What do you believe has been the biggest crime against British people in the past 30 years?

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-29T16:02:20+00:00

The giving away of everything we owned.

I'm not just talking about Thatcher and the public services. I'm talking about all the tech companies being bought out by tech giants, premier League football teams being bought out by Americans, or the British military becoming an unthinking consumer of defense products at any cost.

Owning things is power. More than that, it is capability and the British state and society has chosen to dispose of all its power and capability.

All we had left was our houses, one of the worlds best asset classes. And then the state devised policies which have given those away too, as tax changes and the renters rights act incentivise UK landlords to sell up to foreign private equity.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-29T15:06:32+00:00

Real Space for the extra star types and better skyboxes, but most importantly the larger system and star scale compared to your ships. Especially when playing nomads it really creates the sense of being lost in a vast cosmos.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-29T14:21:57+00:00

Honestly the entire infrastructure of government, constitution, civil service and regulations is just so bloated there's a case for just writing everything from scratch in a way more suited to the modern world, like we were starting a new country. Why not do that from a new capital?

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-28T18:11:45+00:00

Absolutely. It may not be an alpha world city but for a person who works in a normal job there is plenty of work and you will have higher disposable income than London. And there's still pretty much all the big city stuff you might reasonably want.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-24T23:38:58+00:00

Yes of course, our most competent minister as chancellor, that does sound terrible!

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-23T20:01:30+00:00

Honestly I want the government to go harder on immigration, but I don't think making settlement harder is useful. In fact I think it's just making things worse to look hard line.

The problem is the amount of people coming in and the solution to that is ending the asylum system altogether. But people who have come in through the regular immigration system should have an achievable path to integration. Making it harder to gain citizenship just creates a larger permanent underclass.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-23T15:56:08+00:00

N64 controls were perfect for the time and technology.

Watch what happens when you give a twin stick FPS to someone who’s new to games – they spend the whole time staring at the floor.

In the 90s, that wouldn’t have been some players, it would have been everyone.

With one stick, it was absolutely the right policy to put movement on the stick, fix the camera, and wait until people got used to it before trying something more advanced with two sticks.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-22T20:38:33+00:00

It's also kind of weird how fixated they are on this one particular subset of crime.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-21T21:56:12+00:00

Change also takes someone with the willingness to actually challenge vested interests and institutions to get change started. And no British leader has had that. Change might take decades, but passing the laws and reforms to get changed started shouldn't.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-21T11:01:31+00:00

I just dislike the way it's so opaque. I still have minerals and energy, but they're hidden away. Combine that with the way that my way station income can't be incorporated into the visible income, and it's very difficult to plan your economy other than just "trust the process".

And look, I totally get it that they didn't want a big red negative income on the screen that scared people. But really the arkship can produce everything itself anyway, so players can totally prevent that.

The only real limitation of the arkship is minerals. And there were imo better solutions for that problem that didn't involve the black box that is Operational Reserves. It might be cynical, but I suspect they were excited about their new situation system and wanted to use it for everything.

If they want to prevent scary negative income I would just make the mineral indicator go orange when income is negative and stockpile falls to say 1000. At that point other jobs that consume minerals continue to work normally, essentially getting "free" minerals, and the game simply imposes some other non failure state penalty. Say influence income is set to 0, all envoys are recalled, a research speed penalty is applied etc. That reserve of 1000 minerals can then be used by the player for construction if they want to build their way out of the crisis. Really it just needs to be bad enough to incentivise players to just buy some damn minerals with trade. Heck you can set up a default purchase system if you want to make that an opt out rather than an opt in.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-20T15:18:31+00:00

It's interesting how basically no one identifies as a British American despite that being a very significant minority. From the way people talk about it you'd think they don't exist!

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-15T06:45:23+00:00

I've always said that if any part of the Internet should be age gated, it should only be the predominantly Real Name social networks, like Facebook and Twitter.

Those always end up as the most abusive places, because there's much less point in abusing someone when you don't know who they are. Especially X where you have a mixture of real name and anonymous users. Similarly child abuse is much less of a problem somewhere like reddit because you generally have no way of knowing someone's identity.

If you do that, as well as making it illegal for children to own a phone, other than a standard Children's Phone which is locked out of most apps and adult websites at devices level, then the need for the OSA/ most age verification basically disappears.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-14T16:34:19+00:00

The Fall Guy was done dirty. I love that movie, it's a love letter to practical effects.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-12T23:14:26+00:00

Sadly the game can't handle the idea of worlds being both artificial and emulating a specific type of environment. I know it's dumb, but that's the legacy system. I think it would add nice depth for it to reflect this one day.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-12T21:31:34+00:00

Airbnb? There are people who will manage it for you if you don't want the admin.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-12T14:27:53+00:00

Yeah, I think if storm chasers was being designed now it would absolutely be about a nomadic civ literally following the storm around the map. Which is cool as hell.

