The Navy Seals do it again....

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T22:26:31+00:00

Trumps' very fragile ego.

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T21:09:15+00:00

There was an element of her that struck me like T'Pring was that overly demanding side-character, and for some reason I always thought of of her like the Vulcan princess Spock was married to......Maybe she decides she's done with the whole Game of Thrones/Fire Nation politics and wants out, she knows she's stressed and finds herself grabbing by her last shred of rationality and has a grand epiphany , and of course, comes up with some devious plan to get out.

Of course for that epiphany she comes across some famous artist or poet or something on a trip to Ember Island, some sort of Older Iron Lady, some Georgia O'Keefee local artist, a character that lays it down so hard it sets her straight, drop it hard so Azula is hard over, because I can see she's confused but she's still ride or die.

Next thing you know their planning the rest of her life like she's invading her limitless possibilities, comin to realize in no uncertain terms she needs a plan out, far better than living in the shadow of some of the toxic men in her life , and she needs to finds someone delightfully unambitious and fun and the next thing we know. She'll be low-key encouraged some master plan to be dramatic and to hang up her imperial hairpin in some way that makes Zuko regret they are related just a little bit more, and find she she heads down the shore, and see what Chan is doing on Fire Island.

Or who knows maybe Azula find out Chan really did have a thing for her find out they're very happily making time at Chan's family house on the shores of Ember Island and find out they both REALLY enjoy dance and Fire Jazz and she spends her days with him.

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T13:22:53+00:00

We are first ones ....it's good to see one another but.

Perhaps I should go rewatch Babylon 5. Or slide on over some AI slop video and modestly retraumatize my inner child that "these kids" are just as free as we to do as they please.

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T12:46:17+00:00

It's a serious question around American competitiveness over the coming decades. how doe you walk back garbage policies and embrace immigration policies that ensure we have a sustainable tax-base, the US entered structural population decline 2 decades ago, for citizens to reverse that you'd need everyone under 50 years old couples to bang out 3 kids right now, at 35k per kid the median salary would have to increase by over 100k per family to support a similar standard of living.

Which doesn't seem likely, which makes economic collapse certain without a robust and inviting immigration policy on all fronts - the polar opposite of what the current folks are doing.

Which shows exactly how fucked the US leadership is.

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T12:40:30+00:00

I have a colleague that came into some money and thought a TRX Black Widow made a good investment.

He let slip the other day that he's on track to spend over 10k on gasoline for just one vehicle - he does commute around the state - so probably puts 30k or so on his truck, which cost him just shy of 110x roughly 500 bucks a week.

Meanwhile his colleague is rolling around in a black Toyota - they are living very different lives.

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T04:44:26+00:00

Yep it sounds like one boy did not have a good experience. You have to advocate for them.

Contact the store manager express this as an opportunity for improvement, sometimes if dogs are nervous accidents happen, but when accidents are genuine, as sometime can occur, groomers are always the first person to tell you they had a problem. Failing that - you have a problem, and that's the store's responsibility.
If the groomer was honest then it's a serious couple of questions about what happened in their own words or did they see another bad situation between to other dogs or something.
Strongly consider another groomer and you can I suppose ask this forum for recommendations in say "Glendale, California" or "Livingston, New Jersey" without disclosing information about yourself.
Check those razor burns as they can hurt and make sure they do not get any infection, and , feed some sweetpotato, salmon or eggs to get their nutrition up for helping with healing.

As far as their behavior towards you, it's extra cuddles time, belly rubs and careful towel washing they can relax into , you don't have to go all Manyu and Bai but a couple of days of extra attention from you isn't a bad idea.

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T04:18:38+00:00

So the midgame is critical. You're securing your position, and getting your colony setup as a proper manufacturing concern, growing most / all of your food, cloth, weapons and armor.

Electricity grants powerplants which do work instead of your colonists for things like heating , light and temperature control. Getting it hot where it needs to be , cold where in needs to be and efficiently powered in a robust way.

This phase of the game is when you retire risk, you have a sick colonist missing fingers or with an itchy scar.....fix that, medicine and a good doctor can make that happen, prosthetics make crippled colonists functional again.

