In every single fucking article about this, including the wikipedia article, if it is mentioned at all, describes this as a botched seduction. What is this you ask?

"Eric, it seems, had attempted to take things further and make serious love to Jacintha. He had held her down . . . and though she struggled, yelling at him to stop, he had torn her skirt and bruised a shoulder and her left hip."- Eric and Us, 2006

In what fucking world is this "seduction?" If you had seen this, what would you have done? Would you laugh, maybe cringe a bit? Or would you be running off to get someone, anyone, to help someone who is obviously being raped?

If Epstein was around back then, Blair would have been sat next to him on his plane and be talking about how the soviets weren't really socialists or whatever, just like that fucker Chomsky. Im so glad I managed to avoid the influence of that ivory eminence tainted in the disgusting stains of bourgeois impunity

I made this comment on reddit and people seemed to like it so I'll post it here too. I don't think it'd be worth a full in depth article on this topic in particular so I'll just paste it as it.

There are a variety of ideologies out there, but I think they fall into one of three categories. Animate, inanimate and dead ideologies.

Dead ideologies are the ones of feudalism, platonic Republicanism, the chinese mandate of heaven and ancien bushido and divine right of kings. These ideologies had their place in previous class societies like the Manoralist system and slave society, but nowadays have no class basis to survive on [what movement could form around reinstating serfdom?]

Animate ideologies are the ones that belong to classes and advance class interests that are existant. [Modern] Social democracy, liberalism and fascism are the ideologies of the Bourgeoisie, which are obviously animate nowadays. Meanwhile, Marxist socialism is the ideology of the proletariat who are also animate.

There are a plethora of ideologies which I consider "Inanimate" and only exist in the minds of ideologues. [Another name for them would be immaterial]. Ideologies like anarcho-communism, national bolshevism, anarcho-capitalism, among others, have no class basis. They go against political economy and are DOA because they serve no class's interest.

For national bolshevism for instance, it obviously doesn't serve the interest of the Bourgeoisie considering its advocating of DOTP, but the proletariat interest lies in internationalism and respect for self determination and mutual respect, which means it is counter to the interests of the proletariat as well. Ergo, national bolshevism withers and dies without a zeitgeist of either bolshevism, nationalism, or both, and only serves as a diversionary ideology. [The only possible exception would be an anti-colonialist perspective. I.e, bat`thism]

I'm not the most avid enjoyer of either of these franchises [just a personal preference, I find civ to be too "board game" like, when I prefer more simulation like games], but I was trying to think of why the new system [civ switching] felt off to me. Maybe this was obvious to other people but I finally realized what bugged me about it.

It's just too rigid. You're always switching from Rome into spain or something like that. But the problem is that it doesn't feel like your civ is evolving, because it isn't. It's just changing into a different one.

Imo, the best way to make these systems is to not have a "civ" at all. Rather decide the characteristics of your civ. This could be as broad as "sailing culture" to replicate civs like the Polynesians and phonecia, or it could be as specific as to what writing system you use, or if you even have one. But instead of just being "Spain but slightly different" it actually feels like you're going on a journey and forging your own civilization through a story. This would be great if you could get some anthropologists to work on it, along with political economists.

In another example, maybe certain traits could be decided over a long period of time. I.e, being stable could give you a trait that promotes staying at peace and not expanding, but at the cost of making changes in government harder and harder the longer you are in that position [i.e, pre-1911 china].

