, I could just not get the mount until the traditional level 40 (iirc) but what's the fun of playing poverty spec?
And that's the rub, strictly speaking I could choose to play differently but I won't. Rather than making sure to park in an inn or city for the rested XP bonus, I could make sure to leave my character outside to prevent it. I could do the quests anyway even though they deliver zero or minimal XP, to finish the story. Etc. But I'm not going to do those things, I want to play the game according to the incentives. Which means at least a little intuitive min-maxing.
I do think a big part of it is the shift in the audience. TBC Classic is being played by 34 year old me, I have a hundred other things to do, I want a mild distraction not a new avocation. Which I think is a growing market over time in gaming, I would guess that every year after 1998 the total market share of video games occupied by 13-25 year old boys, the core hardcore gamer constituency, has gotten smaller. The market for video games has gotten older, more feminine, and consequently less competitive, less dedicated to the craft, more casual, every single year. Eventually Video Games as a category have become something that middle aged moms engage in just as often as 16 year olds fueled by Mountain Dew and thwarted hormones.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
It's possible that some information, real or dis, has been accessed by Iranian linked or sympathetic hackers and will be released soon.
But more likely this is just a confusing and weird thing by a confusing and weird woman who is vastly out of her depth in a confusing and weird administration.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Don't forget promoting them to run the organization you just made up today.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
First the war is to distract from Epstein, then Epstein is to distract from the war. We've come full circle.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Don't forget "resigned" as an extra step at the beginning!
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I see a lot of people in the conservative press attacking Pope Leo and Archbishop Coakley for their statements against the Iran war, but I've seen very few examine the elements of Just War teachings within Catholic doctrine, because the Iran War will be found wanting if you examine them in terms of what has been publicly expressed.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
The problem is that you have to leave a space where you can stay in charge without getting knocked off by the nationalist religious psychopaths on your own side, or getting bombed by Israel. I don't think that space exists, or if it does exist Israel and the USA have done a bad job communicating it to potential leaders. A good Quisling can't be an obvious Quisling. You have to be able to maintain legitimacy among your own people.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
You said
But that's a lot of "if this then that" to get that stream of cashflows into Iran.
But your list of "a lot of ifs" seems mostly like dividing the single statement "if they toll the strait" into an infinite number of steps
If there are actual tolls imposed on and paid by ships, and a material amount of that money actually ends up in accounts the Iranians can control as they see fit...
You could add an arbitrary number of similar "if" statements into any payment of money for services. "If the money is paid in legal tender," "if traffic doesn't decrease significantly," "if the world remains dependent on fossil fuel exports from the gulf" etc
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I've never watched any of the MCU, so I'm a little out of my depth.
I'm really surprised a powerlifting girl couldn't translate the strength to the mat, huh. What do you think if she was also a purple belt?
I'll let you know in four years! I suspect at that level of experience she would probably move from "can't-beat-me" to "can-beat-me" but I doubt she'd make it to "should-beat-me" or "will-beat-me-every-time." Which are the basic categories of people at the gym in my taxonomy.
I still hope to get the chance to roll with a female black belt or an equivalent female competitor, I still want to meet a girl in the "will-beat-me-every-time" category, to see what that feels like. But in general I can say that a purple belt gets you to "can-beat-me," so more strength might get her to a push where we roll even.
Important to keep in mind: this is me, I'm a decent comp for a mook in a movie, I'm fairly big and muscular and I've trained BJJ pretty hard for a year. I'm not an average American man. So when I say I roll even with her, that means she'd smoke the average American man, who doesn't really work out and has no experience with BJJ.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I'm not knowledgeable enough to claim a useful opinion on either keeping it or tearing it up, but at some point that discussion has to become moot because either way it wouldn't have applied anymore.
Not really. A world with/out the JCPOA is different at sunset than the reverse. Iran is starting from somewhere.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Only the minds behind NEOM could possibly imagine an armored pipeline, so it's likely we'll see it.
This might be even dumber than my predicted ending to the war, where the US takes Kharg and charges Iran a royalty on all oil exported, while Iran maintains control of the strait and charges a toll on all oil coming out of the gulf.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
The structure is pretty confusing.
I mostly wanted to get in the correction immediately before someone saw it and got unfriendly about your whole point over it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Chief of Staff not commander in chief, which is the president. Chief of Staff is a mostly admin role as opposed to a direct commander.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Ok now build air defense for every inch of your pipeline. Pipelines are extraordinarily vulnerable to attack by Iran in case of another conflict. They won't really work as Iran war insurance.
I think a lot of people hear the headline number of $2mm a tanker and think that's high. That's only about 1% of cargo value.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
So we're in agreement that there's age related cognitive decline, but you're correcting my use of the technical medical term in a casual way?
And to be clear, how do we judge a President's mental abilities if not by their fruits?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
This might be the first time I've seen someone actually engage in Zeno's paradox as an argument.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
But it's clearly in their interest since Iran is a long-term threat to them.
I find it interesting the way that Americans (and those LARPing as us on the internet) can recognize that Trump/Biden/Obama doesn't necessarily act in the national interest in the United States, either through wickedness or through stupidity; while we assume that the governments of Iran and Israel are identical with the national interest of those places.
It certainly seems that never-ending war is very much in Netanyahu's personal interest, in that it keeps him out of court for as long as it lasts. I'm less sure that it is in the interest of Israel or the Jewish people that we're hearing things like this thrown around. Yair Lapid on Twitter:
There has never been such a political disaster in all of our history. Israel wasn't even at the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security. The military carried out everything that was asked of it, the public demonstrated amazing resilience, but Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically, and didn't meet a single one of the goals that he himself set. It will take us years to repair the political and strategic damage that Netanyahu wrought due to arrogance, negligence, and a lack of strategic planning.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
a) Weight classes in competition are fake weights. A guy who cuts to compete at 130 probably walks around much heavier between comps. So he's still a small guy, but much less small than you think he is.
b) Availability is the most important ability for any athlete. When you push yourself in the weightroom, you risk injury, so serious athletes tend to go easy in the weightroom, or do partial RoM or odd lifts that target specific movement patterns while reducing odds of injury.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Important to note how victory has a thousand parents, defeat is an orphan.
One of the sudden stomach cramp moments of realizing how bad things were was when Trump said it was Pete Hegseth's idea, that Pete spoke up first. That is atypical of Trumpian dialectics.
I have to confess my ignorance and say I have no idea how a private server works.
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