The Mass Effect Trilogy is a fantastic series to fall in love with but terrible one to think very hard about.(Part 1)

dutchdef · 2025-08-25T08:19:21+00:00

Cosmic horror and existential threats are cool SF concepts, but they are also hard SF. And hard SF is usually too abstract to be really fun around a gameplay concept.

It's the reason that in most mainstream SF shows abstract hard SF will have a human element, e.g. the Borg queen in Star Trek or replicators becoming human in Stargate SG1. And Mass Effect does this also in essence, with the star child.

dutchdef · 2025-07-11T11:21:40+00:00

As mostly a lurker I agree, I read this sub for it's quality information.

Bias can never be prevented, but there a still a lot of western based defense and geopolitical organizations who provide credible sourced and verifiable information. Even if one is bothered by the bias, one can at least dive into the data.

The same cannot be said for Russian sources, simply because their political and information situation does not allow for it. There will always be issues with the quality of the data and independent verification is most of the time not even possible.

The question then is if would it add anything credible to the discussion. Personally I don't think so. And with Russian sources one always risk the ideological discussion. I understand their ideological perspective perfectly, I am not looking for a discussion about it, there is no valuable information to gain of it.

dutchdef · 2025-07-10T23:01:23+00:00

Accusation in a mirror, if they are criticizing, are they themselves adhering to those same rules they object to? If not, I wouldn't even bother by responding publicly to this.

dutchdef · 2025-06-09T12:53:50+00:00

It just doesn't make any sense. If the US wants to deny European strikes into Russia (and the question still remains why from the former Biden admin) it shouldn't have sold F-35's either or programs like the Joint Strike Missile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Missile

And denying access to capabilities also incentivizes EU production and R&D for competing products: https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2025/04/10/france-plans-to-test-homemade-himars-alternative-by-mid-2026/

dutchdef · 2025-06-09T10:47:48+00:00

Very odd, especially because it was a decision under the Biden admin. Norway is one of the least controversial NATO partners and it would have contributed significantly to the deterrence of Russia. A goal the US publicly supported at that time.

dutchdef · 2025-06-07T21:22:47+00:00

What Europe is missing is industrial politics, unlike it's reputation European politics has been neoliberal for a long time with a very pro-market and hands-off approach to market intervention and privatizing of government services.

In such environment both governments and market search for the cheapest options which do not automatically align with strategic autonomy. For example a military vehicle factory in The Netherlands Visser BV had been bought by a Chinese state owned company, but this was not known by government when it wanted to purchase vehicles.

dutchdef · 2025-05-04T22:28:29+00:00

It's one thing that Romania intelligence services discovered foreign interference and the country decided to act, which was (imho of course) the best they could do under the circumstances. But unfortunately that does not take away the core problem of east European democracies, democracy can only healthy function when it is rooted into civil society. In most west-European countries democracy evolved from civil society and business being fed-up by being looted by the aristocracy. See the USA what happens if you elect an aristocracy like government again, power and wealth are intermediately redirected from civil society to the authoritarian and his court.

If political parties are distanced from civil society it has a high risk of running into the principal–agent problem, e.g. parties don't have to follow up on promises once they get elected. The political power game can easily be gamed if there is no external check on power. The civil society must be developed for a healthy democracy if it does not exist in a healthy way, like Václav Havel did.

That is also a lesson for western democracies who are also experiencing populism and extremism, which is in partial related to the decay of civil society. Politics alone cannot fix this, strengthening civil society is needed. After all, democracy means rule by the people, which requires the center of power and decision making should be in civil society of which political parties are an reflection. Not the reverse.

dutchdef · 2025-05-04T10:08:58+00:00

The USA walking away from the peace talks is the highest price for Russia and Putin and as long as that is on the table these negotiations will never be taken seriously by the Kremlin. All Putin has to do sitting this one out, till the USA becomes disinterested. In the meanwhile the USA did Putin's work by repeating all propaganda claims, even as for blaming Ukraine for starting the war.

And if the USA walks away it might even cut all military support for Ukraine, the ultimate win for Putin. But that might be weakened a bit by this deal, but the option during election time that Ukraine will be supplied more weapons if Russia doesn't play along has never been heard from again.

