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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   1462 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 3, 2025

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.

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Scott's newest blog post is pretty good, someone should make a post on it, but I don't really have the time at the moment to write something up for that myself, so you, whoever you are who is reading this, have at it.

I mentioned to my girlfriend that the book I'm currently reading contains the first example I've seen of the word "pornsick".

She thought it was analogous to "homesick" i.e. when you haven't watched your favourite porn for awhile and you start getting nostalgic for it.

Did anyone play Battle For Wesnoth as a kid? Open source fantasy strategy game from the early 2000s, which I just found out is still getting content updates to this day.

Most projects like this fall apart within a few years if they ever get off the ground at all. It's the sort of thing that makes me tempted to do a deep dive into the history and organization to learn the secrets of its longevity. Same with openTTD and freeciv, which have even more impressive histories.

The Wesnoth organization has an actual constitution detailing the responsibilities and powers of the various officers and sub-groups, but is it the rules or the men involved that keep it going?

Wesnoth has a place near and dear in my heart as one of the first times I grok'd tactics in a game like this. I was playing a mission and just kept slamming my forces against the enemy with no ability to make headway. I finally realized if I pulled back a bit I could stretch his reinforcement lines out and build up overwhelming force, upon which point I broke through and destroyed him. Was very empowering.

As a kid? Yeah…

I’m happy to see it has dozens of new long and intricate campaigns packed with plenty of missions pathways and a sense of character progression tied to a solid gameplay loop.

Warzone 2100 is an open source RTS that is similarly well maintained.

The Wesnoth organization has an actual constitution detailing the responsibilities and powers of the various officers and sub-groups,

Oh no, terminally online mentally ill nerds will turn it fake and gay as soon as they cross a metastatic threshold.

but is it the rules or the men involved that keep it going?

The latter, for now.

Replying to remember to download 2100 when I get home

Did you download it? Cinematics are separate.

I haven't yet, I got distracted. Is there a difference between the steam version and the standalone version?

I would make sure they have the same version number. The Steam release might lag.

It still is going on? That's awesome. I wasn't exactly a kid in an objective sense when I devoted a lot of time to playing it, but from my current age that person was nothing but a kid. Certainly one of the handful of impactful games for me.

Apparently shortly before blowing himself up, the Cybertruck bomber, Matthew Livelsberger texted his ex that driving the rented car made him feel like "Batman or halo".

I can only assume Livelsberger thought halo was a pretty cool guy. After all, eh kills aleins and doesnt afraid of anything.

Why is this starting to feel like it's the CIA trying to send Trump/Musk a message?

I'd think by now Trump got so many messages his inbox is permanently full. They already tried to smear him, jail him, bankrupt him, murder him... I don't think he needs any more messages to get the idea there are some people that aren't exactly in love with him.

Best. Cybertruck. Commercial. Ever.

South Korea Travelogue

It's always weird trying to talk about a destination you think is both overlooked and absolutely fantastic. Part of you wants to keep the destination to yourself, prevent anyone else from travelling there and crowding the locations, and yet another part wants to scream from the rooftops about how the destination in question is being criminally slept on and how everyone should experience it at least once. This time, the latter impulse wins out, so here goes: I travelled to South Korea with my sister over Christmas break and it has been one of my favourite travel experiences of my life. And I've travelled a lot. It took us by complete surprise what a delight it was to travel there.

Seoul was one of the only major cities I have ever enjoyed travelling to. I don't usually enjoy cities, but Seoul was surprisingly quiet and relaxed and had a whole lot of character I didn't expect. Many neighbourhoods are full of sleepy little cafes and teahouses and restaurants, and they look so enticing you can't help but pop in for a look. And it's well worth it doing that. One time we ducked into a small, unassuming teahouse, and ended up drinking omija tea in a cosy tearoom all to ourselves. Yet another time we did this, we found a traditional foods store where we did a makgeolli tasting (probably one of my favourite alcoholic drinks of all time, to be honest). Places like Ikseon-dong and Bukchon are extremely charming and feature many modern buildings in the traditional Korean hanok style, and I recommend visiting those.

In addition, logistically speaking, Seoul is easy. The train and bus system is very well connected in the city, and it's easy to make your way everywhere you want with minimal effort. Some aspects of getting around can be annoying, such as the fact that many ATMs don't seem to be able to work with foreign cards, so it's not uncommon to go ATM-shopping for a bit before you're finally able to withdraw any amount of money. You often need cash to top up your transport (T-money) cards in Korea; you can top up your balance in convenience stores all around the country, but these only accept cash for top-up. In general, though, Seoul shouldn't pose many problems.

For the history and architecture buff, Seoul is a goldmine. Historical buildings can be found all over the city, particularly in Jongno District, and a lot of them are hardly visited by tourists. On our first day in Seoul we stumbled across Unhyeongung (a Joseon royal residence dating back to the 14th century) on our way to another destination, and were floored at how beautiful and quiet the site was despite its central location in the city. We spent 30 whole minutes just exploring the tranquil grounds of the residence and the little museum connected to it.

Even more intoxicating was Changdeokgung, a proper Joseon palace and the most authentic example of a royal palace in Seoul, having been rebuilt in 1610 after the highly destructive Japanese invasions of Korea that saw every Joseon royal palace destroyed. In spite of the importance of the site, again, there was barely anybody there. We had the whole site almost entirely to ourselves, and we could appreciate the palace courtyards virtually in complete silence. The whole palace is intricately painted in vibrant dancheong colours, and every part of it is breathtaking, but the most decorated and my favourite part of the palace has to be the Injeongjeon, the throne room of Changdeokgung. From top to toe, the throne room is covered in murals and carvings and other beautiful ornamentation. It was seriously stunning, to the point that I'm convinced I could stand and look into the room for hours on end examining every corner.

Also on the Changdeokgung grounds is the Huwon Secret Garden, a garden that was used as a place of leisure for the members of the royal family. It's intimate and naturalistic and filled with beautifully landscaped pagodas and ponds (the area around Buyongji pond, in particular, is exquisite). I highly recommend doing this if you're at Changdeokgung - you have to pay for a tour to get in, but once in you can actually choose between following your tour guide and also exploring on your own. You are also allowed to wander around after your tour ends, which was what we did and what I recommend anyone else also coming here does. The gardens also harbour resident cats, which is, in fact, the result of a single Joseon king (King Sukjong) who was so fanatical about cats that he kept these animals beside him and petted them while conducting state affairs.

