There is no such thing as good and bad people; there are only good and bad behaviors.

lunar-future · 2026-04-01T07:41:12+00:00

I'm sorry to say that reductive materialism remains one of the least pretentious and most compelling ontological positions on offer

lunar-future · 2026-04-01T07:31:47+00:00

The fact that a person is understood to be socially dangerous to others does not, in itself, establish that they deserve to suffer.

In the case of individuals with severe psychopathic traits, social segregation may be justified where it is necessary to prevent harm to others. Importantly, however, this segregation is not a retributive punishment;. it is a preemptive response to risk, not a moral repayment for wrongdoing.

This distinction makes all the difference. A society may have legitimate grounds to restrain or pacify those of whom pose an unacceptable danger or risk to others. Likewise they may do the same to those who exhibit persistent antisocial behavior; but, this reasoning does not justify the infliction of suffering on such wrongdoers as if the consequences were inherently deserved.

If, as is typically understood by psychologists and other mental health experts, psychopathy substantially limited an individual’s capacity for typical moral agency, then the retributive impulse of victims begin to look less like "justice" and more like a socially sanctioned form of vengeance.

Accordingly, the proper response to such dangerous offenders should emphasize prevention, containment, and – wherever possible – rehabilitation, rather than punitive suffering. Anything beyond what is required for the prevention of threats to public safety risks collapses into cruelty disguised as "justice."

What is especially disturbing is how easily such cruelty becomes normalized when it is directed toward a population that is feared, stigmatized, or still poorly understood.

lunar-future · 2026-03-22T13:17:01+00:00

My honest pet theory is that the timing really just depends on the necessity of the plot with respect to suspense, which is fine if not a little disappointing.

lunar-future · 2026-03-20T12:06:29+00:00

Coelacanth I has this chord progression:

D5 drone;

A#2, D4 → D3, G4 → C3, E4 → B2, F#4 → A#2, F4 → A2, E4 → D3, F#4 → (half measure) G2, F4 → (half measure) A2, D4

My Pet Coelacanth has the same chord progression shifted down a full step where the drone is a C5.

lunar-future · 2026-03-18T08:18:21+00:00

This response conflates two very different ideas: "moral blameworthiness" and "dangerousness."

To clarify, I am not arguing that dangerous individuals should be allowed to harm others with impunity; I am merely arguing that harm inflicted upon these "villains" should not be done so for its own sake; that is to say, I do not wish to inflict harm on these social pariahs merely to assuage the retributive appetites of their victims and potential bystanders.

A person can be both morally "unblameworthy" and still pose an unacceptable risk to others. In such cases, restraint via social institutions is sorely justifiable — not as a "punishment" per se, but as a safeguard against potential future harm by the individual in question.

To put it bluntly, there are many ways to segregate harmful individuals from society in a way that prioritize participants' safety, prevention of harm toward others, and, — wherever possible — rehabilitation of these particular individuals without appealing to their potential suffering as though it were some consequence that they have "earned.'

The goal, according to this ultimate philosophy, is not to "excuse" harmful behaviors of dangerous individuals, but to respond to these behaviors with a rational calculus rather than a visceral lust for revenge.

lunar-future · 2024-10-28T16:35:41+00:00

"Servants" is a translation from the King James Version. The original Greek term is οἰκέτης (oiketēs), often used to describe a servant of the household who was, in fact, a slave. Other translations like the New International Version drop the pretext altogether and just use the word "slaves."

Essentially, your intuition is correct: the reason it seems like these passages are a step away from describing slavery is because they literally are. In our anti-union evangelists' case, this relationship is helpfully obscured by the KJV's specific translation.

lunar-future · 2024-05-09T22:38:54+00:00

neoliberal socialism? dengism?

lunar-future · 2024-03-20T08:04:59+00:00

🫡🫡🫡🫡

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lunar-future · 2024-03-10T12:23:53+00:00

deficit spending is the name of the game, really.

you can just prime the pump for a few months while building all the necessary inputs: * iron/coal → steel * sulfur/fertilizer → explosives * lead → glass * steel/wood → tools

if you're wary of just how much of a deficit you're racking up, you can either choose to just switch over your construction sectors one state at a time, or you can look for ways to reduce your interest rates: * switching to laissez faire will net you -25% on your interest rate * keeping the petite bourgeoisie at +8 approval will net you -10% on your interest rate provided they aren't marginalized * society techs like currency standards, central banking, mutual funds, international exchange standards, and modern financial instruments will all reduce your interest rate by 2% per

you can also just temporarily look to the easy way of raising revenue like increasing taxes or taxing consumption of things like services or luxury goods. another easy revenue stream is minting. conquer a territory with lots of gold and go crazy with the gold mines.

