He / They

  • 4 Posts
  • 90 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • I really like it’s progression of resource tiers, and it’s exploration mechanic that lets you delve into ruins to find artifacts that give you bonuses to town morale.

    It also has a nice pseudo-complex farming system, where you can manage the soil composition to favor different crops (or just choose to plant the crops that that area’s default soil lends itself to).

    It also has randomized maps, which I like to reload until I find one with an interesting layout.

    There is combat, but you can granularly control it, or disable it altogether (there are raiders, and wildlife like bears and wolves).

    It feels very laid back, which is my jam.


  • I bounced off of it, and went back to Farthest Frontier.

    I was not a huge fan of the way the villagers are accrued and assigned; it felt like they were trying to emulate Banished, but didn’t execute well on it.

    I did love the way you draw housing plots, and the ability to add extensions onto houses that have different bonuses (e.g. a chicken coop that gives eggs).

    I think if the city-builder+RTS hybrid aspect is very appealing to you, it’s one of the few out there. If you want a more traditional city builder, check out Farthest Frontier.







  • I think what he means by “charismatic” is someone like Reagan who appeals to the other side of the aisle (Reagan Democrats in this case); Trump is only charismatic to his own followers.

    I don’t think working “across the aisle” is really what this is about; I think this is purely about voters’ perceptions of them as people. But in either case, Biden sure isn’t winning anyone over with his personality who wasn’t already firmly center-right Neoliberal.

    I consider the Afghanistan withdrawal to be, overall, a highly positive thing; yes, it was handled badly, but it’s the easiest thing in the world to keep a forever war going, and at least there Biden put a stop to it, so I give him high marks for that at least.

    Gaza and Afghanistan are polar opposite reactions, depending on what flank of the Democratic party you’re on:

    • Gaza is an unmitigated disaster to the anti-war/anti-genocide/anti-SetCol Left flank, and a moderate success to the pro-Israel/ pro-war Neoliberal Right flank.
    • Afghanistan is an unmitigated disaster to the pro-war Neoliberal Right flank, and a moderate success to the anti-war Left flank.

    Not trying to blindly defend Lichtman or anything, just trying to cling to whatever shred of hope remains.

    Understood. I guess for me my anger is more important right now, because this was so avoidable, and Trump feels like he’s close to coming back because of the DNC’s endless hubris (again). And I’ve already seen people trying to somehow blame the anti-genocide/ pro-Palestinian protesters for this over on Reddit, since they reflexively scapegoat any and all centrist Dem failures, and they don’t have a Bernie or Nader to scapegoat this time.





  • His model was previously based entirely on predicting the popular vote. Now he’s switched it to just predict the winner based on EC delegates. I think we’ll all be thrilled if Trump loses in November (or ideally, just plain dies), but a statistical model that doesn’t factor in things like Republicans trying to pull fake or rogue elector hijinks doesn’t fill me with confidence. And who knows what SCOTUS will do if it’s thrown to them (Lichtman also predicted Al Gore’s ‘win’).

    Also, looking at the list, I’m pretty sure more than 6 are false:

    1. True
    2. If you inspire 650,000 to conduct write-in votes against you, is that a challenge? In any case, not counting this as False.
    3. True
    4. Mostly true (and RFK really pulls from Reps anyways, polls show)
    5. Debatable, so I won’t count
    6. Debatable, so I won’t count
    7. Debatable. He did push a lot of changes, but the number of rightward-changes that happened under his watch (like Roe being overturned, MQD being bolstered, etc) have overshadowed basically everything else)
    8. False. This entire year has been non-stop protests, and not just over Gaza (1)
    9. False. Whether it was a bullshit thing to prosecute or not (it was), Hunter’s conviction is a major talking point on the Right to attack Biden (and specifically, to push independents towards viewing Biden and Trump as equally criminal). (2)
    10. False. Between the Afghanistan withdrawl and Gaza, he’s got military and foreign policy failures in both flanks’ eyes. (3)
    11. False. I think that if Republicans had not been paid by the Kremlin to sandbag aid to Ukraine, he might have had one, but as of now Ukraine is not a success, and I can’t think of any others that are known to voters. (4)
    12. False. He was never considered charismatic like Obama, or a “National Hero”. (5)
    13. False. Trump’s charisma among his base is a trademark of his populist campaign. It’s why Trump can dominate the Right and DeSantis falls flat. (6)