Even if you're coming in winter like we did, I highly recommend it - the gardens are still incredibly beautiful, especially if you arrive in early to mid December when there's still some autumn colours on the trees. Also, there are other royal palaces in Seoul we visited during our trip - specifically Gyeongbokgung and Deoksugung, but out of all of them, I recommend Changdeokgung the most. It's extremely quiet for such an important historical site, especially if you travel off-peak, and it's very worth your time.

Our next major non-palace historical site, visited on the second day in Seoul, was Jogyesa Temple, situated conveniently in between the two major palaces of the Joseon Dynasty. We were fairly surprised to find that the decoration and painting on Korean Buddhist temples are even more ornate than that of their palaces (due to their Confucian ideals, Joseon held that the king should set an example for the people and not inappropriately flaunt their wealth). When we arrived, there was a ceremony going on, and inside the temple we could hear loud chanting and banging of drums. The amount of energy coming from this temple was absolutely electrifying, and yet again, tourists were absent - everyone who had visited alongside us seemed to have gone to pray, and they were standing in front of the temple with strings of prayer beads clutched in their hands and their heads bowed.

Near Deoksugung Palace, we visited yet another relatively unknown site: Hwangudan Altar, a sacrificial altar for the Joseon Dynasty, built by King Gojong in 1897 upon his ascendancy to the throne and his establishment of the Empire of Korea. He performed the Rite of Heaven at this site, the first time a Korean monarch had done so in centuries. During Japanese colonial rule, much of the site was demolished, but the Hwanggungu - the octagonal three-story pagoda which stood on the site - still stands, surrounded by high-rises. You can even still see the drums for sacrificial rites there beside the pagoda. I highly recommend pairing this with a visit to Deoksugung Palace, it's extremely surreal to see this piece of historical architecture surrounded by modern buildings, with nobody around - many of Seoul's residents themselves don't even seem to know it's there.

On our second and final night in Seoul, we saw a lantern festival at Cheonggyecheon, the 10-km long rehabilitated stream that runs through the city. A whole parade of lanterns, made out of traditional lantern paper and placed in the water, lit up the whole stream in red and yellow. These lanterns were modern ones, designed and placed so as to recreate a Joseon royal procession, and despite the fact that the festival was busy it was still a very good experience.

Next day we went to Seogwipo, on the south of Jeju Island. While the town itself is significantly less well-kept than Seoul, it's still a lovely place to visit in winter - the whole island is filled with blooming camellias this time of year, and you can see rows of these flame-red trees lining the streets and alleyways of the island. Tangerines seem to grow everywhere, on roadsides and in farms and every nook and cranny you can imagine. And these tangerines are the best tangerines you'll ever taste in your life. Some varieties are sweet and mild, others are tangy and strong, every single one is delicious.

While Jeju is a great destination to travel to - don't get me wrong, it is beautiful - do note that some of the big tourist sites are a bit commercialised and it's a bit difficult if you don't have a car (we can't drive, so this option was closed to us). Buses on Jeju are somewhat few and far between especially in rural areas, and you can find yourself having to wait a bit especially if you want to travel to particularly remote parts of the island. If you're doing Jeju, I'd imagine the best way is to rent a car and drive yourself to every destination or perhaps get a taxi app like KakaoT so you can go directly to all the sites, instead of having to wait 40 minutes for bus 220 to arrive so you can begin to travel to your destination.

The coastline is spectacular at many points, and since the entire island is one big shield volcano extending down to the ocean floor, black sand beaches and rugged volcanic cliffs can be found encircling the island. Some notable places we visited include Jusangjeolli, a columnar basalt formation plunging straight into the ocean, Oedolgae, a volcanic basalt pillar standing tall near the coast, and Seongsan Ilchulbong, a heavily eroded tuff cone which is a popular place to see the sun rise on Jeju. Oedolgae and Seongsan are particularly scenic and I highly recommend them, especially in winter when Seongsan Ilchulbong is relatively uncrowded.

One of the most memorable experiences I had in Jeju was walking up to a small snowy hermitage (Jonjaam) on the upper slopes of Mount Hallasan. We walked along a forested path for about a kilometre or so, and ended up stumbling upon a colourful gate covered in fluffy white powdered snow. A few hundred metres up from there, a whole series of small shrine halls emerged from the icy forest, painted in traditional Korean dancheong colours and almost entirely smothered in snow. A traditional and ancient Buddhist stupa, made out of Jeju volcanic rock, lay at the very back of the temple grounds. We removed our shoes and escaped the cold by darting into the main temple hall, and inside was a colourful little chamber, with a number of people inside praying to a figure of Buddha.

Later that day we took a bus to Samseonghyeol, a shrine dedicated to a folk myth about the founding of the Tamna Kingdom. Tamna was a sovereign state that existed on the island of Jeju from ancient times up to its absorption by the Joseon Dynasty in 1404, though for much of its history it was a tributary state to many other larger Korean kingdoms. There's no record of how it was founded, but the folktale holds that it was created by three divine founders that emerged from the ground in the 24th century BC, and the holes they supposedly arose from are still preserved in Samseonghyeol. The site is pretty diminutive in and of itself, but it's guarded by dol hareubang statues and situated in a small, enchanting forest, and an array of Joseon-era shrine halls surround the site. Memorial services are still held here, commemorating the founding of the island. I can attest that walking here at dusk felt like being in a scene from Pan's Labyrinth. It was pretty magical. If you're already in Jeju city, I recommend seeing this.

Seogwipo is surrounded by waterfalls, the most famous being Jeongbang and Cheonjiyeon. Jeongbang is part of the Yeongjusipgeong, the ten scenic wonders of Jeju Island. It empties straight into the ocean, with a storied history and many legends relating to it. Probably the darkest bit of history relating to the site is that it was a place where civilians were executed during the 1948 Jeju uprising, with their bodies disposed of over the waterfall. Jeongbang, however, is fairly crowded at times, and of the two, I much prefer Cheonjiyeon, which was much quieter and surrounded by a lush subtropical forest and a small stream filled with huge ducks. While walking to the site, you can also see a little cave which Paleolithic humans on Jeju used as a settlement. Much more interesting and pleasant, in my opinion.

