Largely agree with what you’re saying. I do strongly wish US mass transit didn’t make me feel like I needed a shower the moment I stepped off it (which has been my experience with state run rail systems).

But I’d don’t see the policy changes you lay out as inherently opposed to a liberal state. Yeah, its less capitalist than the current (US) system, but it seems those are talking points and policies often pushed by the American left/Democratic Party (and if I understand correctly that’s typically what’s referred to as the Liberals by communities like this).

Am.i kissing something in that?

Thanks for the reading suggestion. I’ve a feeling I’m not going to agree with the conclusion of the book, but I’ll take a look at it and see what I see.

If you turn up the source on the military ventures = worsening climate change variables, I’d love to read about that.

Also #BigAgree with aviation being a major contributor to climate change. Like, of all the things, that is the one I hear about ad consistently contributing a surprising amount. I would like to see domestic air travel largely replaced by rail (from US, for context).

Should have read more of the thread I spawned before responding to your other comments.

So to me, it seems like the real solution is to begin interplanetary colonization.

That doesn’t fix the problems on Earth, and I don’t want to pretend it does. I also want to be clear that the way that Musk and Bezos seem to envision interplanetary expansion is…not desirable.

But to me, beginning the Terraforming of Mars is a crucial step in human progress. There’s no ecology or biosphere for humans to ruin, but if we can establish a foothold for humans to live there, it let’s off the steam valve of humanity on Earth’s biosphere and let’s us begin the real work of fixing our biosphere without resorting to mass human death.

That probably sounds like a tech-bro pipe dream, and maybe it is, but it also feels like the kind of thing humans will eventually need to do if we want to survive as a species (my main drive for it is so humans can survive the next asteroid, which is a whole issue unto itself).

Okay, just so I’m clear then, you think Eco-fascism is bad, but that there are other flavors of “eco-authoritarianism” that could work in there place?

That probably sounds passive aggressive, but I’m legit trying to learn about Leftist takes on the matter.

I’m a product of the American Public School System, and was taught Leftist can be thought of as just another flavor of authoritarianism. But it seems like there’s more to it than that and trying to “peel back the layers” on that.

Do you think there’s an equitable way to impose de-growth policies (which it feels like is the camp you’re in)?

See and that feels like baby steps towards some flavor of eco authoritarianism (which I suppose I may be conflating with eco-fascism; to me, those both seem bad and in comparable measures).

You seem to be proposing that there is a system (ecologic + economic) that allows for humans to live sustainably at our current-ish population while being mostly free to live their lives with their communities as they see fit and at (at least) a modest level of prosperity.

If there is such a system that doesn’t lean into authoritarianism, I’m unfamiliar with it.

I think it will be difficult to ensure all three of those points (current population + non-authoritarian government + modest living conditions). While I agree Capitalism and Liberalism aren’t doing good on maintaining those three point (gods, are they doing so bad on those three points), I’m unclear what the Leftist suggestions are to fix them.

If you/others here have points that could fill in my gaps of understanding, be interested to hear them. (I worry I’m going to be taken as a Liberal infiltrator, but I feel I know little of the more concrete aspects of Leftist politics and am trying to learn).

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask. Double checked the rules and it doesn’t look like I’m violating any, but please point me in the right direction if there’s a better place for my questions. I genuinely am unclear and want to learn.

In this context, what are eco-facsists? And then how does that and Malthusian Population Theory inherently relate to Capitalism?

When I imagine Malthusian Population issues, I normally think of it as a left-wing / anticapitalist talking point. Assuming I’m missing the mark on that, what’s the Socialist proposed solution and/or explanation of why that’s not an issue? (Racked my brain for a better wording for that last sentence, but couldn’t think of one on the fly. Please pardon my ignorance if there’s a different phrasing I should have used).

Edit: wanna say thanks for letting a foreigner in a foreigner land come and pick at some of the thinking of the community. I appreciate the civil discussion and sources being pitched towards me.

Fedisurfing?

I can see some reasons to not want to get Google hardware, but I can I ask you to explain your reason (in case you have some good reason I didn’t think of).

I’ve had the resources and intent to build a new PC since about Aug of this year, but was busy with some major work projects + some mid-tier family drama, so kicked it down the road with the goals of pulling the trigger over the holidays.

Fuck, what a mistake that was.

As much as I abhor Reddit, they have a lot more active communities for military related questions. I expect they’ll same is true for police. I think you’ll have better results asking around over there.

If you really want to go military, “there’s a waiver for everything” is a common saying (source: I did a stint in the Navy), so you can probably find a doctor who’s willing to write a memo telling them your fit for service. I expect the police will will have similar policies.

If this has rekindled your hope for military, feel free to DM me. Lol, I’ve got lots of thoughts and can point you in directions on that end (not so much the police stuff) and don’t want to wall of text too hard.

Lol, suppose not.

But I’m glad at least I’m not crazy while living in this reality (though I suppose it my be less painful that way).

