cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1d ago
Ya I enjoyed Northgard as well. The games are sort of mechanically similar, but it feels more like "influenced by Northgard" than "Northgard with different paint".
The main similarity is the territory and unit mechanic. But that's obvious from any videos.
What's not as obvious is that there are other areas where factions compete:
- The Landsaraad which is a political forum, where various random gameplay effects can be voted on. The gameplay effects can be large, and the politically powerful factions can basically operate at a permanent advantage.
- Espionage. There are agents than can be assigned to give resource bonuses, or sent as spies to other factions. At the highest levels you can assassinate enemy leaders to eliminate a faction.
- The spice market. This mechanic is a little straightforward "buy your way to victory".
I've also really enjoyed the campaign gameplay. Which consists of a string of skirmish missions, or sometimes special victory condition missions (like conduct an assassination, or befriend the fremen). Victory at the main objective and secondary objectives grants resource bonuses for future skirmish maps. By the end of the campaign I'm usually acquiring enough bonuses to make me almost unbeatable, and missions become more of time attack challenges. But I enjoy being the overpowered unstoppable team in RTSs and I've only been playing on medium difficulty.
cjet79
1d ago
Video games
I've been playing Dune Spice Wars on PC. Its an enjoyable RTS. I initially passed on the game, because while RTSs were some of my first games (age of empires) they have evolved in ways that I'm not always a fan of (relying on micro and speed).
Dune has been a good "dad game" as I like to think of it. I can sit down and play a session for thirty minutes to an hour and not feel blueballed or teased. Pausing is fine in single player, and coming back to a saved game is not hard.
The factions have good flavor. The mechanics are straightforward.
cjet79
2d ago
It's not an either or thing. It's a gradient.
Some things increase skin in the game.
I think tying names and reputation to weapons systems is one way to have skin in the game, but it's obviously not very much skin if it's only a small part of their reputation.
cjet79
3d ago
This seems like a solved and understood problem. And Cowen himself is aware of the solution and has had interviews with the people that proposed it.
The solution is skin in the game. The person making the decisions needs to be personally impacted by outcomes.
That impact doesn't have to always be punishment, as @faul_sname points out below.
There is probably some low hanging fruit for accountability. Military projects should be tied to specific generals that care about a good legacy. And possibly a politician as well. Let those names become a curse or a word that means reliability to the grunts.
School boards should require that they have kids at the school. And possibly they should only be elected by those who have kids in school. It's possible that mixing in traditional politician accountability systems has made these positions worse. They should maybe be anonymous, or at least part of the board should be.
We require that politicians live in the areas or districts they represent. That is a decent start. Economic tie ins or closer representational tie ins should also exist. Lords of an area used to share their name with the area.
It mostly just feels that accountability is an afterthought. Something added in as a shitty ineffective process, because no one really cares about the hard work of real accountability systems. This feels backwards. The power shouldn't be allowed to exist in the first place without accountability. The Constitution was written partly as a way to say "this is how we won't make the same screwups as the last government".
Let the people in power figure out their own accountability systems, or just don't let them have power.
cjet79
4d ago
I play underwater hockey for my cardio. Definitely solves the boredom problem. I never really exercise unless it is a sport of some kind.
cjet79
4d ago
There has not been a topic moratorium ever on themotte. There was one in the culture war thread in the slatestarcodex subreddit.
We have implemented rules about single issue posting for specific users that can get annoyingly stuck in a single issue.
We have sometimes had containment threads, but there isn't tons of enforcement of that containment. I don't think anyone has ever had so much as a warning for violating those.
cjet79
6d ago
Large effects deserve large treatments. I'm not sure that the way most modern religions are actually practiced would cause significant impacts on people's lives.
Islam being an exception, but probably not as big as some people think.
A median Christian believer is attending church a few times a year and has mostly segregated that set of beliefs from everything else they do.
A median Muslim in the US is going through the motions of praying a few times a day, and going to a mosque pretty often. But probably not making a pilgrimage to mecca, probably cheating during Ramadan, definitely not wanting anything to do with the extremist parts of their religion, and occasionally having alcohol.
cjet79
7d ago
Generally best to not make Swiftian style proposals here. It makes it harder not easier to have open discussions on a topic.
cjet79
9d ago
This is the simple explanation:
Tariffs are a tax on goods entering the country.
Taxing things gives you less of them.