In Seogwipo proper, we found that the Seogwipo Maeil Olle Market was one of the most interesting places to explore. It's a charming local market in the centre of the city, and the middle of the street is lined with little benches set beside a stream so you can eat whatever you buy in situ. You can find a lot of fresh tangerines and persimmons from there, as well as a lot of famous market stores selling various food items like bakery items and fresh mandu dumplings. Jesong Bakery sells a heavenly black pork bun - I could eat that for days on end, it's highly recommended. There is also a five-day market in Seogwipo (and Jeju) which opens once every five days, based on a traditional Joseon-era model, but unfortunately the one in Seogwipo wasn't open when we visited. But it's very nice to see that in spite of how modernised South Korea is, these Joseon traditions still continue up into the modern day.

The final region we visited in Korea - and my absolute favourite - was Gyeongju. This city used to be the capital of the Silla Dynasty, an ancient Korean state whose history extends back into 57 BC and who once ruled the entire Korean peninsula until its breakup in the late 8th century and its surrender to Goryeo in 935. If in Seoul there was the very distinct possibility of stumbling upon historical sites, in Gyeongju you literally can't miss it even if you try. The city is filled to the brim with the tombs of ancient Silla kings and their shrines, and you can see these gigantic tumuli and beautiful painted shrine halls juxtaposed against streets filled with modern cafes built in the traditional hanok style. There's also a large amount of archeological sites in the eastern historic district of the town, and you can wander through the site on your own seeing the moats and gardens of ancient palaces (now reconstructed), the ruins of pagodas from ancient temples, and even the oldest astronomical observatory in East Asia. Hell, even Gyeongju's KTX train station has a stone chamber tomb on the site. I am not joking.

One of the most interesting places in the entire region lies just outside of Gyeongju, called the Five Royal Tombs. The Samguk sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms) states that these are the tombs of the original founders of the Silla Kingdom, specifically the first Silla king Park Hyeokgeose and his queen consort Aryeong, its second king Namhae, its third king Yuri, and its fifth king Pasa. That history is now impossible to substantiate and it may be that the site was built later during the 6th century to honour and commemorate the old kings of Silla, but exploring this place was a great experience - the tombs on the site are surrounded by a peaceful little forest, and the shrines and steles on the site are beautiful. There's even a small, intimate bamboo forest near the shrines which we walked through, it's an experience that's very quiet and tranquil. We strolled in the site for a while, taking in the atmosphere, and we were rewarded with a sighting of a deer. The ever-so-popular Arashiyama forest doesn't have anything on this.

Gyeongju is also filled with spectacular Buddhist temples, the most important ones being Bulguksa Temple and Seokguram Hermitage. Bulguksa is historically significant as the site where the oldest extant woodblock print in the world was found - this discovery was only made in 1966, when the Pure Light Dharani Sutra was found during repairs of Seokgatap Pagoda. Historical significance aside, though, this is just a great temple to visit. Even the temple grounds themselves, absent the temple, are gorgeous. Before we even caught a glimpse of the temple proper we had already passed through gates painted with elaborate dancheong, and saw a small but impressive Korean temple garden out front, complete with landscaped ponds and a small bridge. But it's the front facade of the temple that's most impressive - it's large and imposing and adorned with an array of stairs and balconies. A variety of colourful lanterns were hung up inside the corridors of the temples and out in front of the shrine halls, and when the sun shone through them they cast ever-changing patterns of colours on the ground. Entering the shrine halls revealed many Buddhist statues and murals on the inside, about as intricate as the throne room of Changdeokgung. Again, you could admire this place for hours.

Further up the mountain that Bulguksa is on (Mount Tohamsan) there's the nearby Seokguram Hermitage. The path to the hermitage is lined with more lanterns, and there's a small bell tower which you can pay a fee to ring (we did). The hermitage on the outside is small and unassuming, but it's actually just the entryway into an expansive 8th century grotto which contains a large statue of Seokgamoni-bul (The Historical Buddha) calling the Earth to witness, surrounded by detailed reliefs of devas, bodhisattvas and disciples. We couldn't actually enter the grotto, due to concerns about preservation visitors can only view it through a glass pane, but it in no way takes away from the beauty of the site - we were still able to get close and see just how impressive the Buddha inside is.

One of my most favourite unknown and completely untouristed places around Gyeongju is Mount Namsan, a sacred site for the Silla Dynasty which contains many ancient carvings, sculptures and statues many of which are so old that they predate Charlemagne. We visited the west side of Namsan first, taking a route up the mountain that started from Sambulsa Temple and descended via the Samneung valley. There's a large number of Buddhist sculptures and carvings on this route through the mountains, such as the Stone Standing Buddha Triad in Bae-dong, the Stone Seated Buddha in Samneunggye Valley, the Two Line-Carved Buddha Triads, a headless statue of Mireuk-bul (Future Buddha) and a relief of Gwanseeum-bosal (Bodhisattva of Compassion). There's even a bunch of royal tombs at the base of the mountain and a charming little working hermitage, Sangseonam, up in the peaks. Visiting the west side of Namsan is an embarassment of riches.

The east side of Namsan contains some of the most spectacular single sculptures on the mountain. We first visited the Stone Seated Buddha of Mireuk-gol Valley, which is a single Buddha statue dating to the Later Silla period, backed by a nimbus adorned with heavenly carvings of flowers and vines. It's an impressively detailed sculpture, surrounded by a small temple and the forests of Mount Namsan. Next up were the Rock-Carved Buddhas in Tapgok Valley, a stunning 9-metre tall rock covered from top to toe with carvings of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, heavenly deities and pagodas on every side - the south face in particular was particularly impressive, with a standing sculpture of a Buddha carved straight out from the rock and a triad of reliefs to its right. The last sculpture we visited on the east side of Namsan was the Rock-Carved Seated Buddha in Bulgok Valley, a humble Buddha sculpture inset into a rock with a small candle placed in front of it. I have to say it felt extremely surreal and dreamlike to see these ancient carvings and statues in situ - empires have risen and fallen since then, and yet these statues are still there sitting quietly in the forests and valleys.

