213374U

^ Been reading s13ep's posts lately, have we?

Agreed. But it's not about whether he knew, but whether it could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he did. Speer wasn't at Wannsee and claimed he had left Posen before Himmler began his speeches. Even though he managed to avoid being hanged unlike most of his colleagues, turns out he did know about it after all, but it couldn't be proven at the time. As for Milosevic, an acquittal for him doesn't mean that crimes committed during the war were 'for the most part propaganda'.

The best argument against the EU is 5 minutes of Europarlementarian politics being at play. The end-result usually being "let the future generation solve this (or Turkey. Hey how is that working out now? Total mess? Okay then!) That's a Churchill quote. In broad terms, direct democracy is a very bad idea because masses generally can't be expected to act rationally and make the right call. Representative democracy carries the in-built flaw of corruption and crooks (read: "career" politicians) will inevitably subvert it and eventually make it crash and burn... with the acquiescence of the masses. Pick your poison.

The past eight years have done quite a lot to exhibit how utterly feeble the Executive branch is in effecting domestic policy, but the one area in which it holds terrifyingly unilateral power is employment of the strategic arsenal. If the Minuteman III and Ohio missile crews are turning keys, they do so under the assumption that PAVE PAWS, Cobra Dane, and Fylingdales is tracking ballistic missile contacts that just cleared the horizon, and not that Rosie O'Donnell is on a goodwill trip in Beijing. Trump certainly makes for the best argument for nuclear disarmament I've seen in recent years. Since you bring up the assumptions missile crews operate under, and beyond analysis of the Trump phenomenon itself, I can hardly think of a better time to review the system that would allow someone like him to call a nuclear strike, and that call to go unchallenged by anyone other than the Secretary of Defense (c.f. Harold Hering). Questioning the process under a visibly non-insane president(ial candidate) is going to be much harder.

It is hard to argue, no doubt about it. More to the point, I try not to forget that colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.”

Er... not sure if you can continue as a praetor in Antidas' service after that. I think it's a possibility, but don't quote me on that. I've actually been meaning to play a Daratan praetor and wipe out the remaining houses just to see what happens. And regarding Antidas, I think VD said they designed him as a man who just doesn't have what it takes to be an actual 'strongman' emperor, regardless of player efforts. The Guards have nothing to gain by siding with him against Gaelius unless they can use him as a figurehead ruler. You can't really make him the true power in the empire because by the time of the game he has squandered whatever influence Daratan may have had in the past. Yeah, after Teron it's downhill. But it took like 10 years to make AoD. Teron itself was the focus of an extra year of development, VD dixit, and it shows. A bigger budget would have meant either nosy backers or nosy publishers demanding design changes -- a bit of a catch-22. It's an auteur game, with everything that entails.

UnDungeon (pixel art stuff oby posted) actually looks pretty cool. They don't have a KS yet, however, and beyond some neat art, they don't really have anything to show. It's hard to tell even what kind of game it will be. I'd say I'll be keeping an eye on this one... if I had the patience to follow game development.

What was your point again? That only "Islamatic" people commit murder-suicide? Sorry, not true. That only "Islamatic" people kill themselves despite being in treatment? Also not true. A combination of both? Nope, no dice. Perhaps that only "Islamatic" people carry out mass murders? Yeah, no. Perhaps you should just clarify what your point is?

It does, actually. About 4,800 men took their own life in the UK in 2013 alone. But it seems we only care if they yell "Allahu Akbar" before doing themselves in (and whoever's around). Mass murder isn't an Islamist exclusive by any means, either. Suicide rates are more or less a constant throughout developed countries. This means you are far more likely to willingly kill yourself than be killed by a jihadi. Statistics are fun like that. Of course, the cop-out that chalks these cases up to insanity is just as bad as the "because Islam" explanation you get from the other camp.

Maybe you played an older version? Because I'm pretty sure that I convinced Carrinas to support Antidas in two of my playthroughs (Praetor and Mercenary-IG). There's also a similar branch where Carrinas can be convinced to go full retard and proclaim Antidas the emperor. Both paths require fairly high (for that stage of the game) social skills, and you may need to pass a (hidden) [iNT] check, too. Regardless, it can be done. However, this here does highlight a design problem, in my opinion. There are just too many social skills that are not sufficiently distinct. And requirements in each conversation are often seemingly random. Why Etiquette and not Streetwise? Why Streetwise and not Persuade? Impersonate, really? They could have merged most of those into maybe two and the game would have been better for it, I think. Unlike combat skills which force different combat styles, different conversational skills bring nothing new to the table. Regarding the difficulty curve, I agree. They decided that a penniless nullity should have it harder than a seasoned mercenary, renowned loremaster, or reputed merchant. Kinda like IRL, so again, the rationale is not necessarily wrong. Whether this is "fun" is obviously subjective. I admit I was seriously frustrated in the beginning, too.

You think you have a say in the matter? That's rich.

Thanks for the heads-up. I didn't know about this. Regarding AoD, I went through the same. The game doesn't allow you to play it the way you want, but instead of doing it the way other games do, where alternate paths simply don't exist, AoD simply discourages fooling around through [failed] skillchecks and NPCs that are all too happy to murder you. Ironically, once you get the hang of it, you'll realize that the game isn't actually that "difficult". It's just that it's a KKKodex game through and through: it doesn't scale to your level. This isn't everyone's cup of tea, especially in this day and age.

http://pastebin.com/QE9RviaS (I don't speak German, so I can't vouch for the fidelity of the transcript)

Yeah. In Teron you really have to choose between killing people, and talking/skillcheck-ing your way past problems. Not enough SP to build a character that can reliably do both. From what I've read, this is by design, as the devs intended that players realize they are woefully inexperienced nobodies in a harsh world, at the beginning of the game. In the end, high INT really makes a difference. May not seem like much judging by the tooltip, but a minimum 8 INT is a must if you want to try a 'balanced' playthrough (and as the devs advise, you shouldn't try this the first time around). With a ton of metagaming it's possible to build a character that can choose how to resolve situations rather than being forced into a certain path due to specialization choices. I built a successful hybrid and had like 50 unspent SP by the end of my second playthrough. Even with the relatively few CP gained from winning each fight, it's essential to kill anyone that is killable if you want to be a proficient fighter and something else. The rationale is easy to understand, but it's a design choice that not everyone will like. And yeah, The difference in content between Teron and the rest of the cities is enormous. Hopefully lessons learned from and money made with AoD will make their colony ship game better in this regard.