Thus we will have less goods entering the country, and the ones coming in will be at higher prices.
Fewer and more expensive goods and services means we are all poorer.
cjet79
10d ago
Or you end up with something like the Jones act and basically destroy the industry by making sure they never compete and they turn into parasites.
cjet79
10d ago
Are you sure you'd make more money? @hydroacetylene up above suggested it was less money. And my perfunctory googling all has it at less money.
cjet79
10d ago
I'm in situation with kids and wife's earnings that anything less than 80k will probably lose us money as we would have to hire additional childcare help. And that additional expense would eat all my take home income. Unless I can find something part time or work from home with flexible hours.
But it sounds like tradesman salaries are topping out around where software developer salaries start. Unless just living in an expensive area ups those salaries significantly.
cjet79
10d ago
Today's version of "learn to code" is "learn a trade." There is a dearth of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, welders, etc. right now and there are well-paying jobs available for those who choose to enter those fields.
This was one of the paragraphs I almost added in the initial thing. Tradesman is sort of an option. It's not as bad as coffee barista, but breaking six figure incomes seems pretty difficult.
I'm not quite willing to go bug my neighbor across the street about how much he makes in his plumbing business. But he is living in the same neighborhood as us, having bought his house thirty years ago. His land use lawyer brother is definitely richer.
It feels like tradesman is a sort of compromise where we say "no! You don't have to be poor in America if you try hard. It's just we are gonna gate off the middle class." It's a bit of a fuck you. Even Mike Rowe who laudes this kind of work made his money in entertainment.
The US is still great and still the richest. But it also leads the way. Are all nations headed towards this kind of stagnation? We can't quite figure out what to do with everyone. Even skilled workers are likely to get left in the cracks.
Where is the American Dream?
There has always been a dream of wealth and fortune in America. Drawing immigrants and inspiring the population. A sense that you can start from nothing or very little and pull yourself up through hard work, a bit of smarts, and a bit of luck. But I find myself a little unsure of how do this lately.
Learn to code
A decade ago there was a refrain among the elite "learn to code". That was how the coal miners in West Virginia would replace their dirty global warming causing jobs with something less harmful for the environment.
I know how to code. I've been coding for more than a decade. I'm out of a job and unlike in previous years I'm not being assaulted by job offers on LinkedIn every day.
The talk I'm hearing (and believing) around twitter and silicon valley is that AI is replacing coders. Or at least that is enough of a perception that hiring is down.
I'm at least a senior web developer, but for the new kids coming out of college... I don't know. I used to know guys a few years younger than me asking for help finding a job out of college and I'd do a resume tune-up and send it back to them and they'd tell me thanks but they managed to get a job already.
Nowadays I don't even think telling people to go into coding is a good idea.
Heal the sick
There does seem to be a consistent growth industry in medicine. I'm certain this is true. However I feel this is a bad omen.
Medicine has this feel to me like it is a consumption industry. The typically unhealthy are often old people that aren't really producing lots of goods and services anymore. It's savings that they are using to prolong their life.
Maybe if all the medical spending was on life extension I'd feel this was a good use of money.
But forget about how I feel about the industry. Is this any place to get rich as part of the American dream? If you enjoy terrible hours, lots of bureaucratic red tape, and years of mandatory training then it's all for you. It's certainly not available as a quick career pivot.
Become a social media star
Another avenue of wealth open to seemingly everyone is to go on social media and become an internet sensation. Sell advertising and related products.
Im honestly not sure if this is a realistic avenue these days or not. I do enjoy quite a few niche media things. They seemingly make a living even if they aren't wealthy.
The downsides seem numerous.
- Your business is beholden to the social media sites you live on.
- You may end up with fame, but without the traditional trappings of fame that would protect you.
- You are very connected with customers and consumers who are very accustomed to getting exactly what they want. It's a brutal set of obligations.
Where do I go make money?
Some of this really just boils down to my personal job security. Where do I go to start making money?
But the the rest boils down to where do my kids go to start making money?
My mom was able to give me good advice a decade and a half ago to go into coding. It worked out well for a while.
Now I'm in a bind of figuring out what to do next, and what paths to lead my kids down for good career paths.
The AI-lephant in the room
LLMs certainly change things. I'm sorta operating on an assumption that language based things will be solved and done for. If it involves typing up or reading and comprehending a thing that seems like something current AIs can generally do better than 95% of people.
