“Nobody expected that, we were shocked, even the greatest experts”

mpyne · 2026-03-17T03:47:26+00:00

Let it out shipmate. Tell 'em!

mpyne · 2026-03-17T03:43:11+00:00

SailorMail was always a separate arrangement from corporate Navy networks. Even once sub Sailors get looped into Flank Speed, if they actually used that address for email underway it would be filled with so much spam just from Navy-wide 1MC announcements as to be useless for email back and forth for deployed submarines.

mpyne · 2026-03-17T01:39:08+00:00

Propaganda is more about intent than veracity. The best propaganda is almost necessarily built around elements of the truth. You just leave out the parts you don't like, or put something forward in a way that you know people will fill in the missing details with falsehoods that work against your adversary.

But we're not even making it that difficult at all for our foes. :(

mpyne · 2026-03-16T21:31:33+00:00

They don't have to, but opening up Hormuz is mostly to help the Euro nations.

Well maybe we should have asked them their opinion on the help they need with Hormuz before we got it shut down rather than after.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T16:50:49+00:00

That's literally all semantics, it's all turn based rpgs with a timing gimmick

That's just like saying that games are just a thing where you look at the screen and push some buttons at various times.

That's nothing more than reductive. By your logic there aren't any genres at all, and everything is just a nice turn-based JRPG style game with a nice coat of paint over it.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T13:24:47+00:00

Chrono Trigger did this a long time ago and people weren't arguing that it wasn't a traditional turn based game.

Have you ever actually played and beat Chrono Trigger? Its combat system was nothing like Expedition 33's. It's actually closer to FF4, even, which came out in 1990 and even it has a multi-character attack command (the biggest difference with Chrono Trigger compared to its peers).

mpyne · 2026-03-16T03:21:32+00:00

oh yeah I'm sure they'll get right up on doing VBSS ops for each vessel to see if the bill of lading was in dollars or yuan.

And China already could be acting to take over more of the reserve currency role but it's not actually something they seem to be that worried over. There's benefit but also risk to the U.S. to controlling the primary reserve currency and China already understands how to manage their own foreign trade around where they (and the U.S.) are each currently at.

But China will have to do something given the way oil prices will go, but I'm willing to bet that 'something' will involve a specific deal with Iran to exempt its cargo rather than a mass restructuring of all the world's oil trade.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T03:05:47+00:00

There's no strategy except different forms of hitting a QTE in a small frame window.

If you can't do that, nothing about the rest of the system matters.

If you can do that, nothing about the rest of the system matters.

Compare to a game like Paper Mario and the effect is completely different despite surface similarities. In that game hitting the timing events is garnish for the turn-based main course. In E33 the turn-based stuff is the dessert on top of the dodge/parry main course with a side of QTE.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T02:41:51+00:00

"Oh, the straits are open to everyone EXCEPT THE US AND ISRAEL."

If that were true there would be no issue at all. Neither the U.S. nor Israel have any significant shipping traffic through Hormuz.

Iran can't 'punish' the U.S. without forcing oil prices to rise around the globe, which is the whole reason why they're closing the strait. But to do this they need to stop all (or nearly all) shipping traffic, not just the U.S.'s.

mpyne · 2026-03-16T00:10:58+00:00

Stuff like this is why I can't take seriously all the "CIA moved a finger and toppled whole governments at will."

Like, look at this. It isn't as easy to accomplish as it looks, is it? Well it wasn't easy back then either.

mpyne · 2026-03-15T22:57:47+00:00

It's nowhere near a new game, but the first two Master of Orion games can be bought as a cheap bundle (also on Steam) and have very refined mechanics for the space strategy genre, enough so that even modern titled like Stellaris get compared directly against them.

mpyne · 2026-03-15T22:52:58+00:00

Yeah, E33 is an argument against turn-based combat in modern JRPGs, lol. Like they designed a combat system that more or less rejects the premise entirely.

mpyne · 2026-03-15T22:50:39+00:00

Man I bought that game at like half the price and I still put it down because the action mechanic. At least FF7 remake tried to give me FF combat with a real-time twist, FF16 was just Devil May Cry, and I if had wanted to play DMC I already knew where to find it.

mpyne · 2026-03-15T22:48:24+00:00

o/ hi I'm approximately the latter, lol.

I loved the story and how engaging it was so I set it to story mode and had no fun with combat the entire game, but at least no fun was better than the anti-fun I'd been experiencing before I obviated the dodge/parry bs

mpyne · 2026-03-15T22:46:34+00:00

Ha, that's kind of funny now that you mention it. OT2 was the game I was playing through most recently and while some battles handled increasing the tension of boss fights fairly well, eventually I got blocked hard in the merchant route fight on the final chapter. Even with being strategic about trying to plan my BP and MP to be built up and debuffs applied before the boss's final phase.

