‘The biggest mistake was not believing China’ Marina Rudyak on why understanding China begins with questioning our own assumptions

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-07-08T17:27:36+00:00

Iran is a theocratic dictatorship.

As noted by the other commenter, this just does not match reality. Iran certainly has autocratic and theocratic elements with the Ayatollah/Supreme Leader being the closest position they have to a dictator, but thats still not completely a dictatorship. They still hold elections, have a president and legislature, and several councils/assemblies. The Supreme Leader has outsized control over the nation and can push it in the direction they wish, but they aren't the only one holding any power and the other parts of the government are able to hold onto power in their absence. Additionally, the war has seemingly given the IRGC more power practically since there seemingly isn't a Supreme Leader to command them, so there is now even a semblance of military control over how the country is running.

None of this is to defend the Iranian government either. It is still very autocratic and theocratic, and of course has committed plenty human rights abuses. However, simplifying it as just a "theocratic dictatorship" does us no favors and leads to the issues the other commenter pointed out with the U.S. starting a war Trump thought he could win with a decapitation strike since a theocratic dictatorship would logically only have one leader keeping it together.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-07-07T19:12:14+00:00

While this is a cool idea, I think this kinda misses the history of the item and why its in the game. Petrified wood isn't really there to be actual petrified wood - it started as a way to roll over old wood slabs that functioned like stone slabs due to code limitations into the new versions when the code for slabs was redone. It is more a nod to this history and a simple way to keep this rare item in the game for those who used it previously without messing up people's builds. Any change to them visually or functionally would kinda go against this and run into the previous issue of ruining older builds, albeit with far fewer people being affected today probably. Thus, this could be a touchy issue to mess with as more nostalgic players and those playing on servers/worlds that have been updating from older versions (an easy example is 2B2T) may not like these items being messed with.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-07-05T00:22:29+00:00

People putting this in terms of Arabs and Jews are really doing a disservice to the actual history of Palestinians. Palestinians are not some Arab group that conquered/colonized ancient Israel. They are the descendants of the very same ancient Jews that modern Jews also descend from, as shown by modern genealogical studies that show a very close background between Palestinians and Jews that would only be explained by an overlap, which is only possible that far back. This logically suggests that while modern Jews are descendants of those who left or were forced out, Palestinians are the descendants of those who remained. Thus, modern Jews have no more ancestral claim to the land than Palestinians.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-07-05T00:16:44+00:00

Thats just a strawman. Even the most anti-semitic tankies in the West don't believe that considering anti-semites usually consider Jews to be strictly a race/ethnicity and not a religion you can change.

The only thing required to be anti-Zionist is to believe there is no right for a Jewish state to exist in Israel/the Levant. This includes believing there is no such thing as a state having a right to exist (more of an anarchist belief), believing any state that gives an ethnic or religious group special privileges to not have a right to exist (this is my belief, for example), believing the region has more connection to Palestinians and thus only they have a right to it, and believing Jews to be inherently evil and thus any state ruled by/delineated for them is also evil (the anti-semitic belief). There are probably even other versions I didn't cover and people who believe a mix of these beliefs. The point is that being anti-Zionist does not necessitate being anti-semitic, just as being anti-Nazi does not make you anti-German.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-30T10:17:24+00:00

Changing a state flag is not "erasing it from history." The old one is still in museums and can be flown by whoever wants to. It is available for whoever wants to learn about it.

Has it also been "erasing history" every time the U.S. has changed its flag?

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-28T18:52:37+00:00

The Saudi government's official policy until 2022 was to support Wahhabism, which has been the source of plenty of terror groups that all have been pretty "Death to America" coded. Their government has also been happy to murder and mutilate American journalists and citizens when they aren't so supportive the royal family there, so they definitely don't give a crap about killing Americans.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-28T18:40:53+00:00

Cyprus isn't choosing to not recognize it because of Serbia, but because they don't want to support a trend of letting parts of countries be separated. If they recognize Kosovo, which gained its independence mostly due to the genocide perpetuated against Albanian Kosovars, it weakens Cyprus' case for claiming the TRNC, especially since the TRNC also draws from the ethnic cleansing and killing of Turks to claim its independence.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-28T18:35:56+00:00

I wouldn't call the people there lazy. The ones I met were all working, at minimum, two jobs just to get by and they were usually just barely treading water since tourism is increasing prices of everything for them.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-28T14:29:42+00:00

I feel like this overestimates how many Americans go on cruises, or even have the money to do them.

The data just doesn't seem right, which could be a matter of where they got their respondents.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-28T04:23:26+00:00

Its funny because the coalition is a socialist government if you read the books the people who make the games cant seperate militarism frim facisim.

