- fatsy : too many worrs
- TotalVatniggerDeath : 5000 characters of zigger lolcow
- BWC : https://www.xvideos.com/video.aimuoc5757/blonde_russian_and_a_bbc_in_her_butt
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Russian is acquiring territory at a rate of
100 dead/kmยฒ. Another50 million dead, and they'll control all of Ukraine.
There are more than 50 million Russians, so it's doable.
So smart.
Yet he forgets that Ukraine is about to mobilise their 18 years old. And that Russian captured in 2024 more than in 2023 and all their big gains happened the last 3 months.
Why look at those facts if it will make things look bad for Ukraine ? I mean Ukraine is going to win any moment they get the game changerโฆ wait he ain't talking about Ukrainian victory, what happened ? 
Area taken really doesn't show the full picture. You could probably calculate that it would take something like 100 years for Russia to take the whole of Ukraine. However neither Russia or Ukraine can't keep this level of warfare up more than a few years at most. One of them will eventually collapse either from lack of manpower/equipment or due to economy.
Shut up stupid Redditor
This. One of them is going to give up because both are really, really struggling. Both are running out if people. Both are irritating their allies. Both are getting increasingly desperate.
Exactly
The difference is that Russia is running on volunteers while Ukraine is conscription. Most of those volunteers come from the most impoverished areas of Russia and even from foreign countries. Russia can keep the war going much longer than Ukraine
Shut up no truth Russian soldiers having low moral
https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1fng9wy/russian_morale_is_collapsing_now_is_the_time_to/
Well, this ignores the fact that Russia is losing its position in the world (like in Syria) and that its economy is increasingly in trouble. It also misses the fact that the motivations are dramatically different. The Ukrainians are fighting for their very survival, they have very little incentive to surrender. The Russians are fighting for pride and money, which means they just want it all to wrap up quickly. The Ukrainians are far more committed to their fight than the Russians who are just there for a paycheck.
Exactly !
Ukrainian Journ*list Yuriy Butusov confirmed that 1,700 soldiers from 155th mechanized brigade "Anna Kyivska", which was trained in France and sent to Pokrovsk deserted before the first battle. He added that the brigade commander was dismissed immediately after the battle, andโฆ
โ AMK Mapping ๐บ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฟ (@AMK_Mapping_) January 1, 2025
Ukrainian so motivated that after half year training in France they run away from their first battle. Not the second or third but first 
Majority of Ukrainian dislike Zelenskyy, don't want 18 year old mobilised are ready to give up the territory
Burgers cuts the nafo budget and all the "combat Russian misinformation" budget. Media starts painting digits that tell majority of European now want it all just end 
Ahmad Al Sharaa said in an interview with Saudi Arabian state-owned news outlet Al Arabiya this weekend. "We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way that some wish."
Al Sharaa, still better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad Al Jolani (and other simply just as Jolani), is head of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the rebel coalition that deposed Assad.
"All of Syria's arms are of Russian origin, and many power plants are managed by Russian experts," Al Sharaa further told Al Arabiya, while also highlighting the "deep strategic interests" of what he described as the "second most powerful country in the world."
Was insisting to me that Russian run away from that base like almost a month ago. Except Ukraine and EU (that ain't even part of that Syrian party) ain't interested in Russian leaving Syria. Redditors are too stupid to understand Israel, US, Turkey and the new Syrian gov won't benefit from Russian leaving.
"That isn't entirely true Russia forces are actually expanding And that has been noted on many occasions by NATO generals 1- https://www.businessinsider.com/top-us-general-russia-growing-back-pre-war-military-strength-2024-4
2- Atlantic council talking about how Russia military is expanding and it might reach peak military production in 2025 -2026 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/nato-russia-dynamics-prospects-for-reconstitution-of-russian-military-power/
3- https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4589095-russian-army-grown-ukraine-war-us-general/
Since start of the war Russia conducted a semi mobilization for reserves
Meanwhile ukraine conducted six mobilization efforts in 2014 and 2015 Since the start of the war Ukraine have conducted countless mobilization and Ukraine has been snatching people from streets for year and half now
Antony blinken said in interview that Ukraine Basically has more equipment than troops at this point of time and they need to mobilize fast and also No increase in equipments will save them
Stupid Redditor making sense
With Trump as president, Ukraine will fall. It's a sad reality but we need to start admitting it.
This is smart Redditor, despite Ukraine last victory was on October 3rd 2022 so more than 50% of Biden presidency was without Ukrainian victories. So next years you will hear from them that Ukraine lost because of Trump 
Because if Biden had won then Ukrainian demographics would been fixed. Can you argue with it ? You can't because you ain't multiverse creature that can test it 
russia will collapse in 2025
โ HotSotin ๐ซ๐ฎ๐บ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐น๐ผ๐บ๐ธ NAFO (@HotSotin) December 31, 2024
That what I am talking about ! Oh wait it's not Ukraine going to win it's Russia going to collapse because subliminally they know Ukraine ain't going to win so they are coping with Russia will callabse 
My fav prokhohol last year was this guy
Two things can be true at the same time.
โ Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 10, 2024
Russia is advancing south of Pokrovsk, at huge sacrifice. Taking monstrous casualties and capturing a very small amount of land.
Ukrainian forces there are overwhelmingly outnumbered and feel hopeless as a result.
Both are true.
It actually isnโt a good result for Russia to shove a division into a fight with a few battalions and end up taking catastrophic casualties while capturing not much land. No matter how hopeless and overwhelmed the defenders feel.
โ Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 10, 2024
I know a lot of people are currently obsessed with Russiaโs advances in Ukraine, but I personally see these advances as largely a failure of the Russian military. They are dumping entire Divisions directly into combat and advancing a few km while sustaining absolutelyโฆ
โ Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 7, 2024
Writes billions words in early December about Russian are now slowing down, Russian in December 2024 had best month since March 2022. Slowing down baby 
Ukraine has two extremely toxic problems that should have been addressed a long time ago, but never were.
โ Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 11, 2024
First, there is this pervasive idea that being mobilized into the military is basically a death sentence. Which is entirely untrue.
First, there is this pervasive idea that being mobilized into the military is basically a death sentence. Which is entirely untrue.
Ukraine literally didn't had any demobilisation the only way you get delisted from army in Ukraine is if you lose combat capability
Second, there is this idea that once mobilized, you can no longer contribute to the economy. This is asinine. Of course they can. There are many models of mobilization that allow people to keep their jobs and continue working while also being trained.
โ Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 11, 2024
There are many models of mobilization that allow people to keep their jobs and continue working while also being trained
Ukraine has shortened the training requirements and so did eu for Ukrainian
So this homo suggest that Ukraine that is short on men power and has hard time replacing loses will just for lol train some guy to send him back to his regular job ? 
This homo banned me but you can see he is genius. He believes that Ukraine has 6-12 months training and will do it 2 times Ukraine officially has 8 weeks training and in reality 2-3 and he talks about 100 weeks training
Then he finish of with this
Russian government: we have manpower problems
โ Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 14, 2024
Russian military: we have manpower problems
Russian soldiers: we have manpower problems
People on twitter: RUSSIA HAS INFINITE MANPOWER AND WILL LAST FOREVER
And blocks comments because he wants to believe Russian having as much problems as Russian
I mean legendary frog brigade proved this point
Remember they haven't even really mobilized yet.
โ Tom Neznamy (@Tom_Neznamy) December 14, 2024
So back to the front lines
Russian forces have completed the capture of Kurakhove. pic.twitter.com/tYSzMlLmzD
โ KalibratedMaps (@Kalibrated_Maps) December 31, 2024
Kurakhove has fully been captured so now Ukraine will lose whole lower half of Donetsk and fight will start in Dniper region
As one Redditor wrote in og post
Once prokovsk is taken there is only fields till Dnipro, so loosing the Donbas would lose Ukraine the war. Taking the Donbas is by far the hardest part. Just look at WW 2 mr super military genius
Donbas is the most defensible part of that whole region of Ukraine / Russia, as you said first the Germans had trouble going through it and then Soviets too when they were retaking land. The guy calling this advancement against 2014 super entrenched defensive lines insignificant just outed himself as knowing nothing about the war
Ukrainian mappers of course don't report it
Since admitting Kurakhove has fully Ben lost is admitting that black line territory will be soon lost and chances are for truth Sirsky is going to mobilise then as he did with deepstatemap
Many people have high hopes with Trump that he will come and end it all.
And I have a good news, he won't 
2025 will be year of legal battle. They talking about peace deal but what peace deal if nether Russia nor Ukraine are fighting each others ?
For a peace deal there must be a legal conflict and there just no conflict on paper. Russia wants that Ukraine side says that those 5 oblast are Russian territory. That something Ukraine side won't do since its defacto killing Ukraine, they of course don't have power to recapture it but they need cope that one day they will be able to do it. US offers no nato for Ukraine for 20 years. So every side wants to come out as victorious. But what West and Ukraine is offering Russia is just a draw and not fixing the reasons why Russia invaded. Why would Russia accept it after it survived all the giga western weapons. Aid for Ukraine is now around 500 billions that's inflation adjusted is 3 times more than lend lease to Soviet Union. And Biden created lend lease for Ukraine but never used it, you wonder why ? Because he was giving everything for free to Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Democracy_Defense_Lend-Lease_Act_of_2022
Lend lease was such pathos moment
So after all the epic pathos moment how Russia will be defeated by united west
The scary tanks and long range missiles, Ukrainian are on their back foot without any ability to regain balance, west is offering Russian a draw
So you see it's ether Ukraine recognise that those 5 oblast are Russian or the grind will go on
As I mentioned before Zelenskyy is dead if he recognises those 5 oblast as Russian and he already against elections since now even republicans ask it and he still says no
So don't worry bros Slavshit won't end in 2025
Have a good year, see you again around February, need to study, will have exams about how bad and evil Trump is. Had to listen like 2 hours about how Trump is facist but you can't call him facist 
- tempest : spam in some kind of weird pidgin language
- ShitTornadoToOz : I don't speak chinese
- HailVictory1776 : This is America. Speak English trans lives matter
- 1 : .actual-post:has(.mr-2[href="/h/brasil" i]) { display: none; }
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Um dia atrasado pq eu tomei um ban de 1 dia por postar mulheres com pinto
Trancado pq estavam falando verdades inconvenientes demais, isso obviamente sรณ pode ser obra de infiltrados fascistas de outros subs
Um monte de bosta sem sentido, os caras tรฃo dando nรณ na prรณpria fimose pra defender o governo. Eu nรฃo li mas eu imagino que seja mais do mesmo: mercado fascista malvadรฃo etcetc
https://old.reddit.com/r/brasil/comments/1hhc2o9/d%C3%B3lar_bateu_r_631/
O post nรฃo trancado mas altamente janniado
Olha sรณ
antes
depois
KEK
Esquece, jรก trancaram
Vamos aos outros subs
Nรฃo li, mas imagino que seja tudo 'faz o L'
https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hhb3y4/eita_poh/
Cagando na cabeรงa de um twitteiro r-slurado
https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh7z0l/a_seita_ataca_novamente/
Cagando na cabeรงa daquelas jornalistas nojentas
https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hh2nmh/_/
Esse รฉ pro @nuclearshill, tu que curte a argentina. viu que mataram um argentino no rio e o juiz nรฃo mandou prender?
https://old.reddit.com/r/brasilivre/comments/1hgzlll/o_recado_no_finalzinho_%C3%A9_bem_importante/
Seria esse governo horroroso uma vinganรงa do lula?