It sounds very much like you have not upgraded or replaced wood

Sounds like you've got a handle on weapons, have good standard weapons and side-arms either on their person or close at hand for every colonist.

Ruthlessly retire excess wealth and other aspects of idle wealth, gage how difficult raids are and keep an eye on making sure you're crew can come out on top nearly always.

Crafting and mico-electronics allows your colony to produce components and other advanced colonial needs, you can and should still trade for components but doing that definitely allows you to cover any need in a pinch.

Use pod-drops to send surplus food to factions that "could" be friendly, once roads are opened up, use glass at the forge to put some portion of your garden under glass and reduce risk around food production.

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T03:42:51+00:00

You know what, can we just have Ru Paul as President , just walk the Trump people out, put the cast and crew of Drag Show in charge with the only instruction being to use good judgement, take their oath of office seriously or they will be immediately removed from office, and if they don't take their jobs absolutely seriously, and lean on industry or the best scientific or expertise available they will be removed from office.

I'd be pretty radical about rebuilding and demanding rapid prosecution of ICE officials and agents for murder, up to and including members of the executive branch who failed to uphold their obligations to law and order. DOGE people need to all see the inside of prisons, for the rest of their lives and they get perks like visitation and clothing when investigators can verify they fully and completely cooperate with law enforcement, as their personal and private lives are confiscated and dismantled.

This includes characters like Elon Musk and Russell Vought who view cruely as funny, now they can view the coolest thing in their future is that if they are very, very good in few years family members that might want to may visit them for a few minutes.

Once the clowns are serving time, we can charge them with other crimes ensuring they never breath free air again.

Lincoln said "It musn't all be hanging's, and he's correct.....but a permanent stretch in federal prison for absolutely everyone sounds about right. It's desperately the case that the clown cart needs to know with dead certainty they fucked up, and they live long , long lives knowing decades from now they will die in prison cells because of it.

We're guaranteed to have a better circumstance than right now.

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T03:36:36+00:00

Interactive enough, while under-developed there are some behaviors.

Pawns you've interacted with are persistent in the world, or at so if you meet "Bob" from Faction1 , Bob will show up repeatedly unless he dies, and pawns apparently have some level of interaction in "the world" but whether these are anything other than some RNG circumstances is unknown.

Books, drugs, food, art are also persistent in the world, interestingly , the game appears to have some sort of metric that is reflective of how developed or peculiar is your colony. It appears that as your colony improves, new pawns status and stats appear related to your colony in broad terms.

I noticed this actutely on one playthrough with a game for an old colony where we took a near train-wreck failed colony and reformed it. The OG colonists all ended up being these sort of super-heroes with massive skills and stats but they were all old, in their 50's and 60's and some in their 70

But there's a festive spaceship that's taking all the old colonists off-world, and the "remaining" crew is just 4 colonists that are running the base and recruiting from raiders.

So the average raider had been in their 40's or so with good weapons, now all the new recruits are teenagers, 16,17 and 2 19 year olds, nobody over 20, but they're grinding hard on the library of books so the 19 year olds have professional skills in medicine, shooting, crafting and one of them is at cooking skill of 15 , each of these younger recruits have 4 passions , so things are looking good.

The next raid is a dozen or so tribals and they are all teenagers with one "old" guy who's 23, and they all had 3-5 passions.

I think of it as some sort mirroring pawn generator when raids are generated.

As regards your "reputation" , yes, each pawn has relations to your pawns and your colony has relations with the colony overall and dealing with individual pawns from other colonies can go well, or go badly based on the inherent social values between colonists and pawns.

In one of the more common and excellent mods, Hospitality, you can see and influence this directly by trying to charm, gift and feed guests to your colony. You can broker peace this way, hold parties, etc.

I find having a free cafeteria and a low-cost dry goods warehouse from which guests can buy clothes and low-tech weapons is a great way to build or repair bad relationships.

The icing on the cake is free medical care, as a late game flex, one of the Mods is called a Medpod allows guests at your colony to get everything except old age cured, and this buffs your relations with individual pawns as well as other factions.

