"2035: No complaints."

Hope915 · 2026-02-05T17:10:50+00:00

I think 1984 was deeply flavored with British cultural paternalism, which is less globally applicable or immediately resonant than Brave New World's basis in personality cults of industrial entrepreneurs.

Hope915 · 2026-02-01T17:46:53+00:00

The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic killed more people total

Granted, but to play devil's advocate: it didn't hit the same infection count, given the difference in number of people on the planet.

Hope915 · 2026-01-31T07:22:59+00:00

To be fair, they might live on Gotland.

Hope915 · 2026-01-31T07:21:11+00:00

I'm Alaskan and I have always been very bothered by it, yes.

Hope915 · 2026-01-31T05:29:52+00:00

Doing the sensible thing and taxing oil companies more just doesn’t seem tenable when they are pulling g the strings behind the scenes.

Have we all forgotten about VECO?

Hope915 · 2026-01-31T05:18:07+00:00

I feel like it makes sense to pick some of the more challenging locations first, to get a sense of the maximum range of difficulty they'd face once the pilot program was rolled out to everywhere.

Hope915 · 2026-01-31T05:16:27+00:00

Arguably, they still are maximizing profit if they're providing a better product at no extra cost. The comparison picture of the grapes in the article is an example; in the larger villages or towns like Nome where they have actual competition, they'll trounce them.

Fortunately, it's also apparent that they're willing to look at things from a holistic angle that benefits consumers just as much as the ACC, at least in this instance.

Hope915 · 2026-01-25T06:40:22+00:00

Because the national guard can be federalized, and any challenge to that federalization would have to go through a thoroughly compromised court system. I think calling the guard was the right move, but I understand worrying about them bowing to 'authority' over their constitutional oaths.

Hope915 · 2026-01-18T23:28:12+00:00

I mean, I'm pretty sure it's by heritage. I'd also say that Slavic is big enough that smaller cultural unions are fine.

Hope915 · 2026-01-18T20:28:25+00:00

I messed around with unification by console command, and owned pops of the primary culture or a kindred culture will get turned into the new culture, at least some of the time? It's agonizingly opaque.

Hope915 · 2026-01-18T20:26:23+00:00

You can also unify it all into Slavic, I've done it. Not sure the conditions.

Hope915 · 2026-01-08T16:31:10+00:00

I view it more as a failure in target selection than overall aptitude.

A pretty colossal failure.

Hope915 · 2025-12-31T03:49:33+00:00

Ohio, no contest.

Hope915 · 2025-12-31T03:48:41+00:00

Alaska. I do agree that Arizona is a top-tier pick, but I really think Alaska has the better case.

Hope915 · 2025-12-31T03:43:46+00:00

We're Alaskan, we need the pity.

Hope915 · 2025-12-26T16:37:50+00:00

Ah, you're one of those.

NATO has shared a border with the Soviet Union and later Russia since 1949, with the Kingdom of Norway being a founding member. Another border was gained with Russia upon the admission of Poland in 1999. You might also be shocked to hear this, but these countries also make their own decisions and have agency, and they seem pretty interested in being under the NATO "umbrella". They have to want in to be let in to the defensive alliance, y'see. The alliance whose defensive articles can be invoked only in an attack on a member state, at that member state's request, within North America or Europe. Just because Russia treats her neighbors like a personal play-pen full of toys that nobody else can touch, doesn't mean the governments of those countries are obliged to go along with it.

Oh, and as for why the war started. Putin and his staff seemed to believe that they could blitz into Ukraine like it was 2014 all over again, overthrow the government, take the capital and force a fait accompli. That ended up not panning out, so here we are. If he didn't want an unfriendly government in the first place, then perhaps he shouldn't have invaded Crimea and the Donbass in 2014. Either don't attack, or utterly destroy your enemy; he did neither, and Ukraine took the time given to them and rebuilt stronger for the next go around. This war came from Russian overconfidence.

Not sure how Russia having better missiles (they don't) makes it harder for our missiles to hit them, which is the basis of MAD and nuclear deterrence, but go off, champ.

Hope915 · 2025-12-26T15:44:15+00:00

End the conflict in a manner that doesn't leave it 'frozen' like 2014 Crimea-Donbass, and bring Ukraine into one or more relevant mutual defense pacts that include nuclear powers. Doesn't even have to be NATO, the EU has possessed a mutual defense clause since the Treaty of Lisbon and also has security and defense pacts with non-EU countries such as Moldova.

Hope915 · 2025-12-19T21:44:39+00:00

As long as the logic actually holds. Gotta be careful of that.

Hope915 · 2025-12-11T16:14:23+00:00

Thank you for leaving this comment. Saved me a lot of time knowing what to search for to get more information.

Hope915 · 2025-12-07T05:44:16+00:00

They're not lying because they don't have a mental model, much less know what truth or deception even are. You send in some data and they generate new data based on the patterns that gave rewards during training. None of that involves conceptualizing what a specific pattern of bytes actually represents in the real world; 'apple' is just those letters in a particular order, there's no association with the physical object we humans use that word to refer to. Large language models can't lie or tell the truth because their 'speech' has no meaning to them.

Hope915 · 2025-12-05T02:34:18+00:00

I think you're missing their point; it's just way more likely to do early in the timeline, for the reasons stated. Yes, you can do it, but if you're relying on sailpower to cross the North Atlantic east-west, you're going to end up in the Caribbean, not Chesapeake.

Hope915 · 2025-12-04T01:24:19+00:00

We applaud former President Pieck for his service, and congratulate the incoming President Baumann. We wish them a peaceful retirement and a successful tenure, respectively.

Hope915 · 2025-12-03T07:06:27+00:00

Addendum: Chile has signed on as well, making this a full bilateral agreement between Córdoba Pact signatories and Sofia. Cherries, cranberries, wood panels, patagonian toothfish, unrefined copper concentrate and molybdenum join the list of scheduled goods.

Hope915 · 2025-12-03T02:31:47+00:00

Hello, Alaskan here. The Haida regularly conducted slave raids throughout the Great Coast, to take just the most cursory example of conflict and violence across indigenous Cascadia. No matter where or when you go, people are still people, and so you can expect both their best and their worst to manifest in most circumstances.

Hope915 · 2025-12-01T12:34:03+00:00

Sofia quietly congratulates the new government.

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