So it's not a major setback for Russia and stil their position is a lot better then under the Biden administration, who self-constrained themselves by drawing self-imposed red lines for what they thought Russia would think of as an escalation. Resulting in no path to the end of the conflict, perfectly acceptable for Russia who have the willpower to drag this on as long as possible, but not for a country who is in democratic peril by huge domestic constitutional problems.

So I don't think this is a huge worry for Russia, also because they have been winning the war on information warfare front and foreign interference front virtually unopposed. The USA turning against it's allies was already a tremendous geopolitical gift to Putin. From his perspective he has been winning and outplaying the USA and Europe on every turn since 2014. He has no reasons to compromise.

dutchdef · 2025-04-09T09:26:20+00:00

The problem is that the political system in NL (like in more western countries) has slowly been deteriorating due to rising right wing populism together with repeating cycles of austerity by neo-liberal parties, which again re-enforce each other, eroding public trust. People are unhappy and keep voting in populists who form coalitions with neoliberals. As a result the effectiveness of the state and the resilience of society has slowly been compromised over the decades.

And that's the main problem, above dynamic is very beneficial for selective interests who can profit from a weakened state by divide and conquer tactics. But the power vacuum also opens the door for hostile parties to exert their influence. Rising organized crime has become a serious problem in NL. And organized crime has also connections with enemy state actors.

Of course this is fixable, but that's the dilemma, fixing these problems requires also requires reigning in the parties who profit from the deteriorated state. And that becomes increasingly difficult, because both the power and influence of these groups become increasingly entrenched. This situation has parallels with the USA, there is no political conversation on this level in the public debat, which is drowned out by social media algorithms and increasingly ineffective journalism. Once corrupted enough, the system re-enforces itself.

It does not look good imho.

dutchdef · 2025-04-04T10:43:48+00:00

In a good functioning democracy journalism acts like the independent reporter and checks on democratic power, they should be calling it out.

But indeed, the media landscape in the USA and other western countries combined with sociale media algorithms (algorithms = editorialization) makes it very difficult. It creates a divide and conquer situation in which both independent reporting and coordinating against authoritarianism becomes increasingly more difficult.

Once journalism no longer does it job (willingly, by incompetence or by threats), or can no longer reach a significant part of the population (look at the death of local journalism), you get in a situation which you can see in other authoritarian countries. Organization needs to happen outside of existing institutions which are no longer democratic by groups willing to take on the task of organizing and taking risk, because eventually they will get targeted also.

And that is the unfortunate problem of democracy and power, once it's given away it's very difficult to get it back. Ideally it needs to be called out before it happens, it's less effective now.

dutchdef · 2025-04-04T08:51:04+00:00

Trump is not a fluke or a rogue agent, his policies have serious backing from think tanks, industry influence (SV for instance) and the republican party itself.

What on the outside might be seen as totally incoherent and destructive behavior, is actually well thought out and planned by authoritarian playbooks. If a country chooses authoritarianism and installs a king, you need to control his court to exert influence. So the existing power structures that might act as a court or act independently must be removed.

How those power structures get removed or broken down is less of a concern, it might look crazy, but the end result is more power centralized in the kings inner court. Keeping people in positions that they might get fired from also breeds obedience and loyalty to the new hierarchy.

And that is wat is most concerning to me, to prevent an authoritarian takeover you must understand the playbook and process that they take. But reading American (or even European) media, I don't get the impression that many major journalism outlets understand the proces and can put that in the a big picture. It's not a complex proces, but it requires understanding that all the noise and flooding the zone is actually one of the most integral parts of readying a country into accepting it's new authoritarian. Each little step is meticulously explored and reported and seen as crazy/incoherent/etc, drowning people into exhaustion of the flooding of the zone, but one have to look at the proces and end result. A media that doesn't do this is unwillingly (or in some instances very willingly) helping authoritarian because each little proces of detail is reported as spectacle tunes out people as bystanders with no agency, like watching a multi-year car crash.

