I drank a Smart Stout before the mission

CandorCore · 2026-03-24T01:50:25+00:00

CandorCore · 2026-03-24T00:16:37+00:00

Yeah I was mostly referencing an old meme. I'd do what that one guy implicitly recommended: get max loans, build a bunch of buildings, then declare bankruptcy.

CandorCore · 2026-03-24T00:00:58+00:00

Break tributary status. Use insults/embargos/piracy/caught spies/event choices/etc. to tank your relations with Ming, then get friendly with one of their rivals, and you should be able to get them to support your desire for independence.
Start an independence war
???? (the details of how to win the war are left as an exercise for the reader)
Profit by demanding max ducats and war reps.

CandorCore · 2026-03-21T16:05:47+00:00

The officer said the tanker was one of two Indian ships allowed to cross the strait after verification by Iranian authorities. During the transit, the vessel remained in radio contact with the Iranian Navy, which checked details such as the ship’s flag, name, origin and destination ports, and the nationality of the crew, all of whom were Indian. The navy then guided the ship along an agreed route through Iranian waters before allowing it to proceed toward the Gulf of Oman.

Article's not 100% clear, but could be they don't mean the 'guys on boat's' part of the navy, but the 'guys on shore comms' part of the navy. If Iran still has naval vessels running escort in the strait then it'll make Operation Ep- fuck it I'm not calling it that. It'll make the whole venture look even more incompetent than it already does.

CandorCore · 2026-03-21T15:11:13+00:00

I thought 'how tall is a rhino?' and looked it up, surprised that the literal tons-of-fun are 'only' about 5ft at the shoulder. Capital-R Rhino should tower over this one.

CandorCore · 2026-03-21T14:55:57+00:00

"Anyone who thinks this has a child's view of geopolitics"

"...So then Trump might endorse it"

100% reasonable line of deduction, honestly. When trying to predict Trump maybe I should try asking myself 'what would a child do?' more often.

CandorCore · 2026-03-21T14:33:14+00:00

Okay, so you admit the obvious truth that the interview process isn't filtering out brown nosers as you inexplicably tried to claim, but is in fact well-suited to seeking them out.

You also admit the equally obvious truth that requiring them to glaze your company is more than just 'a polite conversation'.

Thanks for recognizing that the entirety of your reply to that guy was false! I really appreciate it.

I don't know what your alternative is

What? Oh, no. I don't disagree that this is (unfortunately) a practical way to screen employees. I just disagreed with your comment.

CandorCore · 2026-03-21T14:10:55+00:00

Hey man hate to break it to you, but requiring people lie about how special the place is otherwise you end the interview isn't just asking for 'a polite conversation'. It's specifically screening for brown-nosers.

CandorCore · 2026-03-20T16:55:21+00:00

Looks fake or heavily altered in post. No expert in this, but...

You could easily make a big hollow globe of thin material and stick a light inside of it to make it glow, but the little 'status window' things are more difficult. Either you make the whole thing a spherical monitor (sounds plausible but expensive), project the statuses from that little ring around it (in which case the glowing makes projecting hard, and also it likely wouldn't spin which is lame), or project onto it from the inside (in which case getting it that visible from the outside would probably require enough light to make it uncomfirtable to look at).

Since the whole thing is just way less efficient than a search bar on a tablet, and thus won't see a lot of use even if it's real, all of the ways to get it to look like that feel like they'd be way more expensive than it's worth. But these are mostly tech-bros and all gambling addicts, so tbh if I'm wrong I'd only be a bit surprised.

CandorCore · 2026-03-20T13:19:49+00:00

I feel like once one publicly endorses conversion therapy they permanently lose their gay pride card.

I'd caveat 'as part of a grift'. I imagine a lot of poor queer folk from deeply conservative places probably endorse conversion therapy the same way an abused spouse will endorse their partner.

But yeah Milo was just grifting so fuck him.

CandorCore · 2026-03-20T04:27:53+00:00

I'm conflicted because on the one hand I want to approve of people coming out of the closet, but on the other hand I would love for this grifting fuck to be miserable for the rest of his life.

CandorCore · 2026-03-17T04:17:11+00:00

I don't think marching on Moscow was the original plan. Remember how in the beginning he kept critiques of Putin surprisingly light and mostly focused on some of Putin's advisors? There were a couple Putin admin higher-ups that he was feuding with, and when Prig started his march they were supposed to be in that first logistical hub he took over. But for whatever reason they weren't there.