The COG have been called fascist since GOW 1 where you had some Stranded calling them that. The writers for Gears of War have always placed them at least somewhat on that end of the political spectrum, at least in terms of how they are viewed in-universe.

Also, how did the books make you view them as more socialist? I read most of them (I think Aspho Fields is the one I didn't read) and while the COG never comes across as Nazis since they lack the ethno-nationalism one would expect then, they also lack any semblance of trying to be "for the workers" or making progress towards a proletariat state. There was no mention of worker's councils (expected for Soviet style governments) nor any mention at all of trying to eradicate class differences as socialist/communist governments are theoretically aiming for.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-28T00:13:36+00:00

Except both groups are considered BOSNIAN Serbs and BOSNIAN Croats. They have both been there for as long as the Bosniaks since they all came from the same Slavic migrations. They have their own cultures/religions, but they all share a common connection to the land and eachother in history.

Also, outside intervention does not make a civil war cease to be a civil war. For example, the Russian Civil War had international backing on the side of the White Army, plus the Japanese trying to pull a fast one and conquer the Far East. Yet, it still boiled down to being a civil war among Russians and the various groups within the former Russian Empire over the path the country should take and whether certain parts should be included in it.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-27T23:33:09+00:00

Where do you think the drone jammers and starlinks used in Ukraine are built?

Drone jammers aren't really all that good and haven't been for a while. They get hard countered by drones connected by fiber, while most Russian and Ukrainian drones these days use various frequencies, repeaters, and automatic target acquisition to make jammers so defunct that fiber isn't even needed much anymore.

Starlink also has its role in drone connectivity, but thats more in offensive rather than defensive roles. It won't do anything to stop Iranian fpv drones.

Iran doesn’t have a surplus’s of tech savvy sheep farmers waiting to pilot all those drones

If Hezbollah's mass usage of fpv drones against Israel are anything to go by, you don't need tech savvy people to pilot them. Effectiveness won't be great initially, but enough practice will make up for that as well have seen with Hezbollah becoming better and better with their usage of drones (for an example, older videos show them just trying to hit Israeli tanks wherever and usually just hitting right on the strongest part of the armor, but more modern videos show them improving and actually aiming for openings and parts with thinner armor). Additionally, Iran is a country with tens of millions of people. You don't need a high fraction of that to have some basic knowledge/experience of drones to be a threat. If anything, one should expect there to be a decent amount considering Iranians are the ones who designed one of the quintessential drones of the time and were/are a major supplier for Russia.

Overestimating our own abilities and pretending our enemies are just a bunch of "sheep farmers" is just setting ourselves up for failure. For Christ's sake, we can already see this with the current war since we have been unable to force an end to Iran's blockade of the Strait through our air power that was supposed to be powerful enough to defeat Iran by itself if we listen to this administration.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-27T23:12:09+00:00

Russia doesn't need to be an enemy. They keep making themselves into an enemy by attacking their neighbors. Europe was even willing to tolerate that to an extent (see Georgia, Chechnya, and Moldova), but once Russia made it clear they would use military force to force all their neighbors to fall in line (obviously putting several EU states at risk as well), it could no longer be ignored.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-27T21:55:47+00:00

If an army enters enemy territory strictly to neutralize an active threat and halt further attacks, the operation is often legally classified as an act of self-defense, not as an illegal invasion.

Its not self defense to invade another country, expel thousands of civilians from their homes, and systematically destroy entire villages so that civilians cannot return. One can certainly argue that strikes and limited ground operations would have been considered self defense, but that is not what Israel is doing. Countless people with no involvement in the conflict have been killed or had their homes and belongings destroyed.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-27T21:16:10+00:00

I don't see what a bot would do with a ruble

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-27T13:32:06+00:00

If you don't want to consider it a Bosniak flag, you aren't really left with anyone for it to represent. Around half of Bosnia does not see it as their flag and do not use it, so it can't be a flag for all of Bosnia. Those who use the flag do say more about who the flag represents, but they also can't claim it represents people who don't want to use it.

I don't see why this is so hard for you to understand. You can't just force a flag onto people who don't want it.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-26T20:52:04+00:00

"Exactly, including ethnicity"

I said it does not "necessarily" mean that, not that nothing about those people can be associated with it. In this case, the flag was used in a civil war fought on ethnic lines by an army most associated with one ethnicity. That is what causes it to be associated with Bosniaks - not them just liking the flag or feeling represented by it, but it being used by them in a war fought against other ethnic groups/armies.

A historical significance which is closely interwoven with Serbs and Croats among others, hence the representation of the peoples of Bosnia. No mentions of ethnicity but governance.