Jรก aproveitando a deixa, isso aqui foi engraรงado, mas nรฃo tem a ver
/r/Farialimabets -- era um sub de meme mas meio que virou um campo de batalha entre MAV do rBrasil e seres humanos
https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh0y9h/compre_na_alta_e_venda_na_alta/
https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh80x6/estupidez_level_1000/
https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hhcejq/o_mundo_n%C3%A3o_%C3%A9_mais_o_mesmo/
https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh97a4/j%C3%A1_eras_sub_fomos_descobertos/
https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hhb8qe/partiu_aeroporto/
https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hh9vc5/achei_o_tal_ataque_especulativo_do_cambio/
https://old.reddit.com/r/farialimabets/comments/1hgmj5o/em_quem_eu_acredito/
/r/Flanelaa (reduto de gente que quer xingar o /r/Brasil)
https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hh0qxz/o_governo_lula_%C3%A9_um_fracasso/
https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hhcexl/update_senhores/
https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hgi10q/haddad_era_so_uma_ferramenta/
/r/investimentos -- Segura que agora vem pedrada
https://old.reddit.com/r/Flanelaa/comments/1hgi10q/haddad_era_so_uma_ferramenta/
https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hh16ru/vou_voltar_a_aportar_na_bolsa_brasileira/
https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhdfqu/ueee_come%C3%A7ou_a_terceira_guerra_mundial/
https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhcex4/s%C3%B3_pode_ser_piada_parte_2/
https://old.reddit.com/r/investimentos/comments/1hhd39r/histeria/
E pra finalizar, vocรช sabe o que realmente รฉ brigading?
Quando um MAV do /r/Brasil vai em outro sub pra fazer post desonesto defendendo o governo.
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They lost 250.000 troops, and 900 tanks for this village thats not even important.
— Phillip Hansen (@PhillipHansenS) January 12, 2025
Triple cope
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/01/12/7493165/index
Khohols reached such point that even republicans asking them to throw the 18 year olds.
Mike Waltz, Donald Trump's incoming National Security Adviser, believes that Ukraine should lower the draft age to attract hundreds of thousands of new troops and stabilise the frontline.
Their draft age right now is 26 years old [it is in reality 25 - ed.], not 18. I don't think a lot of people realise that they could generate hundreds of thousands of new soldiers.
He is coping a bit since most 18 year olds were 15 when it all started so they runaway already and who is left also running away
๐บ๐ฆ๐ช๐บโผ๏ธ๐จ Ukranian boys aged 16 - 20 are leaving Ukraine in masses, buses full drive to Europe daily!
โ Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) January 11, 2025
There are even organized tours for the boys to leave!
The upcoming lowering of the mobilization age to 18 scared people! pic.twitter.com/ut97L1DfXW
On top of unreal high desertion
Ukrainian soldier that was busified run away from army base to capture that guy that busified him to bussyfie that guy
A story of "figurative and literal"
Republicans need to stop Russian progress because otherwise there won't be an argument for Russian to stop and Russian now attacking at angles that Ukraine didn't expected
The Ukr. army remains unable to stop the Russian advance on the western riverside of the Oskil in Kharkiv oblast, despite Russians needing to cross the river with every soldier, weapon, ammunition and piece of equipment.
โ Julian Rรถpcke๐บ๐ฆ (@JulianRoepcke) January 10, 2025
Simply not understandable to me. Thought it was a priority. pic.twitter.com/17eluyoJ76
This mb looks like nothing but it gives Russian opportunity to take this all
And neutralise Ukrainian only success in this conflict the "Kharkov counteroffensive 2022"
Not counting Vovchansk that place has around 9k people so barely nothing at such massive territory. It's around 4700km.
If Russian reaches Burluck Ukraine will lose possibility support that area and we will finally understand why Russian attacked Kharkiv.
This bridge also doesn't look impressive but it gives Russian opportunity to strike the choke point Zarizhne from back and directly strike Lyman
That will give them opportunity to easily bomb Sloviansk
Russian are also almost done with Chasiv Yar and they decided to not go after Konstiantynivka but after Mikiolaivka and Sloviansk, because they now don't have to worry that Ukrainian will attack their flanks (Chasiv Yar and then Ivaniske) since if Ukrainian in Konstiantynivka try it Russian will attack that city from Toretsk.
Russian also will enter Dniper oblast soon.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/01/11/ukraine-russia-kursk-counterattack/
Ukrainian troops launched a counterattack in the region last weekend, attempting to retake some of the territory it first seized last summer and then lost โ with the head of President Volodymyr Zelensky's office boasting on social media that Russia was "getting what it deserves."
But almost a week into the new operation in Kursk, little progress appears to have been made
There is big difference between "little progress" and not progress and decline. Because the conclusion of that offensive was a decline.
Fights now at outskirts of Sudzha and Ukrainian launching offensive east out of Sudzha with goal of capturing a town 80km from Sudzha that is connected with only one road that goes from Sudzha. Also Zelenskyy was claiming Ukraine controlled like 1500km^2 in Kursk and now official Ukrainian army map says 424km
Ukraine's continued focus on Kursk indicates how important Kyiv believes it is to hold on to the territory, especially as Trump's impending arrival could increase pressure for both sides to come to the negotiating table. Ukrainian officials have also warned that if their troops were to retreat back across the border, the 60,000 troops Kyiv says Russia has deployed would follow them into Ukraine and occupy more land.
It's a war of attrition, Ukraine the side that barely has AD and artillery moves into Russian rural area with no fortifications. So they picked enemy turf to do there defence 
Russia, meanwhile, is eager to retake the territory, but has still maintained much of its military might in Ukraine's east, where Russian forces said they captured the Ukrainian town of Kurakhove this week. Ukrainian officials denied those accounts and described the battle as ongoing.
As Trump's inauguration approaches, Moscow, which has the upper hand in manpower and resources, has fewer reasons than Ukraine to see his taking office as an immediate game changer.
"There has been a long-running narrative since the election that both sides are going to try to substantially improve their positions ahead of Jan. 20," Kofman said, describing it as a "fixation" that encourages "short-term thinking" about the war.
I been writing since forever that Trump won't stop it in 24 hours and he just made it official this week by saying he will have a meeting with Putin in 6 or so months.
So did Russian planned to enter Sumy or not now doesn't matter since they ain't going to lose such opportunity so Ukraine GENIUS plan to trade Russian Kursk territory for something would end up giving Ukraine Kursk territory back and some Sumy territory.
"There are signs of a Russian interest to meet with Trump, but that should not be confused with a willingness to negotiate. It's unclear why Moscow would negotiate right now, given the trajectory of the war," he said.
Ukrainian soldiers don't understand why would Russian even accept any negotiation. That's how hard Ukraine is winning.
Oleh said. Ukraine, meanwhile, has taken advantage of communication challenges between Russian and North Korean troops to retake some positions in Kursk, as what Oleh described as confusion between the two groups appears to have slowed Russian efforts to stabilize territory after assaults.
Some news from parallel universe, you won't find those "retaken positions in Kursk" in our universe.
So on top of all other sectors Ukraine also now will need to think what to do with Sumy.
Toretsk was favouriting defenders a lot since look how many industrial areas (triangles) that place had. Only Donetsk city had more. Ukraine losing it faster than Avdiivka shows they have serious problems.
Ukrainian geniuses also didn't build any fortifications in the rare and were stealing like no tomorrow
And it was Kharkiv where some fights were going on all those years since Russian never really kicked Russian out of Kharkiv. Sumy has no fortification and are in such positions that if the retreat Russian will just follow them same roads so no time to mine them.
And Dniper they only now started building something
The geniuses didn't even finished building defence line 1.0
And Russian went in 2024 from 0 defence like to 0,5 > 1.0 > 2.0 > 3.0 > 4.0 and now breaking the unfinished first defence line of Dneper
In 2024 Russian took most of Ukrainian Donbas defence lines and the rest they now can attack from rare or through those defence lines.
They lost 250.000 troops, and 900 tanks for this village thats not even important.
Donbas is also Ukraine most populated region and its main industry
It cost for Ukraine also 4 working man to support one soldier
And when you consider also this
We are past Ukrainian winning arc, we are now at arc of how to persuade Putin to agree for peace and do a goodwill tin
Fun part that now Putin has so many arguments to b-word about. He can point that he steeped out of Kiev and Kharkiv as goodwill tin and that west betrayed him later and when this talks happens Putin will have a huge chunk that Ukrainian "Kharkiv counteroffensive" got. He can point on all Zelenskyy hate speech towards Russia
๐ท๐บ๐บ๐ฆ โI do not respect either the leader of today's Russia or the Russian peopleโ โ Zelensky, President of Ukraine
โ HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) January 5, 2025
Well thatโs nice. pic.twitter.com/Cr6UqINi9f
He can point at Zelenskyy not being elected. At US missiles targeting Russian soil when Biden told no offensive weapons for Ukraine
How Biden warned Putin if Putin uses nukes that Ukraine will receive tanks, jets long range missiles and target black fleet
And attack on Russian soil what was this ?
So goood luck convincing Russian not to finish off Ukrainians who now begging for 2022 March deals
Trump just need some stability to even start the talk since if front constantly moving in one direction you can't start discussing about where to freeze it. But at this point mobilisation won't help it and in worst case for Russian they going to do their own mobilisation
.webp?h=10 "This user is getting in touch with her feminine side ๐ฅฐ")
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The coup and counter-coup in Korea right now vaguely reminds me of Iran in 1953.
You may have read in A People's History of the United States when your pinko high school history teacher assigned it to you, and what you've heard from every midwit in the media, that Mossadegh was overthrown in a coup plotted by the CIA to put the Shah into power because the oil companies wanted to make money. All of these things have a pretty big kernel of truth but way more important stuff was going on.
The Abadan refinery in 1950. At the time it was the largest in the world.
(I'm just gonna summarize this part really quick because it's undisputed: In 1951 Mossadegh nationalized the oil industry built and owned by Britain because they were just stealing it all and not paying royalties. The British together with the big (mostly American) oil companies organize a boycott so that other third world countries don't see this and get uppity. After two years, Iran is suffering badly because of the lack of money from oil among other things.)
Mohammed Mossadegh. He did this strange thing where he would say he was sick in bed and do his business from there. He did it even when visiting America. Maybe there was some meaning to it in his culture but if there was is it went way over everyone's head here. Or maybe it was just an extreme passive aggressive thing. You can understand why negotiating with this guy might be frustrating.
The oil nationalization thing was the big issue looming over everything, but not in the way you might think. Pretty much everyone across the different factions supported it, but there was infighting over whether Mossadegh was doing it competently. As well as a billion other issues. Iran was one of the more democratic countries in the world at the time and people had all kinds of different beliefs and things to fight over. Obviously the religious thing that blew up in 1963 with Ayatollah Khomeini didn't come out of nowhere.
Part of the fleet review for the coronation of Elizabeth II, 1953. This is the overwhelming power they were threatening to use.
Besides the situation in Iran, there was another crisis in a troubled country. Britain was still trying to figure out what its identity was after they lost India. A lot of people thought they should continue running a global empire. This wasn't some weird fringe Tory belief. Across the country there was deep resentment that they were losing their place in the world to the Americans and their anti-imperialism. Britain had been exploiting Iran's entire oil industry for about 40 years based on a deal they got through bribery and threats and paid only a tiny fraction of their profits to Iran. So Mossadegh nationalized it. The British went apeshit and told the Americans that they would have to invade because they couldn't dare lose face in front of the Orientals. So the US is trying to solve this situation without two allies going to war with each other. It's been two years now and it's deteriorating rapidly.
So Eisenhower eventually relents and orders the CIA to implement the coup the British had been begging for and partly planned. So the CIA gets together and plots with various army officers and politicians they think will back it. You can guess how well that goes. Other factions are tipped off and get their army units in the streets to put it down. The Shah flees the country into exile, presumably forever. Ironically, the whole reason why Eisenhower ordered the CIA to do all this wasn't because they wanted Mossadegh out. He was a pain in the butt but they could live with him. It's because Eisenhower was afraid the increasingly unstable, unpopular, and dictatorial regime was vulnerable to being overthrown by the communists and then everything would really go to heck. So the idea was that we would do it first.
Stuff like this was happening but with multiple factions.
But the failed attempt caused so much chaos, with tanks and various angry mobs from different factions roving around the streets of Tehran, that Tudeh (the commies) decided now was their chance and they tried their own coup, but that failed too. At the end of this game of musical chairs, Gen. Zahedi ended up in power, the guy the US had wanted all along. It's hard to say exactly how much American support helped him. The CIA was bribing newspapers and influential people in the time leading up to it which may have had some influence on events, but the actual coup they totally fricked. This all happened in 4 days.
Epilogue
Ashraf Pahlavi. Once at dinner in front of several foreign diplomats she yelled at her brother "Are you man or are you a mouse?" about some policy issue and stormed off. Would.
