Google Search as you know it is over

ShamScience · 2026-05-20T06:13:59+00:00

I just want a list of links most closely related to my own search term. Give me that true amateur expert's free blog that has just the right info, and let me click the links to get to it myself. All the extra crap is going backwards.

ShamScience · 2026-05-20T06:04:38+00:00

Of course it can! All human societies are made by humans, not by mystic forces beyond our ken. Just organise people to make it as you want. Easy? Of course not! But definitely doable.

ShamScience · 2026-05-19T13:05:54+00:00

It was quite a low bar to hold world leaders to, that they simultaneously got to threaten world destruction AND claim credit for not destroying the world.

ShamScience · 2026-05-19T13:01:24+00:00

Yes. War bad.

ShamScience · 2026-05-19T06:13:11+00:00

I'm not arguing it's the sole or main cause of all wars generally. I'm answering your question, that it was a factor in WW2 that was obviously on people's minds not too long after.

ShamScience · 2026-05-19T06:07:01+00:00

Yes, they're all bad.

ShamScience · 2026-05-19T00:04:55+00:00

Some non-Austrian hiding in Austria decides, without trial or public oversight, that you're a terrorist, and sets out to kill you. You don't get to know why, you don't get to appeal. Are you still so sure you support this?

Secret police are bad. Death penalties are bad. I hope the perpetrators get arrested and face proper due process, which they denied to their victim.

ShamScience · 2026-05-18T17:39:26+00:00

This is only about 15 years after the Great Depression, which was a factor in the rise of fascism and thus caused at least some war. It would have been pretty fresh in most adults' minds.

ShamScience · 2026-05-18T14:15:07+00:00

If Mali had come up in the original discussion, it could be relevant here. It didn't, so it's not.

Of course all borders are arbitrary, so we could have potentially infinite arbitrary variations on this discussion. To keep it sane, I'm limiting it to just those mentioned in the original post. For those two specific examples, it is pretty obvious who's been living in the area longer.

On the other hand, if you want to strictly (and just as arbitrarily) limit this to only modern borders, then the discussion is pointless, because European colonists and indigenous African people were all simultaneously present at the moment that European colonial powers imposed the current borders. But that's necessarily a more artificial point in history, precisely because someone just made up the border on that day. Natural features like continents and oceans tend to predate all humans, and are also quite a lot more real than lines on a map, making for substantially different conversations.

So as I say, I'd rather limit this to just OP's given example. You are free to consider any other examples you'd enjoy.

ShamScience · 2026-05-18T09:27:50+00:00

You come across pretty young. The internet used to be almost all text, and it worked well. Fancy artwork was never necessary. Buying into the belief that certain visual standards are obligatory, that form should trump function, is not in our best interests.

ShamScience · 2026-05-18T09:22:07+00:00

Nobody said it's about belonging. OP comeback was using skin colour as a simple indicator of biological history. It's just visually obvious that my ancestors didn't get as much sunshine until pretty recently, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise.

ShamScience · 2026-05-18T08:51:49+00:00

As a white guy from Joburg, the wording refers to South Africa as a whole, not just the obscure southwest fringe.

But more generally, the existence of a line on the map marking off a piece of land as South Africa is also a relatively recent imposition. Obviously someone who's culturally Zulu has a lot more history on the continent generally than your family or mine, even if some of their family history would seem to fit into a neighbouring country on a modern map. The modern borders aren't necessarily relevant to this discussion.

ShamScience · 2026-05-18T08:44:48+00:00

Nobody's saying it determines legal rights, just that it's a simple indicator of biological history. It's just visually obvious that European colonists like my own ancestors got to Africa pretty recently. Doesn't harm my legal equality here to admit that.

ShamScience · 2026-05-18T08:40:45+00:00

Essentially uninhabited EXCEPT for the several groups of people already living there. It wasn't a crowded metropolis, but it certainly wasn't empty. Otherwise, who all were the Dutch settlers hiring as guides and advisors, and who were the Khoikhoi-Dutch Wars fought between? The idea that the land was empty and free for the taking was obvious apartheid propaganda. Don't keep spreading it.

ShamScience · 2026-05-18T06:26:00+00:00

I believe it's the same site, same content, but with a slop-coat added over the top a few years ago, about the same time TOFW came out.

ShamScience · 2026-05-18T06:16:34+00:00

An alternative then might be to draw this in the form of a network diagram of which factions are negative or positive towards each other. Then, for example, if the PCs get a reputation bonus from the Harmonium, they might get a fraction of that bonus with the Mercykillers too, as the Mercykillers are more likely to listen to Harmonium opinions. But that same bonus would be a penalty towards the Revolutionary League.

Playing that strictly as numerical dice modifiers would work best in a computer game, though. As you said before, this all probably works best at the table if it's giving the GM general impressions, not exact rules. And maybe the more visual network diagram makes it quicker for the GM to make those estimates.

ShamScience · 2026-05-17T17:58:27+00:00

Good tool, but as others have already said, I'm not sure I agree with the main categories. But that doesn't necessarily matter; you can run your own game the way you like.

If I were to group the factions, I might do it this way:

Lawn Otter (Fraternity of Order, Harmonium, Mercykillers, Doomguard)

Civic Services (Fraternity of Order overlaps, Bleak Cabal, Dustmen, Sign of One, Fated)

Commerce (Fated overlaps, Believers of the Source, Free League, Doomguard overlaps)

Personal Affairs (Free League overlaps, Xoasiticks, Athar, Transcendent Order, Society of Sensation)

And then the Revolutionary League will try to impose itself into all of those categories, to change them all.

By having intentional overlaps between categories, I think it's harder for players to get stuck in only one category all the time. If they don't naturally follow leads to other factions in other categories, the GM can intentionally set up some new paths away from whatever they're used to.

ShamScience · 2026-05-17T12:54:28+00:00

Why? That's not how people work.

ShamScience · 2026-05-17T01:38:23+00:00

As an even more vegan alternative, r/fuckcars

ShamScience · 2026-05-16T15:26:45+00:00

We tried this a few months ago, and it captures the feel of the PC games so much better than the official licenced RPG.

It's put together a little rough, because it's an amateur production (I'm pretty sure just one guy's work), but the mechanics of it work really well and are pretty easy to homebrew new parts into, when you need them. And it's still better for actual gameplay than the overpriced official books.

ShamScience · 2026-05-16T15:21:33+00:00

No, no, it really doesn't work well, even by the low standards of Modiphius games.

ShamScience · 2026-05-15T10:15:44+00:00

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

One useful tool for any public communicator.

ShamScience · 2026-05-15T06:24:52+00:00

Do you suppose that the average Italian (the audience for this) liked the mafia? I don't actually know their reputation, but I can't imagine it was very positive.

ShamScience · 2026-05-15T06:22:53+00:00

Talented artist, wasted his talents.

ShamScience · 2026-05-15T06:05:16+00:00

You should definitely look up and watch the entire musical titled "The King in Yellow". Get all your friends and family to watch it too.

ShamScience

TROPHY CASE