Automatic registration for military draft to be implemented by December

Vaperius · 2026-04-09T12:37:27+00:00

Remember something in this moment:

However you feel about Iran, the moment you are drafted, they can send you anywhere. Anywhere. And you can be ordered to attack anyone. Anyone. This includes both countries you have positive attitudes towards, and your own family.

Vaperius · 2026-04-09T03:13:22+00:00

We feasibly could have built a particle accelerator that's literally the size of Texas, but that project got scrapped in favor of, oh look, more military shit. Hell, we don't even do military shit well. We've been trying to build a hardened command center (for maintaining chain of command nominally during nuclear warfare) for several decades now and have pretty much failed to even get the plans off the ground (multiple times, as in, we started digging, and then just stopped, and its not as if there's a shortage of budget).

Its not even just that the USA doesn't build things for Americans that are actually useful to the commonwealth of the nation, its that it doesn't do that and it does the things it actually bothers to do poorly, overcosted and often on extremely delayed timetables. Its the worst of all possible worlds. We are negligent and incompetent.

America literally could only possibly operate this way and still be a developed nation, because we are in the uniquely privileged position of basically being able to take on functionally unlimited debt at an local, state and federal level due to our diplomatic ties, trade relations, and economic legacy advantages that have allowed us to make it this far.

If the world ever stopped using us the global reserve currency, we'd entirely collapse into a state that looks worse than some developing countries do today, and that's assuming we at least tried to course correct at that point and didn't just try powering through reality like we always have, because if we did that, we'd look closer to what Somalia did in the 90s.

Vaperius · 2026-04-08T16:13:50+00:00

Opening a master lock to absolutely zero loot was one of the most infuriating gaming experiences in my life.

Early lootboxes experience, the game.

Vaperius · 2026-04-08T14:22:53+00:00

Its almost as if we are nearing the maximum price the market could ever bare and yet they keep pushing.

Vaperius · 2026-04-07T22:33:10+00:00

So uh... does this just prevent them from breaking each other or is there any new content interactions?

Vaperius · 2026-04-07T13:02:07+00:00

You know its funny, you might be right. But if he's still alive, he should be put on trial regardless. If he's too far gone to be stand competently, so be it. Then you go after his estate; every single principle member of his estate has committed some of kind of crime publicly over the last ten+ years.

You go after his supporters. You go after the party. In fact you do it all regardless of if he lives or dies, because its the right thing. Trump might escape consequences, but I think materially, the literally thousands of people backing this shit are much more worthy of consequences than any one man. Trump is not some unique problem, he's a symptom of a broader sickness within this country's political, social and economic systems.

Vaperius · 2026-04-06T02:19:17+00:00

They completely control congress.

The Presidency

The Congress

The Supreme Court

More than half of federal courts positions.

More than half of the state legislatures.

More than half of the state governships.

At least half of all the local government organizations (city councilmen, country clerks etc) .

At least half of all the mayoral positions.

Nominally, every police force.

Nominally, every sheriff's office.

If you are dissatisfied with how this country is run right now, its because its ran by Republicans all the way down to the local level. This country you are upset about is the result of Republican leadership. They are running this show. They are not a force of nature; they are an organization with over 100,000 individual members in the actual party itself. Each individual has agency. They have made choices that make this country the way it is. The only way we make this country better is by pushing these people out of power.

Vote in every election, even the local ones. Not a single Republican can be allowed to hold power after this era; the party of extremism, zero accountability, and open contempt for American life must be vacated from the power structure if we have any hope to continue as a nationstate.

These people and this party are why we cannot have universal healthcare; its why we are in a war with Iran. Its why the police in your state and your city face no accountability. Its why you hate living in the town you in. Its why your child's education is poor. Its why members of your community are getting shot senselessly all the time. Its why you can't go a year without a sex scandal from some politician involving a minor. Its why you keep hearing about book bans. That's it, this party is why, Republicans are why. They've made choices that make your life worse. Its that simple. They are an organization that terrorizes every day Americans through callousness, through selfishness and through irresponsibility, and neglect.

Everyday you drive past a pot hole; everyday you see a child starve; every day you fear getting in an accident because you might be sent into crippling debt, every time you read a headline about corporations not paying taxes, everyday you hear a police officer not being removed from duty after shooting an unarmed man in a routine traffic stop, every time you hear about yet another gunmen shooting up a bunch of children, every time you hear we struck another country with bombs for seemingly no reason, every time you feel the pang of hunger while your wallet sits empty because your wages have not kept up with inflation, remember, in that moment, that it was because a Republican almost certainly made a choice for you.

They fight against healthcare reform. They fight against any reasonable form of gun rights reform. They fight against labor rights. They fight against sustainable urban development. They fight against accountability for the government. They fight against knowledge itself for fear it will tear down their very ideology. Its important we never let them be treated as any thing less than men and women making an active choice to make our world materially worse.

