kanisatha

This game was an Epic exclusive for a year and has just now released on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/597180/Old_World/ Anyone here played it? Any feedback? Looks very interesting to me, but also looks like playing it might get frustrating after a while.

Here's a very interesting piece, yet another interview with a major realist scholar, except that Allison is someone I typically agree with a lot and I use his books in my classes often: https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-dealing-with-horrible-leaders-is-part-of-the-history-of-international-relations-a-31a0aabb-35eb-4107-a65f-39ae5f79c9e7

No I was referring to a recent NYT op-ed in which the editors demanded that Western leaders force Ukraine to give up land for a peace deal with Russia.

No shocker for me at all that Kissinger is pushing for appeasing Russia (though unlike Macron and co. and the NYT, at least he has the decency to still say it is up to the Ukrainians to decide, and this is just his recommendation). Kissinger is a conundrum for me. On the one hand, his academic books and articles are superb: sound logic, impeccable research and documentation, beautiful writing, comprehensive coverage of the subject. His Diplomacy is the best book out there on that subject. Ditto his book World Order. But on the other hand, he (along with Mearsheimer and Walt among others) are those realists who believe the way to keep great powers from doing bad things in the world is to appease them (though conveniently this is not applied to the U.S., and only to "other" great powers such as the former Soviet Union, the PRC, post-Soviet Russia, post-Cold War Germany, and even today's Iran). I generally agree with realist thinking, but on appeasement I'm a hard 'no'.

Okay, but then is it difficult/challenging/frustrating to build up/regain willpower and to reduce hunger?

Hehe. This is me too.

This is exactly how I play most RPGs, the first time being a blind learning experience (where I may not necessarily finish the game), and the second time being a completionist and perfectionist run. Re. Swansong itself, how difficult is it to handle the resource management? I like resource management in games, but have found there is a fine line between resource management that is challenging but reasonable and fun, and resource management that is aggravating and frustrating.

^This. Once they believe they have enough of Luhansk and Donetsk to sell to the Russian people the notion of a "victory," that's when they will start talking about "ending" the "operation." But I think they're also struggling right now to come up with a sellable justification for why they should also get to hold on to the areas in southern Ukraine currently under their occupation. That's the part for which even their ludicrous mythmaking hasn't yet been able to come up with a justification that can be presented to the world at large.

More scapegoating by Putin (should I feel bad for these guys?): https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2022-05-19/putin-loses-faith-in-top-generals-following-high-profile-failures-in-ukraine

Don't want to side-track this thread, but yeah things are utterly ****ty in Sri Lanka right now. And yeah, I also tell my students that Sri Lanka is the proverbial canary in the coalmine; even the US could someday end up in that state when wastefully running up the national debt in a stupid way. My mom texts me every day with the latest, for example that her medications (she is a recovering breast cancer survivor and a diabetic) are going up in cost from one month to the next by about 40%. Just yesterday she texted me about a loaf of bread now costing 400 rupees. That's insane! My mom at least has two financially successful sons sending her funds in hard currency every month. What about the average villager living on less than $2 a day (the UN's global poverty line)? Revolution is coming in Sri Lanka, and this time the bastards at the top are not able to divide the people against each other on ethnic and religious-communal lines, or even socioeconomic class lines.

Excellent find! I would largely agree with Tim Snyder (I have a couple of his books on my office shelf). His concern is exactly what I've been concerned about myself right from the very beginning of the war, that some Western leaders--in their desperation to give Putin an "out" from his war--which would actually be about an "out" for themselves too, may start talking about giving Putin things he does not deserve (or has earned), effectively moving towards appeasement as the endgame for the war. And on my list of things I hate with a white-hot passion, appeasement is pretty up there.

And they shouldn't have any such stick. Will France or Italy or Germany give up any of their territory to an invader?

An interesting bit of related discussion: after a very long time my contact in Russia's Sputnik News emiled me just now asking for my comments on precisely the story of Erdogan blocking Finland and Sweden in NATO and also about the consequences of their joining NATO for Russia's future relations with the West. And even though Sputnik News is a Russian government controlled news outlet, that doesn't matter to me and I am happy to continue engaging with them and trying to get a different viewpoint across to their audience through them. So I wrote back to her an extensive response to her set of questions for me, and am hopeful she will quote me accurately and fairly and in context. Btw, I have also given interviews to Iranian news media in the past. I knew they were looking to use me and manipulate me as an American academic who may speak against some of Trump's policies toward Iran, and that their story would be very one-sided, but that didn't stop me from at least trying to engage with them and to expose them to an alternative pov.

And how would I go about creating this list? Okay, perhaps for some sources in the country I happen to live in, and may be a few other countries associated with my country (so US + other 'Anglo' countries?), I could potentially make such an abstract judgment for at least some sources. But what about sources from the Middle East, or Asia, or Africa, or Latin America? I read a LOT of stories from a LOT of different sources from around the world on a DAILY basis, on every conceivable world affairs issue or event. How am I to pre-judge all those sources? And then you also have non-news media sources online, that include academics and experts and think-tanks and organizations, but also a lot of garbage. How do I pre-draw the line? So the system I have learned over many, many years is to not pre-judge the source but instead to judge the story, and it works very well for me.

Except for that I don't have some mental list of which are okay and which are not, especially given that people often label sources as not acceptable purely on the basis of their personal ideologies and partisan politics. So instead, I base my judgments on each individual story, and not on some abstract and general notion pushed on me by others on whether a source is "acceptable" or not.

People can easily find this out for themselves by clicking on and reading the link, and then judging for themselves, instead of posturing and preening.

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-officers-killing-their-own-wounded-say-captured-soldiers-video-1707074 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russian-commanders-shooting-wounded-soldiers-26973695 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn9D_m4bxEs The Metro article merely links to and reports what the Ukrainians were saying. It's not Metro's own story. So, lmfao "guy"

Ukrainian artillery against the Russians: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3032926/howitzers-proving-very-effective-against-russians-dod-official-says/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukraine-army-uses-guns-weapons-drone-combo-rcna27881

No the F-35s are not gonna' happen. But apparently they are currently negotiating for a batch of F-16 block 70 jets, and he will try to not only get the US to agree but to also give him a cutrate price. He badly needs the jets in the face of Greece's recent shopping spree.

Here's more on Russian depravity in this war: https://metro.co.uk/2022/05/16/putins-commanders-are-shooting-their-own-wounded-soldiers-16652742/

HA! You beat me to it. I was just about to post this same point. Erdogan is just playing games, looking to leverage his vote for whatever benefits and handouts he can squeeze out of other NATO states in exchange for dropping his objections. I bet Orban will be doing the same thing too.

I'm really happy to hear of this. When Hitler began doing this same thing, that's what hastened Germany's military collapse. So Putin micromanaging his war is the best news we can get.

Yup. Teleportation's where it's at. We need a global Manhatten Project for this tech.

At least 2023 is now shaping up to be a potentially blockbuster year for big RPGs: Starfield, BG3, Avowed, DA4, maybe inXile's Project Cobalt, others?

So did a quick readup of the CBS cancellations; they canceled a whole bunch of shows. Apparently they had five dramas with outside licenses that needed to be renewed, and the license-holder was asking a high price. They could only afford to renew four out of the five, and Magnum got the boot. Since the other four shows (three 'FBI' shows and Equalizer) are all shows I know nothing about and have no interest in them, I'm so pissed my only drama show still left on network TV got the axe. Since it had strong ratings and dominated its timeslot, I wonder if someone else will be open to picking it up?