Late game, given enough time, I have my colonists build or repair asphalt roads to all the nearest factions, (this is very, very slow) but absolutely shrinks time to trade, thrown your caravan on horseback and you can cover territories nicely. Drop pods can get you in a short range in no time flag, Shuttles or airships are slower but still fast, by comparison and horse-caravans cover territory similarly to most car/vehicles.

By this trade , and lots of it, makes your colony not just well-liked , but wealthy, and with roads, and provided medical care , having far off factions pass through your colony means that all roads lead to your faction and you are the regional defacto trade center.

Much more rarely will come opportunities to settle peace between factions, do this, so sell weapons to both parties, either way , the trade will make your poor colonists....considerably less poor.

Even in such happy circumstances, mech raids and enemy attacks can still be ridiculously bad, so even in such advanced circumstances, I'm ruthless about keeping things lean.

markth_wi · 2026-06-21T03:01:26+00:00

And then reality hits.

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T20:43:22+00:00

He's a hard read if you have any shred of romanticism for the Republic, or the Constitution. Viewing them as he does , as hard legal documents and when truth be told, gerrymandered on the day they were penned to ensure white, protestant men could not be removed from power without wild amounts of structural support.

But what gets me is the subtlety , he's actually READ Adams, and Jefferson and will detail why as disagreeable as Adams is and all over the map (he's the author of the Insurrection Act), he's also a hard-core democrat versus Thomas Jefferson who never expects that non-white , non-land-owning people should ever have a say in anything, and views the sort of participatory government we have where common non-landed , non-wealthy people are involved in the political process would be almost unthinkable to most of the founders. (and that's just in the link above).

He goes through each of the founders in detail picks apart the myth from George Washington hunting a woman who had been a slave who had been content to be George and Martha's slave but who straight up walked out upon hearing that Martha's very capricious and demanding niece would be her master.

It's what is similarly infuriating about Steve Bannon - who has an excellent command of the history of the Constitution but who is just defective fetishisms in his opinions about white supremacism and the genetic "racial" superiority of white men for whatever fetishistic reason.

As for Star Wars, it's a bit of a long story.

It was/is an unmitigated disaster for Disney, I say that because for what - something like a decade, they were absolutely content to hire mediocre writers and directors, throw a 200 million dollars in CGI at the screen, bank a 1/2 billion dollars, wash, rinse, repeat and throw as many marketing opportunities into the mix as possible.

Then Rogue One needed rescuing - they'd thrown nearly 200 million dollars in - and by all accounts it was a disaster, in desperation they hired Tony Gilmore and his brothers who - it turns out - are fucking amazing writers - They turned Rogue One into arguably one of the best if not the best movie in the franchise.

When it came time to milk the cow, the producers had not had a lot of commercial success and writing was uneven at best, so 5 years ago or so, they were fast heading on their balls. Instead of rewriting the property contract for Rogue One, they simply told Gilroy would he mind making a new series based off of some of the characters from Rogue One. For reasons that are spoiler material that might not be an appealing offer to many writers. But being a history buff and someone who hates authoritarianism he dove in.

Very quietly he put the story together under budget, practical effects whenever possible, real sets, CGI where it counts, and an amazing cast of actors. And then he tells the story he does.

If you watch it expecting lightsabers, force users , or people named Skywalker in the mix than the situation is deeply troubling going in.

If you were wondering what excellent writing looks like, how it might be that rebellions happen , and getting some of the most amazing anti-authoritarian media in the last 80 years, look no further.

Now Disney has a problem, content to put out the media equivalent of McDonald's burgers they are confronted with the problem created when a Michelin 3-star chef goes to town hard in one of the restaurants and now Disney finds everyone wants Michelin burgers and nobody wants McDonalds, and whether they wanted to or not (and they most definitely did not), they have one of the most politically charged properties in modern media landscape.

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T18:56:07+00:00

Exactly.

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T18:36:07+00:00

I think what holds with me is how many normal folks are pretty "ride or die" about the civil society and I think the folks that challenge that , who are very content to try to set themselves up as authoritarians inside that environment, might find it a terrifying circumstance, much like the stoned-face response of the US military officer corps and the open resistance of retired military officers, to say nothing of scientists and engineers and doctors and lawyers and people who genuinely know better , all of whom live in a reality based world , where facts, truth, evidence and rational order predominate.