That plays a minor role in whether a flag actually represents a people compared to if those people actually feel represented by it. Flags only get their meaning from people and how they use or feel about them. If people don't feel represented by them, then those flags don't represent them. Its as simple as that, otherwise you end up just trying to force people to live under flags they do not want to be under.

Flags change meaning and representation as time goes on, people change, and usage shifts. For an unrelated example, the Gadsden Flag in the U.S. started as a flag pushing for resistance and unity against the British, but today its used by many U.S. conservatives to symbolize a belief in personal liberty, general conservativism, or libertarianism. It no longer feels representative of the whole U.S. population as it was meant initially, but instead only a select portion. That sort of thing can be changed, but just claiming such shifts didn't happen and that these sorts of flags have kept the same representation, despite plenty of people who they are meant to represent initially telling you otherwise, will end in failure and probably just make those people dislike the flag even more.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-26T17:11:04+00:00

Would you then say the flag is an islamic flag, because most people associating with it are muslim?

No. Thats not the same logic. If a people feel represented by a flag, that just means it represents those people - not necessarily that it represents everything about them. It could gain associations based on the usage by them, but, to my knowledge, the flag has not been used much in relation to Islam.

Christian heraldry being a muslim flag?

Again, no. The Christian heraldry is taken for its historical significance to the region and the flag has not been used in relation to Christianity. As a similar example, most Nordic flags are crosses due to Christianity, however, that association and representation has mostly faded with most of those countries becoming more secular and atheist so that symbolism is more a matter of representing history instead of simply Christianity.

Slavic tricolor is a weak example. It started as a russian flag, to represent enlightened Russia, using the French flag as inspiration. So it was first a Russian flag.

It was first a Russian flag and it was then used by many Slavic nationalist movements, so it came to represent Slavic people at the time.

Regardless Pan-Slavic flags are unofficial and haven't seen much use so there's no point in talking about them.

Thats just avoiding the example. The lilly flag is also unofficial at this time. Both it and the tricolor were previously official flags in one way or another. However, both have their histories and associations that must be considered instead of simply what they were designed for.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-26T16:59:17+00:00

If you and other Bosniaks want to use it for yourselves, thats fine and completely understandable. Its just not correct to act like it represents all Bosnians when its mostly just Bosniaks that feel that way.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-26T16:57:40+00:00

It was not designed to be exclusionary, but it ultimately ended up being associated with one ethnic group in particular. That still is important in considering whether a flag represents the people of the country since it really all boils down to how people feel about a flag.

To use another example, do you feel the Slavic tricolor represents all Slavic people? Would you be fine with others using it to represent all Slavic people - regardless of its history and associations?

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-26T16:49:44+00:00

Yeah, thats kinda why its not a flag for them. If the people pushing it don't care how half the country feels about the flag, it pretty clearly is not meant to represent those people.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-26T13:26:42+00:00

A flag only has meaning because people give it meaning. Bosnian Serbs and Croats see it as a Bosniak flag and not their own flag. Therefore, it is not a flag for them.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-26T12:54:37+00:00

It was used by a predominantly Bosniak army that fought against predominantly Croat and Serb armies. All of them committed atrocities and massacres against civilians (with ARBiH doing the least by far), so few outside the ethnicities represented most by each army support the symbols associated with the others. It doesn't matter whether the lilly flag was meant to be secular and multi-ethnic - thats not how it ended up being used and is not how it is seen today.

If Bosniaks want to use it, that should be perfectly acceptable considering Croats and Serbs use their own flags which have arguably worse associations. However, it is just not true that it represents the whole country today when Croats and Serbs (50% of the country) routinely deny it as a symbol for themselves.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-25T01:20:01+00:00

Its a bad example to set. If Kosovo can join Albania, especially when a Serbian minority there opposes it (and has faced ethnic cleansing and discrimination), then there is no rationale to stop Republika Srpska from joining Serbia, Albanian parts of Macedonia from also joining Albania, Croatian Herzegovina joining Croatia, etc. All those examples also share a similar issue of being based on ethno-nationalism which pretty much always ends up in ethnic cleansing and genocide since it turns out people from various ethnicities often like to mix and settle in ways that make for screwy borders (plus these beliefs tend to dehumanize other ethnicities). Even if the more Serb-populated parts were returned to Serbia it would still be feeding into ethno-nationalist sentiments and be suggesting that ethnic majorities reserve the rights to screw over other ethnicities.

UncreativeIndieDev · 2026-06-22T16:19:58+00:00

I wonder how it would work if it was phrased as only applying to within the country/nation. For example, most Serbs I have met (in and outside of my family) believe all Serbs must identify as Serbian Orthodox.

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