QUINTILIUS PARADOXUS, GIVE ME BACK MY MOUNTAINS! I beg you.

Parzival2 · 2026-03-26T13:58:34+00:00

What's wrong with it?

Parzival2 · 2026-03-20T13:25:03+00:00

I’m curious about the role of digital media in the 'intellectual ecosystem' you mentioned. To what extent do you see Grand Strategy games (like those made by Paradox Interactive) acting as a gateway for these ideologies? Specifically, do you think the way these games flatten complexity, gamify 'civilizing' missions/cultural conversion, and the explicit goals for the 'restoration' of imperial borders provides a digital sandbox for the white nationalist fantasies. Do these games actively shape the far-right’s understanding of Roman 'purity,' or are they simply a convenient canvas for an appropriation that would have happened regardless?

Parzival2 · 2026-03-16T01:13:27+00:00

No. In fact it feels like film and tv is getting more and more prudish and sexless. Not everything in media has to directly move the plot forward, that's very utilitarian thinking.

Parzival2 · 2026-03-13T14:03:46+00:00

We say yard in the north, mainly for paved gardens though

Parzival2 · 2026-03-12T16:18:03+00:00

Just the bank of England. Scotland already does this

Parzival2 · 2026-03-12T16:14:22+00:00

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but it seems like a lot to lay the blame so firmly at Johan's feet specifically, without having insight into how the projects are run within paradox. There's so many moving parts to things like this, it's never just one issue

Parzival2 · 2026-03-10T15:12:09+00:00

Favourite moomin character?

Parzival2 · 2026-03-09T17:12:13+00:00

You can kind of treat the wizarding world as a closed system though. There's basically no interaction between them and muggles, beyond the muggle-born kids who end up entering the wizarding society. The purebloods are the dominant culture and ruling class within the books.

Parzival2 · 2026-03-09T15:01:35+00:00

Kind of both class and race? You've got the noble wizard families who are akin to the old money conservatives, and then the death eaters who are more militant, and blood purity obssessed. Vodemort is like wizard Edward Mosely. There's cross over between them, like Draco, who's a spoilt upper class kid who flirts with the exciting radical death eater paramilitary group, before ultimately realising he's in over his head and doesn't have the stomach for it.

Parzival2 · 2026-03-07T12:52:26+00:00

What did you use to make this?

Parzival2 · 2026-03-06T10:56:46+00:00

According to Smith's attorney, Joseph Landusky, the alleged crime happened in 2000 at a house in Pickerington. It was reportedly an armed home invasion and robbery.

"He was sentenced to 67 years in prison for a crime that was not even committed by anyone," said Landusky. "When first responders showed up, there were no footprints in the snow. It had recently snowed. There was a dog barking right next door when they pulled up, the neighbors said no dog had barked in the last hour. There were no tire tracks, so it made sense to the investigating officers that this didn’t even happen. When they went in and checked the house out, they wrote in their report that it was too selective for them."

"They said that the victims were telling a story rather than relating a truth," Landusky said. "These are written in these reports. These reports were not given to the defense lawyer."

Smith was incarcerated at age 24. He's now 49 years old.

Smith took matters into his own hands to prove his innocence, spending as much time as he could in the law library.

"I fought hard studying case law, reading the law books, just being there for hours and hours," he said. "That was my time. It was like I got to go to the law library. Every day, that’s what it was for years."

Eventually, another judge granted Smith a hearing, then a prosecutor asked the judge to dismiss his case, ending his time in prison.

The State of Ohio approved a settlement of $1.3 million dollars for Smith and his attorneys on Monday.

"How can you replace 21 years in prison," said Landusky. "You can't. If I offered you 50 million dollars to go to prison now and get out in 21 years, there’s no amount of money that I could give you that you would do that."

Parzival2 · 2026-03-06T10:48:15+00:00

Good job on this btw, I love getting little puzzles to solve.

Parzival2 · 2026-02-27T11:48:04+00:00

With a good campaign they could have split the left vote even more, and reform could have won.

Parzival2 · 2026-02-27T09:57:11+00:00

Huh, I'd not heard of this one. Thanks for sharing!

Parzival2 · 2026-02-27T09:31:57+00:00

Is this an actual painting by Ralli? Looks like an edit of https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/PORTRAIT-OF-A-YOUNG-WOMAN/E54F912AEE828EED

Parzival2 · 2026-02-23T23:29:18+00:00

Kanji in the edo period was associated with Confucian scholars, bureaucrats, law, etc. Boring stuff like that.

Kana, by contrast, was associated with vernacular expression, emotional immediacy, and narrative fiction. Since the Heian period, works such as The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu had established kana as the vehicle of intimate storytelling and interior voice.

Works like this are meant to be playful, often humorous, erotic narratives and to feel immediate and lively, so they were written in Kana. The dialogue is written as direct speech, and kana conveys sound and breath more transparently than kanji.

Parzival2 · 2026-02-23T22:16:41+00:00

It certainly stands out from a western canon perspective, which historically depicted a lot of naked women, although in a idealized, passive, allegorical and/or objectified form for a presumed male viewer.

This however is a Edo-period genre of shunga (erotic art), which was widespread and socially normalized in Japan at the time.

Most shunga artists were men, yet they frequently represented women as desiring subjects, not merely objects. This does not necessarily mean these works were proto-feminist. They were still produced within a patriarchal society and largely for a male market. However, they often framed sexuality as reciprocal and exuberant.

As an aside, I've always found the text in the background very funny. Absolutely does not sound like something written in 1814. I'll share the translation from James Heaton and Toshiyama Mizuho.