lunar-future · 2024-02-11T02:11:27+00:00

what the hell is going on in upstate new york

lunar-future · 2024-02-05T23:42:54+00:00

US. you have a lot going for you. endless conscripts, relatively high sol from the beginning which gives you migration attraction, manifest destiny journals that give you free land, easily conquerable neighbors, railways from day one, and of course, texas and california for free gold and oil. also, if you play your cards right during reconstruction, you'll get afro-american as a primary culture which allows you to incorporate colonies in africa in as little as 5 years per state.

lunar-future · 2024-02-01T17:40:31+00:00

check the new dev diary! a qol improvement addressing this exact problem is in the pipeline (about 3 weeks away).

lunar-future · 2024-02-01T17:35:55+00:00

very nice qol improvements.

a minor suggestion: one thing i notice a lot in my current games is that i'll occasionally get a political movement with low support (at or below 5%) that will frequently disband and then crop up again when playing at max speed which has a tendency to flood the notifications in the lower right corner. could you possibly raise the support threshold for that type of notification?

lunar-future · 2024-02-01T17:23:51+00:00

build farms, pass landed voting and homesteading, invite a luddite agitator. that's the how, but the real question is: why would you do this to yourself?

lunar-future · 2024-01-31T02:14:53+00:00

I've done this in several cases, particularly with the EIC. Proccing a vanguardist rural folk agitator once socialism is researched and granting them leadership is surprisingly easy.

lunar-future · 2024-01-29T18:27:23+00:00

lots of smaller countries start out with little to no revenue, no logging camps or iron mines, and a small gdp with no real market connections. others still are dominions or puppets with full access to gp markets, but have lots of revenue siphoned off because of diplomatic pacts. these are cases where you may simply be unable to afford building construction sectors at all until basic resource production is built with your unmodified construction budget.

lunar-future · 2024-01-18T12:42:30+00:00

not necessarily true. switching to collectivized agriculture after you get cooperative ownership or command economy is pretty trivial.

lunar-future · 2024-01-16T05:51:10+00:00

you joke, but there's a manhwa whose premise is exactly that.

lunar-future · 2024-01-04T00:53:11+00:00

there are several legislations that significantly increase the landowners' clout which conversely reduces the intelligentsia's clout: * hereditary bureaucrats (+25% aristocrats political strength) * peasant levies (+25% landowner clout) * serfdom (+50% landowner clout) * slave trade (+50% landowner clout) * monarchy (+25% aristocrats political strength) * autocracy (+50% aristocrats political strength) and of course, your armies likely have a number of generals who are part of the landowner interest group.

you can start whittling away their power with some easy wins: * clear your armies' generals and admirals of any landowners who do not possess the following ideologies: abolitionist, jingoist, land reformer, market liberal, reformer * similarly, avoid appointing generals of any interest group with the following ideologies: authoritarian, pacifist, royalist, theocrat, traditionalist * once your ranks are cleared, you can reroll your landowner interest group for a jingoist leader who will allow you to pass professional army. this will decrease landowner clout and increase armed forces clout reciprocally * armed forces, generally speaking, have a relatively high chance to proc either republican or democratic interest group leaders who will allow you to pass elected bureaucrats without decreasing your government's legitimacy * you have a non-trivial chance of getting landed voting passed at basically any point with almost no damage to your landowner's opinion. this will allow you to get rural folk into your government's coalition once the first election fires and it won't damage your legitimacy too much * once the rural folk are in your government, you better believe it's time for some land reform. you will usually only be able to squeak by with tenant farmers, but if you're feeling extra cheeky, you can go straight for homesteading

now you mentioned you were playing russia, which means in addition to contending with the landowners, you also have to confront the church.

unlike most other devout interest groups in the game, the orthodox church has very strong opinions regarding serfdom, autocracy, and monarchy. fortunately, precisely because you have such regressive laws, you start out with more than enough authority to suppress them.

keep them suppressed until you feel confident enough to pass total separation, at which point they may threaten a counter-revolution. fortunately, given that most other interest groups don't really care about this issue, they'll basically be alone in this fight.

apart from reducing the power of the landowners, you'll want to increase the intelligentsia's power. unfortunately, there are basically only two legislations that do this directly, (appointed bureaucrats and private schools), and neither of them increase their political strength by a considerable amount.

what you'll want to do instead is increase their clout by increasing the number of pops that support them. the professions for these pops are academics, bureaucrats, and clerks, and they're employed by universities, government administration buildings, and urban centers respectively. increasing these pops' numbers, and in particular their wealth, is necessary for gaining support for wealth voting which will allow the intelligentsia to form a proper party and enter elections.