The Shah returned with Zahedi's permission, like a browbeaten cuck coming back from his shed. The Americans had never liked him. The CIA considered him to be a spineless coward and preferred dealing with his sister Ashraf, who was much more strong-willed and exerted a certain level of dominance over him. But something surprising happened over the next couple years. The Shah managed to lever Zahedi out of power and make himself an autocrat.
After the coup, BP was forced into giving up their monopoly of Iranian oil. They had been shamelessly screwing over the Iranians, using tactics like claiming that they couldn't pay anything because they weren't making a profit. The oil industry remained nationalized but Iran made a contract with the world's big oil companies (the "Seven Sisters") to operate it for them as a consortium. For various complicated reasons that are certainly way above your head, this meant that the Iranians got a way bigger share of the profits. It paved the way for them taking real control around 1970 and OPEC actually getting some teeth in the following years, under the leadership of the Shah to a large extent.
I dunno why monarchs these days always have to wear military uniforms. Your dad became famous for killing a lot of bandits with a machine gun when he was young, but who are you kidding?
The Shah would go on to be denounced as a puppet controlled by the US. I wish. The CIA said he had a (actual quote) "pathological fear and hatred of the British". He'd been brought up this way by his father, who had been deposed by the British. Delusional megalomaniac? Definitely. Somebody looking to be a puppet? No. CIA wasn't even allowed to spy on Iran. In the late 1970s he got cancer which he hid from his "puppetmasters" until it was too late and was overthrown. But that's a story for another time.
This is the only image of paratroopers landing in that war that Google will return now. Serious 1984 shit.
Britain, having been cockblocked out of invading Iran, was still desperate to use its (still very potent at the time) military power to thrash some wogs to show they were still dominant. This led to the disastrously r-slurred invasion of Egypt in 1956 in which the Americans spanked them and put them back in bed, ironically proving that Britain was no longer a global power that could do incredibly stupid evil stuff without American permission.
Addressing your whining
But Redactor! It was a rogue CIA operation!
Just like how sending Gary Powers out on that U-2 was a "rogue operation" until Eisenhower admitted he ordered it. This is an excuse that politicians use to protect themselves. Please grow up and don't be so naive.
But Redactor! He was democratically elected just like Allende! That should trump everything!
And then when things got tough he made himself dictator. Park Chung-hee was democratically elected. DeGaulle was democratically elected. Nixon was nowhere near a dictator but you're butthurt about him and he was democratically elected. Trump is too r-slurred to know when he's breaking the law and he's been democratically elected twice. It's funny how it's only people lefties want to identify with are the only ones who get a lifetime pass for being a dictator because they won an election once.
But Redactor! This is the reason why they hate us!
I know who obscure musician Sahba Motallevi who plays the tar is, which proves I must know what I'm talking about.
Give me a fricking break. Do you know any Iranians? They're some of my favorite people in the world but they are batshit insane about some things. I'm not usually into "Human Biodiversity" but I think they might have a genetic predisposition toward being paranoid. These are people who, when JFK Jr's plane crashed, their first question was who assassinated him. Where the Cinema Rex fire was so obviously done by Islamic militants that it must be a false flag. Where Jimmy Carter is a ruthless thug who secretly wants to stomp all of humanity under his jackboot. Where a really smart well-educated person asked me if Saddam Hussein had really gotten executed several years after it happened. They would have blamed America for something if we never did anything.
Also it's a country with a deep sense of persecution by foreign powers because they were basically colonized by Britain and Russia from ~1800-1945. Except it wasn't done openly. Everyone knew what was going on but it was behind the scenes. The kind of thing that makes you suspicious of foreign superpowers.
This kind of animosity isn't sparked by a single really complicated event. It gets into all kinds of really complicated psychology. Look at the left in South Korea and their reasons for hating America:
I wonder if a single one of these tards has ever even realized that they must have been wrong because the beef genocide never happened.
We were really the bad guys in the Korean war. (Yet literally about 90% of people who actually lived through that think we were the good guys.)
There was a traffic accident once and a little girl got run over by accident. (Car accidents never happen in Korea. Ajussi is totally fine to make it home after a few bottles of soju.)
American beef has prions in it that specifically target the brains of Koreans and give them mad cow disease. (This was a real thing I'm not even exaggerating. It was a huge national issue and there were massive riots over it.)
I can't even begin to list the number of cases of people irrationally hating America when we did nothing wrong:
British leftoids like John le Carre who were obviously butthurt that they lost their empire to America, so now they call us imperialists.
That whole thing in France in the 1960s-1990s where their foreign policy was all about hating America.
Indians who lived off of rice donated by America but were butthurt because we reminded them of the British or something.
Canadians. I think that speaks for itself.
In Iran especially, their culture requires them to have a Britain to blame for their problems, so that's going to be the USA. And in South Korea they need a Japan to blame for their problems, so that's going to be the USA. (I mean seriously, hating Japan has turned into this pathogical need where some of them can't live without it.) !asians
Was it the right call?
So should we have done it? That's the $64 question, isn't it? 
Eisenhower with the 101st Airborne chads before D-Day. This guy lived in a world where he had to make some extreme choices and they weren't just when to upmarsey or downmarsey.
Imagine being in Eisenhower's shoes. Stalin has just died a few months ago and presumably his heir is going to be like him. You were in a legit shooting war with the commies in Korea up until... 
24 days ago. You're 8 years from leading a war on a continental level against another totalitarian regime and having to order the deaths of hundreds of thousands because that's how real shit was. There's a bunch of crises going on all over the world now. This one is especially dangerous because of the extreme strategic importance of Iran. Europe, the place you spent so much of your life fighting to protect, is dependent on Iranian oil. That war would have been a heck of a lot worse if you didn't have more oil than the other side so you know just how important this is. Given the information he had at the time and the imminent danger of WW3 breaking out, I think his decision was fairly reasonable.
Here's my view in hindsight: I don't think they should have done it. I think if there was a better understanding of Iranian culture they would have realized that there's such a large majority who will never accept communism that you don't have to worry about that unless they get invaded. They had a large portion of the population who are conservative Muslims (especially in rural areas). The educated elites liked freedom and democracy. There's actually a democratic tradition going back pretty far and while it was far from perfect it wasn't a complete joke. Beyond that, look at the virtually total failure of communist subversion throughout the Middle East. In the entire Cold War the only truly commie state they managed to take control of was South Yemen. These countries have a really good immune system against communism. Also they really really are not sympathetic toward Russia. You hear it to this day when somebody makes a deal with America and they say "It's another Treaty of Turkmenchay! 
!" And they are extremely nationalist. They are not interested in world socialism.
But don't take my word for it!! We have access to an actual honest assessment from within CIA about what happened.
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Overwhelmed. That's the only word that can describe how I feel right now. I'm drowning in emotions, thoughts, and ideas that I can barely function. Perhaps writing out the issue will provide some relief.
Physical Strife
I've returned to self-harming. I don't even need benzos or painkillers to do it anymore. I can slash myself to the white meat and just sit with the pain. It barely phases me. In fact, there's a part of it that feels deliciously good. It's an entire experience - the blood that drips, the sight of carved-out flesh, the sensation of being obliterated. It all comes together beautifully. I'm not even ashamed of my scars anymore. I think what I've done to myself is quite remarkable, and not many people could manage. If only I could challenge that willpower and dedication to something worthwhile, but I'm stupid as frick and all I can do is longpost and do drugs.
I tried to contact my psychiatrist but they're closed until January. I made an appointment with a GP for today but I don't really know what I'm going to do or say. Just tell them I've been self-harming and having panic attacks? I don't know what they can do for me. I doubt they'll be allowed to prescribe me anything, since I'm technically still supposed to have a supply of benzos for the month (I ate them all ages ago).
Should I go or should I just leave it? I think what I'm really looking for is just someone to talk to, though I don't know if a GP is the right person to be talking to.
As I write this, I'm listening to Nas Illmatic, and I'll say it's my top 5 most favorite albums of all time, and I'd argue it's the greatest hip hop album of all time. I think Life's a B-word is the greatest rap song of all time, and AZ absolutely kills it.
My favorite line is:
I switched my motto; instead of sayin', "Frick tomorrow!"
That buck that bought a bottle could've struck the lotto
I love how it encapsulates that "quiet violence of dreams". We have a vision of someone trying to escape the sins of their environment, but their most reliable means of escaping their heck is to win the fricking lotto. There's such a sense of futility and misery wrapped in these lines.
Social Strife
So it's clear I don't belong here. Everywhere I go I annoy people and make them angry. People have actively verbalized that they don't like me, and this recurring pattern is one that has characterized my life since childhood. It isn't a big problem - I'm a generally introverted person. However, I'm not schizoid and I do need some amount of love and acceptance. I fail to find these things and that makes me sad.
I'm so fricking depressed about being an incel. I'm 29, broke, no hope of GF, children or marriage. I can't even buy hookers because nobody's going to frick a dude with actively bleeding legs. I have literally permanently locked myself out of s*x for the rest of my life with my mental illness and self-harm. I do wonder, if I had the same personality, but I wasn't a 156cm ugly black man, would I still be an incel? These are questions we need quantum computers to answer.
I crave self-harm right now but my appointment is in three hours and I don't know if I can stop myself from cutting until then. And again, I'll probably be wasting my time and money going to a GP who is going to look at me and say "I didn't go to school to deal with schizos" and refer me to a psychiatrist which, as I have highlighted, is gone until January.
Conclusion
I don't know whether I should go to the doctor or not. Am I wasting my time? What am I hoping to achieve?
Well Reddit is shit and I need something to do when I'm not playing RDR2 so I guess I'm stuck with you r-slurs. You people who will give me griefing awards, insult me, tell me to kms, and accuse me of using ChatGPT (an accusation which confuses me. There are tons of plagiarism detection sites online. Proving I use ChatGPT would be trivial, yet nobody does it).
I'm so fricking overwhelmingly sad I can't think straight. This was supposed to be a longpost about Eugene Terre'Blanche but I'm too sad to do it.
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Although it's technically a holiday in Hong Kong I am in the office, albiet with nothing to do so I have been watching DS9. Here are my thoughts...
Emissary
The best Star Trek pilot, both in terms of entertainment and setting the scene and establishing the main characters for the subsequent series. Quark and Odo aren't given much to do but nevertheless we get an impression of who they are and their relationship to one another- Quark's nephew BIPOC is presented here as more of a hardened delinquent rather than the naughty kid he would later appear as and BIPOC's father Rom only appears in the background. Kira is pretty annoying tbh and it took most of season 1 to let her calm down and stop being angry and unhinged about literally everything. Everyone else is pretty much as they would be throughout the show, including Gul Dukat who has a brief appearance.
The story revolves around the immediate aftermath of the Cardassian withdrawl from their 50-year occupation of Bajor and the uneasy new alliance between the Bajorans and the Federation, who the Bajorans fear might just be a new occupation force. The Bajoran gods, the Prophets, are revealed to be aliens who exist outside of time and space in an artificial wormhole which connects the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants of our galaxy. By the end of the episode the Prophets have agreed to allow transit to the new frontier through their wormhole after a lengthy extrapolation between themselves and DS9 commander Sisko on the nature of linear time.
This focusses on why Sisko- who insists we temporal beings are always moving forward- continues to dwell on the death of his wife during the Borg invasion, rather than moving on which he has argued is what we do. This is very smart writing- taking the very out-there concept of aliens who exist at every point in time simultaneously and linking it to the very relatable experience of grief. It would have been better without Avery Brooks' profoundly uneven performance. I think he is capable of acting some scenes very well- the relationship between Sisko and his son Jake is one of the best father-son combos in tv history- but he cannot play strong emotions and resorts to this odd staccato shouting which just seems weird.