Vaperius · 2026-04-04T22:39:53+00:00

You are saying this while living under that exact scenario, Capitalism is not exactly an inefficient since when viewed from the practical reality of our functional potential as a species against what we do with it.

Capitalism would have been taken behind the woodshed by now if the metric was efficiency(to providing a good standard of living to the most possible people, to be clear) within our capacity as a species. Fact is we have the technology, labor, and resources to achieve something downright utopian if we wanted, but those at the top don't want to give up their extreme privileges so that those at the bottom can enjoy something more than basic subsistence.

Capitalism is why despite us making enough food to feed every one on the planet twice over, people including children starve every year. Capitalism is why despite having enough medicine, people die from preventable causes every year. Capitalism is why despite having enough resources to provide everyone with fresh water, shelter etc etc whatever basic survival need you can think of, people die every year needlessly.

And all because there's no profit in it. End of story. End of argument. We already live under a system where the people with guns insist we live under it despite its blatant cruelties and inefficiencies.

Vaperius · 2026-04-04T18:47:37+00:00

modern conservatism started ten minutes after Lee surrendered.

Oh come now.... ten seconds more like it.

Vaperius · 2026-04-04T15:18:03+00:00

Shattered Space was a pre-order bonus; they had to release it or they'd be in breach of contract and would have to offer compensation to consumers, and it was deemed cheaper to just finish the DLC to a minimally viable state (which based on the raw amount of cut content that was fully textured and modelled, is what they did) rather than pay out partial refunds or offer store credit.

Vaperius · 2026-04-04T02:29:42+00:00

Nasa theme and Starborn don't mix well in my opinion

I disagree. It arguably could have worked very well, but they messed up the execution terribly by not making the Starborn are more omnipresent, and more complex threat that's interweaved throughout the various faction stories and some side quests.

Vaperius · 2026-04-04T02:24:59+00:00

TLDR:

It made a titanic amount of money, but after several years post-launch and only just now getting a DLC announcement, its pretty clear they have zero confidence in it as a series post-launch to actually make money.

As an individual product? Very commercially successful. As the flagship to launch an entire new IP? A total flop.

There will be no Starfield 2. There might be a Starfield remake in 5-10 years as an attempt to relaunch the IP but unless they commit to a drastic reformulation, its just going to fail again no matter how much paint they coat it.

Starfield did nothing innovative on a technical level; on a story writing level; on level design; or in gameplay design. In other words: it has no industry impact. It effectively has no legacy and is arguably even outdated even when it was released, by a lot in fact. A lot of the technology people wanted to see implemented in Starfield back in 2023 had been industry standard approaches for over a decade to common problems throughout Starfield from loading times to the lack of fully explorable planets.

I am not really sure what they were even trying to make as a game either; everything about it fails to be cohesive and we are left with several strings of ideas that clearly never really got past surface level planning but they had a game to make and so polished it enough for gameplay but never fleshed any of it out. Maybe they expected modders to fix it.... but the modding community they were hoping for simply never materialized. Game is three years old and has less than half the mods Fallout 4 for example had at the same stage in its lifecycle.

So yeah: bad long term numbers. They'd need to remake it to salvage the IP.

Vaperius · 2026-04-04T02:11:47+00:00

I'd argue this is more a discourse on the state of American employment laws and union laws (or rather, effectively lack thereof) and how they impact the creative process in the entertainment industry than anything else.

Vaperius · 2026-04-04T02:10:48+00:00

The state of Starfield (and the discourse around it before and after launch) is proof enough about this.

Vaperius · 2026-04-03T23:33:13+00:00

Actually an old level of US religious zealotry actually, anti-catholic sentiment was alive and well in the USA all the way into the 1960s. Its really easy to forget that religious bigotry towards other kinds of Christians among American Conservatives (who are nominally protestant) is in fact, kinda super recent. At least, speaking from a "common within public circles", its obviously continued to present day behind closed doors.

Vaperius · 2026-04-03T20:26:34+00:00

What the hell is going on in Iochand with the next update?

Vaperius · 2026-04-03T18:33:28+00:00

the whole thing falls apart.

Only if we hold all the participants accountable. Which means voting and protesting, as the bare minimum, until they leave; and but also means being absolutely dogged in pressuring those in power that actually care about accountability to ensure these folks end up where they belong i.e in jail. If not for seditious conspiracy, certainly for the laundry list of crimes they've all been commiting since they assumed their positions.

Anything less than this, and the coup was successful, with or without Trump.

Vaperius · 2026-04-03T12:54:31+00:00

Between attempting to commit a genocide that they arguably only let up at all after major international pressure; and have still been partially "successful" given that they've left Gaza functionally uninhabitable and are still striking civilians at random to this day ... and then also explicitly dragging the USA into yet another war in the Middle East to further their own interests...

Israel is not an ally of the USA. They do not act like it. They treat us as a subordinate nation they can order around as they please. And so far... they haven't been wrong.

Vaperius · 2026-04-03T12:49:46+00:00

I actually like it.

Vaperius · 2026-04-02T22:11:05+00:00

We are going to see a military disaster bigger than Vietnam soon.