These are not all the places we visited in Korea, but adding them all would take too long, so I'll start wrapping things up here. A few final notes on Korea: Aside from the very strong Miyazaki vibes much of the sights in the country have, there's a lot more to note that I haven't had the opportunity to expound on too much. Firstly - this is just a piece of advice - if you ever want to go to Korea get Naver Maps and the Kakao taxi app. Google Maps alone is insufficient for getting around SK, and can't give you very accurate directions or bus/train times. Secondly, the food is fantastic - do try the black pork barbecue, braised cutlassfish and Udo peanut makgeolli in Jeju, as well as the ark shell bibimbap and hwangnam-ppang in Gyeongju. Finally, Korean people in general are ridiculously nice. We've had more random acts of kindness towards us in this holiday than in any other combined, and the people there are sometimes comically direct but they will go out of their way to help you. The second we touched down in Incheon airport and had trouble finding the airport bus, some random Korean guy saw us struggling and helped us find it. Bus drivers have gone out of their way to help us find the right bus routes for our destinations. Just really fantastic.

Lots of people on travel forums who have travelled to both countries seem to think Korea is a worse Japan, but my sister has visited Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka before and preferred her experience in Korea by miles - found it far more tranquil, untouristed and comfortable than Japan. But that's the end of my rambling about Korea - I think it's worth every traveller's time, and it's no skin off my nose if people don't go since it means I have it all to myself for the foreseeable future, but damn it's a great destination.

Great detailed write-up, thank you.I have minimal experience in Korea and have implausibly never traveled there. Now I'm thinking I should.

This matches with my experience. And yes, the food, in winter, is a massive standout.

At the same time, it was impossible to not see the small marks of Hell Joseon everywhere. In the lines of people's faces, in the stark reminders of class and what it means to be well-connected. In the bluster of middle aged guys getting wasted with no real future, in the stressed, overworked and over-studied youth.

I found a small, out of the way vinyl store in an almost abandoned office building, clearly made of someone's personal collection and not really intended as a way to make money as I was likely the only visitor all day. The place was entirely unattended, although the lights and heater were on. I wasn't noticed as I browsed, and it struck me as profoundly peaceful.

The clam soup with knife cut noodles is utterly fantastic. In bone-chilling weather, it was one of the best meals I've had in my life. Seoul also boasts, for my taste, the best coffee I've had in Asia.

My honest review of the Factorio expansion, after getting through (ish) all four planets: I don't like it, and I think it doesn't really feel like Factorio except for Vulcanus.

The good stuff is that elevated rails and Vulcanus really are fun. And some of the stuff the other planets get you is fun (notably mech armor and the electromagnetic plant). Vulcanus in particular they just knocked it out of the park. Interesting new enemies, liquid metal processing is fun as hell, you have multiple (strong) ways to generate power, even the music slaps.

Unfortunately the bad stuff is... every other planet. And also quality (more on that later). Fulgora is really a pain with how cramped your builds are. Even on bigger islands there's not much room, and the need to use accumulators for lightning really cuts that space down further. Gleba combines one of the least fun things in the game (dealing with belts jamming up), and a new un-fun thing (spoiling timers) Bots at least make Gleba manageable, but trying to do a belt base is hell. Then it caps off with the extra kick in the dick that Gleba science both spoils and gives you less science per pack thanks to the timer ticking down as you transport it back to Nauvis. And it doesn't even give you a cool new building which is useful back on the main base like Fulgora or Vulcanus did. On top of all that, the enemies just aren't very interesting. They basically act like biters, except they can cross walls so you need more firepower. The spore mechanic is just pollution under a different name, so there's really nothing interesting going on there. Aquilo makes logistics much harder thanks to needing heat, and it makes bots impossible to use effectively. Not only that but you have to make shit tons of ice foundation (and import concrete) just to be able to have a half decent production setup, both of which are slow. I finally gave up on the expansion when I realized that I would need several thousand concrete+ice (above and beyond what I already did) just to make 60 SPM. Not to mention getting to the more outlying ice islands once my starter supply of lithium brine ran out. I already have spent 270 hours on this save, and I can't really see myself putting in more time to do all that, research the tech needed to get to the solar system edge, and building a ship to do it.

Quality is one of those things which seemed like it would be fun, but wound up not being fun. Just unlocking it makes the interface harder to use (I had to break my deeply ingrained habit of set recipe->hit esc when setting up new buildings), and it's such a pain in the ass the way it's all or nothing. You have to have belts carry only one quality of item or your machines will jam up constantly. Would've been much better if quality ingredients gave an increased chance at a quality result (with full quality being guaranteed as it is now).

Overall, it feels like Kovarex really loves compact belt spaghetti bases and tried to make the expansion push you in that direction as hard as possible. Aquilo is by far the worst with the bot energy usage penalty (probably unsurprising since Kovarex said in the past he regrets adding bots to the game), but three of the five new environments (Aquilo, Fulgora and space platforms) are extremely space constrained. And I just... don't like that. I like doing big, sprawling builds where I make pollution that blots out the sun and I laugh as the biters break on my defenses like waves on rock. Vulcanus is really the only planet of the four that still feels like Factorio (minus the biters part), and it's a shame.

Obviously many people do enjoy Space Age. But ultimately I realized... I just wasn't having fun any more, and haven't been for a long time. I thought about continuing just to finish the game (I am closing in on the end), but ultimately decided to not give into the sunk cost fallacy on this one. I wish that we had gotten more content like Vulcanus (which is honestly incredible, 10/10) and less of the wild divergence from the base game. But c'est la vie.

I've seen this sentiment from quite a few people and I don't really get it. Maybe Space Age isn't pushing people in the right directions or communicating clearly enough. I'm going to rebut you because I'm a fanboy with nothing better to do, but I don't mean to question your conclusion for what's best for you or call you dumb or anything. If the game isn't making you do things you enjoy then don't play it.

A lot of people say the new planets are super space constrained and you can't build big but that just... isn't true? Space platforms and ice platform are both pretty trivially cheap (especially once you are a Vulcanus enjoyer). Fulgora has infinite islands to claim whose only cost is the rail to reach them and lightning rods which are also pretty trivially cheap. Fulgora limits the max size of any one build, but most big islands are larger than the big city blocks people like to build anyway. It is true these things aren't literally free, but biters and demolishers and cliffs and lakes and lava put a cost on land that is pretty comparable. Only Fulgora constrains the shape of your factory and if you don't like it there you only need to extract holmium ore and make science.

I don't understand why people think bots are good on Gleba (or that belts are bad/hard). The fastest spoil timers are still several minutes, which means you can belt them several thousand tiles on express belts before they spoil. The only output that cares about spoilage percentage is the science which crafts twice as fast as the other new sciences for 1/4 of the "mining" area so it just doesn't matter if it is showing up at the labs at 40% freshness, just ship 2.5x as much. The real unique valuable building from Gleba is the stack inserter, which can quadruple the throughput of all of your belts which is much more game changing than the EM plant. I wasn't a huge fan of the pentapods, they're fine, but to say they didn't change things is probably a result of hyper overinvestment in military.