Why exactly the Prophets- who experience past, present and future as one- would seem surprised or even threatened by Sisko deserves some exploration. Especially so since later seasons will reveal he has a very close relationship to one of them. I hypothesise that they are, to some extent, playing along with the scene but, at the same time, this actually is the beginning of a linear cause and effect series of events for them. They use Sisko's description of linear events as a template to create their own, deciding to interract more closely with the temporal universe beyond their own wormhole- that these events occur in the past from our perspective is irrelevant as the Prophets can leave their own dimension at any point along the timeline. From their perspective the line of cause and effect is- meet with Sisko, realise he's 'one of them'; send one of their own to create him; take a greater interest in Bajor and the greater galaxy (including abducting an ancient religious extremist to act as an alternative emissary- a wake-up call to goad Sisko into taking his role as emissary seriously, and saving the Alpha Quadrant from a Dominion fleet); and latterly suffering a schism among their ranks which creates the Pah-Wraiths. This happens all over our timeline but is a series of one-after-the-other events to them and is their exploration of linear existence. Of course, to some extent, they always knew they would do this as they always had knowledge of past, present and future as one- in the words of Dr. Manhattan; "We're all puppets, but some of us can see the strings".
Past Prologue
The first regular episode of DS9 introduces possibly the greatest reoccuring character in Star Trek history- challenged only by his fellow Cardassian Gul Dukat- Elim Garak (or "plain simple Garak" as he prefers). He is the only Cardassian to remain on the station and is suspected of being a spy, which is half true (but of course, the truth is just an excuse for a poor imagination). Andrew J. Robinson (who also played the Scorpio in Dirty Harry- he was wrong to feel lucky- and the heavy-bleeding father in the original Hellraiser) plays Garak a little too creepy and gay and apparently Rick Berman told him to cut that shit out, so Garak straightens out quite a lot in subsequent appearances. Garak is the best part of the episode, the rest of it is some guff about Bajoran extremists- whom we never hear from again- and another appearance by the utterly tiresome House of Duras in the form of the sisters Lursa and B'Etor (in their defence, they do seem to have nice tits) who are smuggling bomb parts for the extremists. Lets just remind ourselves of what eventually happened to them:
Anyway, none of this goes anywhere and Kira ends up looking like a bit of an idiot for initially supporting the nice-haired extremist leader- to be fair she does redeem herself towards the end. All anyone cares about in this episode is Garak and it's worth watching for him.
A Man Alone
Cut to: Bashir and Quark lusting after Dax (Jeets and Jews being notorious for this kind of shit). Everyone assumes that Sisko is going to feed her a length but he insists they're just old friends. For some reason I startrd imagining the noises Avery Brooks makes when fricking while writing this.
Anyway- none of this is the point of the episode and Odo harrumpfing and admitting to being a vocel before jumping up and slugging a guy at the dabo table and telling him he's got 26 hours (one Bajor day) to get off the station cues us to the focus of this episode. The guy he hit was some kind of smuggler but not the good kind- he let a kid die cos her family couldn't pay for the medicine she needed. He then killed a Cardassian for which Odo arrested and charged him. Later on he's seen getting a massage by a web-fingered holo-whore when's he's stabbed in the back and killed.
The tale requires us to go along with the notion that Odo might actually be the killer- after all, we don't know him that well. However Rene Aberjoniois is a fully paid up regular cast member contracted until at least the end of the season. I suppose, back in the 90s, there were still a lot of people watching who didn't understand how TV gets made but the whole thing never gets resolved and a bunch of threads get left hanging- most notably the motivations of Chudd McWrinklenose...
...who leads the witch hunt against Quark when he gets relieved of duty. I'm going to spoil the ending cos it's not very interesting. The suggler guy cloned himself and then killed his clone. Bashir demonstrates this by growing a clone of the guy revealing that, when it's grown, it will be allowed to leave medbay and go have a life- Odo states that "killing your clone is still murder". Now, I grant you that this might just be Bajoran law but lets just recall how Riker and the awful Pulaski reacted when someone cloned them:
The B-plot is about the O'Briens and Keiko being unhappy with nothing to do on the station. The woman was a botanist on the Enterprise (I assume she and a bunch of other civilians worked in specialist jobs like than somewhere among the huge and echoingly- empty halls of that ship- seriously, the Enterprise-D had a compliment of less than a thousand people -including civilians- and had literally millions of square feet of floorspace- place must've been empty as frick) and now she's sat at home with the kid. So she decides to become a schoolteacher because, when all other career choices dry up, that's what you do. She goes to persuade Rom to send his son to the school. Rom is... very different to how he'll be later. Of course,nobody likes Keiko so anything about her is unpopular. A lot of this is for the same reasons that nobody liked Skylar in Breaking Bad- male writers project onto wife characters and make them drag-wheels for the male protagonists... their feelings and ideas an obstacle to be overcome. Nevertheless, here's a compilation of Keiko being an annoying c*nt:
In summary: meh.
I really want to know why Odo doesn't just turn his arms into tentacles and wrap up perps when arresting them or why he grunts and gasps while he's fighting considering he's a changeling who doesn't breathe.
Babel
Cold open on something I've never seen before: a hard working Irishman. Potatoneighbors usually only put the effort into three things- drunkeness, spousal abuse and the glorification of heinous acts of terrorism. But Chief Miles O'Brien will do anything to avoid having to go home and talk to his wife so he's personally taking charge of literally every actof maintenence on the station. DS9 was a shoddy rush-job, it seems and Cardassian technology is a bit shit compared to the Federation stuff. After fixing yet another anus-juice-producing replicator we see a mysterious object within release a strange gas...
The station becomes Wuhan to an aphasia virus which makes people spount gibberish. This is never funnier than when it's O'Brien- Colm Meany (an actually legitimately great actor) delivers this stuff wonderfully and it's an incredible shame that he's removed from the episode so soon. I could watch this shit for 40 minutes no trouble:
This episode is actually quite good and benefits from having no real b-plot. The closest you get is that Quark inadvertently spreads the virus further by breaking into the crew quarters on the command decks to use the replicators after the ones in his bar break and O'Brien's too busy having his spazz to fix them. Now this begs a question: what the frick are people paying Quark for if he's just using the same ship replicators as everyone else to make his food and drink? Is it ambience? I considered the idea that maybe Quark has licences to replicate stuff you can't get at home but then how's he doing it from a crew replicator? Maybe everyone only gets a certain ration of replicator credits and Quark's takes latinum for more but then that really raises the idea that his patrons are gluttons. I suppose the gambling and holo-whoring is something you can't do in your quarters but everyone acts like the food and drink is something special too.
Quark and Odo are the only two main cast members who don't get affected by the virus by the end of the episode which actually makes a lot of sense as Odo's a changeling and numerous TNG episodes established that Ferenghi brains don't work like goyim brains do.
Anyway- first objectively good regular episode of season 1. The next episode will be even better...
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Duet
A unscheduled spaceship asks for docking permission at DS9 and, in what seems to me a massively wasteful use of resources, Kira (second in command of the station remember) deals with the request. This is how she hears that the ship has an emergency case of Space AIDS (not really, obviously, but I just got done in the last post claiming that a 1970s British multi-instrumentalist and songwriter was murdering people in space so you'll forgive my lack of exact details). Only survivors of one of Cardassia's most awful mines during the occupation (which we will hitherto call Michigan Mine cos apparently the air quality was so bad it gave everyone AIDS). Kira skips down to the infirmary to greet a brave survivor of the occupation to be greeted by this cheeky chappie:
He's obviously one of the guards from the camp and, as Kira tearfully explains to Sisko, those guys did a few too many of the old Nanjing Massacre recreation activities during their time in Michigan. This one is called Maritza and is played by Harris Yulin, an incredibly prolific character actor- if you don't recognise the name you'd recognise his face from one of his many, many movie roles. I've always remembered him best for his role as the corrupt pig in Scarface who was cocky enough to think Tony Montana wouldn't shoot him:
Although Maritza claims to have a different sickness, Bashir confirms it's definitely Michigan AIDS and Kira goes all Simon Weistental in her quest to see him hang. Sisko's reluctance to bend the law in order to hold the man on circumstantial evidence threatens to cause a diplomatic incident with both the Bajorans and the Cardassians and he's forced to give Kira 26 hours (one Bajor day, remember) to wring a confession out of the guy.
Sisko gets a call from his predecessor Gul Dukat...
Remember him? Yeah this is only the second time he's appeared in the series, believe it or not. Season 2 will see him appear far more prominently but, until now, he really hasn't played a large role.
Now, the rest of the episode is basically a series of one-on-one interrogations where Kira tries to prove that Maritza was actually the commander of the camp and was therefore responsible for everything that happened there and Martiza both denies it openly but also implies she's right and mocks her for not being able to prove it. These scenes are largely played straight without much in the way of special effects, location changes or other cast getting in the way- hence 'Duet'.
It's very strong stuff and gives Nana Visitor a lot of chances to prove her acting chops (which are considerable- everyone's just going to have to accept that I am going to simp hard for Visitor from now on because she's hot and talented AND I LIKE HER HAIR OK? I have been traumatised in recent years by the 
genocide of tomboys and I like to return to the 90s when boyish girls were loved and cherished and not hoodwinked into cutting their tits off*).
This episode reminds me of TNG's 'The Measure of a Man' in as much as it's a strong script presented plainly with very strong performances without needing a bunch of expensive vidual effects or the fricking camera rolling around on a fricking skateboard like modern Trek. The ending is a bit contrived (Maritza turns out to be the camp clerk who was too scared to stop the atrocities and wants to set himself up as a great villain to provide the Bajorans with a sense of justice and to publicize the massacre across the quadrant to stop the Carsassian revisionist history from burying it- Kira goes from hating him to feeling pity for him) but the road there is well worth travelling and it does a lot to explore the Bajoran and Cardassian attitude to the occupation and their relationship with each other. Having established that he's actually innocent- and a Bajoran sympathiser to boot- Kira escorts Maritza to his ship but, along the way he is attacked and killed by a Bajoran- not because he was a war criminal but simply because he was a Cardassian.
Ahhhhhhh
No seriously- it's good. Just falls apart a bit at the end.
*This was a sperg out and I'm sorry. I'm going to remember that obssessing about trains helped elect Dumpf and his gaggle of neo-lib Jeet-entusiasts.
In the Hands of the Prophets
So last episode re-introduced Gul Dukat. Lets meet another one of the DS9 rogues' gallery for the finalรฉ of Season 1...
Vedek Winn is a religious fundamentalist and one of two Vedeks (like bishops) in line to become the next Kai (like the pope). Literally the first thing she does upon arriving on the station is shut Keiko the frick up and shut down her stupid school.
So far she's a very sympathetic villain. Winn's issue with the school is that it's teaching the kids, specifically the Bajoran kids, that the Celestial Temple is just an artificial wormhole and the Prophets are merely aliens.
Now this is some real Star Trek shit. The general disdain for religion and the repeated debunking of supposed "Gods" has been a cornerstone of this show from it's earliest days.
DS9 would tackle things differently- the Prophets are, essentially, just very advanced aliens... one theory posits them as what the Bajorans will eventually become although this idea has some issues and also it's a rip-off of the ultimate fate of humanity in Babylon 5...
...but since when has DS9 ripping-off Babylon 5 ever been something new?
Anyway, as I was saying- although the Prophets are just aliens to the Federation, DS9's writers never undermine the religious beliefs of the Bajorans: they are gods to them and they literally do all the god shit that gods are supposed to do. Similarly, just because Winn is an extremist that doesn't mean her religion is entirely bad or wrong.
To compound Keiko's problems, Miles is finding himself quite enamoured of his Bajoran assistant. She has actually been in a couple of episodes before this one but here she's given a lot more to say and do- she's smart, competent and she keeps sticking her tits in his face all the time.
Anyway, after all the shit Winn's been stirring, someone bombs the ( by luck, empty) school...
Remember how I said Winn was one of the Vedeks in the running to be the next Kai? The other one is Vedek Bariel.
You may recognise Robert Anglim as the younger priest guy (who wasn't Richard Chamberlain) from The Thorn Birds. Maybe you don't- he was later in the series after Rachel Ward and Brian Brown weren't in it. Bariel is the moderate candidate and Sisko tries topersuade him to come to the station to try and offset the violence.
He eventually agrees and arranges a photo-op with Winn- "let us stand together against this violence" he says- when Tits McWrinklenose tries to shoot him but is intercepted by Sisko doing a slow motion dive. He even gives us a slow motion "NOOOOOOOOO!" when he does it which is pretty funny. I actually don't want to undermine this scene- it's a heck of a climax.
Ahhhhhhh
Note the Bajoran special-needs clapping as Bariel does his rock-star priest act.