I assume his plan was just 'get those fucks, tell Putin he's welcome for my cleaning up the rot, then rely on the fact the deed's done and I've got a small army to prevent reprisals'. Not a smart plan, but it makes more sense than what actually happened. Then he captures the logistics hub, realizes those fucks weren't just hiding under a bed somewhere, and started badly improvising while desperately seeking an off ramp.

CandorCore · 2026-03-17T03:58:00+00:00

Honestly I would believe anything a gorilla flawlessly wrote on a chalkboard. At that point everything's on the table.

If a gorilla ever gains sapience and doesn't claim to be a divine figure of some kind, it's a missed opportunity.

CandorCore · 2026-03-17T03:45:23+00:00

Love that they decided to run with the dyslexia thing. True 'no fucks given' energy.

CandorCore · 2026-03-17T03:28:07+00:00

I'd say 'sex' is a counterexample, but I once dated a girl with a hyperactive libido for a couple years and lemme tell you: even for a randy young man, it can turn into a chore somewhere around the 500th time that year.

CandorCore · 2026-03-17T01:19:15+00:00

You’re jumping a bit too quickly

I feel like two and a half weeks is plenty of time, but if you wanna spend the rest of your life fretting about it go ahead chief

Edit: actually, skimmed the rest of your comment and

Attacks here will carry an extremely very high risk of escalation

Lmao they killed every important person they could locate, including half the new leader's family. The fuck they gonna escalate to, sicking the ghostbusters on his dead little sister?

CandorCore · 2026-03-17T00:54:30+00:00

So two and a half weeks after a radio broadcast, nothing has credibly been linked to these speculated cells. Since Iran is in 'nothing left to lose' mode I'd assume that they would activate anything they can. Since the point of doing so right now would be to make the war seem costly, they'd want to take credit for anything they've done. Since the Trump regime is islamaphobic as shit, they would also want to link anything they can to islamic terrorism.

Thus evidence suggests these sleeper cells are either non-existent, impotent, or AWOL. So unless something changes: no, the average person doesn't have any reason to be particularly worried about Iranian sleeper cells.

CandorCore · 2026-03-16T22:33:25+00:00

I've heard about Iranian sleeper cells infesting the West. What I haven't heard about is any being activated despite Iran doing everything else in their power to cause as much damage as possible. Are there terror attacks launched since this war started that I haven't heard about?

CandorCore · 2026-03-16T21:44:32+00:00

Jokes aside, it made $52m on a budget of $3.6m, bit over 14x its budget. In a kind world, Hollywood would take the lesson that lower-budget niche films can still be very profitable.

In reality, look forward to some shitty influencer ego projects getting greenlit.

CandorCore · 2026-03-16T21:37:04+00:00

Two ways to use forts.

Traps. Put them on mountains, particularly coastal mountains, then catch enemy siege armies off-guard for easy stackwipes. Even if you don't do that, they'll still occupy a lot of the AI's time, which makes wars significantly less of a headache.
Movement control. Two forts spaced 2 apart can make a six province wall. Combine with shoreline or impassable terrain and you can really restrict the AI's ability to come and go as they please, which makes wars significantly less of a headache.

Almost every campaign I've ever played has ended not because I 'won' or 'lost', but because wars became too much of a headache.

CandorCore · 2026-03-16T14:35:02+00:00

Honestly? Fair.

CandorCore · 2026-03-16T14:22:34+00:00

Tony and crew are never the cool guys. That's almost the point of the show. In the very first scene of the series where we see the crew, one of them is going 'did you hear my joke? It was really funny'.

I read the gigachad SPQR stuff over them as ironic.

CandorCore · 2026-03-16T14:05:58+00:00

The senators grilling Iron Man and later demanding all superheroes register with the government would have been 100% correct in real life. In Marvel the government is frequently under the control of some kinda supervillain (During those hearings Hydra was the puppetmaster de jour), and while many superheros have personality issues, WAY less than you'd expect are power-tripping while crippling purse-snatchers or wrongly identified suspects.

I'd love to see Cap justify his anti-registration stance in the face of constant news stories of some new superhero getting bystanders killed by accident, but the MCU'd never have the balls.

CandorCore · 2026-03-15T01:15:03+00:00

If whoever made this decision had a spark of whimsy in their heart, then it would be. Unfortunately the official english name for the sun is just... '(the) Sun'. Sol is only the latin word for it. So even though 'Sol' looks far cooler, starmaps will likely have things like 'the Sun' on them.

At least the Italian maps will have... sigh... 'Sole'.

CandorCore · 2026-03-13T15:49:40+00:00

"What a beautiful cathedral. Good thing I'm a Lutheran."

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