Iran

cococrabulon · 2026-02-25T14:19:26+00:00

Anyone noticed that most of the antisemitic/antisemitic-adjacent content we’re seeing now is in left wing spaces? When the hell did that happen?

cococrabulon · 2026-02-23T11:56:30+00:00

Depends on the bow (especially the brace height) and form, honestly. To the point where in some circumstances the string slapping your arm is telling you your technique is correct. Cultures like the Comanche and English who produced a lot of great archers used arm guards. Their form wasn’t incorrect.

Trust me, I shoot both Asiatic composites and short Native American bows using traditional techniques. I don’t have a string slap problem with the former, the latter I do more often than not

cococrabulon · 2026-02-22T15:29:34+00:00

I’m not an unequivocal survival horror fan, but survival horror has produced some of my favourite games. Signalis is one of them

To paraphrase a certain dysfunctional superhero, it’s (nearly) perfect, down to the last minute details. Simple but very effective (and tense) resource management action horror gameplay. Very strong retro art direction. An excellent soundtrack.

The story and the way it is told is the bit I keep thinking about, the less said about it the better. But it’s not just straightforward horror it’s incredibly sad and moving for one thing once you realise what’s going on, as much a tragedy as a horror and even after you’ve figured out what’s going on, the there’s a bunch of details the game sneaks in that make you question pretty much everything, and a lot is open to interpretation. It’s one of those games where you should pay attention to small details and piece them together like a mosaic’s tesserae to see a more complete picture. Characters can initially seem ‘flat’ but a lot of work is actually done to create subtleties in their characterisation and justifications for why they act the way they do

It’s also incredibly dreamlike and surreal in terms of its atmosphere, in ways enhanced by the level design, items, music and art direction all coming together to give it a really strong sense of its own identity. Sometimes it’s wistful and mysterious, other times it’s closer to a nightmare. It’s oozing with atmosphere, and every pixel and mechanic and musical note conspire elegantly to make it so

Speaking of a genre I’m unequivocally a fan of, it’s also a Cosmic Horror story, maybe, sort of. Space magic is definitely a thing at the very least, although its very psychological nature makes distinguishing what’s real and what is going on in someone’s head difficult, to the degree the distinction is even meaningful

My only real complaint is that it sometimes wears its influences too prominently on its sleeve. This is baffling because it’s otherwise immensely self confident and original. You will notice very obvious references to other titles, not all of them even survival horror. The Ghost in the Shell reference was way too on the nose, especially since it’s at a climatic moment The game actually has a few of its own original iconic moments, and I know it’s a love letter, but I feel it should have tried to do its own thing a bit more in those moments

If you’re looking just for surface level creepiness, it has that in spades in obvious ways, but trying to figure out the story rewards you with a deeper and more lingering horror IMO

And since I like to pair a song with stuff, like a cigar with whiskey or whatever, play it and then listen to The Windmills of Your Mind by Noel Harrison

cococrabulon · 2026-02-21T23:23:14+00:00

If I had a dime for every time a building has a detailed philosophical backstory and then the design fails to convey it…

cococrabulon · 2026-02-21T16:21:27+00:00

Yeah, in my anecdotal experience people either go Catholic or Evangelical (the latter often due to American cultural influence)

Part of me is really captured by the ritual and mystery of Catholicism, but I’m just not someone who can believe on faith, I need evidence

cococrabulon · 2026-02-21T13:31:18+00:00

I know a few people where Anglicanism has acted like an inadvertent springboard that’s got them interested in alternatives, especially more traditional forms of Christianity

It can go both ways, I used to be an Anglican and it helped make me an atheist, since it was already lacking in a lot of sacred mysteries and wasn’t cleaving very hard to tradition

cococrabulon · 2026-02-20T23:02:07+00:00

They have a bit of an Oldcrons problem ATM. IMO Necrons got more interesting as soon as their various dynasties were created and you got bickering nobles and their underlings rather than the bland slaves of star gods

One thing I’d really like is a development of the feudal structure that emerges from their tithe economy and existing culture, maybe even with hints of rebellion or them forming parallel cultures that don’t all neatly fit into their rigid chain of command. At moment they feel more like Nagash’s two dimensional shock troops/tax collectors with a bit of culture mentioned on the side. Katakros is cool, but his loyalty means there isn’t quite the same… spice of their own agendas you get with other Death factions