OK straight off- Louise Fletcher as Winn is fricking amazing. The passive aggressive shit she pulled as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Works even better here where she ties it to smiley insincere religious doubletalk. I know the Oscars is bullshit, and I guess some of the schizo dramatards think the Academy a cabal of old libertarian Jews handing out awards for whatever shit they think will most destabilise the midwest, but Fletcher's Oscar deserves to be celebrated and is a badge of her talent. Let's just have a bit of that now...
Yeah, that's Brad Dourif- voice of Chucky and another Star Trek alumni.
Bajoran extremist shenanigans will kick off season 2 and Winn will be back in action, this time allying herself with multiple Tony Award winner Frank Langella (The Tony's are the stage Oscars but even more gay).
DS9 will return... maybe even in the new SciFi hole, who knows?
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I technically have only 1 trophy left to get the plat, just to finish the game on hard but after beating all the challenges it's an easy part.
So the game continues the divisive game ff7 remake or part 1. A vocal minority didn't liked that part 1 wasn't a faithful remake
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/168653-final-fantasy-vii-remake/80041128
My fully objective opinion is that if you want to play original story then play the original game. I played first time the game in 2017 and it held very well, the graphic is part of experience it also a lot better in many ways than the remakes.
So devs had hard choices to make second part more faithful or do some creative freedom.
They started with big middle finger to canon lovers by putting Zack in front of their promotional art. And teased that you can actually save Aerith. And the whole game will end up being a very big tease.
The game start with you playing Zack and them showing parallel universe where Zack survives but cloud doesn't wakes up. Zack enters Midgar and sees helicopter crushes with Avalanche including Aerith. This shit absolutely doesn't make sense timeline wise but goal was to show Zack surviving is bad. So cloud than wakes up, yeah every Zack moment in the game is dream sequence.
Devs made every Zack sequence as dream so they could always back steep if majority of gaymers don't like the new direction and say "ha it was just a dream"
So the next 7-8 chapters of the game have basically no story. Just gameplay and the gameplay is alright, it has some strong far cry motif but what is really impressive is the balance. The game is so balanced
FF7 is a legendary game because there was so many way to break the game so many players were experimenting with the builds and stuff. RPG are generally about min/max and breaking the game. So ff7 remake parts showing such a middle finger to rpg elements. Some rpg elements will only show up at end game but you'll still will never be op. They also future proof the balance. Like you can't use equipment to get a status boost +100% attack or magic. You get only 1 item in the game that can give you +25% attack so it's impossible even to reach 100% attack boost and they already creeped you
You end up being in that game weaker than in part 1. In part 1 every character can reach 9999hp because the hp materia gives you 50% hp boost and you can use multiple of those. In part 2 30% hp boost max
You could assume it an action game but nope as action game the gameplay is absolutely not balanced but luckily you only encounter it doing hard mode or challenges.
So on chapter 8 comes the first legit big change. Tiffa falls into mako, in og game that happens after aerith dies.
On chapter 13 happens some wild religious symbolism shit in those dream sequences starts happening. Here my fav:
They start giving player a choice hinting that you can save Aerith but same time foreshadowing that non of those choices are real, neighbor can't escape fate and some symbolism like all those choices had this dog
Hinting that you won't save Aerith. That dream sequence also killed Zack multiple times showing you can't change the fate, Zack must die from bullets from those soldiers. So the moment Aerith is about to get killed, cloud saves her in his head and starts fighting Sephiroth and then thinking that he saved Aerith when she got killed
The game ends with illusion of Aerith telling she will stop Sephiroth and all this is still cannon since in og ff7 Aerith did showed up in the end in life stream defeating Sephiroth.
The real changes are basically just Tifa mako event and Yiffie being the main female protagonist, she has even more screen time than Aerith if you ignore the dream sequence. It's understandable, modern Japan is quite libertarian so no wonder she is everywhere and the strongest character in the game. Despite being total optional in og game. She got her own dlc in part 1 and in part3 she will get a huge chapter for her self.
Graphic of ff7 part 2 is actually worse than in part 1 but part 1 is not open world so understandable.
Part 1 is generally a better game than part 2. Part 2 just has so many mini games like 1/4 of chapters are just mini games. Part 2 is too much of an fanfic game.
The story also needed more changes because like I mentioned before that og ff7 did a lot of things better than the remakes and one is that in part 2 it doesn't make sense how the party was following clearly mentally unstable cloud without questioning his actions, many characters interactions just looked better og game than with modern graphics. In rebirth so many interactions and characters motives look so robotic than even most giga neurodivergent would write a better interaction of characters, just show how robotic japs are.
So objectively the game is a 7/10 but if you like Japanese nonsense the game becomes 8/10 and if you like serious shit that makes sense the game is 5/10.
If you go after platinum it will be an harder platinum than any souls game
It has challenges where you have to fight 10+ bosses and if you lose one fight you have to start from beginning, you cannot use any items. All bosses are faster than you and have moves that will wipe you out in one hit so you need to know their patterns
I didn't had any trouble with the game and beating the mini games but the feeling that after fighting a challenge for 30 min the prospect of losing last battle and then start from zero didn't felt nice. I have no idea why they made a jrpg this hard. I am pretty sure the 1% that finished all those challenges didn't liked it and devs will make them even harder in part3.
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(Reply to this post)
@Redactor0 grandpa confirm what I got wrong
Nothing fam. Just like I expect from you. 
Let's see if there's a few points I can elaborate on slightly.
USA Navy forces were not immediately aware of the ramifications the Battle of Midway would have upon the momentum of the Pacific Theatre
Keep in mind that both sides didn't even know how what ships the other had. They were getting bullshit intelligence from their own pilots all the time, so for example the Japanese were overestimating how many carriers they had sunk and had no idea we still had 3 left in the Pacific at that time.
the sheer dominant magnitude of the influence an aircraft carrier would as a weapons platform would supercede even the wildest prewar speculations
I gotta push back on this just slightly. Battleships were going obsolete but it wasn't completely over quite yet. Notice how important they were at Leyte Gulf on both sides and that was near the end of the war. This is one thing where I actually got some insight from computer games. Like so often, that comes in the form of actually getting the geometry involved. A battleship at flank speed could get about as far overnight as a carrier-based plane could fly (I'm oversimplifying here, but you get it). So you could actually dash in and catch them with a little luck. Especially if there were a few clouds out.
But it was really marginal. At the end of the war the proximity fuze for AA shells came out which helped the battleships a lot but also jet engines and guided bombs. And just planes that could fly farther. So it was really obvious by 1945 that within a few years they would be totally useless for fighting other ships.
the Royal Palace in hue
The bastards got there before Old Man Redactor could take pictures of it. 
But there was a lot of beautiful stuff left in Hue even after the battle.
this upcoming deafeat would be the greatest blow dealt to the US for the entire war
That's a really good way of putting it. You must have some angloid DNA. 
It was the single greatest massacre of VC forces to the extent that they literally ceased to fricking be a political power within the communist sphere in Vietnam entire and Cambodia. From then on the North Vietnamese had near absolute control of military operations.
The VC were never really an independent force. At least not at the top level. There were lots of commies in South Vietnam at the beginning of the war of course, but the leadership was always directed from Hanoi. What was really changed by Tet is that all these low-level commies native to the South got killed off. After that, there was no longer any pretense that this was a guerilla war. By the time the old man got there (I think 1970) it was completely a conventional war between the North and the South fought with advanced high-tech weapons. He wasn't hauling an M-16 around when he was on his photography trips to old historical buildings in Hue because there weren't any guerillas to be scared of. Those people were all dead.
The Phoenix Program was also very helpful here. Just using basic 1960s police and office work they rooted out the commies in the villages. This was basically just turning the tables on them. Going after everyone who is on the enemy side. Except we didn't use terrorism the way the VC did, chopping off the head of the mayor's kid and shit like that. The cops just arrested people in 90% of cases. (Statistics on the Phoenix Program are quite interesting, something to go into more detail about someday.)
The US and ARVn performance was absolutely spectacular, perhaps one of history's great battles like fricking Cannae or Waterloo or something
Let's not suck our peepees too hard here. Old Man tells me a story second hand of a guy who had been in some big base around Saigon during Tet. He complained that he never got to shoot anybody because they were all slaughtered by .50 cal machineguns before they even got close enough. This wasn't Hannibal or Wellington we were dealing with.
us Air Cavalry (helicopter troops)
My dad will swear up and down that he hated everything about the Army but this is exactly the kind of comment that would draw him out. The 101st was airborne, it was NOT cavalry!
the lies and deception of the military a and 2 administrations about how good the war went
That's what the real crisis was. If it wasn't Tet it would have been something else to trigger it. They kept saying the war is about to end and they were clearly lying. This is a generation that wasn't beyond sacrifices. Everyone's parents had been in WW2 in some shit job sweeping asbestos off the floor of a shipyard or on the side of the world fighting. A lot of them never came back. But there was a purpose. People will sacrifice a lot for a purpose, but if they're getting jerked around, they notice real fast.
Old Man's story about this is listening to the radio where Nixon is saying that we're not bombing Laos and he's looking up in the sky and there's planes above him heading west. It didn't take fricking Descartes to guess where they were going.
unexpectedly brought low USA civilian morale to continue to send their sons overseas into the meatgrinder
A lot of the conventional wisdom about this isn't always right. We had something like half our casualties after Tet. (One third, I dunno.) And popular support for the war wasn't really eroded all that much if you look at the polling data.
Keep in mind that there's a certain class of people who dominate the discussion of the Vietnam War. Specifically: Guys who dodged the draft so they didn't have to go there and know anything about it. There's an extreme level of self-serving bullshit they claim. Like that the "Anti-War Movement" (lol you sure cared about the Vietnam-Cambodia war) had any impact at all on anything other than being so disgusting they helped get Nixon elected in 1968. These are the last fricking people on Earth you should ever believe. I trust the guys fighting on the other side 1000x more than them.
By the time 2023 arrived the most critical munitions would be basic artillery shells
So my two things I was saying going into this is ATGMs are gonna be important (because of experience in the Middle East in previous decades) and basic b-word artillery shells. There was this cult of precision munitions from Desert Storm. The thing I never heard anybody explain is: What if you don't know exactly where the enemy is tho?
Unironic WW1 bunkers and trenches also came to dominate the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine from Donbass to Crimea, with static artillery war and massed charges for both sides being the most popular strategy, on a grinding stalemate similar as to the ending phase of 1952s Korea War.
The last full-scale war we had between two opponents that was a fair fight was the Iran-Iraq War and it was a heck of a lot like this. I keep telling everyone, but nobody believes little old Redactor. I guess I gotta post more Chronicles of Victory.
- HailVictory1776 : r/oldschoolcool blue lives matter
- 52
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Fix your title to:
Jewish woman chased by men and youth armed with clubs during the Lviv pogroms, 1941, USSR
or
Jewish woman chased by men and youth armed with clubs during the Lviv pogroms, 1941, when USSR occupied Ukraine.
Both your titles are wrong so the main title. The pogroms were done in Lwรณw, Poland, when GERMANS occupied Poland. The pogroms were done by Ukrainians and Germans.
I think if you ask an old Ukrainian they'd tell you it was more like an occupation
Many Ukrainian were in high leadership positions and Ukraine was a very important part of the USSR .
Between here old Ukrainian:
But today Ukrainian Nazi problem is unique you see all the Nazis that survived the first year of fighting they stopped fighting they went to back stage position where they getting shit tons of money. Good example Wolves of Davinci
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Wolves_Battalion
Its leader told he will be an homosexual if he loses Kurakhove then neighbor got rich from donation money bought him self Rolexes started telling how Ukraine will lose, the moment Russian were approaching Kurakhove, left it with his boys.
This is prime example of Ukrainian nouveau riche Nazis.
And it's understandable, when you rich you stop giving frick about Nazi shit and nationalism. Why be in dirt if he can go to Maldives and bang some models ?
But fun part Zelenskyy don't understand that Nazis in Ukraine changed and yesterday he gave this interview
Before the interview started Zelensky was talking with that guy in Russian. (There multiple accounts, and Zelenskyy team is Russian speaking and they only speak Ukrainian when the cameras are on) Then during the interview he told to this Russian guy that he has no respect for Russian and Russian language. He sweared a lot. Then still talks about memorandum and guarantees like frick it's 2025 and he still drives that car. Memorandums have guaranties only if they are ratified and nobody ratified them and US even openly told it multiple times. And taking those 300 billions Russian assets will frick up western banking system for more than 300 billions. So this interview wasn't for westerncels it wasn't even for Ukrainian because 75% of them didn't understood why he acted like an r-slur.
