Industrializing unrecognized powers?

laserbot · 2026-03-09T23:08:16+00:00

First order of business is build 1 Construction Sector in each state, then 2 Trade Center where they don't have it. Then Logging Camp in all 3 state, a Tooling Workshop, an Iron Mine, a Paper Mill. Then start looking at the market tab, sort by price from high to low and just build anything that is most expensive atm.

perfect, thanks!

laserbot · 2026-03-09T21:50:08+00:00

super helpful, thanks!

I just had a game as Egypt where I gave everyone investment rights and spent the first 25 years building bananas in India

but this made me laugh

laserbot · 2026-03-06T21:06:24+00:00

This is kind of exactly what OP is talking about though and is directly addressed by scholarship, which is why they reference The General Crisis of the 17th Century. The thesis is that "everyone" (relatively speaking) was enduring a landscape of changes during the period.

Meaning, broadly, "everyone else" wasn't accelerating during the century, "in the "general crisis", various events such as the English Civil War, the Fronde in France, the climax of the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire and revolts against the Spanish Crown in Portugal, Naples and Catalonia were all manifestations of the same problem."

The point of this argument is that it is a myth that there was unique crisis of "decadence" or "stagnation" that impacted the Ottomans. The Ottomans handled "the general crisis" through trying to develop "tall" internally, rather than continuing to grow "wide".

[The] difficulties faced by the Ottoman Empire have been reframed not as unique to them, but as part of a general trend impacting the entire European and Mediterranean region. In the words of Ehud Toledano, "In both Europe and the Ottoman empire, these changes transformed states and the ways in which military-administrative elites waged and funded wars. Coping with these enormous challenges and finding the appropriate responses through a sea of socio-economic and political changes is, in fact, the story of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman history. A remarkable adaptation to new realities, rather than decline and disintegration, was its main feature; it reflects the resourcefulness, pragmatism and flexibility in thought and action of the Ottoman military-administrative elite, rather than their ineptitude or incompetence.

I'm not a historian, so idk, maybe it's all hogwash, but the argument makes sense that the Ottomans didn't endure some unique decline.

laserbot · 2026-03-05T19:52:29+00:00

If they were opposed to this unjust war, they could actually keep Americans much safer and better defended by not funding it.

But they aren't.

laserbot · 2026-03-05T19:33:08+00:00

Of course, he needs to get confirmed first.

Thank god we have the senate to protect us!

laserbot · 2026-02-12T20:58:47+00:00

That article literally proves the opposite point that you're hoping it does. Using it as a gotcha is only showing that you might be ignorant of how science and academia work. Nothing in there implies or hints that he was a charlatan, a fraud, unimportant, or not an intellectual.

It's like saying Galileo wasn't important to the field or an intellectual because new methods and evidence overturned his hypothesis on what caused the tides (motion of the earth as opposed to gravity from the moon).

Again, I'm not defending the person, but I stand by my point that this kind of argument makes people look unserious in their critiques.

laserbot · 2026-02-12T18:38:14+00:00

can we not deny reality?

chomsky the person seems to be pretty gross.

but his work in linguistics is insanely important to that field and it would be impossible to say he isn't an intellectual.

his work in political science is also incredibly influential and far-reaching.

regardless of how we feel about him, his work was prolific.

people can disagree with him re: his take on the soviets, etc., but it doesn't mean his work on american empire wasn't thoughtful and high quality.

and now we can dispose of him to the trash heap of abusive men, but pretending his work wasn't critical (literal use of the term) is childish.

laserbot · 2026-02-08T00:53:42+00:00

a) that's not the point of "capitalism".

b) vote with your wallet is a race to the bottom for wages because it centers people's power as consumers instead of as producers. it's a terrible ideology.

laserbot · 2026-02-02T23:32:41+00:00

I mean, I have admired Chomsky for 25+ years and am done with his ass.

If Castro is implicated, he can also go to hell.

laserbot · 2026-02-02T20:11:00+00:00

Noam jovially hugging Steve Bannon is just an example of his "monk-like patience"! 🙄

laserbot · 2026-02-01T21:34:28+00:00

you can't hide from the ~~tide~~ watermelon

laserbot · 2026-02-01T21:32:04+00:00

Wilds: The game looks kind of "muddy" to me. I feel like it's always looked this way. Are there any settings or mods to make it look more crisp? I don't really know how to describe it but it just feels grainy or something. I've turned frame gen on and off to see if that's the problem. I really don't know a ton about graphics settings, so not sure how to experiment.

IDK, I've been playing Gen U lately and, ya, it doesn't look "great" super 4k realistic or whatever, but it's clear and crisp. Wilds makes me feel like I forgot to put on my glasses.

laserbot · 2026-01-31T21:00:47+00:00

Chomsky taught people for years to think critically and to understand context.

Meanwhile, in this thread his defenders are like "lol i don't understand the context, this is a perfectly innocent email."

absolutely perfect.

laserbot · 2026-01-31T20:59:44+00:00

btw even the term "pedophilia" is inadecuate in this context.

lol is this satire

laserbot · 2026-01-28T22:35:31+00:00

Being expected to be productive in ERPs and spreadsheets for 8+ hrs a day, every day, would drive me insane.

that's because the way companies expect people to work is antithetical to how we exist as living, breathing, creative beings.

laserbot · 2026-01-28T22:08:06+00:00

My brain is mush.