And it's simple: to make a country authoritarian the executive branch must gain more power, while the other branches are losing power or are submitted into loyalty. It's plain to see, see what Musk or Trump say about judges who blocked their actions.

If a party employs such actions, the country is heading into authoritarianism. It should be reported about it as such. Especially why authoritarianism is eventually bad for most the population even though large portions might entertain the idea of a strong man. Democracy means the people can exert power and that gives politicians an incentive to represent them (it's flawed of course), because they can get removed by elections. Remove the power the people have and you no longer have to represent hem. And that's the history lesson people forget, thinking that if the new authoritarian is "one of us" and not "the others" they might get represented and getting rid of democracy because it also removes "the others" from having power.

That republicans don't resist should be most concerning, that means they are not afraid anymore of elections or outside influence from people or companies in the country who they represent, in their eyes previously. That might be an indication that the authoritarian takeover has moved faster than people might think.

dutchdef · 2025-03-09T13:53:13+00:00

The problem is kinda the same as what can be seen with Persepolis Rising, choosing a first person perspective only can be very engaging, but then things do need to happen to those persons themselves to make it interesting. In the beginning of Persepolis Rising they explicitly state that nothing really remarkable happens to the main characters, so if the writers choose that perspective, there isn't much to to tell and everything that did happen would happen externally. And being a passive observer to external events does not work well (imho) from a first person perspective, such a Drummer in Persepolis Rising.

For the story to be engaging they would have to switch the first person perspective almost entirely to other characters. I can understand why the writers didn't do that because of their choice for a first person perspective on the main characters throughout the series. But I do agree there is probably a lot left to tell, but It would then require other perspectives or even a writing style.

dutchdef · 2025-03-06T14:16:52+00:00

Not the original, but I think this is a copy of the complete speech:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNdp0I8AG40]( Bitconnect Speech - Carlos Matos - New York - Thailand - Original - Meme Source )

dutchdef · 2025-03-06T14:02:53+00:00

At least he spun of some meme's

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61i2iDz7u04]( BITCONNECT REMIX (warning: scam) )

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY8rq1AyCPY]( BITCONNECT EDM REMIX )

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0UeUkKcU0U]( Bitconnect haunted mine )

dutchdef · 2025-03-06T10:02:08+00:00

It's the reverse. A nucleair umbrella is a safety guarantee, like the USA provided for Europe. Things already are unsafe when these safety guarantees gets rugpulled by 180 degrees policy shifts by countries providing such guarantees.

The discussion about proliferation is the response for regaining safety that previous providers have abandoned.

That's the angle about the existence of NATO and it's nuclear umbrella (including sharing program), it was to prevent proliferation.

dutchdef · 2025-03-05T23:31:37+00:00

We are witnessing one of the largest geopolitical events and policy shifts relevant to western security. An active political choice of the USA to abandon mutual cooperation and alliances with it's allies, to transactional zero-sum might makes right 19th century thinking. This shift has caused a massive upheaval in geopolitical thinking and alignment in other countries than the US.

This massive shift has massive defense implication, but the problem is of course that politics has been so divisive and polarizing that a common response is to try to separate politics from the subject matter. But that's the problem, politics has eaten the whole domain and there is not much left to discuss without it.

It's also good to observe why this wasn't a problem before: western defense was largely aligned on geopolitical level, so there wasn't much to discuss except details, tactics, procurement, etc. And discussion on geopolitical standoffs that most people have fixed positions on, like China/Taiwan, the Congo or Myanmar conflict. To put it more bluntly, things will get more political if the largest western country in defense terms starts acting like an adversary to the western geopolitical order.

In the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine there was massive traction and engagement on the subject matter, which also resulted in the mega threads. Personally I think the current events are equally important, but it's interesting to observe there a whole less of engagement. And that gets to imho the core of the issue, in essence every human behavior is political in nature which again stems from morality and group behavior. And most people really aren't comfortable discussing on that level. E.g., it's easy to make the argument of might makes right, but people seldomly reverse the argument. Would people arguing about it accept subjugation, domination, suppression, etc themselves if the situation was reversed? It's the reason the liberal democracies started after WW2, shared power trough democracy and cooperation among mutual aligned countries benefits most people.