It was for those ultra nationalists who will think it's cool that he swears on Putin and Russian and dehumanising them
Like those guys who he in 2019 told to remove weapons from some kind of protest and they laugh at him when he told them he is president of Ukraine.
But this interview in grand scale is low IQ move just like giga epic new counteroffensive offensive 2 days ago.
Like imagine Putin shows this interview to Trump and says look at this guy he is not only illegally on his current presidential position but he is clearly unhinged, he says he hate every Russian, how are we even supposed to talk to him ?
And don't forget Trump hates Zelenskyy, Zelenskyy cost him presidency in 2020 and put him into an impeachment and Trump team already hinting at an election for Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy also told Ukraine has 900k soldiers and basically don't need mobilisation or how they call it now in Ukraine Bussyfucation
In 2023 December he told Ukraine had 1,4 million and didn't need to lower mobilisation age do get extra 500k soldiers
Ukraine will lower the mobilisation age no doubt about it when last week they told
So now before Feb 5 every man from age 18 to 60 if they have exception from military service have to redo it. It's clearly sign they want those guys to have fresh medical papers before lowering the age of mobilisation and then busificate them
The Myslovo Dictionary of Modern Ukrainian Language and Slang chose the word "busification" as the word of the year 2024. The neologism, which refers to forced mobilization under an accelerated procedure, was in the center of public attention last year. The term points to problems with mobilization, when quantitative indicators prevail over qualitative ones, and human rights (sometimes along with common sense) are put on the back burner
And a lot of people didn't believed Zelenskyy words about 900k Ukrainian soldiers because it doesn't make sense that they are having KD of 10 and getting out numbered by opponent that has 2 times less man power
Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko is getting very angry, asking how Russia can have a fivefold superiority in men power along the front, when officially Ukraine has twice as many soldiers deployed as Russia.
โ Julian Rรถpcke๐บ๐ฆ (@JulianRoepcke) January 6, 2025
He suspects corruption, bribery, and fake numbers to be the reason. pic.twitter.com/7fNPaZulrL
I would disagree a bit, taking into account other recent analyses of missing manpower on the Ukr. side.
โ Julian Rรถpcke๐บ๐ฆ (@JulianRoepcke) January 6, 2025
๐บ๐ฆ has no manpower problem, but an infantrymen problem. People simply donโt want to die in the first line & do everything to be put into other units of the respective brigades.
Julian anal ysis is always genius. Ukrainian have high morale because they protecting their country
Russian morale very low and that's why Ukrainian have many times more deserters.
But for real cross thousands miles to give interview to an pro Trump Russian boi and tell to his face that he hates Russian language and Russian
- 31
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Happy continued Civilization IV week !g*mers 
We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod that replicates world history. Following last game, we have just recently gone from the "Roman Kingdom" to the "Roman Empire" following the conquest of Greece. We control up to Byzantium (Constantinople).
The Persians (probably) razed Sfard so there's nothing left to conquer there. We need to settle one more city in Anatolia at some point. India (Gupta Empire) has a higher score than us but is behind us technologically. Persia (Achaemenid Empire) is very stable, prosperous, and more advanced than us.
Athens is a huge boon to us and a Great Person will be born there soon, either a Great Merchant or a Great Prophet. We need Currency for our first victory condition, so hopefully it's the Great Merchant. I decide to go ahead and research Law. If the GP turns out to be a Prophet we'll get Aesthetics which will put us a step closer to Architecture, one of the technologies we need to research first for the third victory condition.
Law allows us to enable Citizenship
The High Upkeep is going to suck when our empire gets big, but it will help a lot with getting buildings up for the "Bread and Circuses" victory condition. Hopefully the quick libraries will offset the cost of upkeep a little.
Since Carthage opened borders with us when we were in a mutual war with Greece, we're able to spy on them a little. They control the Levant including Jerusalem and their original capital of Surru (Tyre) when they were the Phoenicians.
Surru is lightly defended, but I have to attack fast because the Phoenician Unique Power allows them to quickly raise mercenaries. They have a Silk Road trade route and built the Great Cothon there instead of Carthage so it will be a strong prize along with the holy city of Judaism.
While snooping around the area we establish contact with the Nubians
The Roman Empire is stable as heck. We have strongly booming economy (+9). The way economy works in RfC and DoC is based on commerce GROWTH. Not treasury gain, not commerce alone, but the amount of commerce () gained per cycle whether it be from citizens in cities working tiles or through trade.
The coins and bigass money bags are units of commerce, also available through Trade Routes in the upper left (these show the cities we're trading with, right now Athens is trading with Carthagian cities). Athens is rich and we just built a Silver mine in Tarragona, so we're booming. The drawback is that if we can't sustain this growth we'll crash into a recession. Fortunately we also have very compatible civics for the Classical age (Domestic +8).
Most importantly, there is plenty of room to expand. Trade routes be darned, it's time for some Punic Wars 
Surru falls. Even attacking over a river, our City Raider legion take out the defenders easily. The last troops are rushed mercenaries (the blue glow meaning they're so fresh they haven't even been promoted yet) and go down like a b-word.
Surru is great. The Silk Road trade route disappears once conquered and it's a little cramped next to Jerusalem, but The Great Cothon adds production to their coastal tiles and a Great Scientist is settled there.
Where Hannibal is successful is in harassing the shit out of our warships guarding the Iberia/Italy coast with a swarm of galleys. Motherlovers are like locusts 
Our Great Person is born in Athens - it was 50/50 a Merchant or a Prophet and we got the Merchant (aka mercenary commander) Pubius Sittius. This will allow us to finish Currency quicker, allowing us to build Forums for our "Bread and Circuses" goal, with some additional spillover to Navigation. With Law and Currency we can now research Politics, one of the technologies required for the third victory condition. Persia, our chief technological rival, can't research this yet so we should be in good shape. If we can get a Great Prophet or Artist next we can blow through to Architecture.
Jerusalem falls next. We now have access to Judaism, our first official religion, giving us access to religious buildings. We could convert to Judaism now, but that would be silly. Jerusalem also has a Great General settled in the city, which is neat, but probably can't be utilized that well because it's not a strong production center.
Somehow I missed this 
but Carthage had also pulled the Nubians into war with us right after we invaded and they start to come for the Levant. Killing just a few of their dudes gets them back off with miniscule tribute.
Fine by me, I got more important shit to do.
Caption this:
The Roman Empire has successfully conquered the Levant and Hannibal has successfully annoyed me enough with his boats. Great Generals are born in both Rome and Carthage, Gaius Marius in Rome and Hasdrubal Barca, brother of Hannibal in Yglgl. Generals can either join individual armies for a bonus and unique upgrades or be settled in a city (like the one in Jerusalem) for a +XP boost to all troops built there.
We come to an agreement. The Carthagians are sufficiently buckbroken now and willing to offer tribute. 
We'll turn our attention back to Carthage eventually, but with these buttholes off our back we can benefit from a peace treaty and safely get our fishing ships back up along the coast.
We are now Very Stable with continued conquests and economic growth. We've pissed off the rest of the world a little, but oh well. There's still room to expand, and we have a large army stationed in the Levant. Where to? 
Oh, you. 
You want some free shit, do you? And you're upset because Hannibal was "your friend"?
Time to die 
Egypt is stronger than I expected. We have a 1.5 military advantage (see the diplo overview) but her core is tighter (
) and her army is consolidated.
I see Persians at my border and I about shit, but they aren't invading. Darius, the fricking r-slur, is seriously about to resettle the city he burnt to the ground. I don't really want to frick with him. Maybe I could get super lucky and cause this city to flip, but more likely I'll have to settle my fourth Anatolian city in Crete. Unfortunately, these tight borders are probably going to cause some tensions.
With two more Forums built we accomplish the "Bread and Circuses" victory condition ahead of schedule
Now, we can focus on colonization and conquest.
A Great Prophet, Claudia Quinta is born in Athens, allowing us to speed up the research of Architecture, one of the necessary technologies for the third victory condition. This is lucky, as Persia has been able to research this tech for a good few turns 
We could have also had her found the Temple of Solomon in Jeruslaem, and embraced a Jewish Roman Empire if we wanted to get weird with it. But I don't want that.
This was the toughest siege yet. Only one casualty (a City Raider III at 96% win odds 
) but it took a looong time to wear down defenses and had to supply reinforcements and fend off Egyptian chariot raiders constantly running into the Levant.
Surru is suffering and not returning as much $$$ as we'd like due to the ongoing war. It might be worth considering a peace treaty.
As we have researched Politics, we now have the option to let her Capitulate, which she's willing to do after a few turns of War Weariness. She would become a vassal state called the Province of Aegyptus. As fun as it would be to keep Cleopatra as a pet slave, there's little point - with her capital's conquest and me occupying her core she's very unstable, and her land is more valuable directly controlled. However, it is worth it to take a new technology and some gold for tribute for a few turns of peace. The rest of Egypt will probably fracture soon.
And sure enough.
Taking Ra-Kadet is effortless, but annoyingly, the Nubians and Carthagians also had armies nearby. Carthage swoops in and takes independent Waset. I want that 
I also notice that they now have Heavy Spearmen, meaning they've researched Steel. This is bad. They need to be dealt with ASAP. It's time for a Second Punic War 
Carthage settled Alicante in Iberia right up next to Tarragona. It looks easy to take until Carthage starts rushing mercenary Heavy Spearmen. Promoting a Legion to Shock (+damage to infantry) allows them to take it, fulfilling the "Iberia" part of the Pax Romana victory condition.
Speaking of this goal, I need to get a settler up to colonize Britain soon. I concoct a plan to get my settler ready in Tarragona, slip a boat and warship through the Carthage controlled Strait of Gibralter while we're in conflict, and have the settlers take a Roman Road to meet and board in northwest Iberia. Did you know you can draw on the map in Civ4? It's so fun 
Attempting to go straight for the jugular. Skirmishers harass my weakly defended ballistae weakening the city of Carthage (Qart-Hadasht) while I bring in reinforcements for the final push.
Good timing too cause these elephant neighbors start trampling my few soldiers guarding the ballistae 
The reinforcements land and Carthage is finished 
The city falls and the empire collapses.
Now that the Mediterranean is mostly peaceful (save some barabarians and pirates) we can colonize Knossos, satisfying our fourth city in Anatolia, since the Persians settled Turkey.
I complete the Flavian Ampitheatre in Rome. Tbh these resources could have better been spent elsewhere but I felt like building it in Rome because it's cool. 
.
With Gaius Marius settled there too, soldiers built in Rome are hard as frick and cranked out every couple turns. These gigachad supersoldiers will make conquering Gaul a cakewalk.
We're running out of time, but a two pronged attack from Tarragona and the Gigachads of Rome should make this possible.
Another Great General is born from the Gallic conquests, Germanicus
With the conquest of Gaul and the colonization of London we control the territory necessary for our second victory condition, just in the nick of time. 
With Pax Romana a motherflipping Golden Age begins 
Orthodox Christianity was founded around 50AD (dunno where yet) and has already started to spread, so Pagan Temples are starting to disappear. The Pagan Religious Victory will probably be unattainable soon, which is fine. We should probably convert to Orthodoxy soon.
If we want to do the Historic Victory, we just need to research a couple more technologies before anyone else. I believe Persia is still our dominant tech rival but I'm sending spies out to confirm that.
We are incredibly stable. The Golden Age will be a super sweet time to take advantage of, but this ain't gonna last forever. Germanic barbarians are starting to attack. Orthodoxy spreading is going to start to upset some religious unity. The economic growth is not going to be sustained. Our income kinda sucks in general, but we're getting Jails up everywhere which will help with that by reducing maintenance. Eventually, the Eastern Roman Empire will split and eventually France, Spain, and England will start to become their own civilizations. At some point even the Northern Italian City States will want to flip. This will really suck.
