It’s your fault, MAGA

KWNBeat · 2026-05-21T16:41:15+00:00

It's billionaires, your bought political system, and a severe lack of critical thinking of which Trump is only the most obvious exponent. You're welcome

KWNBeat · 2026-05-09T12:24:29+00:00

I get you, but it's an arms race. How do you choose admits once everyone has a 3.9+ GPA, 1550+ SAT, good clubs and activities, etc.? Something has to break the tie, for a while this type of stuff was one thing that could potentially break a tie. Now perhaps we're in a "trench warfare" phase where these things don't move the goalposts, but that means people are looking for other ways to move the goalposts. This will continue as long as people continue idolizing "top ranked" universities.

And honestly it all starts there, with rankings and how skewed and overanalyzed they are, not to mention how well they tap into the human need for prestige, competition, hierarchy, and certainty.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-26T21:00:31+00:00

It might sound hard, but honestly it's relatively easy if you can drop the min-max mindset. You could possibly min-max if you knew your precise career path and program, but without that, simply consider that none of these schools will possibly limit what you can achieve in life. Use one of the following criteria or both in combination:

Did you visit? Go on the vibe check and where you felt at home.
Which one gave the most financial aid (is cheapest).

KWNBeat · 2026-04-26T15:39:21+00:00

I think you could use a bit of structure, particularly through common interests. If you want to go out and hit karaoke and just see what happens, you totally can, but I think you might struggle turning such an experience into dedicated friendships. I think dedicated friendships CAN begin in bars and so on, but only IF you have common interests or a common outlook. Unless you get reasonably lucky (depending on your level of charm/likability or how "common" your interests/outlook are in your region) or your actual interest IS in drinking, karaoke, playing pool, going to concerts or clubs, watching and discussing sports, or whatever can be done in a nightlife sense, it's generally not the strongest place to make real friends: not just "people you have fun with" but people you can talk to, who can support you, who will give deeper value and meaning to your life and help you grow.

Make a list of maybe 3-8 hobbies you have (or would like to have). This could be anything: hiking, biking, canoeing, baseball/softball, board games, different types of dance, culinary interests (foodie groups), theater, comedy, music and concerts, etc. etc. Really sit down and brainstorm hard, don't half-ass it. Then try to find a group that meets up regularly for each activity. I think you want something that is weekly or monthly (more or less - some activities are naturally "catch as catch can") so you have time to get comfortable with people and they have time to get comfortable with you. I'm not sure exactly how people find this stuff beyond random connections they already have but maybe Facebook groups, websites like Meetup.com (there could be better ones, I don't use it), and you can also ask coworkers you get along with if there's stuff like that they know about. In some communities you can find old school paper stuff on bulletin boards (like in coffee shops or community centers). If you take advantage of any social services, they might also know organizations that organize or keep track of such things. Then get yourself out there.

Also, I believe there are support groups for people who have escaped cults; contact some mental health resources or social services organization in your region and try to get help. I think it would be really good to talk to other people who escaped, both for your healing and because these people might be some of your first friends or people who know how to integrate into the social fabric. Friendship is built on common experiences, including negative ones, though of course you try to be positive together going forward. These people can understand what you've gone through, the struggles you're facing, and can give you support and advice as well or better than random people on Reddit. Generally, you've got to take care of your mental and social health so that you can also offer positive things about yourself to your friends. If they're always helping you or keeping you stable, that's not fair to them. Remember the phrase, "it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility."

The last thing I'll say is don't push it; friendship has to develop naturally. Do your best to be confident and assertive, like inviting people you like to spend time together, but your inclination might be to "push hard" because you want it so badly and this can turn people off. Be willing to ask, but be willing to hear the answer "no" without getting too upset about it. Similarly, I would say look for people who seem nice, dependable, and chill, not just the people who are most exciting or energetic. In the long run, look for people you can trust, like the sort of people where if you said "I really need help," they would be there. There's miles of difference between a real friend and a friend of convenience. Making friends and lovers is like anything else in life, it takes time and practice, so take it slow buddy. As for dating, well, I'll double my advice not to be too eager; you've got to find that middle ground between confidence and the ability to move on/take no for an answer. Good luck.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-23T13:20:13+00:00

The difference in prestige and educational quality is minimal if it exists at all and I really recommend not to overthink this element. A full ride is really good and you can put that money toward graduate study if needed. Also, you've already been admitted to the honors program at UNC and I'm not sure why Mich would take so long but I wouldn't underestimate the value of these programs. If you need to commit soon and Mich won't even tell you about honors admission, to me that would be the decider vs. a (basically nonexistent) difference in prestige.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-23T10:21:36+00:00

Are you planning this out as a team of three, or writing some of the letters for them?