My first Aquilo science setup targeted 60spm and took just over 500 concrete (1/3 of a rocket load of stone brick processed through a foundry) for the main processing core and rocket silo which both sat on the starter island (so didn't need platform) and about 600 platform to train in my closest fluorine. This was all common quality machines and modules as I hadn't set up any meaningful quality processing yet. Where is all the concrete going? Also why aren't you just making more?

(The quality interface change really bugged me, the move from dropdown to radio buttons helped a lot but muscle memory is a hell of a drug. Also the mixed quality for chance of better output sounds sweet, but is a lot more complicated than people make it sound. What weight do different ingredients/qualities get? There are several different recipes with drastically different efficiencies for making the various materials so using summed ore count is awkward and overweighs processed materials because of productivity. Should I be able to consistently make good circuits from legendary copper and common iron? What I think it really needed was some sort of downgrade machine that didn't feel terribly inefficient to use so you could have your mines output a stream of common and uncommon ore which could go to their own smelting stack without dealing w

I also felt that the expansion railroaded players very hard towards the specific play styles the developers like, while the original game let the player choose between multiple viable options. For example:

  • Dealing with enemies: Pre-expansion game, there were multiple viable approaches - a belt of ammo going to a bunch of turrets, a couple layers of laser turrets, a pipe to flamethrowers, or some mix thereof were all viable strategies with advantages and disadvantages. In the expansion on Gleba, though, the 80% laser / 50% physical resistance on the stompers makes the "laser turret / gun turret perimeter" approach a lot less viable. This is clearly intended to push players towards using rocket turrets in the places they're needed, but it feels like they encouraged rocket turrets by making the other options worse rather than making rocket turrets better
  • Similarly with the asteroid resistances, seems designed to force the player to route three types of ammo, and to force them to redesign their interplanetary ship multiple times (not just "provide new tools to make a better ship" but "block progress entirely until players explore the mechanics of the new ammo type")
  • Gating cliff explosives behind Vulcanus likewise seems like an attempt to make city-block-from-the-start or main-bus-from-the-start approaches non-viable. Likewise Fulgora seems to be encouraging spaghetti by ruling out other approaches, rather than by making spaghetti approaches better, and likewise on Aquilo with the 5x energy drain for bots.

That said I did enjoy the expansion, even Gleba. There were lots of interesting mechanics, and those mechanics were pretty well designed (except maybe quality, but that one is optional anyway). But it did quite often feel that the developers were gating progress behind using the new expansion game mechanics, rather than making the mechanics available and rewarding the player for exploring them.

Dealing with enemies: Pre-expansion game, there were multiple viable approaches - a belt of ammo going to a bunch of turrets, a couple layers of laser turrets, a pipe to flamethrowers, or some mix thereof were all viable strategies with advantages and disadvantages. In the expansion on Gleba, though, the 80% laser / 50% physical resistance on the stompers makes the "laser turret / gun turret perimeter" approach a lot less viable. This is clearly intended to push players towards using rocket turrets in the places they're needed, but it feels like they encouraged rocket turrets by making the other options worse rather than making rocket turrets better

I think you being a bit too critical of Wube's design here. The basic gun/laser turrets will handle the initial enemies easily enough. Rockets, tesla turrets, flamethrowers, or some mix thereof (railguns too, but those are overkill...) are all viable to handle Gleba's enemies once evolution starts kicking in. Rockets can be researched and sourced entirely locally. Tesla turrets require the player to go to Fulgora, but trivialize Gleba's enemies. Flamethrowers are held back by the lack of oil production on Gleba, but Vulcanus's coal liquefaction combined with Gleba's coal synthesis make it viable. Or you can just ship the fuel in from another planet since flamethrowers are so frugal and enemy attacks so sporadic. And if you really want to keep using the basic laser/gun turrets, the infinite damage research for both keeps it viable though expensive. You can get sufficiently far into them to handle Gleba's enemies without ever leaving Nauvis since they don't require any other planet's science.

On top of that, Gleba's design encourages a different defensive strategy. On Nauvis, nearly everything produces pollution that aggros the biters, which expand aggressively and attack in large waves. This encourages players to build a defensive wall around the entire factory for the constant biter attacks to break against. In contrast, only harvesting produces pollen on Gleba, so most of your factory doesn't need to worry about attacks if you ensure enemies don't need to path through it to get to your farms. Your defenses can thus be focused around your farms with almost no defense needed for the rest of the factory beyond some artillery turrets to keep expansions from popping up too close.

Wube's design is thus pushing people to try something different, with multiple options unlocked or enhanced by visiting the other planets. You can still use the same defensive strategies you used on Nauvis, but there are better ones and the design rewards you for trying something new.

Oh yeah, the asteroid resistances are particularly egregious. I think the whole space platform thing could've used some more time to bake. The full cargo rockets of one thing only for automation, the lack of ability to communicate, the only one landing pad for some reason, the lack of ability to transfer items between platforms. I enjoyed Space Explorations interplanetary logistics quite a bit more.

I think you might be just wrong about the railroading on the Gleba enemies. Red ammo in gun turrets at the edge of infinite research need 25 turret x seconds to kill a big stomper. Rocket turrets need 12 turret x seconds and have over twice the footprint. Strafers and wrigglers don't have notable physical resist. Lasers have 16 turret x seconds to kill strafers which is totally respectable. Against stompers they are pretty useless but behemoth biters do the same thing to gun turrets without uranium ammo.

Oh yeah, the asteroid resistances are particularly egregious.

But make for awesome music videos.

Red ammo in gun turrets at the edge of infinite research need 25 turretseconds to kill a big stomper.

Yeah maybe that's viable. I admit I just slapped down a 1.4GW reactor and a perimeter of tesla turrets because I didn't want to deal with iron or copper production on Gleba.

I definitely appreciate your thoughts and maybe it comes of different approaches to the game. One of the neat things about Factorio is you will see two people approach the same task in vastly different ways, just based on what they intuitively came up with. So, let me elaborate my thoughts on some of your points.