Next time we will probably win Historic. I still want to go to space, but things are going to get tougher from here. New plan: next time we will win a Historic Victory and then reload and fail it so we can win a separate Space Victory 
For now though, we will bask in victory for conquering (almost) Trajans borders.
Happy New Year! 
More election drama! Study on the ethics of making stupid political alliances and throwing campaign money at even dumber causes - 30
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Previous posts on this subject, even if you don't want to read the whole thing you should check the description of the candidates and parties involved from the first link because I'll use the same marseys to represent them for a easier reading 
https://rdrama.net/post/323123/marseyflagromania-a-literal-political-thriller-movie
https://rdrama.net/post/323407/marseyflagromania-romanian-elections-drama-continues-elections
https://rdrama.net/post/323949/marseyflagromania-our-spy-political-thriller-goes
Political rivals 
This was annoying to write because I don't know what details are actually relevant enough, I don't want to make this too boring
A little backtrack first. I focused a lot of Georgescu 
in the previous posts but now the 
parties and the relations between them are more important for the drama. PSD and USR really don't get along. The old guard wants any new person entering politics to follow their orders while is formed from politicians who want to dethrone them and form their own political 'dyasty'. So they really hate each other. As I said in the previous post, the 
parties are too new to really have clear love or hate relations with either side in this conflict.So, when the Constitutional Court (controlled by
) demanded recounts for the first round of the presidential election, USR were naturally suspicious. PSD would never do something in their favor after all. Then the recounts happened and nothing changed, and ok, if these buttholes aren't trying to frick us over then what was the point? 
But they still remained tense, because while this move was weird and useless, it's a clear warning that are preparing to mess with the elections. And it turns out they were right to be worried 
After the elections were cancelled people were expecting, you know, stuff like explanations, accountability, arrests, plans to guard against similar shit in the future and other stuff that competent countries do
At the beginning things were fine, some heads of the nazi and other far right organizations that threatened with violent riots were arrested, members had their homes searched, and our authorities were working with NATO and EU over the election interferences. For some reason, Georgescu was left alone. But hey, we're still in the early stages of the investigation, we just uncovered this whole russian plot, his time will come right? 
That planned riot was a failure, people didn't show up, some literal nazis were caught trying to enter Bucharest with weapons hidden in their cars, lots of funny shit. The guys were jailed
Later released 
Then grabbed by the police again 
...then released for good and allowed to frick out of the country 
This is some 
shit, isn't it? Aside from a few r-slurs threatening violence and screaming about the jews on the internet that were fined no one faced any punishment for the whole thing. And no one bothered Georgescu 
Add the fact that we still don't have any extra information on what happened during the elections and it's once again starting to look like this bullshit is just our own politicians doing stupid shit. But the question is, are they working with Russia or is this whole Russia story just a lie? Since they were already paranoid, USR
saw the writing on the wall and accused PSD of trying to steal the elections as soon as the presidential ones were cancelled. After all, they were battling Georgescu for the president position, so the cancellation affected them just as much as it affected him. Besides, if the elections were cancelled because of Russian interference, then both the presidential and the parliamentary elections should be cancelled, since Georgescu's unofficial party POT won seats through the same TikTok strategy, but only the elections that PSD lost are being remade. But since they spent so much time during the elections screaming about how dangerous Russia and Georgescu were they now came out looking like hypocrites and were criticised for siding with the far right just to keep their political power.
Trying to form a government - new alliances and betrayals 
Since no faction won a majority for the parliament, our politicians are now stuck trying to make coalitions together. As the
parties were branded as traitors the most obvious solution is for and to form a pro-NATO/EU coalition and leave the anti-NATO/EU parties in opposition, right? Too bad they hate each other's guts 
So, the first tentative alliance was formed. PSD
+ PNL + USR + UDMR 
UDMR is the party of our hungarian minority and they are big enough to make a difference in the parliamentary negotiations so despite being hated by everyone they are accepted into every single coalition ever. They are the single biggest whores in out politics, but then again I already said they are hungarians 
- are starting to accuse our president of being an illegitimate president, since he only kept his position because our Constitutional Court refused to allow a new one to be elected. They said that if he doesn't step down after his term is over on December 22nd he's an unelected dictator. USR agreed with them. Once again, they were criticised for preferring to side with the extremists over working with their political rivals.
Multiple embarrassing slapfights happened while all parties were trying to negotiate their coalition. USR
came with an 8 point political reform program and said that if it's not accepted in full they will abandon the coalition and join the in the opposition. While their plan was good, their unwillingness to negotiate it while they were already hated by the were obviously not in their favor. Ciolacu, leader of PSD , insisted on being named prime minister, but PNL told him that his embarrassing failure in the elections (couldn't even enter the second round) alongside his disastrous economical policies during his last term made him unfit to be placed in the same position again 
So PSD decided to grab their toys and go home and told everyone that they'll join the parties coalition. This was a problem since they are the biggest party in the parliament so them joining means that they can form the government together. They said that they will make sure to only vote pro- NATO/EU proposals but no one trusts them, so... shit PNL
decided that if their brother party isn't in the coalition then they'll back off too and soon after UDMR threw in the towel too. So, that will leave only USR and some minority parties in the coalition or what? 
In the mean time USR went to the president to complain about his unconstitutional mandate extension. They refused to stand up when he joined the meeting room, he didn't shake their hands, they told him to resign, he said no, and the whole thing lasted three minutes in total. Meeting ended after 
But plot twist! Not even a day after 'resigning' PSD
told everyone that they were joking and that they'll still form a pro-EU/NATO coalition and invited all the other parties to negotiation again... aside from USR who were thus officially kicked out of the coalition. PSD + PNL + UDMR can form a majority together, a barely there majority true, but still a majority.USR
threatened to not vote the new government, probably hoping that the in-party rivalries will destroy the barely there majority and will force the other parties to re-invite them in the coalition. Instead, convinced 20 parliamentarians from AUR to vote for them, and now we finally have a government! 
Ciolacu
was named prime minister again, and with USR out of the picture PSD controls most of the country again.
Lmao wtf is going on? 
After this childish political battle more and more people started to accept that the real coup was done by PSD
Again. EU, confused that there is evidence that Russia messed around our elections but also sniffing bullshit, keeps harassing TikTok for investigations. In the meantime America praises our decision to cancel the election every few days. At least someone is happy with the situation? 
Obviously now, when things started to calm down, it's the perfect time for another bombshell to drop!
A journo group announced that they have proof that PNL paid for Georgescu's campaign! 
At this point people weren't even shocked just exasperated and done with the whole circus 
PNL denied it and said that they paid a firm to promote their campaign and that their money was instead funnelled into Georgescu's campaign. Really? Still, things don't make sense
Georgescu's campaign was massive, with millions of bots and dozens of sites involved, the cost alone must have been way past what PNL paid, and multiple countries confirmed Russia's involvement. We're still missing a few things here 
Trying to patch all the information... PSD
wanted to promote AUR to split USR's anti-establishment votes and lower their winning chances. Realizing this, PNL then decided to promote Georgescu as a way of splitting AUR's far-right votes so that PSD's plan will fail. But at some point Russia decided to promote Georgescu too to stir chaos and/or coup us and massively blew up his popularity. PSD was too busy with their schemes to notice anything and gave some of their votes to AUR in the first round, accidentally kicking themselves out of the second round. Georgescu and Lasconi won the first elections because these two r-slurs were too busy fighting each other. That's why our secret services and didn't react to Georgescu's raise in popularity, they were involved in the whole mess too and now they didn't know how to swipe everything under the rug as much as possible.Still, Georgescu
was a problem and something had to be done, so they had to sound the alarm and call NATO's help. Russia's plans were stopped 
PSD , until now disappointed that they lost the presidency and their hold on the parliament was severely diluted, realized that they now have an excuse to steal the elections and get their control over the country back. They couldn't do any bullshit with all the NATO/EU eyes on them so Russia's interference was like a gift send from God Himself into their laps. So they talked with the Constitutional Court to annul the elections, all with our allies panicked blessing, kicking Georgescu out of his top position for now, caused one heck of the mess during the coalition negotiations, and managed to kick out USR too PNL just shrugged and went back into allying with them, while and parties were left defeated and screaming in the dust 
Another theory here is that, after messing up and accidentally promoting Georgescu on top on the race with Russia's help,
parties wanted to let him win the presidency and join forces to control the parliament and block any dumb shit he wants to do. Especially since he has some ideas similar to Trump, so maybe they'll get along or something. But Biden's cabinet insisted that we do something about it so the elections were cancelled. Unfortunately, now people around Trump, like his son and Musk, are bitching about Soros and democracy, so what do we do? America might still get pissed at us 
Now wait, we have an idea! We'll just do nothing against Georgescu himself, we'll postpone the new elections and any investigation until Trump steps into the White House and if he still wants Georgescu as president we'll just let him candidate like nothing happened while blaming everything on Biden and his people and things will be fine 
Current situation 
So, right now we still don't know what exactly is with Georgescu
He seems to be both with our glowies and with Russia. Mostly probably PSD will try to negotiate with him until the new presidential elections (somewhere in spring most lkely) and if he seems like he can be reasoned with (read, he'll listen to their orders - and ) he'll be allowed to run, if not they'll just get some institution to forbid him from running again PDS has not only gotten more power, but will also get bolder in their bullshit next elections since the population didn't react to them stealing the elections in any way, so why not do it again? 
Out of all the
parties, AUR started to work with PSD the most. It's expected that the rest of them will be pushed out of politics one way or another until AUR will become the far-right controlled opposition to PSD. A few parliamentarians from the other parties are already two steps away from getting kicked out of their new positions because of different cases opened against them in the past (corruption, defamation, antisemitism, and other shit). USR is marginalised ever further, and seems like they'll even lose their anti status-quo party to AUR 
- parties and their supporters are still screaming about how the government is illegitimate and try to get people to protest them, but since it's cold and most of us are doing the last minute preparations for Christmas they don't have
muchany success
But there's still time for other plot twists to happen, so who knows what the future will bring?
The (second) revolution that never was 
Quick funny thing that didn't fit in the main post
So, two weeks after the elections were cancelled, Georgescu's voters finally realized that they were dunked on by the establishment and decided to actually carry out a violent revolution We're serious this time guys, we swear! So they threatened to gather in the streets with axes and bats if the president doesn't step down after his mandate expires on December 22 
Like with all of the shit that happened until now, this was massively promoted on TikTok 
In the mean time, in order to calm down the far right rumours that EU couped us in order to force Romania to enter the war alongside Ukraine, our (old) government used it's last days in office to approve two laws: one where Romania can now down foreign drones flying over our airspace, which could be used as a potential escalation against Russia, and anther one where foreign generals from allied countries can take command over our army. Yeah, totally not suspicious at all and will definitely calm everyone down
(Last one should be called the 'America take the wheel' law tbh 
)To prove to everyone that they are hardcore patriots willing to die for their country at any time, our brave revolutionaries panicked that our new NATO army will break their bones if they start shit and stayed at home. No one turned out to even protest peacefully
So that embarrassing episode ended without any bloodshed 
All right, last two things:
our diplomat in America said at some point that our secret services work hard to gather data for CIA, fifth largest contributors actually. This will totally calm down all those conspiracy theories about glowies and us being a NATO colony
First shit our prime minister
said after taking his role was that we are ready to fully support Trump's peace plan for Ukraine, so if at any point EU plans to keep supporting Zelensky after America bows out of the conflict they should start planning on how to do it without us
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Civilization 4 week draws to a close and it has successfully gotten me to waste my weekend and procrastinate on a bunch of work !g*mers
We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod that replicates world history. Part 1 Part 2
104AD, the Roman Empire is around it's historic peak. We have completed 2/3 of the Historic Victory Conditions, just recently securing the necessary territorial borders for Pax Romana, so we're in a 24 turn Golden Age
There are still some barbarian cities in Africa and Iberia, remnants of the Carthaginian Empire we might as well go take. Persia also controls Mesopotamia and Turkey, so these aren't true Trajanian borders 
but we're kinda close!!
For a Historic Victory we just need to research a couple more technologies first.
The Pagan Religious Victory is losing viability. We have 22 cities, 4 of which in Egypt and the Levant have Judaism, and Christianity (Orthodoxy) has been founded and started to spread to the Roman Empire. Pagan Temples are disappearing.
