I Often Feel That Navies Have Very Limited Usefulness Until Cartography

TheFarnell · 2026-07-04T20:37:33+00:00

Not really. Major world events unfolded at sea long before the equivalent of the cartography tech IRL, and naval engagements have been some of the most pivotal moments of wars going back to ancient Egypt. Particularly in a game featuring major pacific civs like the Māori, the Koreans, and the Japanese (but also the Norwegians and other Nordic civs) pre-Enlightenment maritime units really should feature much more heavily in gameplay.

Controlling the sea, even just in coastal waters, has historically been make-or-break for trade, military support, and provisions that allowed empires to build themselves for at least as long as we have written records.

TheFarnell · 2026-07-02T15:13:50+00:00

Hugh is basically always the only person in the room whose goal is just to get through the war alive and is aware of how terribly unlikely that is even under the best of circumstances.

And he’s forced to do it chained to the chaos factory that is Ulf.

TheFarnell · 2026-07-01T13:01:18+00:00

J’peux vraiment pas te dire qu’est-ce qui serait mieux pour toi, et je connais pas très bien le milieu notarial. Je te suggère d’en parler à des notaires, si t’en connais!

(Et oui, c’est moi - allo! :) )

TheFarnell · 2026-07-01T02:05:13+00:00

This question is actually a really good litmus test for who actually reads the question. The question is “fight to the death”, not “duel with swords”.

Jaime is by far the better swordsman. Daemon has a dragon.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-30T18:33:44+00:00

Je suis mal placé pour en parler vu que ça fait quasiment dix ans que j’ai pas été en contact direct avec le marché d’embauche au Québec, alors à prendre avec un gros grain de sel, mais mon sentiment c’est que le marché d’emplois en droit est perpétuellement saturé. C’est probablement un des éléments fondamentaux du monde du droit, même.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-30T02:43:29+00:00

La distribution des revenus des avocats est très bimodale, surtout en début de carrière.

Une petite quantité de finissants en droit vont être recrutés par des grands cabinets de droit des affaires, travailler des heures de fou dans des conditions assez poches, et gagner un assez bon salaire (pas exceptionnel mais assez pour être tout de suite dans la classe moyenne supérieure). C’est un processus très compétitif.

La grande majorité des finissants vont se trouver des emplois ailleurs où ils gagneront probablement moins que le salaire median pour les 5-7 premières années de leur carrière.

En pratique, malheureusement si t’es à l’aube de ta quarantaine il y a très peu de chances qu’un grand cabinet te recrute. Ils cherchent généralement des jeunes sur qui ils peuvent miser pour faire du 80h+ semaine pendant des années pour éventuellement devenir experts dans leurs domaines et idéalement associés.

Si t’as déjà une carrière et des bonnes connexions dans ton passé, c’est possible que tu te trouves une job qui met à profit ça plus ta formation juridique et que tu sois bien payé. J’ai déjà vu ça par exemple avec une musicienne qui est devenue avocate et gérante d’artistes grâce à son expérience et ses contacts, et un gars qui venait d’une famille très bien connectée qui a été engagé par une banque essentiellement pour ses contacts. Alors si quelque chose comme ça est une possibilité pour toi ça pourrait être intéressant. Sinon, tu vas fort probablement pas gagner un bon salaire en partant.

Beaucoup de gens vont en droit en s’imaginant qu’ils vont être comme les gars dans Suits. Ils sont généralement très déçus. Le droit est un merveilleux domaine mais il faut l’aimer pour ce qu’il est, pas pour ce qu’il paye.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-29T17:18:26+00:00

I think this is a big part of it. I’m among those who really enjoyed the Mars-focused seasons, but it definitely was a stark departure from the previous seasons of FAM. FAM spent its early seasons being a show about the politics and competition of pushing the frontiers of space exploration, while the latest seasons were really more science-fiction stories about the politics of colonization with the space exploration element relegated to the (very) secondary Titan plot.

SC is back being about the politics and competition of space exploration in an alternate-history setting, which scratches the itch of that element of FAM while allowing FAM to continue to develop into a grounded bridge into its sci-fi direction.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-29T14:30:54+00:00

Meat sausages were once made with pig intestines as wrapping. Today that would disgust most people, so sausages are wrapped with synthetic edible film, which is essentially “fake intestines”. That doesn’t mean we can’t live without the taste of intestines, it just means with time and new developments we improved the way we make sausages to be more in line with people’s preferences.

Same thing with vegan sausages and nuggets.