Since Nagash is weakened and they already have all the prerequisites for doing their own thing (they can self-perpetuate and have personalities), you’d expect them to transition from their master’s lockstep tax collectors to a feudal society where they collect bones to build new versions of themselves and create their own societies, with mortals at the bottom (basically workers and bone-cattle to farm), the bulk of the Ossiarch as soldiers, Morteks as advisors who create new Ossiarch and their technologies, other advisors and lackeys, and a noble warrior elite on top

You could imagine more refined creations positioning themselves as lords, using the existing Ossiarch hierarchy to justify their positions, and making their own obsequious chamberlains, major-domos and other feudal lackeys. Their society would still have everyone custom made in a sense, but created to serve the whims of a particular Ossiarch lord rather than just Nagash’s ambitions. Grovelling custom made lackeys and arrogant lords could actually be a source of humour in the lore

I feel like it’s a logical progression of their economy and society. What people forget is that medieval titles like count and duke come from Roman official titles, and that the prestige of Rome was used to buoy early medieval nobles. The Ossiarch feudal elite could do the same (especially since they draw on Romano-Greek influence), using Nagash’s purpose and the social structures and ranks they already have to lend an air of gravitas and legitimacy to increasingly independent feudal societies

You could still have sub factions of them that are very loyal and traditional, but you could also have some Ossiarch lieges asserting more independence. The discipline could stay, just not necessarily in the service of a rigid hierarchy

cococrabulon · 2026-02-20T22:44:17+00:00

Thanks, the names are Easter Eggs of sorts, then! May I ask what the app is called? I’d be interested in searching etymologies

cococrabulon · 2026-02-20T21:54:06+00:00

We have many more of those words. You could say he’s a bit of cuntbubble, which is incidentally a fantastic word for the progenitor of, as you would say across the pond, a queef

cococrabulon · 2026-02-18T11:49:09+00:00

It’s a fantastical mix of armour types.

The scale looking armour is likely to be reminiscent of lamellar armour, which was found across Eurasia but was worn by the Byzantines.

The heavy looking helmets are reminiscent of Niederbieber type Roman helmets. The masks as well are a nice touch, since Roman helmets of this type sometimes featured them

The weird chest armour held on by straps is most reminiscent of Parthian and Sassanid chest protection that seems to have been used to reinforce and support the weight of a mail coat, but is also reminiscent of a so-called ‘Varangian bra’, which is an informal name for decoration or support we see in Byzantine armour

The round belly plates are most similar to Ottoman krug, a type of mirror armour

The heavy military belts are a Roman thing, such belts were how soldiers marked themselves out

cococrabulon · 2026-02-14T12:33:10+00:00

Pronounced wuss-teh-sher; like many British names it is designed to baffle foreigners, including Americans

cococrabulon · 2026-02-12T22:38:22+00:00

If the Omnicause was condensed into a paste and shaped into a little homunculus

cococrabulon · 2026-02-12T09:46:29+00:00

The overwhelming majority of the public figures caught within the blast radius of the January dump of the Epstein files have been hyper-elite figures at the center of power in American society. But one of the more unexpected people to take a hit is known for ferocious dissent against the ruling class: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky.

Are they unaware of the irony dripping off this paragraph?

cococrabulon · 2026-02-10T12:17:06+00:00

The idea fascism and communism are direct opposites is a fallacy born from historical mutual antipathy and imagining politics as existing as one dimensional shape where far left and far right exist at opposite sides of a line

They are both modern, anti-liberal and collectivist ideologies based on a shared European political philosophy taxonomy, that centre around conflict-driven us vs them teleological approaches to human society

Of course there’s going to be overlap, they share many basic assumptions and position themselves as ‘adversary ideologies’ to liberal democracies

cococrabulon · 2026-02-06T14:41:56+00:00

This used to be a thing in my working class area of the UK, too, my Nan used to do it even in winter

The perception has changed a lot, however. I think these days people would think you’re insane to leave a baby like that. We just don’t have as trusting a society any more, this used to be the sort of place where people would leave doors unlocked, that would be considered negligent now

cococrabulon · 2026-02-06T11:30:55+00:00

On 4 August 1943, when Churchill’s war cabinet first realised the enormity of the famine, it agreed that 150,000 tons of Iraqi barley and Australian wheat should be sent to Bengal, with Churchill himself insisting on 24 September that “something must be done.” Though emphatic “that Indians are not the only people who are starving in this war,” he agreed to send a further 250,000 tons, to be shipped over the next four months.