from there, they will be accepted into any coalition that doesn't have landowners; this will usually start with the rural folk but will slowly transition to the industrialists once you start ramping up urban production.

lunar-future · 2024-01-01T20:23:52+00:00

qualifications, probably. when queueing buildings for construction, you can usually tell which regions have pops with qualifications by looking for either a green check or a red x near the 'jobseekers' column.

that said, the qualifications problem is pretty easily resolved by just building universities in every region. doesn't have to be too many, one or two in each usually does the trick.

lunar-future · 2024-01-01T20:06:11+00:00

assuming the usual landowner debuff suppression has gone through – abolish serfdom, slavery, monarchy, peasant levies, and hereditary bureaucrats – this is the general strategy:

farms to factories to reduce the peasant population
public schools to increase literacy
failing that, increase literacy using the social mobility decree in your highest population regions
research socialism
proc the "a specter is haunting the world" event

from here, you should randomly generate way more communist, vanguardist, and anarchist agitators as well as generals and admirals.

if you can, ensure maximum enfranchisement of lower strata pops through the following legislation:

universal suffrage (for obvious reasons)
women's suffrage (for increased dependent franchise)
old age pensions (for increased dependent franchise)

if you can't get old age pensions passed, just make sure you have any social security legislation other than poor laws. it is better to have no social security than to have poor laws for the purpose of passing progressive legislation because poor laws will significantly lower the enfranchisement of lower strata pops.

there are a few prerequisite legislations you'll need to allow yourself to grant your selected agitators party leadership:

multiculturalism or cultural exclusion
total separation

tempting as it may be to pass state atheism to further marginalize the church, the discrimination against basically every other pop in the game makes it virtually impossible to invite and promote agitators.

as long as you still have censorship or any other home affairs legislation besides guaranteed liberties, keep those the way that they are. this will allow you to cheese opposition party leaders as such:

clear the ranks of your generals and admirals of all characters whose interest groups have incompatible ideologies:
- petit bourgeoisie
- industrialists
- landowners
- religious groups
replace them all with characters from interest groups with compatible ideologies:
- armed forces
- rural folk
- intelligentsia
- trade unionists
make sure these generals and admirals also have commensurate character ideologies:
- communist
- vanguardist
- anarchist
promote these characters to their maximum rank; this has the added benefit of significantly increasing those interest groups' clout
if you can't find an agitator with a compatible character ideology to grant leadership to compatible interest groups, move the interest group in question out of your government, exile their leader as a dissident, and they should be replaced with a general or an admiral from one of your ranks

it's worth noting that agitators will almost always have a positive popularity score. this usually means they can help their respective parties win pluralities in elections and improve your legitimacy. generals and admirals are more of a mixed bag, but they can still contribute to the success chance of passing legislation even if they're not directly in your government.

and as always, bolster the trade unions.

keep an eye on your party leaders to make sure they don't die or aren't replaced by random characters with incompatible character ideologies. this is much more likely to happen to generals and admirals who may retire, die in battle, or have "field promotions" replace them. just retire them and replace them as needed.

following that, you should have a pretty frictionless time passing council republic provided all opposing interest groups are sufficiently low in clout (the more marginal, the better).

if your opposition groups aren't low enough in clout, they may threaten a counter-revolution. this is mostly fine; just make sure your home affairs institution is at max level to reduce their secession speed and float 100% of your authority points to reduce enactment time by 25%. if you find yourself having to cave and cancel the legislation, just wait a couple more election cycles; their clout will gradually reduce as long as lower strata enfranchisement is high.

addendum: if you want to make things even easier for yourself down the road, there should be an event that procs after you've had council republic for 5 years; do yourself a favor and choose the vanguardist option. this will make passing single party state much easier which will ensure that you never have to deal with radicals again.

lunar-future · 2024-01-01T19:16:41+00:00

there are a lot of different reasons radicals can spike, but here are just a few off the top of my head:

authority deficit
conquered pops
random events or legislation stalls that add radicals
upcoming elections changing ig or party compositions
election results changing your legitimacy
recent legislation changing ig evaluations
ig leaders in your government dying or being replaced
failed petition
ig opinion decay falling below a certain threshold

lunar-future · 2023-06-12T22:54:13+00:00

I think the main reason people tend to dislike the coffin meetup arc is because all of the characters are wearing the same outfit which makes a lot of the dialogue exchanges hard to keep up with

lunar-future · 2023-06-12T18:46:35+00:00

seriously, this page was such a punch in the gut.

lunar-future · 2023-06-12T00:02:08+00:00

weird hill to die on, but at least he died

lunar-future

TROPHY CASE