People are pretty stupid and uncritically believe the myths about the republican party. Guy I worked with said “the republicans will unlock the economy” so he voted for trump. And then tariffs borked his business, and the war in iran probably killed some of his family. But he still jokes, as an iranian immigrant, about ICE abductions. Some people are just stupid.

That’s the heart of conservatism: hierarchy

There are many who would happily lobby to refuse all emergency services, rights, legal protections, healthcare, etc to those who are “undeserving”.

I go on about this a lot, but the book “Dying of Whiteness” has examples of that. One guy literally was dying but still didn’t want those people to have free health care, even if it would save his life.

I think part of the problem is that Bethesda doesn’t really seem to have a good critical understanding. They like the superficial stuff, like children. Like this meme, I guess.

If you haven’t read Eco’s essay on ur-fascism, it’s a good read: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

So we come to my second point. There was only one Nazism. We cannot label Franco’s hyper-Catholic Falangism as Nazism, since Nazism is fundamentally pagan, polytheistic, and anti-Christian. But the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change. The notion of fascism is not unlike Wittgenstein’s notion of a game. A game can be either competitive or not, it can require some special skill or none, it can or cannot involve money. Games are different activities that display only some “family resemblance,” as Wittgenstein put it. Consider the following sequence:

1___2___3___4

abc bcd cde def

Suppose there is a series of political groups in which group one is characterized by the features abc, group two by the features bcd, and so on. Group two is similar to group one since they have two features in common; for the same reasons three is similar to two and four is similar to three. Notice that three is also similar to one (they have in common the feature c). The most curious case is presented by four, obviously similar to three and two, but with no feature in common with one. However, owing to the uninterrupted series of decreasing similarities between one and four, there remains, by a sort of illusory transitivity, a family resemblance between four and one.

Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.

Musk is a sack of shit that doesn’t deserve nice things. I hope he, as the saying goes, dies mad about this.

This was Hinge, which is owned by Match Group (who own okcupid and many others). It’s the least bad, I found, but that is extremely faint praise.

I used to use OKCupid way back. It used to be better. I’m pretty sure you could search. Like you could just type in “Star Trek” or “Dark Souls” and find people who had that on their profile. Nowadays you just take what the algorithm gives you.

Glad I finally am in a position where I’m not on the apps (knock on wood, etc). I was getting dates but I could always tell it was in spite of their best efforts.

And even the person I’m with now, I feel like the app algorithm thought we’d be like an 80%. On paper it doesn’t seem like it’d be a long term fit- i have a cat, she has a dog. I like a lot of metal, she likes jam bands. Lot of room for the algorithm to predict we’d have a few dates and then it wouldn’t work out.

And as someone else said, most of them are owned by Match group. Even the myths of capitalism require competition for products to be good. Match should be broken up.

Fortunately someone already did a lot of the work for you. That’s one of the mods I consider mandatory for every playthrough and lets you freely tweak a tons of rules.

Oh yeah, the last time I replayed the games I used that. I had some sort of dwarf berserker that was pretty strong, until the end game where being angry wasn’t enough.

Wonder if getting it to work on linux is trivial… Someone did a writeup at least: https://moebiusproject.gitlab.io/mods_on_linux

I feel like you’d rapidly cross a point of having changed so many rules, you just have a different game with the same story. Which is maybe fine, but at that point maybe just make your own story too.

I’d end up changing like every piece of the rules system if I tried to make it more to my taste.

Loved the game as a child. Really struggle with the rule system now.

The combat is kind of shallow. There’s a lot of tedious kiting, or just rolling the dice and waiting.

The sense of wonder was pretty top notch though.

Maybe I can work this fact in the next time I’m going on about how cars are bad for us

A top priority for me is the people who do stuff benefit from that stuff, instead of some removed jerks.

Along side health care, food, shelter, an environment that’s sustainable for human life.

I’m not familiar with anarchism’s solutions to these things.

Some of these streets are busy with double parked cars and a painted on bike lane. I still believe if someone’s parked in the bike lane you should be able to do whatever you want to the car.

There’s one spot I’ve been through a lot, on this list, where they want the bike to merge into the center lane in order to continue. Insane.

Just read people’s history by Howard zinn and that’ll radicalize a lot of people. It’s just the rich fucking everyone over and over.

the reaction I’ve gotten from many of my family members and friends is that choosing to study abroad as an American is inherently a downgrade, regardless of the university or country

That’s insane. Pure emotional slop not based in any facts.

You’re not casually going to convince them otherwise. Facts don’t matter. Here, read this: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

Interesting read. I didn’t know long COVID was so pervasive.

It’s frustrating to think about how things could be better if we had a competent government.

Conservatism is entirely about the laws applying differently to different people. The king is special. The nobles are a little less special. The peasants are trash. The slaves are worse. That’s the conservative world. Hierarchy. So of course they don’t want to apply rules to their chief.

They are worse than children.

I remember when 9/11 happened I wanted to know who did it, why they did it, what we would do next. Most of the adults were just freaking out and had no idea.

There’s always a chunk of people who want to be the boot. And a chunk of people who are happy to eat boots if they can be the boot sometimes.

And it also wasnt you until you suffered a personal tragedy that.made you reevaluate your stance. Because that is what it sounds like.

Generally, people change their mind from in group pressure, or trauma. That’s really it. Facts from the out-group won’t do it. Looks like a bit of trauma shook the author up here.