Bay 12 Games Forum

Eh, there's lawyer and then there's lawyer, y'know?

Any case, did actually walk by a TV showing at least part of what fol was talking about. I think it may have been the most straight faced lies I've heard before breakfast in years, ha.

That first bit, as to the ones behind... honestly? From what I understand and can remember from the last time I checked into that ruddy nonsense, basically none. Those debt goals and that military spending were goals, not mandates or requests, and if I'm not misremembering their deadline was somewhere in the 2020 or beyond range. And that "deadline" was nothing but a, "Hey, if we ain't there yet come that point let's talk, see if we can't hash some things out" sort of deal. Most NATO nations have been working towards them, military spending going up, and so on. One or two may have met some already, but that was never really the agreement to begin with. It (NATO nations not meeting certain spending levels, et al) has came up recently-ish in US political discourse, but most of the spin there has been pretty pure bullshit.

Examples, you can look to ukraine for an easy one, you can look to what's been going down in chechnya re: homosexuals (and russia's treatment of them and any number of other groups, for that matter) that's been going on as russia, despite having significant control over 'em, pointedly ignore it; if you want another ally with similar human rights that's been on the up and up for the murder, you can go poke at saudi arabia and yemen. I'd have to brush up for a second (and it's way too damn late for that) on neighbor murder for russia, if you're not going to count ukraine, but it's not like they haven't indulged to one extent or another in the last few decades. Russia's issues with human rights and geopolitical aggression aren't exactly hard to notice. Probably harder to miss, really. They're maybe not as bad as some ME/Africa/etc. hellholes, but that's not exactly a shining comparison and it damn sure doesn't recommend them as someone we particularly want to buddy up with. We have enough problems with that shit as is without inviting more.

Economy wise they're still pretty much entirely reliant on gas. Maybe they're working away from that, but they're not there by a country mile, and we've latched ourselves to enough oil baron equivalents as is, particularly belligerent ones inclined towards pissing on our more aligned allies' interests and sensibilities. Corruption, bloody hell, if you want more examples than you feel like shaking a stick at, just use google. You'll find all sorts of fun crap. It's not a subtle issue by any stretch of the meaning.

Re: cyberattacks, because russia can be trusted about as far as the country can be thrown on the subject. They've shown zero inclination towards giving a single shit about the extent you are or are not their ally so far as that sort of infiltration et al goes. We know at this point that their reaction to being told straight up to knock that shit the hell off is to keep going -- why in the name of anything would we expect that to stop, regardless of whatever agreements we came to? What matters isn't friendliness, but how much they think they can get away with, and widening the arms isn't exactly going to lessen that.

Seriously, they're a country we've had openly antagonistic relationships for decades and they've shown little interest in substantially cooling that, that are belligerent to our actual allies and basically everyone, have little to no substantial gains to offer us economically that would offset the costs of kneecapping our relationship with some of the largest trading blocks in the world, and on, and on, and on. The sole and single benefit they'd bring to the table is potential strides towards nonprofiliation -- and, hey, we also know exactly how much their current administration's word or assurances are worth on that front, too. So much for that "we don't build bombs, you don't invade" thing. State of russia and its leadership as is, trying to embrace that is how you get in a knife in the kidneys either from knock-on effects or straight malfeasance. They'd have to shape a hell of a lot up and mend a whole passel of burnt bridges around them before working to buddy up would stop being a significant net loss for the US. They don't bring anything to the table for us except pain and stuff we could get elsewhere without nearly the complications.

That might change after putin steps down or dies of old age, or somehow they manage to purge a bucketload of problems from the country, but until then sweet hell we seriously don't want much to do with 'em.

... I'd be in favor of better relations with russia if it weren't for that not-so-small chance of going for them meaning we end up hand in hand with yet another regime cheerfully intent on conquering nearby countries and murdering bits and pieces of neighboring populations. The lologaggle of human rights violations wouldn't be terribly attractive, either, just like it isn't to all the other jackasses intent on that we've yoked ourselves to. Or the connections with an iffy economy entirely too reliant on gas and whatnot and riddled with more corruption than a house half collapsed by wormrot. And hey, the whole regular cyberattacks and whatnot leaves me thinking maybe them as an ally wouldn't be much if at all better than them as a non-ally. Also it shitting on the rest of the european connection and gods know what else wouldn't be much of a bonus.

Like, yes, it has nukes. Basically everything else about it we probably want little or nothing to do with.

It... can? I think. But pretty sure it can lead to things like infections and whatnot, too. Possibly structural damage of one sort or another... don't quite remember how bad it can get. Generally much of anything in your lungs that isn't normally there is some variation of bad juju, though. Is why you check with doc, just to be sure.

No, no, I'm pretty sure platformers being entirely inclined towards being bloody bizarre, especially older ones, is entirely on topic.

So what if you think he's a nut, the post makes a great deal of sense. Judge a story by its content, not by who wrote it.

Eeehhh... often better to do both. Death of the author may be a thing to varying extents, but writer influences content, too. Think I've used the example before, but two folks, one a raccoon enthusiast and the other a white supremacist, each writing an article on raccoons can rather easily be writing very different things even if the words are by and large identical. Some stuff don't look loco until you realize the writer be loco and ain't usin' dem words like you thought they were, heh.

... not saying that's happening here, mind. Just saying that a story's content actually can change in nature depending on who's writing it. Often you can separate content entirely from author, but sometimes you kinda' can't.

It is though. Archeological evidence and, you know, common sense indicate that the pack instincts and whatnot came a lot before first ritual burials and other stuff that could be considered religion.
Unless bacteria also belive in bacteria Jesus, or something.

Man, when you bring common sense into parsing archeological evidence you dun screwed up. Common sense ain't -- stuff's a set of cultural norms highly informed by bias, common to that particular society only sorta' and actually common even among specific ones only occasionally. For all it works out often enough what likes to happen when you start applying assumptions ultimately based on your current environment and whatnot to incomplete reconstructions of previous environments is those assumptions end up wrong. If you're going to make analysis that isn't just a nice go at a just-so story (i.e. it might as well be fiction, to the extent it isn't outright) you kneecap "common sense" and bury it in the nearest mushroom patch.

Indicate isn't prove, basically. What a thing looks like doesn't necessitate it is what that thing is. We make good attempts at a guess, and do our best to make things cohesive based on what information we have, and it's not like that isn't important to one extent or another... but we did that for dinosaurs, too, and they seem to be picking up the oddest profusion of feathers nowadays :V

We have a lot of things, but the ability to say with justified confidence that religion and ritual were caused by morality or that morality was caused by religion and ritual innit one of 'em. That's the kind of thing you can build evidence for and make a good argument, but at the end of the day we have no means of observing when it happened and end up with the grounds to say which is right, or if either are.

Which, hell. Is fine. For all it's fun to talk about the actual answer doesn't really make a difference.

Well, a shotgun worked for ash, I think? Or a chainsaw? Don't quite remember. I'd probably try fire, I'unno. There's freeze methods, too, and if all else false it's off the cliff and in the sea. Whatever ends it the quickest.