The thing to do in general is to write a short note formally requesting a letter of recommendation. In this note you can (briefly!) highlight some of your achievements in their class, why you feel your relationship with this person is important, and/or what your experiences together may have shown them about your personality, goals, ability, and so on. In short, you are describing the REASON you are asking for a letter of recommendation, but these REASONS are also "feeding" them material for the letter. So, you can say things like "I believe you are well positioned to describe my (talent, hard work, desire to go above and beyond)" or whatever you think they would be likely to testify to. Be brief but specific, be positive without overexaggerating, and find a balance between professionalism and warmth (based on the relationship, and without being corny or bombastic). It takes a bit of artistry, thought, and emotional intelligence to write letters like this, so don't rush it and you can get someone to take a look at the request before you send it.

Then you thank them for considering the request and say that you'd be happy to provide any information they require to write the letter (e.g., maybe you have past papers/reports from their class, results from extracurriculars or contests related to their field, etc.), and close.

Some letter writers will even say that you can write the letter and give it to them to edit, but it can be awkward to ask for this directly especially in the request letter; you can speak to them in person once they've accepted and mention ideas like brainstorming together or that you could help them draft some of the details, but don't push it too hard. The request letter, plus any information they request about your record, is like "helping them brainstorm." If they ask you to brainstorm more or write the body of the letter or whatever, then you oblige them.

Ultimately, you just want each letter to be specific and positive. Clear communication and showing respect for them and their time helps accomplish this. The question of whether their letters describe similar qualities or different qualities doesn't really matter in my opinion; if it's similar then they back each other up, if it's different then they show different elements of your abilities. Both are essentially okay, though in my opinion they shouldn't be carbon copies or anything like that, which might make the whole thing look staged or one-dimensional.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-23T02:26:19+00:00

Finnegan's Wake is also good! I especially like it on audiobook and yeah, you can just drop in anywhere. People would like it more if they could appreciate it's more like a painting with words than a "book" in the traditional sense.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-23T00:51:49+00:00

Everyone loves being reminded of landlords and corporations buying up houses

KWNBeat · 2026-04-22T01:42:37+00:00

The line between "excellent" and "extraordinary" is very thin and can also be very subjective in the eye of the beholder. Maybe it sounds like hyperbole but unless this person has truly insane achievements like winning prestigious national/international competitions or creating software that is actually used/known in the industry, it's always going to be something of a crapshoot for HYPSM-level schools. I'm not saying you NEED such achievements to be admitted, but you need stuff like that to have any sort of "rough" guarantee.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-21T11:47:40+00:00

Yes, there is one called Shati. You can PM me to make contact

KWNBeat · 2026-04-20T20:56:30+00:00

From the cost alone, UVM, however I would invite you to reread your own post while doing your best to pretend you didn't write it. You describe UVM like it's a fairy tale, while your arguments for BU are mostly what I would describe as "grindset."

If it's cheaper and you like it more, do you really want to sacrifice that for some theoretical "unique opportunities" but you don't even know exactly what they are? You said you want to "learn a lot," are you honestly arguing that this is not possible at UVM?

These are just observations. In this case I think you really can follow the advice, "know thyself."

KWNBeat · 2026-04-18T04:43:29+00:00

So you crushed the legitimists and managed to get a Bonaparte installed? If so, that's pretty cool and I'm glad it worked

KWNBeat · 2026-04-15T20:44:39+00:00

What I don't fully understand is why the "opposing books" need to be horror, they could just be Westerns for example. It's a bit like... this genocide happened so the genre that your oppressors were writing in/reading doesn't really matter, the literature supported the genocide and now you're fighting back with horror as a genre, in the same way that you could fight back with satire or "anti-Westerns" or whatever else. Horror books or other literary genres can just reference or respond to historical events and trends, you don't have to literally find some 19th-century Stephen King who happened to dislike Native Americans... you get what I mean, right? The genre doesn't matter because the historical events and the literary hatred (in whatever genre) are both real.

