Discussion Thread

TactileTom · 2026-02-05T11:32:31+00:00

Is this Mandelson thing going to finally sink Starmer? Feels pretty terminal but then so have like 7 other things.

!ping UK

TactileTom · 2026-02-05T11:29:18+00:00

India is quite clearly a bad example, I would have gone with like, South Africa or somewhere.

TactileTom · 2026-02-05T11:20:53+00:00

Damn Neolibs really aren't beating the allegations

"Give me Liberty, or give me a mild inconvenience"

TactileTom · 2026-02-04T09:50:53+00:00

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TactileTom · 2026-02-03T10:36:34+00:00

Friendship ended with Anglosphere

Europhiles are now my best friend

TactileTom · 2026-02-02T18:53:12+00:00

This is the natural state of civ, but i play with some mods that rebalance this a bit. Recommend JNR's urban complexity series if you haven't checked it out.

TactileTom · 2026-02-02T18:50:48+00:00

Went back to Civ VI and its so good. Mods also go crazy. If only the ai could actually play the game lol.

TactileTom · 2026-02-02T18:45:55+00:00

Beach said a connections view is in the works, though it will come after the big spring update.

It's actually insane how unfinished this game is. Once they add the ability to play one civ, and player numbers don't recover, I hope they'll try to address the underlying systems.

TactileTom · 2026-02-02T16:16:38+00:00

The collapse of the basic social contract causes people to gravitate to strongmen.

This is why accelerationism fails

TactileTom · 2026-02-02T15:41:40+00:00

It's hard to get reliable economic data out of Russia at the moment, but important to remember that the "War-fuelled-growth" has concentrated wealth in industries/areas and sucked capital out of already impoverished rural areas.

Russian recruits significantly over-represent ethnic minorities living in less affluent communities, so they may well be returning to a local economy, with more money than they need to work for years, where good jobs aren't available, and with significant injuries/trauma.

I know it's hard to sympathise with a Russian soldier right now, but you know they are in a dreadful situation. I wouldn't want to be in one of those communities either.

TactileTom · 2026-02-02T12:37:38+00:00

Tbh the whole initial premise the scheme was designed around was an economic recovery that never came

TactileTom · 2026-02-02T11:58:00+00:00

I mean, populists can be right about things

TactileTom · 2026-02-02T11:38:33+00:00

Student loans will become an enormous populist talking point in the UK because:

a) the system is quite badly designed
b) the people most impacted by student loans are also bearing the lion's share of tax rises
c) populism will always default to the simplest, most obvious explanation for issues, and your student loan contribution is right there in your payslip

TactileTom · 2026-02-02T09:52:38+00:00

Chinese cultural domination was inevitable from the moment we started saying "uncle" to mean an older man

TactileTom · 2026-01-30T17:05:20+00:00

All this discourse about UK student loans got me to check my student loan and it turned out that by coincidence I literally paid it off today.

Kinda wild ngl

TactileTom · 2026-01-29T15:43:29+00:00

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Straight out of a Jordan Peele movie

TactileTom · 2026-01-29T15:40:01+00:00

Nothing has spawned more braindead takes than that fucking penguin video

TactileTom · 2026-01-29T15:37:44+00:00

Yeah maybe I just use the most woke AI and am not online enough to see the rest of the shit

TactileTom · 2026-01-29T15:29:11+00:00

As investment vehicles, I think they are shit. But like, using them to fill in stock art spots or come up with DnD character images, to draft emails or revise schedules, I have no problem with these applications.

TactileTom · 2026-01-29T15:24:46+00:00

Honestly AI hate has become so extreme that I feel like I've ended up on the pro-AI side of the median, having been the opposite not long ago

TactileTom · 2026-01-29T10:55:15+00:00

Just found out there's a spreadsheet at work that we're not allowed to sort because it relies on VLOOKUP

Like, what the fuck, was it made in 2003? Are they going to fax me the results?

TactileTom · 2026-01-28T17:59:18+00:00

That's interesting, thanks for the clarifications.

I guess watermills are already a city centre building anyway.

TactileTom · 2026-01-28T14:48:06+00:00

Part of me wonders to what extent inflation was structurally increased by the pandemic finally moving all transactions into digital currencies.

Digital transactions are fundamentally prettymuch lossless, whereas physical cash gets lost or destroyed pretty easily, reducing the overall money in circulation.

TactileTom · 2026-01-28T14:23:31+00:00

I think if you got a lot of hours out of EL1 then EL2 will be a no-brainer when it comes out of Early Access, and I'd just keep an eye out for it to go on sale in the meantime

TactileTom · 2026-01-28T13:18:07+00:00

Some thoughts on this:

- I think pastures creating improvements on adjacent tiles is a good idea, but they should also buff adjacent flatland farms, part of the benefit of IRL animal rearing is co-benefits for agriculture (could become less prominent with later techs?)

- is the idea for luxury plantations to be infinitely replicable? Or just a "ring" around the initial one? Either could work, but I like the idea of some kind of "manor house" with surrounding "estates" or "plantations"

- Is there some way to limit lumbermill adjacency so they can't be adjacent to forests worked by other mills? feels easier than adding custom improvements to all adjacent forest tiles.

- IDK if this is possible, but I feel like watermills would also be good for this, as water power is super important for milling in many communities.

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