Yes, we are by and large biological automatons, ruled by impulses and instincts that stem from brain structures that first appeared over 200 million years ago. Of course, that's not all we are, but it's not an either/or thing, and the factors discussed don't have exactly the same weight in influencing human conduct. While the upper levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs have come under much criticism, I haven't seen any serious dispute of the base (physiological and safety) needs, which, when under threat, will trigger strong responses that we aren't necessarily in control of, and which are most certainly not rational. Thought precedes action, unless it's instinct-driven.

This is an argumentum ex culo. You are confusing facts with ideology. In fact, part of the problem is that comprehensive, reliable data is not available. However, since the "War on Drugs" began in earnest in the 80's, convictions (which disproportionately target blacks) have skyrocketed. Is the problem -rather than merely the perception of the problem- getting worse lately? Hard to say. It's clearly not getting better, though. As for Muslims and Islamic law, it's actually the other way around. Most Muslims don't care and just do whatever the law of the land says. This is evidenced by the fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims living in Europe and the US, do not, in fact, go around murdering infidels. Deal with it. Muslim arbitration courts in the UK are a disgrace, I'll give you that. However they are still subject to greater UK law, and any ruling found non-compliant would be thrown out in an actual court of law. So your proof that economic conditions have nothing to do with violence is... that one of the most economically depressed municipalities with a large Muslim presence in Brussels wouldn't be very receptive to Marxist rants. And again, facts disagree, seeing how according to 2014 federal election results, it's a left-leaning town [1] [2], with the ISLAM party getting a little over 4% of the vote in the 2012 local election. You are also conflating "dumping" religion and cultural customs and replacing them with mindless, predatory consumerism, with abiding by secular law and deferring to it when it comes into conflict with interpretations of religious texts. It's a proven system. It can be done. So far, your argumentation to the contrary is based on fearmongering and reactionary ideology. I'm perfectly awake. Even painfully so, at times, thank you very much.

So, for months there has been a (social) media focus on police violence against blacks specifically, in a country of 350 million people, where cops killing blacks -justifiably or not- is a fraction of the total of violent deaths. This, to you, is "a narrative". But then, you have, for years, a media focus on Islam-motivated -inspired -related violence in an area populated by more than 500 million, where the actual number of people killed for this reason is far less than the cops/blacks problem, by about an order of magnitude. This, to you, is "a problem with Islam", a sign of "cultural incompatibility", and so on. Authoritarian ****face Manuel Valls claiming that the Nice attacker had Islamist ties "one way or another" despite evidence to the contrary is not a narrative at all, right? And yeah, I guess the widely observed correlation between poverty and violence is just a coincidence, and mostly just a narrative pushed by leftards. Ideological killings is where it's at. Time for my time out...

Funny that you'd make a comment in this vein, considering your expressed views on other issues. Manufactured race, gender, political orientation or religious wars are apparently very effective at averting class war.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. The purges are proceeding with blinding speed. This was a military uprising, what's the excuse to summarily dismiss thousands of judges? They are also considering bringing back the death penalty for participants in the coup. Looks like "democracy" has been preserved, alright. I wouldn't want to be a Turk right now.

They don't need ads, there is conscription in Turkey. I wouldn't expect frightened 20-somethings who may or may not have been threatened with disciplinary action to go along with this, to make for very good shock troops against their own population.

Obama & co. threw their support behind Erdoğan, but they weren't too quick to do it. From what I saw, only after it was plain that the coup was full of fail, did they come out and demand respect for 'constitutional order' and such. I'm thinking if the coup had been successful, they would instead 'express deep concern for the recent events in Turkey' or some diplomatic rubbish along those lines, but little else. Rule of thumb with coups d'état, if you can't present everyone, within and without, with a fait accompli, you'll end up before a firing squad. Question is whether this will weaken Erdoğan's position in the long run, or strengthen him as his enemies within are defeated for good.

Exactly what demographic changes are "a fact"? Generally, trying to dispute claims for which no evidence has been produced is a waste of time. However, in this case, somebody went ahead and did it anyway. Muslims in Europe are, and will continue to be in the foreseeable future, small minorities. Yeah, people should rightly be afraid of being made a laughingstock when making baseless, fringe claims. I honestly can't sympathize with your frustration in this regard. Who knows, maybe the fear of being ridiculed may push them to research and educate themselves. Are you also concerned that "aliens did 9/11" folks and their ilk are pointed and laughed at? Who are these "progressives" that say we should welcome our new Muslim overlords?

It's a well known myth or conspiracy theory, perhaps. Feel free to post literature in support of the theory that current native European populations will become extinct, or even a minority, and replaced by Muslims. (Breivik's Manifesto, not having been peer-reviewed, is unacceptable as evidence, I'll have you know) edit: also, "Muslim" is not an ethnicity, so I'd also like an explanation of how a religious denomination is going to replace ethnic groups...

[citation needed] [dubious - discuss]