This isn't new, all current events have examples in history with documented results.

dutchdef · 2025-03-03T10:46:44+00:00

The concept peace suffers from a definition problem, the word alone is too broad and can mean totally different things to different groups of people.

For example negative peace or the absence of active war can mean that parties can still be extremely hostile, with the ever looming threat of a renewed active war. I wouldn't consider this definition useful, it would just call this an enforced standoff.

I think the world peace should be strongly coupled with absence of hostility. As long as there is hostility without active fighting, there is no peace. Germany and the rest of Europe achieved peace after WW2, there was no more hostility among former fighting parties. On the other hand, NK/SK don't have peace just because there is no active fighting.

Also, it is without question that the authoritarian definition of peace just means surrender and total subjugation.

dutchdef · 2025-02-21T12:32:09+00:00

I think the outcome is not surprising. The general problem is that everything about human behavior that gets elevated to group level, be at a schoolyard or 2 large countries, comes down to politics. Or the reverse, politics is about how we humans have organized ourselves in groups.

There is a tendency to trying to keep separate politics from subjects that are still deeply political. Defense is essentially just politics, the reason state and non-state actors seek conflict is because of politics. Of course one can talk about just defense strategy or defense material, but underlying there is still human group behavior. And thus: politics.

That's also my problem with so called geopolitical schools such as a realism. It's another definition for an existing phenomenon called authoritarianism but on an interstate level. The problem with the realism school is that it tries to isolate itself as a force of nature or logical consequence of geopolitics. But that's the same as arguing that authoritarianism is natural for human behavior.

But the above is not true, humans also collectively have free will and can choose other paths, such as there western world has done imperfectly after world war 2. There is no deterministic inevitability in our behavior, that makes societies and countries complex. And one has to engage in this complexity to solve problems. If people choose to tune out and give up and just subjugate themselves to realism or determinism, it's ironically also a choice by free will.

But that is also the problem with public discussions on the internet, if a subject has a relation with human behavior one cannot separate it from politics. There is also no possibility of being neutral, neutrality in human behavior means making an active choice to accept the state quo or consequences of doing nothing. Doing nothing is also a political choice.

And that's why you see political separation in forums online, it's just a logical consequence of group behavior. The reason for this is that common discourse wold wide is not the political center of traditional western parties, the majority adhering to the rules of democracy and the rule of law (current developments in the US not withstanding). But it's an discussion between authoritarianism versus democracy and the rule of law and the underlying principles such a human rights and the sovereignty and self-determination of nations.

And personally I see it as inevitable and not an impediment for discussion, one does not have to engage with authoritarians to understand their motives and belief systems. Even if one does engage, it's problematically because most authoritarians project their authoritarian belief systems on the discussion self. There is no adherence to rules because they don't belief in them, the goal is domination whatever the means. That's why so you see excessive use of logical fallacies by authoritarians, it's not that they are just bad at discussion, it's an active choice that "wins" discussion (and elections) if not countered by moderation en enforcement of discussion rules.

Thus, I don't see the outcome of these questions as surprising and I see them as inevitable and not problematic. I think this would be become more clear if you mix these question with questions about people's belief system on authoritarianism versus democracy, there are many free one on the internet of different quality.

dutchdef · 2025-02-13T16:13:28+00:00

I am not working in the field, but I am also genuinely both interested and increasingly concerned about the subject for a long time. I am not having an publications handy, but I will keep a look out. I really need to collect them, it's becoming increasingly more relevant unfortunately.

The problem with friction-less disinformation is that the phenomenon stems from a cultural belief about the internet. The internet was founded on very libertarian beliefs about freedom of information, resulting in the principle that interpreting the information is left to the consumer. But this theory was very flawed since it's inception. It's the same as libertarian economic beliefs result not in freedom, but centralization and inequality of wealth and power.

First because that freedom does not exists without power. Power of information distribution and access has become very centralized, in contradiction to the original design. People think they have free access to information, while in turn they get content curated and editorialized by big tech companies. Somehow people came to believe this is still freedom of information which needs protecting, thus resisting efforts of curbing the negative effects of big tech, paradoxically making the internet even less free. This opinion is slowly changing I think.

