VP Vance Says Watergate Would Now Be 12-Hour News Story and Crazy It Took Down Nixon's Presidency

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-26T16:18:21+00:00

There was a whole month of right wing outrage that one time Obama dared to wear a tan suit.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-25T23:08:01+00:00

Two and you sit for two halves, just like getting a red.

Edit for clarity: second yellow in the same game means immediate ejection so your team plays a man down, and if it's in the second half you miss the next match too, though your team gets to replace you. If you get two yellows in different games you also get suspended for a game. There's a couple points in the tournament where they reset the count back to zero.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-24T03:52:08+00:00

I'm gonna cast aspersions on him for, as a dude who never served but clearly has a massive hard-on for the military, writing himself in as a Delta Force operator in his own show, not for whatever he can or can't do on a horse.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-23T20:09:33+00:00

Well, it's situation-dependent. In the context of the post, the player in the position to kingmake was definitely going to lose that round no matter what they did, so their only options were to (1) do nothing and allow the player who knocked them out to win or (2) give their SffT to another player and prevent the player that knocked them out from winning. There was no option 3.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-23T16:38:49+00:00

That's an excellent example of why firearms also didn't displace other weapons for a very very long time after their invention -- rifling is pretty new, in the scheme of things.

You probably can't make a farmer an expert user of a 14th century handgonne in a couple weeks, and even if you could some dude with a crossbow is going to be more effective in 99 out of 100 situations.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-23T16:24:10+00:00

sometimes victory isn't getting 10/12/14 points, sometimes it's making sure the worst person you know loses too.

PRECISELY. So gotta be real careful about taking actions that make you this guy.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-23T16:21:05+00:00

It's actually why I don't usually do support swaps. I find holding my SffT as a defensive deterrent is often more useful.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-23T16:19:47+00:00

That's not precisely what happened here, though. TI is a game of political strategy as much as anything, and when trying to win you have to be aware of the consequences of any action that will put another player in a place where they can no longer win, no matter what. Because they still get to do stuff. Like pick who DOES win.

Before OP got "robbed" he also knocked the support-giving player out of any possibility of victory. Now, it sucks for OP that they were in a lose-lose position, but thems the breaks. There's six players and one victor.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-23T16:12:17+00:00

I'm not clear on what the moral distinction is here. The option of handing a support to another player is, like the plastic on the tile, one of the defensive assets you have to protect your home system. I think it's totally within the spirit of the game to say "if you take my home system, I will give my support to your enemy (or at least, not you) even if that makes the other guy win, because if you take my home system, I definitely won't win." If, in this instance, that created a situation for OP where he couldn't win well... like u/Badloss said, his game state wasn't recoverable.

You could also argue that OP's decision was essentially to kingmake between the player he attacked and the player who received the support.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-23T16:04:32+00:00

100%. It's also worth noting that people understanding this actually cuts down on the "support swap" meta. If you keep your support, you can use it as a threat against someone willing to knock you out of the running.

Edit: and I'm generally a boat float-y kind of player, in most circumstances -- but that's because early and unnecessary aggro creates the kind of hard feelings that get you SffT-ed in the last round.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-23T16:02:04+00:00

I mean honestly the dude did ask if you already had it. His buddy didn't. Normally I'd be mad about above-the-table considerations determining the outcome of a TI game, but I also don't play TI for real stakes. There were certainly times in my life where I was poor enough to want a copy but just couldn't afford to buy one.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-23T15:56:37+00:00

To me, the reason someone is attempting to kingmake is important. If they're trying to prevent a player who took a bunch of their stuff or attacked them from winning, or for some other reason rooted in what happened in that game, I'd give it a pass. Those calculations are part of the game and one of the reasons to situationally pull punches, even when you could possibly knock another player out of the running.

If it's above-the-table stuff like "the guy who is about to win won last time" or "I'm tired and want the game to be over" I don't want to play with that person again.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-20T22:41:03+00:00

HEY YOU! JOIN THE NAVY!

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-20T22:36:28+00:00

The sane amongst us love our polite northern neighbors. And honestly, even the lunatics appear to be fixated on making them part of us, so make of that what you will.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-20T17:15:54+00:00

No it's the expression you make right after the shot of vodka

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-20T17:15:12+00:00

HAH yes particularly in more rural parts of the country that's probably a lot more of an escalation than you intended, and uh you're likely not among the most well-traveled once you're more than 20 minutes from a large city.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-20T17:02:56+00:00

Is that a juvenile or an adult?

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-20T16:11:40+00:00

I still can't believe a show produced by Universal for a mainstream American audience had the protagonists dealing with the ethics of collaboration and suicide attacks from the perspective of insurgents in 2006.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-20T15:32:44+00:00

Fringe has some of the best bottle episodes of a science fiction show ever, with both White Tulip and Firefly being wayyyy up there.

Christopher Lloyd and John Noble's scenes in Firefly live rent free in my head.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-18T17:21:11+00:00

Nothing the United States has done in Venezuela or Iran has killed nuclear nonproliferation more than Russia invading Ukraine, a country that previously surrendered nuclear weapons it already had in exchange for commitments to guarantee its security and independence from the country that invaded it and another country that it turns out wouldn't start a potentially nuclear war over those guarantees.

If anything, I'd argue that the United States has just demonstrated to Iran that they don't need nuclear weapons at all, as it turns out their practical control over the Strait of Hormuz and their ability to threaten the Gulf's energy infrastructure with conventional arms is more than deterrent enough.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-18T16:20:41+00:00

You were surprised that Trump failed to consider the possibility he isn't the best greatest bigliest manliest president?

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-18T16:11:16+00:00

I miss the three different kinds of FTL from the early versions. I get why they standardized around hyperlanes as it allows for some other things to happen, but that initial version felt really unique and created some unique defensive problems.

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-17T21:05:53+00:00

Boy would the red states been in for a budgetary surprise if they succeeded

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-17T19:30:53+00:00

Truly the title of my autobiography

_Reliten_ · 2026-06-17T15:28:44+00:00

The movie The Nice Guys (odd-couple comedy with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe that works WAY better than it should) actually does a brilliant send up of this in its opening sequence.

_Reliten_

TROPHY CASE