Oh, I was wondering why RAM prices seemed so much higher. Its been ~4 years since I looked and gaslit myself into thinking my brain was just going bad.

Glad to see I wasn’t just imagining it.

Did a pinch of digging and this Stack Overflow Question seems to be the best “all in one” answer to your question.

To try to explain from what I’m seeing:

• Disable stops any “autostart” services/processes from starting. It also tries to gracefully stop any background processes and services.
• Force Stop kills those processes forcefully (but doesn’t necessarily stop them from auto starting again).
• Its possible (though unlikely) for you to Disable an app and there to be a delay for all processes and services to die.
• Thus it can be useful to Disable, then Force Stop if you really want something dead.

That said, in most cases it looks like its more likely to be a “UI Bug”. Theoretically, if no processes are running for an app, the Force Stop button is supposed to be deactivated (greyed out), but this check is apparently not very authoritatively checked, and defaults to Active if the OS isn’t sure.

Hopefully any wrong info I’ve stated will summon a true expert to explain better.

Union Minister for Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia claimed on Tuesday that the Sanchar Saathi app, a fraud reporting app the government wants pre-installed on all devices, will be optional and can be deleted by users.

“… If you don’t want Sanchar Saathi, you can delete it. It is optional… It is our duty to introduce this app to everyone. Keeping it in their devices or not is up to the user,” he said to reporters.

So it sounds like it can be removed, though I can’t help but feel like it might leave malicious artifacts (this is based on absolutely no evidence and is purely speculation on my part)

Eh, gonna have to soft disagree.

Its got a lot of those same elements, but you have a character that is only at one spot at a time, and so that limits how elective you can be at the expansion part.

That said, it is also not a typical RPG where you have just a character adventuring across the land. Really unique game in that its a bridge between those two broad genres.

Its honestly a very small facet of the game, and more so used to bootstrap your company/Army’s finances until you gain lordship of towns and cities (and thus collect rents).

But to try to explain how it comes together anyway:
So towns specialize in producing a single type of raw resource (grain, ore, grapes, sheep, etc) and they sell those goods mainly to a single city. A city will have 2-4 towns “feeding” it resources, and so if a city has 3 towns that bring it grain, then you’d expect the grain price to be cheaper than in a city who’s towns produce ore.

Next level, if you have two neighboring towns one producing ore and one with grain, chances are there will be a stable (and relatively low) grain price in both with reasonably high population (pop growth is primarily boosted by excess food). Imagine now an enemy army rolls up and burns all the grain towns and seiges the grain city (traders can’t enter a sieged city). After a week, this would lead to MUCH less grain in the ore city, thus prices spike.

So you, an enterprising new player with a dozen men and some spare horses, load up with cheap grain from somewhere else on the map and make a run to the ore city, selling grain at an inflated price.

Again, this general strat is good for bootstrapping the money to build a medium warband, but generally falls away as a viable source of income once you leave there early game.

Bonus factoids cause I’ve got time to kill: The game is very open ended. If you just want to be a merchant, well, I suppose no ones stopping you. But the course of action you’re nudged towards is to raise a warband and join (or build) a faction and conquer unite all the cities under one banner.

With that, I’d define the goals/stages of the game as:

Early: building a small company big enough to be helpful to you faction when fighting alongside other lords. Goal here is to buy a few workshops inside your own faction’s lands (which grant passive income).

Mid-game: you’re working to build a fighting force that can solo other mid-large forces, while obtaining / managing a city or two for your kingdom (this is where you manually trading starts to not yield enough income to keep your army paid). Goal is to become a significant political player in your faction and to gain as many cities as you can for yourself.

Endgame: by this point, you should be leading a faction. For combat, you’re gathering multiple vassals into large army’s to take key enemy cities. You’re managing the wars that spring up and determining which vassals get which cities. This is where you can finally make real territorial gains for your people.

I was wondering what happened with this the other day (haven’t kept up with XKCD since highschool).

It makes me happy that they’re both still here.

This is something that has always bothered me about roadkill animals (esp deer which are particularly prevalent as roadkill in my area).

Its my understanding that the hide can remain in good and usable condition for days to weeks after the animal’s death. It seems that this could be a decent source of blankets and other light-medium cold weather gear.

I’d imagine it largely comes down to the skinning process. The internal organs of dead animals are supposed to get real gross real fast (and that’s in the best case scenario - if anything ruptured when they were hit, then the grossness increasing exponentially) and removing those is the first step towards skinning. Additionally, everything in harvesting the hide would need to be done by hand.

But boy, if we could build one of those Boston dynamics bots to do it…

It appears to be a widely circulated fan art, appearing on her page of the Fandom Wiki (though Tetsuya Nomura may be an official artist for FFX).

Point is that its accredited to an artist, so it would seem the missing teeth was intentional?

Oh, I thought this was going to be about the trading cards they implemented in steam. Those are so lame and cheap I wasn’t bothered by this.

For any non-readers-of-articles, this is about a loot box mechanic added to counterstrike (which is fair criticism imho)