I definitely don't agree that space platform is basically free; it sucks up steel like blue circuits suck up copper. Not necessarily in terms of the literal amounts, but in terms of how you go from "I have enough for everything" to "holy shit I have nowhere near enough" as soon as you start producing them. And of course it will take a shit ton of resources to get all that space platform up to orbit. Ice platforms are basically free, but both they (and space platform) are S L O W to produce even with speed modules in the machines. And given that I needed thousands of both, that's a big bottleneck. I estimated that it would take me anywhere from 20h to 40h to finish, and I expected (based on how Aquilo had gone thus far) that up to half of that would be waiting for ice platform to get made (and for concrete to arrive from Nauvis).

I also am not a city block guy (I'm a main bus guy), but I have seen some city block designs in my day and I would not say I saw even one Fulgora island which could fit one. Maybe the islands are theoretically that big if you add up all the square footage, but the thing is that Factorio builds tend to be very rectangular and islands on Fulgora just aren't. You can't exactly put a square shaped city block on an island that is L shaped, after all. Add to that the fact that you're going to need a lot of accumulators for your power needs (I literally half filled one of my biggest islands with them and it still wasn't enough to last between storms) and the islands get cramped fast.

The issue with belts on Gleba isn't how far you can carry things before spoiling (green belts kick bots' asses in that regard anyway), it's the logistics of distribution at the factory. Take for example bioflux. You need three things (jelly, mash and nutrients) at different rates. So you side load a belt with jelly and mash, have a second belt for nutrients, and run them down the side of the row of machines, with filtered splitters switching which belt carries what as you go. The basic setup you might have for coal based smelting. Except sooner or later (it's sooner), spoilage will be on one of the belts. And now your splitters all jam. And then on the output side, you are going to have the splitter which siphons spoilage off the belt jam up sooner or later (again, it's gonna be sooner) and cause the output to jam. Both of these things cause cascading spoilage all the way down the belt until finally everything spoils, it all starts to go through the spoilage filters, and things flow again (for a while). Belts are just plain really hard on Gleba. By contrast, bots never jam. If something spoils in a requester chest, they take it away. If something spoils in the machine, it gets put into an active provider chest and they take it away. Everything flows smoothly at all times, unlike with belts.

Fair enough on stack inserters. I didn't ever make them because I never needed more throughout than a green belt provides, but you're right that they are very powerful. Also I suppose the biolabs (or whatever the research building is called, I can't remember which is the production building and which is the research one) are arguably a Gleba building. And they are very good as well.

As far as enemies go, I don't think I could have any less military and live. Medium stompers (let alone big which I haven't seen) are no joke, and they generally make up half of any attack group (13% spawn chance is a lie as far as I can tell). That takes a fair amount of combined arms fire from Tesla turrets and rocket turrets (with lasers to do damage to the squishier enemies). Even with that my turrets take decent damage from every attack. But really the issue to me is that they just don't feel very different from biters. Spores are just pollution with a different color, so they feel very much like the enemies you're already used to.

I genuinely have no idea how you can do Aquilo with that little space. Like I said it took me literally thousands of tiles to give me space for:

  • Cargo landing pad
  • 200 MW of steam power via heating towers
  • The solid fuel production chain for the same
  • The oil field I started with
  • Production of perhaps 100/m ice platforms, which is both a fair few machines for a cramped planet (like 25?) and also very slow when you are consuming thousands at a crack

As I evaluated how much space I needed to produce 60 SPM, I figured I needed at least another chunk that size, not to mention the bridges out to fluorine and lithium brine patches. And not to mention rocket silos either! All of which needed to have concrete so it could support heat pipes, but that at least was being produced on Nauvis and I just needed to wait for the ship to bring batches of it (which is a slow trip). Actually building the base on Aquilo isn't that hard once you get the hang of how to leave space for heating pipes to touch everything, but getting the area to build on is torturous. You're just sitting around waiting for resources to build up so that you can actually play the game. If I had kept going I probably would've let the game run overnight just so I didn't have to wait that long for the platform+concrete I needed.

As far as quality goes I agree that it would need some thought put into it. But on the other hand, that's kinda not my problem as a player. They're the game devs, it's on them to figure out how to make it fun and not me. All I know is that quality in its current iteration is kind of a pain to deal with for the reasons I stated. Maybe my suggestion would work and maybe not, but they needed to do something different.

Album that I reference below: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fOO5Lneer9W4UiT9pn9bKf2dvob_rKjN?usp=sharing

(1) On Vulcanus, a space platform foundation literally costs about 1 calcite without any modules.

20 steel + 20 wire = 400 molten iron + 17 molten copper = 1.1 calcite

The build in the album could make my whole post game fleet of 2 freighters and high speed delivery ship, a personal cruiser and 2 legendary asteroid farms every 6 hours. If you want more than that it is tileable up to 8 times with no changes, a minor belt tweak would let you go to 16.

The rocket costs are about .2 calcite and 15 coal per platform delivered to orbit with no productivity on anything. It is a fair bit of processing sure, but not that much. To keep up with the platform build you need 1 lds foundry, 2 em plant for each circuit type and 5 rocket fuel assemblers. Without modules. Or beacons.

(2) The ice platform build generates 0.5 platform per second and takes a bit less than 180 platforms to make, so it takes about 9 minutes to self replicate. After an hour of that you'll already be getting 64 platforms per second and probably have trouble building the platform factory fast enough.

(3) I generated a Fulgora and dropped some 100x100 squares of belts. I think that is what Nailus (a popular factorio streamer) uses but I could be wrong. My train network is 64x64 tiles because I think 100 is way too large. Big square patches aren't incredibly common, but they definitely aren't rare. Fulgora does really force you to use a lot of bots or trains though.

(4) Next is a demo of a Gleba main bus style base. Produces 180spm at 98% freshness and can trivially scale until your mash fills a green belt with stack inserters (about 3600 spm). Obviously needs some more production sections for rocket parts if you don't want to import them. No circuits needed just inserter filters.

I think more could've been done to distinguish them from biters, but there is a a lot of little differences that again aren't very well communicated. Only farms produce spores, and the pentapods give no fucks about anything else you place, so your base can largely co-mingle with them while you heavily defend your farms. Also traditional pollution is free so power and production can be dirty; bring out those steel furnaces and oil refineries. Their expansion parties are always wrigglers and will only move to wetlands so you can wall with very light defenses or landfill them away from your agri towers (a lot of wetlands are entirely surrounded by highlands which don't even need that much landfill to give you free fruit forever with no defenses). Stompers will get lost if they have to travel far enough to reach artillery (strafers too but that is very late game), so artillery outposts need suprisingly little defenses once established. The enemy types are much more varied than the biters/spitters which makes the new turret prioritization much more impactful.