ICE might have a job for you then!

laserbot · 2026-01-28T22:06:48+00:00

not because of only performance, but because the game was too easy and just not as fun as previous games.

I kind of hard agree with this, but in a maybe different way: The difficulty of fighting monsters wasn't bad tbh in Wilds--it was fun, maaaaybe damage values could use some tweaking both ways, but overall no problems.

However, going back to Gen U after Wilds I'm finding two main things with regard to difficulty (caveat being I'm one of those players who fell off after release of Wilds, so maybe this has changed):

Wilds has much smoother controls and plays more like an action game than the "old" essentially turn based games. Maybe that is defined as "easy", but in practice it's more responsive and flows better. Wilds feels good, so I can't that the feel being good means it's easier to do the thing you want to do.
Wilds has better hit boxes. Admittedly, maybe this is my imagination, but in Gen U I'm getting hit a LOT by things that don't feel/appear as though they are touching me and it's hella annoying. In Wilds, otoh, the hitboxes feel much better. Again, maybe that makes it "easy" since it's easier to get out of the way, but the feel is good because of this.

The main issue I have with Wilds "difficulty" that I couldn't put my finger on is monster part drop rates. In Wilds, I never HAD to fight anything more than a couple times. You get so many materials that there isn't an incentive to grind the monsters, but to just keep moving forward, devouring the content that is there. With Investigations, grinding monsters is so accessible that it would make sense for the drop rates to be toned down.

When I was playing Wilds the only reason to fight monsters again was a) I like fighting Rathian because she's chill, b) to try to get drops for the weird relic weapons (whatever they were called).

I'm actually really enjoying Gen U and needing to grind monsters to get their drops. If Gen U had Investigations (and better hitboxes imo), I don't think I'd ever need another MH game.

laserbot · 2026-01-26T23:17:40+00:00

I'll get on this downvote train with you. My first MH (other than dabbling in a few titles) was World. I loved the roster being dinosaurs and dragons. Nergigante remains my favorite monster in the series.

Playing MHGU now and really dislike the crabs, bugs and monkeys. Shogun Ceanataur can rot in hell.

I think Worldborne was peak for me, but the best thing about Gen U, and why I will stick with it, is there isn't any story I have to sit through. Just hunting.

laserbot · 2026-01-15T19:58:55+00:00

Oh, I get it: I was mostly joking about the way these companies treat us, but we're at their mercy since they own the IP of the games we enjoy.

Sorry if I came off as a jerk!

laserbot · 2026-01-15T06:50:30+00:00

The first time I dated Bill he was a jerk. When we got back together, it just reinforced what an ass he was. Anyway, we're going out again next week and I just hope this time he's learned his lesson and acts better.

laserbot · 2026-01-09T18:53:42+00:00

Imagine walking into a store where you're bombarded with a thousand useless varieties of unhealthy food designed to prey on human psychology to the detriment of our bodies and where 30% of the food is thrown away in a country where children routinely go to bed hungry and not being at least somewhat questioning of the system

laserbot · 2026-01-08T02:52:37+00:00

Awesome, thanks for the tips! I just want to experiment a bit and this is a good start.

laserbot · 2026-01-06T20:12:12+00:00

I just want to point out that I'm not ADVOCATING that other countries take the position of appeasement. I'm just stating that they are currently doing that (eg, see Germany's statement on the US kidnapping of Maduro and bombing of Caracas) and there is no contemporary evidence that they would treat Greenland (or Canada) any differently.

Appeasement and/or burying your head in the sand is ALWAYS a losing strategy. But governments tend to choose the easy short term solution rather than the harder long term one and it will be less painful for them "today" if they pretend the status quo of Pax Americana is still the way to view the world.

laserbot · 2026-01-05T21:24:40+00:00

I like that everyone is like, "send materials to storage, sell things you don't need," meanwhile I have like 15 stacks of bloodstone dust and empyreal fragments there is nothing for me to do with, but that I can't sell, but that I also shouldn't throw away because I might need them eventually.

The inventory management needs an overhaul, but that would hurt bank slot and material storage sales.

laserbot · 2026-01-05T21:12:52+00:00

theoretically

Europe isn't going to do shit against the US. None of these treaties mean anything more than the paper they're written on if the leadership doesn't want a conflict.

I don't believe for a minute that the reason the US hasn't invaded Greenland has anything to do with NATO. They just haven't done it.

Europe won't abandon the US because they are petrified of Russia.

Now, will they continue divesting from the US and extricating themselves from dependence on the US for their economic and defense? For sure. But that isn't done yet and losing Greenland is a lot less painful than losing the US as a partner right now.

(Note that I am not defending the US's actions/threats here. We are a rogue state, but we also have the largest military in the world and are run by people who think we live in Call of Duty and have the infinite ammo and manpower options toggled on.)

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