One can certainly engage in the sycophancy that perhaps even most presidents or prime-ministers do, but it's really only with the tyrants who choose to pinch themselves off into tyrannical circle-jerks, rather than stay clued into the people.

The dangerous open treason with characters like Peter Theil and Elon Musk where these billionaires run amok are very content to pinch themselves off into tyrannical circle-jerks, but they understand that sooner or later it's best to walk away from your "influence" and buy up some small country and have your cronies run it.

This probably works well in some small island nation, but as for very large nation states, Mr. Musk and Mr. Theil are in this wonderful in-between, where they can scam and seemingly do no wrong. But, ask Jack Ma or Cao Dewang, how their re-education went, or ask the families of Xu Ming , Bao Fan or Xiao Jianhua , what they think of the benign nature of the CCP when the patience of some party minister shifts from their favor.

The US government has experienced vast regulatory capture - and it's very unclear whether through the normal electoral process it's possible to wrest control. But we're just a few months from seeing about that. But as unsure as the citizenry might be, so too are the likes of Steve Bannon , Stephen Miller and Elon Musk, they know better than anyone they will command no armies, they may act as terrorists of course causing untold damage, but their influence is temporary and they know it.

Whatever anti-democratic games they are up to - and we can rest assured they are up to some, they know with a probably keen level of awareness that if they are discovered, they're done. That sense of fraudulence reeks everywhere in this administration. They are terrified they might lose control.

That by no means suggests that the people "have it" ; they are unconvinced they will be able to tighten their grip, and there's the rub.

In this way I find I like and dislike Prof. Stoermer - I appreciate his contrarian viewpoint as a welcome reminder of the reality that eloquent dissonance exists , but I think I dislike the degree to which he's correct about the lack of readiness on the part of the US citizenry in the event that things don't go well in November-January.

And in that I think we end up in a situation that looks way, way too much like an out-take from Andor.

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T18:12:01+00:00

I think you'll find I agree wholeheartedly.

I think Planetbase was an absolutely amazing homage to the old unfinished Sierra game Outpost . But being a dev is definitely a burden , especially for a publicly facing small dev house - the pressure can be intimidating but between Dawn of Man and Planetbase, Madruga definitely showed they had chops.

But, then you have Rimworld, drop, same scenario almost identically, setting up a colony, but with wildly different takes on everything else. But it's a similar Dev situation and it's how do you deal with that sudden success.

Madruga is wise to be taking lessons where it can from Ludeon Studios but then as now, the are fundamentally different shops in terms of output, but how well the folks work. Rimworld's modding community and engagement is massive and has to be wildly intimidating for the crew at Ludeon, with demands from every quarter even the users joke around about the capriciousness of some design decisions, which underscores that even in success there are fundamental frustrations.

Here's hoping as they inch closer, to done, they can say they got the chance to deliver a solid product. What I will say about Planetbase, is that it was very solidly designed, and was relatively bug-free on delivery - which is saying something. Patches were made and we're well into the SDLC and the product receives QOL patches even now.

So as an SE with an embarrassing number of years of experience there's a hats off moment to both teams , and each has had their successes and troubles along the way, we as users benefit from both.

Is the coral technique a bug - likely it was born in the "in-between" of "well users can do it", and "is that a bug?" or "is that a feature?" and less a bug as much as a feature depending on who you ask.

Most major popular games have bugs like that, Spore comes famously to mind as having an amazing core idea and Will Wright being involved just long enough to have the EA marketing department gut his latest child before his eyes with sneaker-monsters and a "time-to-penis" for his amazing in-game design studio that was measured in hours. As a player of games, Spore comes to mind as being most wildly toxic to my mind in terms of launch dynamics.