(5) Re Aquilo: I dunno. I guess direct insertion and beacons? I used fission which is probably about the same size as heating towers per watt, but only made like 40MW. If you have a place for things to buffer you can also babysit your other 4 bases or do some victory ship design while you wait for platforms to accumulate.

Re Quality I was more trying to communicate that I think such a system would necessarily be too complex to teach the player in a satisfying way. I agree it is kinda jank, but it also leads to some interesting decisions/math about where in the production chain to upgrade quality, which recipes to use, where to trash materials to simplify logistics and how many machines need to be processing each quality tier. I guess it is a particularly bad fit for main bus style bases because of the explosion of distinct items. Might be why you are feeling it particularly acutely.

Thanks for the pics, I think that they have clarified a couple of things that helped me realize where the difference in our experience is coming from.

  1. I didn't realize you could just have inserters grab off the end of a belt to put into a heating tower like your build is. I figured you would need to split off spoilage so as to not starve the machines along the belt, but forgot that machines which come first on the belt will get served first so you don't need to worry about "what if the heating tower consumes too much".

  2. Your Aquilo build makes a lot of use of modules and beacons, whereas I never plan a build using such. I do the math on how many buildings are needed without any additions, and only then start using modules or beacons to tweak results. That explains the vast difference in how much space we would need for two equivalent science factories.

As far as your points about Vulcanus and Fulgora go, I'll be honest I have never seen a Fulgora island as large as some of those which you were pointing out. Furthermore I build ships on Nauvis, not Vulcanus (cause Vulcanus has asteroids), so I definitely still don't think of ship size as being free. But it's true that if you use Vulcanus for parts the cost calculus changes significantly.

I really enjoyed all the planets except Aquilo, I didn't mind the slightly different manner than bases need to be constructed in due to heating requirements but the way that expanding out your heating network too fast could cause a shutdown was a source of frustration. I also wasn't the biggest fan of platform design and interplanetary logistics.

But I do empathise. Because despite Space Age stealing my soul for a couple of weeks I can't imagine myself replaying it any time soon. With biters off vanilla is practically therapeutic. Needing to be attentive to possible jams or freezes on multiple planets and paying a high cost for fucking up makes playing Space Age feel like juggling flaming swords.

Not sure how much you read or watched in terms of advice, but some of the things I picked up online definitely helped my enjoyment of the game. I was also playing with another mottizen and it helped that we had some different preferences and playstyles.

  1. Vulcanus - this was also my favorite planet. It's where I ended doing a lot of the quality stuff. It was easy enough to just make giant quality recyclers for getting legendary base metals. I love the ability to sprawl.
  2. Fulgora - this is the drone planet. Whatever kovarex previously said about drones, someone else clearly got to him and convinced him to make a planet that is perfect for drones. Drone malls are the way to go here. Or just dumping things into the logistics network. By end game we had gone through something like 20 million scrap (before counting productivity mining bonuses).
  3. Gleba - the secret here is that you just don't need many buildings period. All the recipes are so damn efficient and productive. I ended up building self sufficient tile blueprints, they'd take in just a few inputs and then produce what was needed and burn all excess biowaste. I thought I'd then need to replicate these tiles a bunch, but when I was done I realized I only needed like three of the tiles for base resources. This is also a planet that benefits from drones, and power is basically free once you unlock the burners.
  4. Aquilo was tough. Tiling builds that connected was the right approach here. Efficiency and productivity modules were very useful. There are some recipes on aquilo that you can burn the end results, it's important to just have them on a loop and things will run themselves. I never needed a ton of space or output on this planet. I was almost done with the game when I tapped a second oil field.
  5. Space - was actually the second most fun for me. I just had to embrace tossing excess crap overboard as a way to balance things. Getting used to the way space logistics worked was a little annoying, but once I had it figured out it was pretty smooth.

Haven't gone looking for tips but haven't avoided them either. I agree with your conclusion that bots help a lot on Fulgora (especially for train stations!) and Gleba. The Gleba paradigm I settled on was to have all inputs produced locally (except metals, raw fruit and bioflux). Then biolabs would have chests request 30s worth of materials + 20ish nutrients, with the chests set to trash unrequested. The output would go to a passive provider chest, with a separate output (filtered to spoilage) going to an active provider chest. The passive provider would also have an inserter placing spoilage into the active provider. With that my buildings wouldn't jam up (unlike with belts), which was worth the power cost of bots. Science packs would be about 10% spoiled by the time I made them (due to lack of ingredient freshness), but I honestly don't see how one could do better.

The 200 hour negative review.

Yeah... I had a very rough start and it took me 100 hours to even get to the expansion content. Then at first I was having a blast, and even when I got to planets I didn't like as much I wanted to try them all before passing judgement. Thus my fairly absurd playtime.

If I wanted to combine a mind map and a mood board, which could be expanded outward almost endlessly, what program should I use? The more multimedia capability the better

mind map

I'm not totally sure I understand what you want, but Obsidian does have that with Canvas. You can add notes, pictures, whatever. You can make it as big as you want, although I only messed around with it for a bit focused on specific concepts so I didn't push the size.

Case of a 19 year-old woman experiencing significant breast hypertrophy starting 1 week after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in September 2022. "The patient initially reported tingling paresthesia in her breasts, followed by sudden bilateral growth which worsened after receiving the second vaccine dose. Over 6 months, her breast size increased from a B cup to a triple G."

I want to know how this is physically possible, I thought this was confined to the realm of doujins. The medical journal says that they have no idea why it happened but think it had nothing to do with the vaccine.

https://x.com/DrJohnB2/status/1875214374182248677

My brother's girlfriend was holding out for the Pfizer because she heard about this side special effect.

This week I learned that "female" is a) etymologically related to "fellatio," both deriving from a PIE word meaning to suck, and b) not etymologically related to "male," the similarity arising due to folk etymology.

For those (like me) wondering why "female" should be related to "sucking", it's because the babies suck on their mothers breast. (See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/female and follow the etymology links.)

Another fun note is that the old-english for male was "weaponed" because their was a weapon between their legs: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/w%C3%A6pned#Old_English

In fact, wæpn seems to have had a secondary meaning of penis. Disappointingly, the original meaning seems to have been weapon (as this is the only meaning given for the proto-Germanic ancestor). It would have been better if weapons had been named after penises.

