Didn’t finish it. The city building aspect is barebones, doesn’t really feel like you have much creative freedom or strategic choice. They offer you narrative “choices” which I don’t think really affect the narrative, though I only played the thing once.
trompete [he/him]
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Cake day: October 16th, 2021
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10·19 days agoAlso now I’m at the point in the program where Ash is explaining that it’s just Netanyahu leading them all by the nose. I hate these people, they spend half the program complaining how the media and politicians are doing “industrial scale gaslighting” and then they come out with these bangers.
To summarize their shit takes:
- Iran should not respond, that’s dangerous.
- Trump doesn’t actually want to escalate.
- Obama did a great deal, it’s Trump’s fault for blowing it up.
- Iran shouldn’t have nukes, you can sort of see why they’d want them though. Also, Iran probably wasn’t totally transparent with the IAEA (source: the vibes coming out of Ash’s ass).
- Netanyahu is manipulating all of them, he’s the real problem.
.
They literally do not even for one second entertain any idea that the US has interest in the region, has geostrategic interests, and has for decades had plans to attack Iran.
Novara media had some peace studies professor on, and that guy (as well as interviewer) somehow think Iran has/had a chance to avoid a war (yes that’s basically how he phrased it) if they just keep quiet and don’t respond. How tf can you study this your whole life and think this whole escalation ladder wasn’t gamed out by a bunch of nerds, and that the US is following a plan here.
It’s so blatant in this instance especially, what with the US clearly constantly choosing to provoke an escalation and using diplomacy just as cover for sneak attacks. Obviously they’re not here to do a one-off bombing raid. If Iran doesn’t respond they’ll poke them more, and if they still don’t respond they’ll just cook up some narrative how they’re weak and this proves that regime change is just behind the
cornernext bombing run and why let this chance slip through our fingers, and how to be absolutely sure that Iran can’t get the bomb, regime change is definitely necessary, or maybe they’ll say they didn’t actually destroy Iran’s nuclear program and they’re definitely making a bomb right now under a children’s hospital or whatever they can come up with.The only reason why Iran would respond cautiously is to make the US look bad, but at this point how much of difference does that make? People have already made up their mind, the spin doctors are already spinning, and they’ll ignore international and public opinion as best they can like they always do anyway.
Peter Scholl-Latour (1924-2014), a prominent German journalist and middle east expert, worked for the BND (German foreign intelligence), newly released archive files reveal.
Scholl-Latour, as can be seen from the 70 or so pages of the BND archive, is said to have repeatedly reported on his travels and people he met to the BND in the 1980s. He is also said to have made film and photo material from war zones available to the BND even before it was published.
The historical documents also mention assignments for the BND: for example, it is said that Scholl-Latour was supposed to meet a BND source in Lebanon. Elsewhere it is noted that Scholl-Latour wanted to help identify a person from the GDR who was working for the International Red Cross in Africa.
German article: tagesschau (ARD/WDR) | archive
4·1 month agoI remember running a transparent* terminal like 20 years ago. I stopped that shit real quick because it affects readability.
* technically it was fake transparency back then, it would just display the wallpaper, but darkened
Overengineered by Germans
, over-complex UI and unstable (I blame the C++). Little vision except “similar to Windows but with more options”.Originally, Qt (the GUI library KDE uses) was proprietary and it still (I think) is corporate and not community-run, though it is now free software and has been for a long while. The people who started the project apparently didn’t care much about that, though I guess some people put in significant effort later to convince whatever corporate entity was in charge of Qt at the time (I think Trolltech) to release under dual LGPL/proprietary license. Gnome was basically started as a fully free software alternative to KDE.
Otherwise it’s fine, definitely has a target audience who love that shit, and it also doesn’t deserve being called KKKDE.
As per his husband on facebook:
Statement from Tristan Kern de Gonzales
Husband of Jonathan Joss
My husband Jonathan Joss and I were involved in a shooting while checking the mail at the site of our former home. That home was burned down after over two years of threats from people in the area who repeatedly told us they would set it on fire. We reported these threats to law enforcement multiple times and nothing was done.
Throughout that time we were harassed regularly by individuals who made it clear they did not accept our relationship. Much of the harassment was openly homophobic.
When we returned to the site to check our mail we discovered the skull of one of our dogs and its harness placed in clear view. This caused both of us severe emotional distress. We began yelling and crying in response to the pain of what we saw.
While we were doing this a man approached us. He started yelling violent homophobic slurs at us. He then raised a gun from his lap and fired.
Jonathan and I had no weapons. We were not threatening anyone. We were grieving. We were standing side by side. When the man fired Jonathan pushed me out of the way. He saved my life.
Jonathan is my husband. He gave me more love in our time together than most people ever get. We were newlyweds. We picked Valentines Day. We were in the process of looking for a trailer and planning our future.
He was murdered by someone who could not stand the sight of two men loving each other.
I was with him when he passed. I told him how much he was loved.
To everyone who supported him, his fans, his friends, know that he valued you deeply. He saw you as family.
My focus now is on protecting Jonathan’s legacy and honoring the life we built together.
If your concern is how someone coped with trauma or how loudly they speak when recounting injustice and being ignored by authorities then you never truly cared about my husband.
Jonathan saved my life. I will carry that forward. I will protect what he built.
– Tristan Kern de Gonzales
In the last week, I have seen two videos of groups of men punching and puting to flight TCC officers. And one video that supposedly shows a TCC office going up in flames. Previously, this stuff was rare; you’d usually see mainly women shoving and berating the TCC pressgangs, and obviously the guys being kidnapped trying to escape. The TCC wasn’t getting attacked though, that seems new.
I would like a row of sittings ducks please.
Best I can do are sitting duck related meetings with expensive consultants.
Perfect!
But that’s what I’m asking. Assuming the quote is correct, and he really did say a decision has been made to create a security zone and they’re currently solving this problem, what does that mean?
Security zone is vague af (which I guess is the point), but people have been speculating about quite a large area potentially. Something about getting Moscow out StormShadow range, everything east of the Dnieper, stuff like that. And whatever forces crossed into Sumi chasing the Ukrainians out of Kursk, that’ll not be enough to achieve that. So must be an offensive, am I wrong? They would not announce this before starting, so they would have started already. It’s also about time for a spring/summer offensive, assuming they had one planned. Supposedly they built up two new armies.
But who knows I guess we’ll see in the next few days.
Did Putin just announce an offensive to take half of Ukraine?
4·2 months agoOk, I have another one. Radi (“Rettich”), which is long white radish and quite big. It tastes similar to the small red round radishes.
You cut it into an accordion-like strip, salt the insides lots, then wait at least 20 minutes while it weeps. You then rip off bits with your hands, squeeze some of the salty liquid out, and eat it with a buttered pretzel or bread in a beer garden, as Brotzeit (“bread time”, basically an irregular snack pause between meals), or for dinner.
Kohlrabi is also really good just eaten raw with some bread and cold cuts. You need to cut the outer gummy-like parts off. It’s nice and crunchy and subtly spicy not unlike mustard somehow.
When I was a kid, my mom used to boil (or steam?) Kohlrabi and then serve it with a creamy dill sauce. I hated it. All the crunchiness is gone, the spiciness is gone, there’s only a hint of Kohlrabi left. It’s like she somehow managed make the water it was cooked in into a gel-like solid.
Man I have never even heard of any of these, the vegetables in the shops here suck.
Having said that, we have a fairly common one here that I think might not be that well known internationally, called Wirsing (pronounced like “were-sing” or “were-jing”, think werewolf), apparently it is called savoy cabbage in English. It’s a big round head with big leaves like white cabbage, but they’re green and wrinkly. In my opinion the taste and texture is a bit like kale, but I haven’t had that much kale tbh. Kale is common in the north of Germany but not here in the south.
Wirsing is not my favorite, but maybe it’s niche? Anyway, it’s not eaten raw, it’s blanched (for e.g. a salad), steamed or put into a stew.
The Bavarian Cookbook* has this basic recipe for a steamed Wirsing, which I assume is lifted from the French somehow (CW: meat and butter are optional, but they’re mentioned in this recipe):
- 1 kg savoy cabbage
- (optionally) salt water for blanching
- 30 g oil, or optionally bacon, cubed
- a half onion
- salt
- 250 ml liquid [it just says “liquid”, by which they mean pretty much anything: water, stock, even wine; I have seen milk, but probably best to dilute and add the milk later so it doesn’t burn]
- (optionally) 20 g of flour as a “dough-ling” [unsure about that one, I assume they mean mix the flour with some water, probably like a starch slurry], or with 20 g butter as a beurre manié [1:1 flour and butter kneaded together]
- a little bit of nutmeg
- (optionally) 10 g butter
Wash, remove stalk and very large ribs. Cut into eighths and then into wide strips. Optionally, for old Wirsing, blanch in salt water [I think this is to remove bitterness]. Fry onion in oil or use rendered bacon. Add salt, Wirsing, and only a little bit of liquid. Cover with lid and let steam on moderate heat until soft, add a bit more liquid when necessary. The cooked Wirsing can optionally be thickened using flour “dough-ling” or a beurre manié, bring to a short boil while stirring lightly [this is to get the flour taste out]. Add a little nutmeg, add salt and seasoning to taste, optionally improve using butter or fried bacon cubes. Cooking time about 45 minutes.
* Some background about this cookbook from German Wikipedia, which I think is interesting:
The book’s predecessor was the cookbook published in 1910 by the Bavarian Association for Economic Women’s Schools in the Countryside for young women and home economics teachers for “utilization in itinerant cooking courses” at the Miesbach Economic Women’s School, which was founded in 1903. These itinerant cooking courses were held in winter when work in the fields was at a standstill. The Miesbach itinerant teachers, often so-called higher daughters, came to the villages with mobile cooking equipment and taught cooking and home economics.
Some Ukrainian officer explaining that their drone operators are getting hit more and more:
transcript
The second thing I’ve been thinking about a lot is that I’ve felt that the Russians have learned to counter our drone systems, and I’m seriously concerned about this, because in the past few days—the past few weeks, I’ve seen a lot of signs of this, when I see that the number of losses among our drone pilots has increased. Are these ambushes? These are complex measures, unfortunately. And I’ve been thinking about how we need to resist, yes—what we need to do to reduce this impact, because earlier it was only guided bombs, and now it’s “Molniya”, it’s fiber optics, it’s operations with many methods of attack and winged shoot-downs. This story—they’re working on a broad scale.
And it really troubles me internally, because I keep thinking about what I can do here to improve the situation over there—to reduce this gap between Kyiv and the front line. That’s the main thing.
And the losses really, if we’re speaking about the brigades specifically, have skyrocketed. They’ve skyrocketed just over the last couple of weeks. We were also just recently at one of the brigades. This happens constantly—you might spend two hours with a brigade and you get the message that there are “200s”, there are “300s”, and of course, this greatly, greatly affects both what’s happening on the front and the overall condition of our military.
What I see now is—they’ve learned to counter our UAVs, and their success is getting better and better, unfortunately, and this is happening in several directions. First, it’s situational awareness on the battlefield. Second, it’s targeting the positions they detect—they’re striking identified positions. I’ve even heard in some brigades—“Let’s change our shifts not every three or six hours, but let’s stay on rotation for a month and then rotate out,” because today, the act of repositioning is very difficult and has deep consequences, including from the effects of the Russian enemy.
Again—three months ago they worked only with guided bombs. Now they’re using both “Molniya” and guided bombs, and now there’s fiber optics that were working three months ago in the Kursk direction, and now they’ve moved—to Kurakhove, to the Kostyantynivka area, and to Pokrovsk.
Three months ago there was no fiber optics at all in Pokrovsk. Two months ago there were just isolated strands hanging somewhere in Pokrovsk, and now—it’s daily operations—again, daily operations. And this is the problem that—I keep thinking about it constantly, and it’s more important to me than the Istanbul track, Ankara… and from what I understand, they’ve basically created an equivalent of our drone forces—that is, a separate branch of troops that focuses solely on countering drones. And in my view, we really, really need to consider—just like we have counter-battery units in artillery, we need counter-UAV units, positions that handle that, because their drones are taking out a major part of our armed forces—honestly.
And we don’t have a separate structure in our armed forces that works against drones on their side. There are specific initiatives at the level of individual units, some companies or battalions—but it’s not a systematic effort.
4·2 months agoReturn of the Obra Dinn, UFO 50
Civ 6 works ok on Steam Deck if you turn down the graphics (make the leaders into static pictures especially) and take some time to configure the inputs.
They are either trying to be an independent imperialist power, or they’re just doing the US empire’s bidding. Either way it’s imperialism. If you believe their insane plans will actually manifest (I doubt it), their goal is to be able to win the next round of war in eastern Europe. Clearly they’re not winning this round, so wherever the front settles, they want to be able to do re-match in couple of years.
I so hope this backfires. First of all, I don’t think they can pull it off anyway, the corruption and incompetence is off the charts with these people and that’s not due to lack of vision (which they also don’t have) or whatever, that’s systemic. All that money will go into private pockets and fuck-all will be delivered, and thank Allah for that.
Also, this will antagonize other EU countries (well, some of them, I assume the Baltics will hail their German overlords), making it so much easier for nationalist EU-skeptic politicians to gain support.
https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/499987.ukraine-moskau-muss-brennen.html
Junge Welt reports that the Deutsches Freiwilligenkorps (DFK; I assume they go by Freikorps), made of German Neo-Nazi volunteers, will be integrated into the 49. storm battalion “Karpaten-Sitsch”:
Founded in 2014 after the Maidan coup by members of the Svoboda [“freedom”, formerly social-nationalist] party and the “Sokil” military sports group [article says “Wehrsportgruppe”; famously Wehrsportgruppe is what Nazis like to call their little militant clubs in Germany], the “Carpathian Sitsch” battalion, which has since been disbanded and reactivated in 2022, is a volunteer unit. It follows in the tradition of the “Carpathian Sitsch”, which was formed in 1938 on the initiative of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and wiped out in the fight for independence against Hungary.
The DFK to this day recruits from the milieu of the small party Der III. Weg [the third way]. The neo-Nazis have maintained contacts with Svoboda, Sokil and the “Azov” movement for years, collect donations for Ukrainian fascists and took part in a conference of the Fascist International in Lviv in August 2024 together with the DFK, the Russian Volunteer Corps [these are the Russian Nazis that raided into Russia in 2023] and other neo-Nazi units fighting for Kiev. The fact that the DFK congratulated Adolf Hitler on his “birthday” on their official social media channel on April 20 does not seem to bother the Ukrainian army leadership. Nor does the revanchist manifesto published by the DFK on the 80th anniversary of the liberation: “In Germany, the 8th of May 1945 has not been forgotten, and it will certainly not be celebrated!” declared the DFK, demanding that the German people show “the same courage, the same loyalty, the same willingness to sacrifice” as Hitler’s soldiers once did - “for a bright future in the glory of the old glory”.
This is interesting because I haven’t so far seen widespread BDS support in Germany. Aldi is presumably doing this preemptively in the expectation that this is where things are going. So that’s a good sign.