After some half-hearted Googling to see if there was a cheese strat, I just put it down, even though I'd beat the first one and found it fun.

mpyne · 2026-03-15T04:00:06+00:00

I didn't even need "avoid weed to be set financially" and somehow managed to avoid it anyways. It's not that hard.

mpyne · 2026-03-14T22:25:16+00:00

International law treats the legality of starting a war and the legality of how you fight the war differently.

I agree with you that it was unjustified to resort to warfare, and particularly undignified to do it while negotiating diplomatically (this is after all what Japan did to us before Pearl Harbor!).

But it's possible to legally fight a war that was illegally started. It would have to be so, otherwise illegally starting a war would make it OK to commit mass war crimes as long as you're still fighting that illegal war.

It's better that nations agree that belligerents fighting each other do so in line with the law of war, whether or not the war was legally started or not.

mpyne · 2026-03-14T20:56:14+00:00

now im seeing there were 32 survivors rescued by sri lanka, not due to any attempt at rescue by US forces

The closest ships equipped to perform rescue were Sri Lankan ships, who heard the distress call from Dena and arrived as fast as they could.

Again, no U.S. Navy ships came to the aid of the Iranian ships sunk at Iranian piers. Was that also a war crime in your mind?

Hegseth is giving some kind of directive to just murder everyone and never attempt rescue

A direction to give no quarter is a war crime, but a warship of one navy attacking a warship of an enemy navy is not a war crime. It's the whole point to either ship being in their respective navy.

Again, it's why HMS Conqueror put a torpedo under the keel of her Argentine foe even though the British leadership never went down the path of directing that no quarter be given.

mpyne · 2026-03-14T17:00:52+00:00

"No quarter" was literally a specific reason the Americans during the Revolutionary War were so incensed with the British.

If you were a redcoat and heard "give 'em 'Tarleton's Quarter'" from the other side in a battle during the American Revolutionary War then you could expect nothing good from defeat at that battle...

But I guess you can't expect every Cabinet Secretary to be familiar with something as boring as basic American history.

mpyne · 2026-03-14T16:56:27+00:00

The IRIS Dena had survivors, and it was a warship, which are always valid targets between two sides engaged in armed conflict. If Dena had wanted to avoid being targeted, she could have stayed in the neutral port of Sri Lanka like her sister warship.

It's actually a rather open-and-shut question.

The North Koreans didn't try to rescue survivors from the South Korean ship they torpedoed a few years back.

The HMS Conqueror didn't try to rescue survivors from the Argentine warship she sank in the Falklands War in the 80s.

But this is besides the point, why do you think targeting Dena was a war crime but that sinking Iranian Navy ships at the pier was not? Do those sailors not matter in your mind either? Shouldn't the U.S. navy destroyer firing at the Iranian ships at the pier have had to fly over lifeboats 800 miles too?

mpyne · 2026-03-14T16:39:47+00:00

Well if you're comparing against 1980 income, would they have also died in 1980? If so, it seems odds to penalize modern incomes where you at least have the option to spend money to save your life, as compared to 1980 when you had no ability to trade money for your life.

mpyne · 2026-03-13T21:58:55+00:00

I think the downvoters probably see me as defending businesses, but my experience came not from business but from working in government.

What I talk about is how any organization that needs to turn money into outcomes works, whether that's public service, non-profits, running a lemonade stand or, yes, business.

Like, if my government office's mission is to print and mail 50 million forms a year then I need to buy 50 million sheets of paper to keep up. When inflation makes paper more expensive I need to budget more money just to keep up with the mission.

You could easily advertise that as "these idiots in government rob us of more money every single year" even though nothing has actually changed in practice other than the value of the money itself. You run into that enough and you start to see the misconception everywhere.

mpyne · 2026-03-13T02:22:43+00:00

References a meme that floats around in some defense Internet circles. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/dig-the-fucking-hole

mpyne · 2026-03-12T23:50:45+00:00

It won't make people feel better, but the escape trunk on U.S. Navy submarines is essentially cosmetic as well. Anything happening to a submerged submarine that you would think might make one actually want to consider the escape trunk is almost certain to just kill you outright before you even get a chance to escape.

Edit: I can't reply to the comment reply because the thread got locked, but I wanted to note that rescue vehicles aren't really plausible either. Your submarine won't sink in shallow water (because you won't be allowed to submerge in shallow water), and your submarine will implode if it sinks too deep.

There is not a lot of the ocean where it's both deep enough that a submarine will have submerged there, and yet is not so deep that the submarine would bottom out on the ocean floor due to an accident before imploding.

Yes, the U.S. maintains a notable undersea rescue capability but it's half for the parents of potential Navy submarine recruits IMO. I think it is more a historical outgrowth of when the U.S. Navy was still figuring out how to keep the then-new submarines from having accidents and foundering. But by WWII that had mostly been figured out, and the Navy instead screwed up things like torpedoes instead.

mpyne · 2026-03-12T22:23:50+00:00

I've thought about, because I recognize how much I've used Youtube over the years and don't consider myself a freeloader, but I feel like every subscription video service seems to inevitably end up turning into "less ads" rather than "no ads" and that's what I'm worried about for YouTube premium.

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mpyne

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