Factorio: Space Age progress is going slow. The bare bones of the lava planet factory is automated, and its science is being delivered with few hiccups. The ruins planet factory is now underway & the first science packs are being crafted now.

Rolling for quality this go-round is still a chore. I knew enough to bring blue-quality advanced miners to maximize my rolling chances. Probably should have brought logistics bots with me instead of trying to build them from scraps scratch. Not to mention buildup of higher-quality materials on the lava planet occasionally creating jams & back up.

I wonder when I'll be ready to really start building the Mark II of home planet's base. Kinda thinking I should wait until unlocking some researches from the swamp planet first. But maybe I'll run out of patience first, so hard to say.

Lava planet is needed for artillery, so I always considered that the first stop before improving the Nauvis base. That and the smelters with 50% bonus to productivity. Less need to expand, but also the ability to expand and still keep the base safe.

New J*rsey has joined the surprisingly wide ranks of states that impose no sales tax on precious-metal bullion. However, capital gains on bullion remain taxable by both state and federal governments, despite one federal representative's efforts (1 2).

Project Gutenberg was ready for Public Domain Day, and released a rendition of All Quiet on the Western Front.

However, capital gains on bullion remain taxable by both state and federal governments

What's the argument for treating this specific investment differently from all other investments?

Presented without endorsement:

“My view, which is backed up by language in the U.S. Constitution, is that gold and silver coins are money and are legal tender,” Rep. Mooney said. “If they’re indeed U.S. money, it seems there should be no taxes on them at all. So, why are we taxing these coins as collectibles?”

Acting unilaterally, Internal Revenue Service bureaucrats have placed gold and silver in the same “collectibles” category as artwork, Beanie Babies, and baseball cards – a classification that subjects the monetary metals to a discriminatorily high long-term capital gains tax rate of 28% [versus the rate of 21 percent applicable to, e. g., stocks].

Sound money activists have long pointed out it is inappropriate to apply any federal income tax, regardless of the rate, against the only kind of money named in the U.S. Constitution. And the IRS has never defended how its position squares up with current law.

Furthermore, the U.S. Mint continuously mints coins of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium and gives each of these coins a legal tender value denominated in U.S. dollars. This formal status as U.S. money further underscores the peculiarity of the IRS’s tax treatment.

Thanks for the quote!

“If they’re indeed U.S. money, it seems there should be no taxes on them at all

My paystub would like to be the witness of the opposite. It's full of money, and so much of that money is so much taxes. My savings account - which also is entirely composed of money - is taxed on the capital gains also. And, of course, none of the investment bullion coins are ever used as money, this is plain bullshit - nobody is using gold dollars, which could cost from $400 to $200k or above, depending on particular coin, as a legal tender, even if in theory one could. One has to be a complete idiot to do so. But if such an idiot exists, and buys a gold dollar for say $400 and then uses it as legal tender at its $1 book value, I do not think the IRS is going to charge any capital gains taxes there - moreover, one could likely claim a $399 tax loss here and the IRS would likely accept that.

I'd say it is surprising how such weak bullshit appears in official Congressional record and is discussed and not laughed at derisively, but unfortunately it's not surprising at all and I have to admit I've seen worse than that. Still, very weak water. No surprise at all it's not successful.

Your paycheck isn't money, it's income.

What's being talked about is switching units of account. For example, if you hold a ton of Euros and British Pounds or whatever, and convert them into USD, you might have a capital gains tax or loss. Switching units of account is almost always a taxable event. USD are the baseline, and any time you move your wealth out of and into USD the government dings you.

The argument is that Gold and Silver are the only units of account specified in the constitution. It might even be true! But our government hasn't care about the constitution for a long, long time. And ever since we went off the gold standard, or probably when FDR confiscated all the gold, this part of the constitution quietly became obsolete. The time to have fought that fight was in the 30's. Doing anything about it now is trying to undo almost 100 years of consistently moving past that goalpost.

The argument is that Gold and Silver are the only units of account specified in the constitution.

So what? Again, I do not see how anything useful follows from that fact. Here's the only mention of gold in the Constitution:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

We can immediately notice several things: a) it never says gold and silver are "units of account", it just bans states from introducing legal tenders that aren't gold and silver b) it actually contains no limits on the action of the Federal Government. Beyond that, however, the line from "states can only declare gold as legal tender" and "investment in gold can not be taxed" is not at all clear to me. It's like saying "English is an official language of the US government, therefore any university course taught in English should be free". Like what's the fricking connection between the one and the other?! Those are different things!

And BTW it is obvious this section only limits the States and not the Feds because Feds can enter into Treaties and Alliances, or coin money, of course. And when something that is prohibited overall is concerned (like Nobility) it is mentioned twice - once here and once in limitations on Congress.

And ever since we went off the gold standard, or probably when FDR confiscated all the gold, this part of the constitution quietly became obsolete.

But it did not. States still didn't make anything to be legal tender. Federal government made the paper dollar legal tender, but the Constitution contains no limitations on the action of the Feds in that regard. You may argue that was a stupid move economically or abhorrent morally (I agree gold confiscation definitely was), but there's nothing the Constitution can help you with here. And not by omission - there's a big part that contains things that the Congress can't do - just making paper money legal tender is not in the list.

Theyre talking about gold and silver coins, which I would think are still legal tender simply by being dollars, no? A modern US coin could become valuable and trigger the same issue, gold standard or no.

They are legal tender, and if anyone is insane as to pay your taxes in gold dollars by nominal value, I'm sure the IRS would be fine with that. In fact, if you want to do that, I am sure there would be thousands of people who would be willing to facilitate such transaction. I certainly would - not everyday you can make 200x+ immediate profit.

A modern US coin could become valuable and trigger the same issue, gold standard or no.

There are collector coins, for sure. And I am pretty sure if you buy one and sell it at profit, you'd owe income taxes.

I mean... kind of. I'd have to check mine, but 1 oz gold American Eagles I think are still stamped with something preposterous like $25. But obviously nobody would apend them like that.when the melt value is north of $2000. Its an insane fiction kept up since Nixon for reasons I can't fathom.

something preposterous like $25

It's 50 dollars.

The only mention of gold and silver in the Constitution is:

No State shall... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts...

Which plainly doesn't bind the federal government to any particular course of action.

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