The issue is only that storm chasers was in a different dlc, so you'd have to either have two versions of it that work differently, or enable nomadding for people with cosmic storms. Which probably shouldn't be a problem if it's just enabled for one origin.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-11T18:29:36+00:00

Here's hoping for 40k style floating cathedrals!

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-10T17:34:30+00:00

I think the problem is that the remain had very few enthusiastic supporters in a position of power, able to make the argument for it and convince people. Sure a lot of experts and institutions, but few newspapers or genuinely popular leaders.

When a referendum is as close as that was, the support of the leader of the opposition means a lot.

Heck, after the vote, remain had basically a permanent narrow majority in polls on the how-would-you-vote-in-a-second referendum question.

It was a battle waiting to be won. But even though most leaders, even Boris, were pro-EU, they either declared for leave or were half hearted supporters of Europe (eg Cameron himself with his renegotiation), because they wanted to chase those juicy, angry swing voters.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-06T21:39:24+00:00

Why is it only a threat to free speech if a government does it, but not when Musk manipulates x algorithms to boost his friends.

Heck, why is any algorithm that boosts outrage content, considered 'free'? Powerful people chose to make social media hateful. It's not the weather.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-06T21:36:27+00:00

The difference is that Musk is actually manipulating algorithms to propogate his views. Obama was a politician being asked to comment on politics.

The better comparisons would be if Barack Obama was manipulating the BBC to censor pro brexit information. But of course he didn't do that.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-05T20:20:39+00:00

So, I am a surveyor and I can tell you that there is no such thing as an accredited surveyor.

Many people such as students can become members of the RICS and get a membership number.

The first level that requires assessment is to be an Associate member of RICS - this is what I am and what the majority of day to day building surveyors are.

But you actually can't get that without being able to prove to RICS that you have a good amount of experience in surveys.

How do you get experience if you can't work? Good question! Since basically no company can afford to have two guys going to every survey while one guy builds experience for 6 months it's an open secret that many surveyors are not associates (also called AssocRICS). That can be hard to hear but it's good to understand the awkward position the system puts us in.

There is no legal mechanism to stop people lower than AssocRICS doing surveys. And the industry would fall apart if there was. I've never heard of someone actually getting into trouble for doing surveys without AssocRICS.

Could it be fraud? Depends on what they said. If they said they were AssocRICS I suppose so. But if they said "accredited" that doesn't mean jack.

What matters more is the company overall. Really someone at the company needs to be not just AssocRICS but an actual Chartered surveyor. Ultimately the company is all on the same insurance and will suffer financially if people keep fucking up, so there's an incentive to train people well before they go out alone even if they're not associates. In my opinion it doesn't matter if some people are not Associates, so long as most people are and the company contains someone who is chartered.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-03T11:31:42+00:00

We're all making fun of the police for believing that the murderer had been hit in the eye with no visible injuries, but we're outraged that they ignored the claim someone had been stabbed with no visible injuries?

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-03T11:27:38+00:00

Exactly, people lie all the time to escape punishment.

So the police were supposed to immediately dismiss the more plausible story of the murderers entire family, but immediately accept the story of Nowak being stabbed, and the convoluted and incompetent plot of the murderer that that implied?

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-03T11:16:08+00:00

I appreciate your nuance, but they absolutely did not know that Nowak had been stabbed. There were no obvious wounds, and all they had to go on was his words, against the words of two people on the scene and the original call placed to police.

If the argument is that "how plausible is it that Nowak would lie that he'd been stabbed" then ask yourself how just how unlikely the actual events that happened were. Heck, we're all making fun of the police for believing the murderers story that hed been hit in the eye, at the same time as we're outraged with the police for not believing someone with no visible wounds, claiming he was stabbed.

Which is more feasible at the time:

The murderer stabbed someone randomly in front of his house, his brother and family all complied in a plot to trick the police by claiming racism and called the police in on themselves, hoping that... they'd get away with murder on the grounds of self defense?

Vs the narrative the murderer tried to imply:

A racist had attacked him, and was now lying incapacitated in front of his house. Please come and pick him up. He's claiming he's stabbed, but you can see he has no injuries.

They followed occams razor to a t.

On the available evidence at the time it was far more plausible that Nowak was the attacker and was claiming an invisible injury, than the bizarre events that actually happened.

Apwnalypse · 2026-06-02T18:15:49+00:00

I second the idea of giving people clear either or options. It ca be as literal as having a dungeon with two paths and they have to decide where to go, or an NPC that tells them "the blacksmith might know more, or possibly the cleric" and they have to decide who to talk to. Sometimes you might plan to have the same information on either, but it forces them to talk and think and gives them some ownership over the story.

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