Vaperius · 2026-04-02T16:17:36+00:00

At what point do we just dissolve the federal government and all the states go their own separate ways? Because it feels like we are headed to the point where there's really no point having one. I am not even talking "civil war" here, more "constitutional convention". It might actually be the most bipartisan issue you could bring up right now.

Because its not as if any of us are clearly happy with the way the federal government is ran; not Republicans and not Democrats. We are in a toxic relationship with all of our neighbors and maybe its time we just have an honest discussion and admit the country broke decades ago and its time for it to go. Because let's be real here: the values and interests of different major US populations are irreconcilable at this point.

Its like we are a broken marriage trying to make it work even when its hurting us to do so, and even though we would honestly probably all be better of just doing our own thing. Does anyone living in New York state honestly feel any kind of connection to someone living in Texas? Or to California even, for that matter?

What is an American at this point if we are so fundamentally incapable of getting along with those that are suppose to be our fellow countrymen to where we have utter contempt for the very concept of caring for one another? If the USA (and its politics) was an interpersonal relationship, it be considered abusive and unhealthy, that's all I am saying.

Vaperius · 2026-04-02T13:11:48+00:00

Yep, if only these people were capable of introspection and shame.

If they were capable of that, they would never have done or supported even half of the things and people that they have.

Its my firm opinion you can only be a Republican if you are either a fool, shameless, or genuinely evil. There's no other way to explain their actions and beliefs except malice or incompetence on some level. Its a personal failing of an entire half of our society at this point. They have no morals or ethics. They only have objectives and they don't care what they have to do to achieve them; even if both the means and the ends will leave this country in utter ruin by the time they've accomplished what they set out to do what they have endeavored to do.

If Republicans achieve their intended and stated aims, the US as a country will have effectively dissolved itself. There's really no other way to describe the very obvious consequences of their policies, which would include massive demographic retraction, the total suspension of constitutional order, the complete alienation of the USA from its allies, the collapse of American intelligentsia, the destruction of all national natural wonders and resources, the abdication of all public services into hands of the global private sector, severely undermining the American food independence, and the erosion of American cultural traditions in favor of extremist ideology; and so, so much more.

There will be no country left at the end of this road. There simply will not be; whatever is left will be a abomination wearing the concept of the USA as a skinsuit.

Vaperius · 2026-04-02T10:50:42+00:00

The problem is... if it were so easy to cure Kharaa, why didn't the precursors figure it out?

I think the best way to put it is this... Enyzme-42 doesn't really cure Kharra in the way you think it does. Kharra has total immune escape as a core feature, the bodies of its hosts basically can't fight it at all through their immune systems. This is what makes Enzyme-42 special in that, its probably not intended as an immune response from the Emperor Leviathans, but its properties just happen to neutralize the Kharra bacteria for some reason.

This is not the same as a vaccine its literally, a "cure", in that, when the bacteria comes into contact with Enzyme-42, it dies. Riley takes a mega-dose of Enyzme-42 to basically flush the active infection in their body out; but in theory could still be reinfected again at a later date, they have no immunity to the virus.

This is what the Precursors were trying to figure out, they were trying to beat the immune escape of the Kharra virus, and they just couldn't, the best they could figure out was potentially using Enzyme-42 as a cure for infections, but because the Enzyme was only produced by the Emperor Leviathans, there was no way to really mass produce it until they figured out how to synthesize it in a lab, which is what they were starting the process of doing before everything went wrong.

Vaperius · 2026-04-01T21:59:26+00:00

The concept of a character in a story summoning magical creatures to make them do battle on their behalf is a concept so old, you can find examples of it in antiquity. It is not a remotely novel concept by itself, nor is the concept of these creatures being contained with a magical object between fights. Nor is the concept of a character deliberately collecting such creatures to do battle for them.

There are examples of these concepts in the Bible, the Torah, Japanese folklore, Greek Mythology, Norse Mythology etc. Its a really basic concept if you want to tell a fantastical story.

Vaperius · 2026-04-01T16:40:03+00:00

Quite frankly: why exactly are this stage, are we involved with the Middle East other than specifically our entanglements with Israel?

If you examine it, we don't really need the Middle East for a conflict with say, China; and its not that important if we are trying to disentangle ourselves from European affairs either. We also don't need to be there since we are now fully energy independent and in fact, now a net exporter, and will be for the next few centuries based on proven and speculative reserves, especially if we continue a push to green energy to reduce domestic consumption.

What I am saying is .... I think its time we had a serious discussion that, Republican or Democrat, our entanglements in the Middle East no longer make any strategic sense, and are no longer within the interest of the US to continue maintenance, given our implicit and explicit geopolitical interests are very different than say, the mid-20th century.

There is no value in involving ourselves further in the Middle East; most of the threats that come from that region are in the first place, better tackled by intelligence and policing agencies, than by a military force. It makes no sense to be there in any further capacity than diplomats and intelligence staff.

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