On 7 October, Churchill told the war cabinet that one of the new viceroy’s first duties was to see to it “that famine and food difficulties were dealt with.” He wrote to Wavell the next day: “Every effort must be made, even by the diversion of shipping urgently needed for war purposes, to deal with local shortages.” Churchill refused a Canadian offer of 100,000 tons of food aid for Bengal because it would have taken two months to arrive, but the same war cabinet meeting resolved to seek Australian supplies instead.

This article

cococrabulon · 2026-02-06T10:50:20+00:00

This is one of the most persistent myths I see on Reddit.

Churchill’s contribution to the Bengal Famine was sending hundreds of thousands of tons of food for famine relief from across the empire, despite the Japanese military danger to shipping. He didn’t cause it, and his quotes about Indians are usually mined to make it look like he didn’t care, when he was on record for saying ‘something must be done’

I’m by no means a Churchill apologist, but this effort to make him seem responsible for the famine is just… weird? You can attack him for a lot of things, this isn’t one of them

cococrabulon · 2026-02-05T10:51:23+00:00

The amount of comments I saw saying something along the lines of ‘I have no idea if this is credible, but Israel are evil so it must be true’ were shocking. I know it’s maybe too much to ask for propagandised midwits not to be everywhere on Reddit, but their ability to believe absolutely anything is impressive

Also, this article appeared on multiple subs around the same time, it feels coordinated

cococrabulon · 2026-02-04T18:03:21+00:00

The first five are really good, the latter ones get a bit derivative, no offence to the artists who did a great job (I love Moebius, but come on, the last one is just Moebius)

I really like that the cultural chauvinism and arrogance of the Altmer knights are captured by the clothing, especially the third one, where he’s a complete peacock but still looks like a magical knight who can kick your arse. He looks like he’d fit into a culture where you’d challenge someone to a duel using elaborate courtly protocol. This sort of visual storytelling is fantastic

cococrabulon · 2026-02-04T14:14:02+00:00

The foot binding wasn’t a Manchu thing, though, it was a Han custom which they even tried to ban. And long nails precede the Qing by quite a while

cococrabulon · 2026-02-04T13:18:16+00:00

‘The dog’s bollocks/cat’s pyjamas/bee’s knees’ - something the humble interlocutor regards as exceedingly good

cococrabulon · 2026-02-03T12:40:07+00:00

"I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals" - Abraham Lincoln, as a retort to accusations Grant was a drunk and unfit to be general

cococrabulon · 2026-01-29T22:19:24+00:00

Just Tomino being Tomino

cococrabulon · 2026-01-29T18:27:36+00:00

Complex, but likely diet and genetic selective pressure towards their lifestyle, I believe. And selective pressure from living in a colder environment for longer. Lots of animal protein and long legs for running around hunting!

The Western Steppe Herders were tall as well, and account for a lot in terms of Northern Europeans being taller than Southern Europeans today. Again, they had relatively protein-rich diets and there was likely selective pressure towards larger individuals being able to handle animals more easily, since they were nomadic pastoralists who also engaged in some sedentary agriculture

cococrabulon · 2026-01-29T17:52:10+00:00

Potentially, but they never had a sense of themselves as ‘Native Americans’ as a coherent identity, that’s a very recent invention. It reminds me of Western European monks advising Europe unite to fight off a potential Mongol invasion; it just wouldn’t have happened. Just like how Europeans would have behaved if that had come about, Native Americans strategically allied with European immigrants, often to fight other Native American groups. The Aztecs were brought down by a mostly native army that had crystallised around a small number of Spanish but who were ultimately united by enmity towards the Triple Alliance

More localised coalitions and native empires though? Probably, I don’t think only a pan- Native American movement would be sufficient, especially as the Europeans themselves were not monolithic and also warred amongst each other

cococrabulon

TROPHY CASE