Bay 12 Games Forum

I have this terrible hope that the final conflict... if it actually happens mind you and this isn't some long-winded fakeout... that the final conflict will be relayed in one or a series of flash games.

Calling it now.

Bunch'a quote-unquote liberal politicians and business owners got together today in Washington to promote a big thinkpiece released by the "Roosevelt Institute", a sort of Keynesian mirror of the Cato Institute.  Specifically, it's an unabashedly American-Left-ist federal policy prescription, intended to be the Liberal version of the "Contract With America" of a generation past, and they're front and center with wanting the Democratic presidential candidates to talk about it.  You can read the 112 page playbook yourself.  I haven't yet since I'm typing this on my lunchbreak.  But from the summary, I can find three huge issues with this campaign that have nothing to do with the details of its proposals:

One reason the Contract With America was a great advertisement for its philosophical bent if not necessarily its content was that it was straight to the point and easy to digest.  The average voter's attention span is definitely not longer now that it was in 1994, and Newt Gingrich wrote it as an open letter to fit in one of the widest-read sources of information of its day, TV-Guide.  Yes, there actually used to be such a publication.  I have a hard time believing more than 1% of the people who even hear about this 112-page campaign will make it through the introduction.

The booklet and its sponsors repeatedly mention that piecemeal alterations and experimental compromises will not be sufficient for any of their plans to work, they must be implemented wholesale.  Any realist would say that's pretty fucking impossible in 2015 or the foreseeable future.  I'll give them a pass on that since people don't get fired up over hedging your bets and talking about a backup plan, but I would like to know if a backup plan exists.

And most of the bulletpoints the plan is built around all revolve on a very common theme.  Basically, stop thinking of wage-and-salary incomes as both the backbone of federal tax income and yet ancillary to 'real' economic growth, and go back to actually enforcing existing financial laws and regulations instead of leaving the banking and investment industry in charge of policing itself.  Obviously I haven't read the whole report yet, but I'm really hoping they devote some time to discussing exactly how and why those situations came be the accepted normal in the American economy, and more specifically how they intend to roll that back to their goalposts, and not just wish the world wasn't so.

It'll make some nice reading later.

Quote from: nogoodnames on May 11, 2015, 08:54:43 pm

I was feeling nostalgic so I went back to some of the very early releases and did a Mun mission. It was refreshing to return to flying by eye and designing rockets through gut feeling and experience without any math to back it up

This is why I play without the mecha/engineering/calculator/autopilot mods that everyone seems to use.  For me, the game is most fun trying to eyeball things and shooting from the hip.

I definitely see the appeal in this as someone who's been playing since before the Mun was added, but I'm horrible at calculating stuff so I pretty much always relied on tips and walkthru's to actually send a craft anywhere.

I still don't use any autopilot type mods (mostly because I've never had any luck getting them to install correctly and they always come with a bunch of extraneous crap I don't want).  But I am considering it with the gameplay requirements of Career mode.  Namely the fact that I find myself flying identical missions to build up science points or stockpile money with tourist flights.  Having something to at least refly the tedious missions for me would be pretty great.  Space-station assembly is another good candidate since I hate trying to plot orbital rendezvous, always get the intercept wrong by a kilometer and then everything I do afterwards just pushes it further apart.

I recently bought a complete desktop computer for $20: a 2001 model iMac.  It's all about perspective.

Considering every component they list in the design sells wholesale for a couple times $9, I really want to know where they're getting these parts and how they're assembling them.

Hey, Aqizzar. I think I sorta remember you from the feudalism thing?

Do you have any idea how many years ago that was?  If you do, don't say anything, I don't want to think about it.

Twas the finest hour of my apathy-based governance.

Things are happening on Bay12.  Janet and Aqizzar both making returns on the same day.

Those things are tangentially related.  Well, I guess less tangentially than just being the same time.

Anyway yeah.  I don't like needing to mumble to keep my thoughts organized since I've been caught doing it before, but it's pretty easy to control when you don't get carried away with something.

When I'm alone I tend to pace too.  Makes me think I must look neurotic, even though pacing used to be a perfectly acceptable thing, as recently as whenever Ducktales was made.

Also chinman! Hello here, too, chinman!

I ventured out into the wilderness to discover myself.  Instead I discovered that the wilderness sucks and nobody should venture there.

Good to be back.

*Nissan chow mien, to be precise

I am now picturing baked noodles sponsored by an auto company.