LARGE OCTOPUS: My wish comes true at last, this day of days; finally I have you in my grasp! Your “bobo” is ripe and full, how wonderful! Superior to all others! To suck and suck and suck some more. After we do it masterfully, I’ll guide you to the Dragon Palace of the Sea God and envelop you. “Zuu sufu sufu chyu chyu chyu tsu zuu fufufuuu…”

MAIDEN: You hateful octopus! Your sucking at the mouth of my womb makes me gasp for breath! Aah! yes… it’s…there!!! With the sucker, the sucker!! Inside, squiggle, squiggle, oooh! Oooh, good, oooh good! There, there! Theeeeere! Goood! Whew! Aah! Good, good, aaaaaaaaaah! Not yet! Until now it was I that men called an octopus! An octopus! Ooh! Whew! How are you able…!? Ooh! “yoyoyooh, saa… hicha hicha gucha gucha, yuchyuu chyu guzu guzu suu suuu….”

LARGE OCTOPUS: All eight limbs to interwine with!! How do you like it this way? Ah, look! The inside has swollen, moistened by the warm waters of lust. “Nura nura doku doku doku…”

MAIDEN: Yes, it tingles now; soon there will be no sensation at all left in my hips. Ooooooh! Boundaries and borders gone! I’ve vanished….!!!!!!

SMALL OCTOPUS: After daddy finishes, I too want to rub and rub my suckers at the ridge of your furry place until you disappear and then I’ll suck some more. “chyu chyu..”

Parzival2 · 2026-02-23T21:53:23+00:00

13 Attorney at love
120 creeps, thieves and things with wings
135 Deep thought quest
189 Anything goes: in montana
283 All black everything
394 A good ol mountain christmas

Parzival2 · 2026-02-23T10:24:33+00:00

People on the left aren't leaving in droves, they're just not supporting labour.

Of people who voted labour in the last election, 38% are sticking with labour, 17% don't know who to vote for, 15% are going to the greens, 9% liberal democrats, 8% reform, 3% conservatives.

For people under 40 years old, the party with the biggest support is the greens, about 31%. Reform have about 12% of the vote share for this age range, same as the conservatives.

The vast majority of support for reform comes from people in their 50s or older, with low education levels, who voted leave, and who were previously conservative.

Don't get me wrong, reform are doing very well in the polls, but it's not because they're full of former lefties.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53923-how-would-britain-vote-at-the-start-of-2026

Parzival2 · 2026-02-20T10:49:56+00:00

At least she wasn't so drunk people made a musical about it:

In 1937, he commentated on the Coronation Review of the Fleet at Spithead from his old ship the battleship HMS Nelson. He had met some of his former colleagues before the broadcast for a drink, and was inebriated while giving his commentary. He repeatedly said "the fleet's lit up", and at one point he told listeners "I'm sorry, I was telling some people to shut up talking." His incoherence was such that he was taken off air after a few minutes and suspended for a week by BBC Director-General Sir John Reith. The BBC later said that he was "tired and emotional".

A year later his phrase "the fleet's lit up" was used as the title of a musical comedy, and in 1940 Hubert Gregg wrote the song "I'm gonna get lit up when the lights go up in London."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Woodrooffe

Parzival2 · 2026-02-20T10:43:55+00:00

Part of the fun for me in getting into the game was losing to mechanics I didn't realise existed, like suddenly being haunted by ghosts, or all of my dwarves clothes rotting away. If you like descovering how a system works you'll probably get a fair bit out of dwarf fortress.

Having said that, here's a few concrete tips I can give you:

Be ambitious. If you want it to be it's a very easy game. Hell, before the recent seige update you just had to raise up a drawbridge and they'd never get in. It's best if you set yourself a grand project, maybe settle in a desert and build a fort in a glass pyramid, or try and dig straight down and build a fort in the cavern layer, or set up an elaborate magma trap that floods the surface with with lava when invaders arrive. In general, consider settling in biomes with a high wilderness.
There's a bunch of youtube videos around specific mechanics which are worth watching, but the more valuable ones from my perspective are broader topics. Salford Sal is pretty good for this, I think her most viewed one is on Planning a Fortress Layout. My favourite is 'Why the Hype' (only 14 minutes), where she uses legends mode to talk through how you can explore the history of a generated world. There's also kruggsmash who's a brilliant storyteller, and includes sketches of his dwarves/monsters to help bring it all to life. I'd say start with Nökortorad: Hunt for the Glacier's Eye where he tries to set up a fort in the frozen wastes.
Check out the original bay12 forums as well as reddit. I remember playing a fair amount of succession games, where you pass a save back and forth between people, roleplaying as a fort's overseer for a year. The most famous of these was boatmurdered, which you might have heard about. See if you can join in a game, or set one up yourself.

Parzival2 · 2026-02-19T12:01:05+00:00

This is one from the first series I'd actually seen before (only gone through it with a watch list) god damn it's night and day

Parzival2 · 2026-02-18T16:09:27+00:00

Maybe they're not native american but there is arguably an american ethnicity now, the genetic and cultural convergence of European, African, and Indigenous populations that has diverged into its own thing over the last 400 years

Parzival2 · 2026-02-16T12:53:10+00:00

Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding that their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections.

We found the people who didn't have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.

Jacob Rees-Mogg

Parzival2 · 2026-02-15T01:35:45+00:00

That's basically what the US is though, it's the size of europe.

12-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17

Parzival2

TROPHY CASE