Or they could be instigated by some event and become more ingrained if they aren't changed. For example, you could choose between forms of government justification. Perhaps you would have bread and circuses, which would make you really stable as long as you have a surplus of food and amenities, but unstable if you lacked them. Conversely a divine right of kings would make people more docile in general but requires an organized religion and you need some religous or legal justification for wars against people on the same continent [or something. Idea is WIP obviously]. The game should also force some amount of instability on you, but should also make that a good thing in some cases. If you have a government that's too stable, like mentioned above, then maybe you slow down tech and cultural advancement, or economic ones. Or at a certain point it's just impossible to keep your government if the modern economy is incongruent with your civ. [This shouldn't require a complex pop system or anything. Just as you advance through the tech tree your settlements will have a system of deciding economic and political power of classes(as in, economic decides who the main producers of society are and political decides what change can be enacted). So if x settlements have dominant proletariat economic power but dominant Bourgeois political power, then in times of instability there can be a revolution to replace the Bourgeois power with proletarian power. [Note:this should actually be a tiered system, or have a third thing called control I.e, peasants and serfs could be the dominant economic power but can't actually take political power without the help of another class like the Bourgeoisie or proletariat. So a settlement could have peasant economic power, Bourgeois political fervor, and land owner political control.]

Obviously this does lose a large chunk of the appeal of civ being more board game like and leading a civ with a leader who both give bonuses you need to play around to win. But I feel like both humankind and civ 7 need to go "all in" on the idea for it to work, rather than going half and half and pleasing no one.

[Note: Obviously all of the ideas here are half baked examples. This came to me right after i woke up from a nap. Also no I will not try developing it myself because I'm not an anthropologist and more importantly my coding skills are less than abysmal. I more just wanted to rant because trying to figure out my problem with both of these games was bugging me]

Sorry its been longer than it should have been for an article, things moved very fast while I don't really have much to add beyond "what that guy said."

"Marat: That is the great fearsome spector of the ages. If you want to know it's true name, cry down into the abyss thr word Marat! The echo from the depths of infinity will answer you: poverty!...

They guillotined Charlotte Corday and they said Marat is dead. No. Marat is not dead. Put him in the Pantheon or throw him in the sewer; it doesn't matter-hes back the next day. He's reborn in the man who has no job, the woman who has no bread, in the girl who has to sell her body, in the child who hasn't learned to read; hrs reborn in the unhealed tenement, in the wretched mattress without blankets, in the unemployed, in the proletariat, in the brothel, in the jailhouse, in your laws that show no pity, in your schools that give no future, and he reappears in all that is ignorance and he recreates himself from all that is darkness. Oh beware, human society, you cannot kill Marat until you have killed the misery of poverty." -Victor Hugo [sourced from Clifford D. Conner's biography of Marat]

I’m thinking of places to immigrate to, and I know the Nicaragua government is decent at least. They’re also smaller and not currently under blockade compared to Venezuala and Cuba, while having a language I can learn easier [Spanish, compared to Mandarin and Vietnamese]. Beyond that I don’t know much [besides the weather probably being something I’m going to have to get used to].

I’m not hyped on the idea or anything, just curious

Me with comrades: "Well it's not really fair to judge people under capitalism who don't hold much power. You're also combining this with a Plato's cave situation, so really it's a very complex thing. I think we should just admit that we can't change who we were so it's more important to-"

Me when "me doing nothing in Afghanistan": "SCOREBOARDDDDD, SCOREBOARDDDDD, AWE WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FRIEND?"

Source: Han Suyin's "Mortal Flower"

(Elaboration: I never got why people like laowhy86 and such could be so racist but also have a thing for Asian girls and live in Asian countries. This passage helped explain that better)

After having a professor basically ask us induvidually to memorize and repeat parts of it to him, I've finally realized why "its on the Syllabus" is annoying.

Professors are so goddamn inconsistent with it.

For some they want you to follow everything to the letter, others haven't changed it since 1999, others basically just copy and paste university policies, others make changes to half of it, others forget it exists, and so on. So when I see a Syllabus I basically take it as a suggestion and a place to answer basic questions rather than this holy document. Ergo, when I start getting a pop quiz on the thing i get more than a little annoyed.

I don't exactly know why I made that post. In any case no matter what I shouldn't have posted something like that. Anyway, I'm feeling a bit better now. I'll try to be better about managing things