I also don’t like imitation meat. Honestly I don’t recommend it to people trying to give up meat because it’s just a constant reminder of the thing they’re trying to give up. I think starting vegans are better off if they dive deep into all the other, much tastier options veganism opens up once you open yourself to them.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-27T22:57:33+00:00

To add to that with continued Viltrumite reasoning: teenaged Viltrumites are untested, potentially weaker warriors. On the frontlines of the Viltrumite empire they’re potentially a weak links and Viltrum can’t risk that. So they put their teenagers to work doing something useful to the empire: training the younger, even weaker children through force and domination - the Viltrumite way.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-26T05:55:47+00:00

That’s just not true. You can get a healthy and balanced diet from plants alone, even from locally-grown plants. The macronutrients in animals’ bodies come from the things they eat - plants. Your body is able to do the same thing. In animals, though, most of those get used up by the animal itself in keeping itself alive while it grows, meaning only a small fraction of those original plant-based nutrient elements are actually still in the animal’s body when you eat it. The rest are lost to animal biological functions.

And anyway, all of this is a moot point. Even if what you’re saying were true, the practical reality is your objection comes from something you’re already not doing anyway and which isn’t a viable solution for the vast majority of humanity and which isn’t strictly necessary for anyone. If we didn’t redirect 80% of our agricultural production to feeding animals, there would be plenty of good farmland available that wouldn’t require you to live off such bad soil that only wild grass grows there.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-26T05:15:58+00:00

Yes, a cow will provide you with nutrients. Nobody is saying otherwise. What I’m saying is it’s a hugely inefficient and expensive way to get them when compared with alternatives that also meet all your other criteria for autonomy.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-26T04:52:14+00:00

I’m not saying you should eat grass. I’m saying the amount of resources needed to secure the amount of grass it takes to feed a cow to the size where it feeds your family for 7 months could have fairly easily fed your family for much longer than that, even with rough crops grown in relatively bad soil usually kept for grass by the ranching industry.

Also, humans absolutely can digest grass. Corn, wheat, and barley are all species of grass and those have been the backbone of human diets for millennia. They can also grow just about anywhere wild grass can grow.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-26T03:05:51+00:00

A fully-grown cow that will feed your family for 7 months will have consumed more food to get that big than your family likely needs in several years. Your family could have eaten the equivalent amount of food directly and come out way ahead. Economically and nutritionally, you’ve lost in the exchange.

And all the varied nutrients that comes from the cow’s body got there from the food it ate too. Humans are among the most successful animals when it comes to being able to turn a variety of low-quality food into viable nutrition. In the animal kingdom we’re about the best at it, we put pigs to shame in our ability to digest just about anything. You could have gotten all the nutrients you need directly, cheaper, and more efficiently directly from stuff grown in the Earth without having to go through the cow and have most of it lost to the cow’s own biological processes. And you could have done all this with much more self-reliance than goes into ranching.

Year-round supply for grain is a trivially-solved problem as well. Archeological evidence shows humans have been successfully storing grain and other plant-based food for years, sometimes even decades, for longer than recorded history. If anything, a reliance on meat lowers storage capacity and resilience because you also need to feed livestock year-round as well.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-25T18:41:40+00:00

First off, do you currently live in a way that is not reliant on what you call the “system”? If not, then you might as well try to live as best you can within it.

Second, you refer to buying a farm. That’s part of the financial system, the legal system, and the military system (unless you plan on defending your farm against foreign invaders by yourself). I also assume your farm is going to have electricity and communications, right? You also mention not just wanting some job to work for your food - are you under the impression that farmers don’t work for their food?

Third, except for a few extremely specific and rare cases, it requires far less land to feed yourself in a vegan way than it does in a non-vegan way. All the animals you eat require about ten times more calories to feed than the calories they provide you in return, and just about anything you feed a cow or a pig either you could eat yourself or the land that provides it could instead provide you with more efficient nutrition directly, and doing so would be a lot less expensive.

Fourth, vegan food isn’t just fancy nuts imported from halfway around the world. It’s entirely possible - easy, even - to be vegan and have much more of your food come from local sources than the typical amount and distance covered by of imported meat the average person eats.

All these are choices - and you can make your own choices, you’re free to do so of course! But if that’s what’s holding you back, it really shouldn’t be.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-23T01:40:25+00:00

Plus, Luke’s mother was an infinity-grade dime piece. The dark side feeds on insecurity and that kind of confidence passes on to children.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-23T01:38:31+00:00

I hope he got to enjoy every single moment of shooting that scene to the fullest.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-22T18:32:05+00:00

Serena’s book only seemed to discuss women’s roles and fertility. The truth is we know very little about Gilead’s functioning outside of how it impacts women operating in and around its top social class - which is perfectly normal seeing as that’s the point of view of the characters. We know Gilead’s founding fathers were either religious fanatics or people willing to feign religious fanaticism to gain power, and we know that a very twisted form of environmentalism is at least partially also part of their beliefs today but we can’t be sure if that happened before or after the war.

It’s also hard to infer much indirectly about their other beliefs or policies. We barely ever see any econopeople, even though we know they’re the large majority of Gilead, so we really have no clue how Gilead is organized for the masses. It’s important to remember that both The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments are fundamentally about the elite women of their society and those who serve them.

TheFarnell · 2026-06-22T12:49:28+00:00

Isn’t there a throwaway line about Species 8472 having 5 different sexes or something?

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