site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8hr ago (text post)   221 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 8, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Short review: Factorio: Space Age is .. pretty good. It's kinda like Space Exploration mod but somewhat lite & polished.

There's a whole bunch of new mechanics, such as spoilage of certain items on Gleba, grave-robbing on Fulgora and industrially excavating the ruins of an entire civilization and turning it into recycled materials and reusing some of it. Spaceships can't use logistic bots and have only one chest, requiring a whole additional way of building stuff.

Item quality, unlocked by said grave-robbing is a replacement for the upper tiers of materials Bob & Angels used to have. It doesn't seem critical so far, but it's nice to have and makes things more efficient. Might be critical for late game, who knows.

All in all, if you like automation games, this is a worthy DLC for the one that started the genre.

The only downside is, it's not 3d. Why, I can't tell you, seems to me the entire belt-related code could be pasted into a 3d game bc essentially, the belts on a 3d grid are the same as on a 2d grid (if you had infinite belt-types for interleaving).

Earlier this week, I said that everything I've learnt about Chappell Roan was against my will. But after repeated exposure to her single "Good Luck, Babe!" I must confess that it's grown on me and the hype might be warranted: this didn't top the singles chart here for no reason.

I could take or leave the music, but I do have to admit that PowerPoint-97-looking music video is amusing.

She seems to have some impressive vocal control, though. Flipping through other videos, it sounds like this one is way above her usual register, and yet she's still doing smooth glissandos up to the highest notes?

One of the comments on the video:

Video: Graphic Design is my Passion

Lyrics: Sapphic Desire is my Passion

That’s the only one of her hits I don’t find obnoxious. I mostly can’t stand the new crop of pop girls. Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter have some okay singles but their most popular songs are annoying, Espresso has some of the worst rhymes I’ve heard in a while. On the other hand, I’ve liked Charli XCX since 2013 and she’s only gotten better since.

I don't even know who a single of these people is.

How does one even get exposure to pop girls?

Listen to the radio. The only reason I've heard Chappell Roan's music is because I recently started a new job in which the office has a radio tuned to a local station playing chart music all day.

Alternatively, join a gym and don't bring your own Airpods. You will hear a lot of chart and dance music.

Olivia Rodrigo

I thought that song "Vampire" was alright, if a bit melodramatic. Can't imagine getting that bent out of shape about some dude you probably didn't even have sex with.

I’ve liked Charli XCX since 2013 and she’s only gotten better since

There were a few songs off the How I'm Feeling Now album I enjoyed, but I found the marketing campaign surrounding brat so annoying and inescapable (not least of which the "Kamala is brat" "endorsement") that I'm refusing to listen to her as an act of protest.

I like the Sabrina Carpenter cover of it.

I had my second therapy session and I now have to use alarms and a strict af schedule where my sleep times are fixed and I have no social media accounts. Apart from that I really enjoyed using twitter as I am a neo-reactionary and seeing trump win was fun. I am not even American lol but the memes were worth it. I remember 2016 a little bit, I was 2016 and not as online but 2024 is not bad in terms of internet content. Again I have severe severe adhd and no sense of time so i can spend all day on it but it was really funny.

I was reading some blogs for fun since I have started thinking more about religion and how that relates to cooperation but that is not something the people or the mods would want on a fun thread. There are fights on this week, I am jaded with combat sports though, Prates and Ridder should beat their older gatekeeper opponents to pulp.

Here is a weekly ritual my family enjoys, my ma, dad and younger brother sip on some masala chai (spiced tea quite literally) every Sunday morning. It is getting cooler here in Rajasthan so tea consumption is up. It is real simple to make too, just boil tea leaves with some fresh grated ginger, pinch of black pepper and later add some milk, adding it before can cause curdling.

This belongs to the WW thread, I think.

And yeah, social media is a great timesink good for.. very little.

@MadMonzer comment:

It is worth pointing out that the Kingdom of Canada is still technically a vassal of the British Empire, so pressing the claim would mean with war with the top liege and all his vassals, which probably include nuclear Gandhi.

(1) It is somewhat interesting to note that Victoria 3 has introduced a new tier above empire, called "hegemony". (It reminds me of my abortive attempt to make a Crusader Kings 2 mod with all the titles shifted down by a step, so that "mega-empires" like India and Rome could be on their own tier separate from regular empires like Bengal and Italy.) In-game, India is a hegemony, Britain is an empire, and Canada is a kingdom. Personally, though, I think it makes more sense to call Canada an empire, with each province afforded the dignity of kingdom status in the federation. (The USA's states, with their tradition of "dual sovereignty", definitely should count as kingdoms.)

(2) Canada is not a vassal of Britain. Rather, the title is still personally held by Charles himself, though he has delegated the administrative minutiae to local steward Trudeau. Call it a personal union. (India does count as a vassal.)

Given that a Duchy can be meaningfully sovereign (they have their own laws, for example), I don't see why the US States and Canadian Provinces can't be Duchy-tier titles. The average present-day population of a US state is 6 million, and the median is 4.5 million. The typical present-day population of a CK2 de jure Duchy in Western Europe looks like 2-3 million (much higher in England because of industrial-era population growth) vs about 15 million for a Kingdom. Also, the nearest equivalent to US states in terms of their shared sovereignty are the Electorates of the HRE, which are Duchy-tier. I think the US was a Kingdom-tier title at the time of the founding (given that it was plausible for the British Empire to vassalize it) and became an Empire in the usual way once it de facto controlled 80% of its de jure territory.

population

But what about area? Personally, I feel that a useful statistic for comparing the "sizes" of geographic entities with significantly different population densities is the product of population and area.

  • K. of Bavaria: 9.4⋅1011 people⋅km2

  • K. of Austria: 7.6⋅1011 people⋅km2

  • K. of Pennsylvania: 1.6⋅1012 people⋅km2

  • K. of Virginia: 6.3⋅1011 people⋅km2

Also, what really matters is the inherent prestige of the title, not what the title actually controls. The ERE was an empire even when reduced to one province.

I think the US was a Kingdom-tier title at the time of the founding (given that it was plausible for the British Empire to vassalize it) and became an Empire in the usual way once it de facto controlled 80% of its de jure territory.

Well, we can imagine that the de jure map changes as population density skyrockets with the colonization of virgin land. Start with the sparsely-populated colonies as duchies, the Dominion of New England as a failed kingdom, and the USA as a successful kingdom. Then at some point (between EU4 and V3) population density becomes high enough that the states now are important enough to be considered kingdoms. The sea-to-shining-sea USA can be a hegemony, encompassing the empires of New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Midwest, Louisiana, and the West. (Or something vaguely similar to that.)

One of my favorite half-joking proposals: Either the US should get 50 seats at the UN, or the EU should get one. They are both unions of sovereign states under the umbrella of a larger entity, after all.

EU countries continue to have separate foreign policies. Sure, they're coordinated, but there's no larger mechanism to ensure absolutely unanimous action in foreign and security matters, as Hungary demonstrates.

It's been a fun week, hasn't it, guys?

I spent almost all the entirety of its free time playing Factorio: Space Age. Even to the point of neglecting the imaginary girls and thus giving my GPU a well-deserved rest.

Yeah, fun week.

Imaginary girls?

Factorio is single monitor and so easy on the GPU you could multi-task it with the imaginary girls until pretty far in the late game, I'd have thought.

Never come down anon

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats