pureronin.bsky.social
Coder with a day job.
All communications are my own.
136 posts
48 followers
406 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
comment in response to
post
Most of the US constitution is crazy like that. All the different parts are their own democratic legitimacy and there is no real fix. Describing it as a Vetocracy where any part can stop another part. Every other state that copied it ended in a coup.
comment in response to
post
Indeed and having the main character be a Private Dick of the Chandler mode was definitely a friction free way of doing it, why I mentioned D:Noir.
comment in response to
post
Kind of feel like you need a BBC/HBO co-production. I don’t think you can do the novels as they are since so many of the jokes are in the prose. I think something like Discworld Noir is the way to go, use the setting and characters but do an original story for the medium.
comment in response to
post
It’s pretty telling that Mort is pretty much the first Discworld novel that people are recommended to start with and it’s the fourth one published. And I usually start people with Guards, Guards and that’s the eighth. Still I feel like there is a great film adaption to be made.
comment in response to
post
I forgot to link to Amy’s excellent piece. And, one additional thought- this would all be very different if moderation and acquiescence were winning strategies. They are not. So, I think it’s not only fair but essential to ask- what are we going to do different?/
comment in response to
post
This is the premise of Iain M Banks’ Culture series. A bunch of brilliant novels about a Post Scarcity Utopia that doesn’t have a Prime Directive so they have a covert ops Special Circumstances that is messing around with other people to get them ready to join the Culture.
comment in response to
post
If towards the end of ME2, TIM announced he was actually Admiral Sheen of the Alliance and the Cerberus this was just because Alliance High Command couldn’t count on the council, but now you have proof, it’s time come in from the cold, ME3 would makes sense.
comment in response to
post
I remember broadly agreeing with his critique at the time. Most of what I like about ME2 he isn’t touching on. ME2 is better in all the game parts and I think the more focused squad story works better. ME3 is where thing come off the wagon for me.
comment in response to
post
ME1 was doing loads of world building. I assume BioWare had a huge lore bible they were pulling from. Cerberus were the only human organisation other than the Alliance mentioned (I think). ME2 didn’t add any lore that wasn’t in ME1, so I assume the lore bible wasn’t redone.
comment in response to
post
And you have an RSS feed! Thanks for taking the time to do that. Looks like you have 5 (6 is me) followers on inoreader.
comment in response to
post
On my first play through, I assumed the big twist was going to be that Cerberus was the Alliance. In ME1 it was described as a rogue faction of Humans, then in ME2 there were other rogue factions of Cerberus you fought against so of course I assume TIM was Alliance set up with deniability.
comment in response to
post
I hate that almost all these guys’ original companies are failures but because you have invest your pension in the stock market, they get rich, either because they float into a frothy market or some big dumb capital company buys them for “growth”
comment in response to
post
My Observer piece on Badenoch's election & the identity politics of Kemi Badenoch
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
comment in response to
post
Oh I hear that. The history book I was reading when my son was born got finished after his 2nd birthday. It’s worth it. Crashed is definitely weaker, I think necessarily so. It’s like the secondish draft of history.
comment in response to
post
You didn’t enjoy The Deluge, his book on WW1 and economic aftermath? I liked it almost as much as Wages of Destruction. Though I was already primed to hate Woodrow Wilson.
comment in response to
post
ThisthisTHIS. 88% of housing spend, straight into landlords’ pockets.
comment in response to
post
There is a difference between people who derive their income from investments in enterprises and those who derive their income from investments in property. Entrepreneurs vs rentiers. I am not sure how much growth depends on increasing the value of assets?
comment in response to
post
I think about this a lot. When the current public valuation of a company completely outstrips a fundamental analysis of current cash flows, I would if the government should start to tax that company as if some of that cash flow had already arrived? Rubberbanding against the bubble.
comment in response to
post
The only real reason not to is all the lights and audio equipment might overload the electrical circuits and cause a fire.
comment in response to
post
I would preorder that.
comment in response to
post
I’m just a small guy but I am pretty sure the rule is if I think they seem like the sensible choice given the options, the Conservative Party believes them to be unelectable.
comment in response to
post
Nope. The Brexit vote was a couple of different things. The Brexit voting people who wanted it had been steeped in anti-EU propaganda for decades. I have met people who voted Brexit as a vote against the status quo. And Brexit wasn’t defined pre-vote so it could be anything depending on your media.
comment in response to
post
Warning you now you could get in a lot of fights arguing DJ is the greatest hurler. I think you definitely can argue he’s the first superstar of the modern era. In Cork especially Christy Ring has a Babe Ruth like mythos, but from an era where players smoked in the dugouts.
comment in response to
post
Do you mean DJ Carey? 5 All-Ireland Hurling titles with Kilkenny. 10 Leinster titles. His Wikipedia page doesn’t even list his win record in Handball (GAA squash without a racket), but he has multiple All-Ireland titles there too.
comment in response to
post
Their French set up is really non-historical since they seem uninterested in modelling anything that France was going through in the 1930s, other than turning it fascist or Comintern. I just like playing as democracies but the game just doesn’t want me to.
comment in response to
post
Hearts of Iron is one of these games I want to love but find hard to forgive. It’s kind of telling on itself that the game just echos the fascists propaganda of themselves. Though I have enjoyed playing France and only diverging in foreign policy in 1940.
comment in response to
post
Indeed. Independent trilogies have been around for a while. That used to be standard. I know Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time was pitched as a trilogy that out of hand. Of course it was such a success it pushed everyone into long running series. At least that’s how I remember it.
comment in response to
post
I think you are talking about Robin Hobb here? I did enjoy those two trilogies (not so much the piebald prince one). It is nice that storywise they are completely separate. You could read each trilogy on their own. But you couldn’t read the middle books on their own.
comment in response to
post
You are and I don’t disagree that getting the news out first does allow the most positive spin. But I think it’s clear that it’s a German tactical victory.
comment in response to
post
Sure but not decisively. Since German Naval Theory was reliant on Entscheidungsschlacht, they lost. The High Seas Fleet had one job, and it failed. A couple of victories like Jutland and they would have been utterly ruined.
comment in response to
post
Also can we normalise stand-alone books in the same setting and common characters. I’m not saying I want more Discworld but like Discworld (it doesn’t even need to be funny, I would take humanly sincere).
comment in response to
post
I’m not quite sure what your point is? What terms the conflict end on are entirely separate from the current conditions.
comment in response to
post
Accepting the 1967 border is contentious to some Palestinians. It’s not clear that the West Bank and Gaza represent a sustainable state. You can’t accept those borders on their own without understanding what economic support is forthcoming. As they sat “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”
comment in response to
post
Sure but I don’t really see why you think that 1967 borders are the only ones on which compensation should be based. I kind of assumed that land over the 1967 would just be returned in the event of a two state peace deal. The compensation would be for land in Israel that doesn’t change hands in deal
comment in response to
post
Even if the two parties of the contract accept it? Who has standing to dispute it? I am unsure about sales that occurred post 1967, but I got the impression that it’s wasn’t Israel directly that bought the land. There are the post-1948 (and Mandate era) evictions too which follow this pattern.
comment in response to
post
Logically I agree with you but I am Irish so have folk memories of the Land War. Emotionally it’s hard to let it go. Some recompense is needed there. I would suggest something that goes into a general welfare fund. If you got to that point enormous progress had already been made.