I'm assuming other distinct areas will not be solved for. Not because I think they are unsolvable, but just planning becomes meaningless at a certain point. But they also don't seem currently solved.
cjet79
11d ago
I've been listening to a Tim Dillon (a standup comedian) for a lot of my political news. He called it a while back that Musk and Vivek were going to be fall guys.
The strategy that makes sense to me, and I think the one they've talked about before is to break down the government for the first part of the administration and then build it back up in the form they want for the second part. The building up will be easier if done by someone with a clean record. Someone seen as a voice of reason and stability.
cjet79
12d ago
The story is a bit of an odd duckling. It feels closer to cozy western fantasy than most cultivation. The main character is an old man, and generally concerned with his extended family/ descendants. The sect he joins is good. It's different from many cultivation stories that have selfish jerk MCs playing in a world of only terrible people. Generally if you are looking to avoid dysfunctional families I'd agree that avoiding all cultivation novels is smart. But just consider this something that might fit your preferences that otherwise would get totally filtered out from your searches.
cjet79
15d ago
Sublight Drive is a Star wars fan fiction of the clone wars. Main character is competent and generally so is everyone else in the story. The only times there is anything approaching incompetence is when someone is outside their area of expertise.
cjet79
18d ago
And I naively though children's health and an international pandemic would supersede politics due to the importance of getting them correct. But now I don't know what politics has touched and what it hasn't.
cjet79
19d ago
From your conversation below. There is a difference between common sense medicine, and common sense applied to medicine. I am more talking about using common sense medicine. Things a practicing family doctor might take for granted after 30 years.
One of those common sense things is that a major medical intervention requires a set of good justifications:
- Life of the patient is in danger, or severe quality of life impairment.
- The efficacy of the treatment is proven to a set of standards.
- The side effects are known, disclosed, and understood by the adult patient or the patients' medical guardian.
There is a lot of elaboration and nuance for those points. But it feels like they were repeatedly violated for political reasons during the last decade. And it has drastically lowered my trust of medical authorities.
cjet79
19d ago
Yeah all the steroids abuse by teen athletes seems like a natural experiment to look at. I'm not even sure steroids are as impactful as hormone therapy, but no one thinks steroids for kid athletes was good idea. The "medical" justification for both is kinda the same too, self hostage taking. "I'll be sad and kill myself if you don't let me take these drugs."
cjet79
19d ago
It's partly that they flipped all the standards of evidence on their head.
Interventions were considered safe until proven otherwise. Masking young kids in school, widespread adoption of a novel medical treatment (MRNA "vaccines"), puberty blockers, etc.
Covid is basically a flu/cold virus. All intuitions about such things turned out to basically be correct. And there was good evidence that was true in 2020 but they spent nearly four more years dragging it on. Unless you were part of a BLM protest, and then things were fine.
Biology can often be weird and unintuitive I get that. But when it gets weird is when you need more evidence and research, not a political wall of silence saying "you are a bad person if you don't believe us".
I literally cannot imagine a non life threatening scenario where hormone therapies would be allowed for kids. Hormones are definitely one of those systems that we don't understand very well. We know that getting it wrong can even cause life threatening conditions. We correctly vilify anyone giving out steroids to teen athletes, this seems just as dangerous and permanent.
cjet79
19d ago
This is one of the topics that really broke my trust with the medical 'experts', along with the covid stuff.
There are some basic common sense things to know about medicine and if someone is going to make a claim contradicting it they need to have a lot of evidence and some damn good explanations.
The idea that halting a major development milestone would be harmless breaks every bit of common sense about child health. The idea that infection with a sickness does not grant any kind of immunity is also insane.
Usually leave the genre and try turn based strategy, or grand strategy.
I think you'll probably still generally enjoy Dune Spice Wars. I run the game at double speed and then just constantly pause and unpause it. Some micro is necessary at the early parts of the game. Like when you want to save one of your 5 soldier units, and you have just that unit do a tactical retreat while everyone else stays. By the end of the game its more of the reverse where I'll might leave one guy behind to die while everyone else retreats, or more commonly everyone retreats at the same time if the combat doesn't look like it will go in my favor.
There is a bit of tactics changes for small units. They have an "armory" that provides different unit bonuses, or sometimes tradeoffs. The tactics and tradeoffs are pretty limited though.
Most important skill is planning out your territory expansion, and adapting those plans as needed when temporary status effects come into play.
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