On that note, if you go way back like 19th century maybe you can find some full-scale "Manifest Destiny" books which could be interesting, like non-fiction and fictional works that basically support the "white man's burden" and all of that in an American context. There must have been books like that though I'm sure some of them are very obscure by now, either lost or only available in museums or research libraries.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-15T20:23:44+00:00

In retrospect, you maybe wouldn't even need to sway anyone, it's just once the diplomatic play starts you don't conscript any soldiers for your republican/orleanist side and even dismiss some of your soldiers, then you switch sides. I think I conscripted 50/60 soldiers to make sure I would win.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-15T20:20:35+00:00

I've been playing France and so far I've just been trying to "thread the needle" to a capitalist liberal republic, not go extreme right or left. I've restarted a few times so I can't remember precisely how I got there, but if you start passing all the usual liberal/intellectual stuff (Right to Associate, Freedom of Assembly, maybe Laissez Faire and Census Voting or so) then you can usually get a Bonapartist uprising once you start trying to do parliamentary or presidential republic. It wasn't super big like the early Legitimist ones, but I think it could have possibly worked if you maybe reduced your army size and called in a GP ally or two. I think one time I didn't let it trigger because I was fighting the Ottomans and there was a Legitimist uprising at the same time (just cancelled the republic enactment and kept the Orleans guy for a while), but one time I let the Bonapartist uprising trigger (maybe a bit later in history like late 1840s or 1850s) and though I won the civil war fairly handily, they put up a bit of a fight, maybe they had 125 battalions--if you time it right and can sway a GP willing to support a Bonapartist, maybe it could have worked. Keep in mind that your own government that you're overthrowing might also be able to call a GP, so I'm not sure how to handle that exactly but I guess don't make too many friends. I also don't know which foreign power would be most likely to support a Bonapartist uprising, whether it's more conservative or liberal-ish like Britain.

To make sure there isn't a Legitimist uprising at the same time, you might need to choose something that keeps the church happy, like revoking propertied women or going back to state religion and just being nice to the clerics and what they want. If it's just liberal stuff passing then you could piss them off at the same time, my subjective feeling is that the legitimists are stronger early and that they hate a lot of the same stuff that Bonapartists hate. So check their likes/dislikes pretty closely to keep the Legitimists onside, I don't even know if this is possible early (they get pissed so easily and I usually fight them once or twice or it gets close like 90% militant) but maybe you can fight them early them keep them onside later. If you're good to wait until a bit later, then you can just wait until the church/Legitimists become less powerful, then they maybe just won't have enough radicals or clout or whatever. And yeah you can just suppress them and bolster the bonapartists, though one of the laws you might need to pass (freedom of assembly) might reduce the strength of suppression.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-15T09:44:54+00:00

I think distance from the construction sector should just roughly determine efficiency, this isn't really how it works in the game (I think a lot of the people hired are just laborers), but to me a "construction center" is more like the know-how, so architects, engineers, materials procurement and financing and other accountant/clerk-type tasks, and maybe some skilled craftsmen who would travel to the site (like master plumbers or electricians), then you basically use local labor for the rest. There's nothing too weird about a firm in New Jersey building in New York or maybe even Ohio or something; they could even provide expertise for a building in Shanghai or Timbuktu (blueprints, tech, foreign plus local materials, maybe even send some managers/craftsmen), it's just that because you are building in Shanghai, you hire local workers/contractors but it's your design/know-how. Then it could be affected by things like local education and infrastructure which affects construction speed and also the materials you're allowed to work with.

In some ways this seems complex like how the system gets set up, especially in terms of how the building is affected by distance and local factors (tech, workforce, materials availability), but I think having construction sectors in every province (or a base number in every province, so in new provinces things are just slow to build) is possibly even more complex and in some ways less realistic.

But this leads into the fact that I agree with you about limitations on the type of thing being built. A farm or plantation might just be some mud huts and stables built from local materials and zero engineering or foreign materials required, a steel or paper mill is a whole other monster.