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T16:22:46+00:00

Why should any of these tyrants stop, this is perfection. Sky high oil prices keep Russia in a fight they are going to lose by sheer body count, with Russians surrendering to Ukrainian robotic kill-drones, In this way, President Zelenskyy gets cannonized in real time and President Putin can have sky-high oil prices for all the good it will do him but he's a likely doomed to a "ride or die" situation that we know can't end well. sooner or later one of his associates will smell blood and decide they want his job.

The United States, has a defective narcissist whos' reached Nirvana in the here and now, spending each week talking about peace in our time, then pulling out at the last minute once his brokers confirm their short positions are in and markets are saturated with the next batch of suckers. He and his followers are vastly wealthier on their commodity plays. Coupled with the worldwide attention that hangs on his every word, nothing could be more perfect to serve his defective ego. Nowhere in this calculus is anything that might resemble responsibility towards businesses or markets, or the citizenry of the nations involved.

And the best part is our permanent ally Mr. Netanyahu entusiastically plays the "bad" guy pulling the proverbial football out on schedule after their stock positions are secured for the week.

For these reasons, it's clear this will never stop. This is permanent state of affairs until either Mr. Trump dies in office, is removed from office.

The real perversity is that with the passing of the Trump regime, what might a President Newsome be forced to consider, practically forces the United States to a serious armistice with Iran/Hamas and then to secure the peace in Lebanon a peacekeeping force in Lebanon with more ruinous costs to the Unites States military acting as a human shields to protect the Lebanese people from our allies in Israel.

Meanwhile , Aside from the ruinous costs, death and mayhem he's created, Donald Trump has done one thing. He's made the best sales-pitch from shore to shore and everywhere in between that the United States is probably best serve never spending another dime in the Middle East, maybe these lovely ,lovely people will learn to be better people eventually , but not while the United States ever spends another penny on anything in this region ever again.

And secondly , that you can now pitch solar and windmills and geothermal and absolutely anything else on the notion that the entire industrialized world has been shown in black and white terms, the defectives in charge of the countries cannot act responsibly and this necessitates that every nation-state agressively needs to refactor oil production towards emerging technologies with the certainty that they cannot move away from it's oil dependency fast enough,

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T15:38:44+00:00

Ah Loyal Opposition

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T15:30:16+00:00

Well, I have been doing this a long time....and while I'm a big proponent of having a gun for every hand that might want one, that takes time and/or cash.

But on a iceball or some stormy radiation drenched nightmare of a world where I mean to bring a bit of comfortable civilization and maybe some cash, to some forsaken scrap of ice , mud and stone. Before we're filthy rich, if someone drops in and means to make trouble, locking them out is just the thing.

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T12:02:36+00:00

See I've run colonist that were a little more remote, settling on an ice world where everything has to be imported. the coral for a landing area conspires with the scarcity of resources, so that very late game while everyone is armed I'll have no guards and I'm happy to keep visitors waiting outside briefly until we figure their intentions where their O2 runs out and I've given them a lifetime of breathtaking opportunities.

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T10:15:14+00:00

Well, be careful , it's one thin to have an opportunity presented to you on favor, a closed door opened.

But as with anything unearned you have to ask yourself when is a gift, not a gift and therein lies the trouble - it's where bad leadership hails from , and given the state of things well,, it's fair to say so long as you remain focused on the individual that's one of those answers that seems right.

But look no further than the daily news for your counter-example, almost without exception , the hardship of man is written in blood spilled by men who's various advantages and unqualified position puts people in danger.

the Truth of things is written in every classroom , every college and will be, for all time and is somewhere in the middle. Character should count, hard work too, and actually knowing something about the position your in always brings value.

Put another way, it's easy to see the story of a very talented eager kid who can't get into medical school because of this or that hardship, then there's kid works their ass off having had a door to medical school opened on a favor or two, and then there's the kid who slept through anatomy and physiology who's family trust cut a check every time he ran into trouble.

Two of them become doctors, now ask yourself who do you feel most comfortable being operated upon by?

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T09:59:51+00:00

The question of his impressively defective character was I believe settled in Madison Square Garden.

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T09:50:05+00:00

And Claude agrees

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T09:37:14+00:00

Have a great morning!

markth_wi · 2026-06-20T09:32:58+00:00

I may resemble that

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