Obviously there’s a proxy war between russia and the west in ukraine, but I don’t think the US wants a long attritional war.

They could have done more to not end up in one, but I think escalation management really is driving a lot of decisions in washington.

Bauxite is the obvious one. Bringing bauxite to Australia. How could you forget about bauxite?

There was a greek-australian comedian who was standing in front of the parthenon and said something like, “You can tell this house is greek cause of all the pillars”.

I generally recoil from comparing biden to putin but this really requires russian levels of post-truth politics.

Israel is committing war crimes like trump commits all his crimes - openly, in public and shielded by US elites.

Short answer: it isn’t

The power structures that make ‘the west’ a bloc in the international system are 100% defending Israel’s genocide.

We’re giving them weapons, vetoing on their behalf in the UN, denying that the text book genocide going on is a genocide. Netanyahu’s war crimes are as obvious and publicly committed as trump’s money laundering and election subversion, yet biden is pretending that the ICC warrant is unjustified.

Despite a growing number of brutally beaten protestors, it’s still true to say that the west is supporting israeli war crimes.

Dear god in heaven - I’m pretty sure that applying percentages to a d20 violates the geneva convention.

Thanks for the horror story! What a cautionary take in how to destroy an otherwise serviceable core mechanic.

Could you elaborate a little on the design issues?

From Wikipedia it looks like you roll 3d20 looking for at least two successes, where the TN is a character attribute.

I find success counting mechanics are much lower cognitive load at the table than adding up mechanics, plus there’s a sensible limit to the number of dice and players will always have the target number written on their character sheet.

Plus that gives you a fairly clear 4 levels of success which is always easy to interpret as crit/pass/fail/crit fail.

I personally don’t like using D20s but that core mechanic seems fairly smooth and elegant to me. Where does the physics degree part come in? Too many overly complex subsystems? Weird character creation?

That code is to computer porn as the Hunt the Wumpus is to computer games.

Boeing is an important part of our military industrial base and thus an important part of the broader structure of US power.

That’s why they’re allowed to kill whistleblowers without repercussion.

That sounds like an incredibly exciting moment in the fiction! I always ask the other players what they think about character X bringing heat down on the crew.

One of the tensest most dramatic scenes i’ve seen in blades started with the characters doing a very threat-of-violence based intervention on the addict who kept mouthing off about their scores (+heat after indulging their vice). The target of the intervention made some very good points about the character who organized the intervention and there was this moment where everyone, one by one, changed the target of their drawn weapons.

Pineapple on pizza is a lumpers vs splitters divide.

Broccoli, pineapple and jalapeno is one of my favorite pizzas, but a lot of western palates struggle with some honestly delicious food when it crosses the boundary we set between savoury and sweet dishes.

A lot of others cuisines aren’t burdened with this arbitrary distinction and happily lump the savoury, sweet, sour and spicy into the same delicious dish.

Think of them as 2 methods for determining policy

They’re not though.

Democracy is a strategy some states use to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of the populace. Science is a method for producing knowledge.

Policy is determined by the financial interests of our elites, our global imperial interests, and the form of our bureaucratic institutions.

Democracy, science and policy are three very distinct domains.

Civilization is one of those great words (like Innovation) where if you’re using it, you’re definitely using it wrong.

When you say civilization, do you mean: The State, Justified Violence, Official Oppression, Bureaucracy, A Standing Army, Cultures you Agree with, or just Table Manners?

if politicians would grow a backbone, most of the problems we have would be solved

Politicians aren’t scared to do what’s right. Their job is to act in the interest of their fellow elites. The most successful at empowering their fellows are given more power. Solving society’s problems isn’t remotely on the agenda.

If anything, we want more cowardly and timid elites. Politicians with a backbone are just more dangerous predators.

Not everything is about productivity, sheesh. Sometimes you just want to emiserate the poor for the joy of it.

For those who are truly into etiquette, we understand that it is a gift we give to others and hope they will choose to return in kind.

What well-wrought words!

I feel like there’s a picture of etiquette where it’s always stuffy and exists only to reinforce unjust hierarchies. Etiquette as a gift given freely with hope but no expectation of return is a great alternate model.

I love this comment so much, but it feels hypocritical for a supporter of Canadian cricket to be lecturing people about doing it wrong.

**Except for allergies or ARFID or something

You take the automatic RFID chip out of your food? How else will the app know when you’ve finished digesting?

One of the many things I loved about Taiwan was that people leave the left side of the escalator free for those who want to walk up or down.

There’s one single file line of people standing on the escalator. Even during the evening commute, there’s a single file line snaking back down into the station. But then as you get close there’s a much smaller line to the left moving much quicker of every who plans to walk up.

It’s so civilized.

how the light passes through and into it

Yeah that’s bananas. Looks incredible.