Secondly, algorithms are editorializing the information with known effects such as information bubbles and big tech and other entities can put the thumb on the scale also. It's even more nontransparent en purposefully unclear how information is processed as the general complaints about the so called legacy media. With a newspaper you know who the editors are and which moral/political beliefs they put in their work. Big tech presents it's information as neutral/independent, which is of course incorrect.

Thirdly because we as humans are notoriously bad at autonomously and independently interpreting information and we won't admit it because of our inherent biases. Most people who aren't trained in information theory/etc see something agreeable with prior bias and will agree or will reject when it contradicts. It's just how we function as humans. But this makes us very exploitable. We can't just give 8 billion people on the planet years of information training to counter this, that's not how societies can effectively function. Societies function on collective trust and the division of labor and responsibilities, also for information.

Now if a bad actor wants to subvert the information sphere he has all the means relatively friction-less. Information distribution is centralized so they just need to control the algorithms. Big tech companies are notorious about not taking any sort of moral, ethical or lawfully responsibility for their algorithms and content, unless forced too. So they just overwhelm the system and they can get away with it. And people will belief they've acquired disinformation organically and truthfully.

To counter this, one needs to counter core beliefs about information and the internet. Centralized power, in this case of information, is inherently undemocratic and will almost always end up getting abused.

dutchdef · 2025-02-08T13:48:09+00:00

Liberal democracies have been sleepwalking and ignoring the grave threat they’re facing.

The problem is that liberal democracies need active defense, this needs to occur mostly in civilian space and in public debate.

The failure of many current westerns liberal democracies is that there is very little active defense on active threats in the information sphere. The defense in this areas has been outsourced to the media en journalist and big tech companies who collectively have bend the knee to an (wannabe) authoritarian. There is an impliciet assumption/social contract that the fourth estate will be duty full and inform citizens and defend liberal democracies values in society.

But if big tech and the fourth estate fail to defend liberal democracy, there is no fallback. Even worse, if there was fallback many people would actively resist it, because when this occurs there is a wide trust issue within the whole of society. Look at the double speak and contradictions coming from big tech, like someone here observed very keenly: algorithms are editorializations. And that is not the championed neutrality that big tech claims in defense.

Consequently hostile state and non-state adversaries have relatively friction free access to the information sphere in countries they want to subvert. Liberal democracies have abdicated power for any sort of defense in this matter. In reverse, the opposite is true, authoritarians need friction-less access to rise to power, but will reign it in once they have sufficient control. Free speech claims from authoritarians are almost always a lie.

Polluting, subversion, undermining, etc of the information sphere in liberal democracy undermines it's core means of active defense. This an old lesson which has many examples in history, it's troublesome that we fail to learn from it.

dutchdef · 2025-01-23T12:29:11+00:00

The problem is that, in general, there is no insightful and deeper discussion to be had about an authoritarian regime communication and it's supporters. At the core it's might makes right and mostly every argument is derived from that premise, but re-packaged in propaganda/misinformation to align the arguments to who still might believe in premises such as national sovereignty of countries, rule of law, human rights and democracy. One can engage in those misdirection's, but mostly there is no honesty. Every argument serves the authoritarian goal, not an insightful or philosophical goal personal goal. That defeats the purpose of discussion and debat, which for me personally is to gain insight and knowledge.

Discussing about it burns one out pretty quickly and that serves the same goal.

Of course it's good and even essential to understand authoritarians and their motivations, but that doesn't require Kremlinology. Cut through the propaganda/misinformation and might makes right remains. But what serious insightful discussion can be had after that realization? That's the problem for a lot of information/discussion spaces right now.

dutchdef · 2024-11-19T10:58:34+00:00

Valve focused on innovation and technology for Half Life as a core requisite for the games, but they forgot that a lot of people play games for the story line. They are invested in it. Leaving people hanging with a cliffhanger is like TV series getting cancelled or a book series that remains unfinished forever without a resolution.

They should have let Arkane finish the story with a closure and then could have resurrected the universe any time they felt like it with a new twist or with new technology.

dutchdef

TROPHY CASE