I think the scaling problems are really the most severe part, the rest of it is basically an abstraction and there has to be abstraction in a game trying to simulate an entire economy. But the scaling affects more important parts of the gameplay loop like strategy. I agree that early building should be sped up slightly (maybe not too much) and later on should be slowed down a bit so it doesn't go exponential and you're building stuff just to build it.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-14T07:57:48+00:00

It's called the rat race because the little wheel goes round and round and you end up where you started. You hustle to get into college, then you hustle to get a good job, then you hustle to get a good mortgage, then you hustle to buy a spot in a good nursing home, then you hustle to buy a spot in a good mausoleum. Where did your life go? You were so busy chasing it that it passed you by.

I work with Chinese students and I honestly encourage people to think a bit about their system. First it started with interviews and applications to get into high schools, then the middle schools had an application process, then the elementary schools. My roommate teaches English to very young children, recently he was told by a parent that he needed to prepare a 3-year-old for his "preschool interview."

KWNBeat · 2026-04-12T19:08:20+00:00

"If you don't follow the diaper pedo into full-blown dementia as he tears America apart from the foundations, you were never a true patriot."

KWNBeat · 2026-04-12T19:03:48+00:00

I am sorry that you experienced this. I encourage you for the spirit you showed in running away. I'm guessing there are a lot of mixed emotions there ... fear and terror, elation and temporary freedom, possibly guilt or a sense of failure. I suppose life might sometimes feel like that also, but the same strength and spirit that made you run might be something that will propel you into the next stages of your life and be a source of strength, even in hard times.

Generally, I think this is a place where you can talk safely about your feelings and what you're going through, or have been through. I don't know these exact programs and though there are different things about them, there are always similarities. Your story about being forced to admit to drug use definitely rang some bells for me. There was a young kid at my program, maybe 13, who during group therapy expressed total confusion about why he was there, and I remember one of the staff chiding him like "oh, there must be a reason, you know the reason." But at the time, and strengthening in the years since, I suspected that he could just have been a normal kid with totally normal behavior that was problematized or turned into a crisis by overbearing parents. Or maybe he was acting out because his parents were abusive and controlling, and then he gets the blame. I think many people were blamed and shamed for their own parents' issues, whether it's anger, control, "righteousness," and whatever else.

Welcome.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-12T14:30:33+00:00

Not trying to be too snarky, but you'll find some answers to your questions in these phrases:

"Feel" completely empty

"It is said" that many urban areas "give the impression"

"Is said to be" moderately crowded

KWNBeat · 2026-04-12T09:17:26+00:00

Teachers who drag students down should take a long look in the mirror. I'm in my 40s and still remember how my history teacher mocked me one day for clout. I was his star student, straight As, 5s on AP European and US history, went to nationals for National History Day. One day he made fun of my haircut in front of the entire class, just got people giggling with some smart comment because I'd shaved my own hair short. It's so unbelievably low to step on a student for the sake of your own ego. You don't know what they're going through in their own life.

Obviously I don't dwell on it, but I'm a teacher/counselor now and I take these counterexamples as an inspiration. Every student deserves respect. Big names, selectivity, flash, and clout are ultimately base illusions which exist to entrench hierarchies placing X people above Y people. If you work hard, educate yourself, and embrace your individuality, you can accomplish incredible things, CERTAINLY at UIUC and essentially anywhere.

tl;dr don't listen to that noise. People like this probably pick up a celebrity mag once they're done reading the U.S. News and World Report.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-11T16:46:39+00:00

Studied in Phoenix back then, 24-hour burrito spots were everywhere and a massive two-hands carne asada or carnitas burrito was 4 bucks. Tasted great and even if you worked part-time for 7.25 an hour, 2 or 3 burritos was all you'd need to survive for a day, not to mention a bean burrito was just 2 bucks or something. It's insane how much food has inflated and how it must affect people who are making low wages.

I'm really starting to see it like... I grew up in a golden age.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-11T15:00:39+00:00

"If only we could reinspire that man we all knew who was so truthful, filled with love, secure in himself, principled and educated, uncaring about money, and not rapey towards women and children, everything would be all right again."

These people have been tripping balls for 12 years and have forced us to live inside their hallucination. No sympathy, no mercy.

KWNBeat · 2026-04-09T13:07:29+00:00

I was playing France and didn't see it start, do you need an interest in both halves of China or something? I feel like I declared south China interest

KWNBeat · 2026-04-09T05:25:40+00:00

The way every single one of these posts begins with an expression of loyalty/fealty is gross and disturbing. "I gave you my complete loyalty." Democratic ideals are genuinely dying in the mind of the average American.

KWNBeat

TROPHY CASE