Brennus of the Celts is still alive, they live in Ireland. Their core moves from Gaul to Ireland following the Gallic conquests, so they aren't at risk of collapse. They could capitulate but they're worthless. We could wait for them to be willing to offer tribute but they are poor and underdeveloped as shit. We'll offer peace.
We can even offer charity to improve relations and advance them from being such disgusting backwards savages. We'll probably have to help them out a lot. Such is the Roman Man's Burden.
There are a couple peaceful tribal villages around the British Isles, our scouts can explore them for a bonus (a military unit runs the risk of angering them and spawning barbarians). Did I mention how much Civ5 fricking sucks? In Civ5 these are "Ancient Ruins". Why are there ruins? You start at the beginning of human civilization, you play through the ancient times! Are they ruins of the 12000BC Magic Kingdom of Zeal? I'll bet they changed it for cultural sensitivity or some weak shit like that.
The villagers give me a warrior. I name them the Britbong Warriors. Did you know in Civ5 you also can only name units when they are promoted? What an r-slured design choice. That game fricking sucks. You can't even draw on the map either.
Anyway, the above events are depicted here:
Christianity (Orthodoxy) has spread to Rome and the people are all pissed off about it, particularly because we have the Religion civic "Deification". It's past time for some government restructuring.
Unfortunately, unlike in vanilla, changing civics in a Golden Age is not free. Fortunately, unlike Rhyes and Fall, anarchy does not consume Golden Age turns. We just put our Golden Age on hold for a little while.
This will take some thinkorinoing
In addition to the bonuses, we want to have super strong stability. Around 290AD the Eastern Roman Empire will fracture off if we don't have Solid stability. CHEERS to @RWBY for informing me of that this is preventable btw.
Certain civic combos have synergy/negative synergy and when we start to approach the Medieval age some civics will lose stability for being obsolete.
Religion
We need to move from Deification 100%. Syncreticism would be dumb because we don't have a lot of religions available, and it's incompatible with Citizenship. Clergy is the obvious answer, although we don't have a State Religion yet, we will soon.
Economy
Redistribution is awful at this point with 22 cities and will soon be obsolete. Merchant Trade is much more lucrative.
Territory
I am still running the primitive default "Kinship" here and it is very embarrassing. I would have benefited from taking the anarchy hit to run one of these earlier. Same with Merchant Trade. I kinda forgot about my civics tbh 
I'm actually bad at this game
Thalassocracy is better with all the fishing boats we have around the Mediterranean, and has strong synergy with Merchant Trade.
Legitimacy
This is still all we've got available for now.
Government
Monarchy is very good and better than Republic majority of the time but we have more fishing boats than farmland right now and free specialists during a Golden Age will get us more Great People. Republic also has strong synergy with Citizenship. Elective sucks, I don't get the point of it.
Despotism will go obsolete
Soyciety 
Slavery has positive synergy with Despotism, but both will go obsolete soon. Switching one more civic here will save a turn of anarchy later, so it's worth considering changing something now. We have more pastures than quarries/plantations and no longer have a lot of opportunities to capture workers, plus lots of undeveloped land, so changing to Manorialism might be a good idea. Unfortunately it has negative stability synergy with Merchant Trade . If the Eastern Roman Empire split weren't a concern, it would be worth it to just take the hit. Caste System has positive synergy with Clergy, but we can't benefit much from it. We'll just stick with Slavery for now and save a turn of anarchy for later.
Hindsight Fun Fact:
Final: Despotism/Citizenship/Slavery/Clergy/Thalassocracy
120AD, during the revolution, Catholicism is founded in Roma. 
We of course will embrace it once our government restructuring is over. 
The revolution is over, and the reformed Catholic Roman Empire returns to work 
Look at how rich Greece's coast is 
No way I'm letting that shit become Byzantine 
Although it's still Orthodox over there 
The Religious victory available is now the Catholic Religious Victory. Being "Pope" means being the head of the Apostolic Palace, which in base game is basically the medieval U.N.
Great Prophet Petrus is born in Athens 200AD. Now that I have Roma as the holy city of Catholicism I can found the holy shrine wonder - Saint Peter's Basilica (which doubles as the Apostolic Palace from base game). I wasn't 100% sure I wanted to build the holy shrine yet but holy crap this is TOO perfect. 
Our stability is still Solid. The "Foreign" stability is the only kicker for "Bad Relations". Pretty much always in DoC I have "bad relations" because half the world has a different religion and everyone is pissed off about something. One of the weakest areas in Civ4 is diplomacy, and the tendency for foreign leaders to come by constantly whining and asking for shit with a -1 penalty when you refuse is unfortunately common. I've heard trying to entertain this whining can improve Foreign stability.
For example, a few turns back the King of Aksum (Ethiopia) kept coming by trying to pull me into his irrelevant ooga booga conflict with the Nubian Kingdom of Kush. Typically I click "no go away" without hesitation and just accept the -1, but it may have been advisable to just annihilate Kush for these savages instead. Moving forward I will actually consider entertaining the requests of these lesser rulers, within reason.
And hey, why not join the Aksum war? Nubia is pretty lucrative land, and I now have spies to check up on their defenses. It's conquerable and I still have several soldiers and artillery from the Egyptian conquests stationed here. I may consider gearing up for a small invasion.
Speaking of spies, I'm able to look at Persia a little. They can research Machinery, one of the technologies required for the third victory condition. 
But when I apply some espionage to them 
I can see that they're currently researching Fortification - nothing to worry about yet. We have a strong military advantage too, but I'm still going to leave them alone.
We can put this espionage to good use thoughever. Our spies can't do much right now, but they can pilfer the Persian treasury a little. Dawn of Civilization has an expanded espionage mod that provides a full promotion tree for spies, and "Great Spies" from the original game are now generated like "Great Generals". You can see the counter for both Great Spies and Great Generals at the top. If we want to survive past Medieval times we will need espionage. New civilizations are intentionally placed at an advantage so it is near necessary to use espionage to even the odds. Now is a good time to start gaining espionage experience.
Dorylaion, the city Darius founded on top of the independent Greek city he destroyed is the most efficient place to send spies to, mainly because if it's proximity to Byzantion and Roman cultural influence. I was annoyed about this at first, but it will prove to be useful now, we can send spies from Byzantion easily and gain experience. Khosrow will catch a few and it will further piss him off and hurt our Foreign stability, but 
If we crank up our espionage and settle a spy there for a while we could even steal a technology. 
Notice we can see inside the city now (though Fog of War is only cleared with the research of Electricity in RfC)
Also, with our Citizenship civic we have a fun little gimmick where we can have spies bribe Barbarian units.
290AD is approaching. We're still at Solid, but teetering a little close. Foreign sucks of course. We've lost some ships to barbary pirates and this has messed up our military stability . I'm building my warships in Rome now so they can get a boost from the Flavian Ampitheater to prevent any more of this. Fortunately, we're still booming and expanding, but we're very close to the overextension point and need to start concentrating on making sure our core population is higher than the population outside. Despotism is great for this because we can just whip all the extra population away. Domestic is lower than usual because Slavery is now outdated - if needed, we can change this to Caste System to take advantage of a further boost from it's compatibility with Clergy.
We just have to hope nothing unexpected could tank our economy...
Oh frick. While exploring the far east I discover a plague in India.
Oh God it's spreading west
AAAA FRICK
We are hit with a Certified Hood Classic Plague from the East. On the plus side this will help cull our population and reduce overextension. This is a pretty shitty plus because I could've just whipped neighbors. The downside is our economic development will suffer. This is a justifiable time to invade the Nubians for their lucrative mines and please the Ethiopians (Aksum). I think maybe annihilating a civilization will also reduce Foreign stability penalties (cuz they're dead). I hope that's how it works. Nobody really likes them at least, so I won't get a "You declared war on our friend!" penalty.
The Nubian conquest is slightly riskier than anticipated because the plague is weakening our troops. The highest promoted crack troops are affected worst so the benchwarmers have to step up.
This ungrateful prick is still Annoyed at me, but now that we're in a mutual war he's willing to open borders. After destroying the Kingdom of Kush I can spread missionaries and bring Aksum into the Catholic fold. Maybe I'll have to supply some resources and technologies too. Truly, I am Atlas, carrying the rest of the world on my soldiers 
On that note, frick the Irish Celts too. Even after generously trying to pull them out of the Stone Age they're still all pissed off and probably contributing to the Foreign stability penalty, plus there's still some angry citizens in Paris wanting to rejoin them. They can't join shit if Brennus is dead.
The Germanic barbarians are starting to swarm. We take some losses - this is bad. Barbarian losses negate stability. Using the Citizenship ability to bribe barbarians with spies actually comes in handy.
We're so far ahead technologically that I found Islam just for the heck of it. Waset in Egypt becomes it's holy city. The Arabs (Mohammed) will still spawn and attempt to spread Islam by sword but they've been cucked out of the benefits of Mecca as a holy city.
The Kingdom of Kush/Nubia is conquered. But they're still alive for some reason?!? I have no idea where their last city is.
We send a missionary to spread Catholicism to Aksum but crankypants is still only "Cautious" and isn't ready to convert as a state religion. Hopefully when it spreads to his second city he'll join the fold. Once another leader is Catholic the Apostolic Palace/Saint Peter's Basilica will be able to hold diplomatic conventions.
336AD, the Golden Age has ended. We are no longer insanely propserous, and our stability is wavering. We've lost some battles to barbarians and are suffering war weariness for the invasion of Kush. For one positive "Foreign" has gone from -5 to -4, so I guess helping out Aksum and destroying the Celts might've worked. "Domestic" is down because of outdated civics (Slavery) and Religious Disunity (Catholicism is not in cities with Orthodox, Judaism, and Islam). Next time we may have change the Slavery civic and spread Catholicism to the Eastern world.
The Eastern Empire is still ours however. We apparently avoided the Byzantine schism. So mission accomplished
I hope. I can't find this in the code and don't know how it works 
Some guy on the CivFanatics forum said if you pass 290AD you're good but he was also taking photographs of his monitor instead of taking screenshots. To be safe I'll try to stay in Solid stability as long as I can.
We only have one more technology (Civil Service) for the Historic Victory, so we might as well just win the game too.
()
But frick that! I want a Space victory. 
I'm going to reload and intentionally stall researching Civil Service until I fail.
Next game, the scheduled decline of the Roman Empire begins. We attempt to defy history and go to medieval times and beyond. 
Next:
https://rdrama.net/h/vidya/post/332528/lets-play-civ4-dawn-of-civilization
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(This is a continuation of my reply to the recent thread about the Civilization series.)
It's got some issues with, for lack of a better term, historical accuracy. There's some weird dodgy stuff in the tech tree. You may try to scoff and say that it's just a game, it's not meant to be accurate. Yeah, of course not, to a certain point. Old Man Redactor once saw me playing Darklands and pointed out that if you just changed the data files you could use the same engine to make a game about running a laundromat. What elevates games over spreadsheets is that there's some kind of story that it's telling you where the numbers mean something. In Civ, that story is history in general, so it had darn well better at least feel like it has to do with history.
I only realized later that actually my father is a Satanist who was trying to drive me away from good Christian games. One day on the solstice he made carry a bunch of 1-gallon milk jugs full of blood (I dunno what kind) from the garage to the trunk of his old Honda. Then he got in and it flew away into the night. That's when I put two and two together.
The way religion is handled I think is pretty butt-backwards. In the original Civ, it's all abstract. You build a temple and that's it, it's assumed that it's a temple for whatever these people believe in. It doesn't really matter what religion it is because, for the purposes of the game of Civilization, people from different religions act pretty much the same for the most part because we're all human.
The other approach you can take is what they do in Europa Universalis. (I dunno if they still have the guts to do this but they did when I played it.) Where you decide which religions are good or bad and give them bonuses and penalties. This obviously has some disadvantages. Like it's really fricking obvious what's going on when the game is made in Sweden and the good religions that get bonuses are in northern Europe. You can't get away with that if you're making a game outside of an extremely ethnocentric culture like Sweden.
Swedes always score themselves as the happiest country on Earth when they make those rankings, yet all the Swedes I know complain about how their husband just drinks all day and won't do anything even though she physically beats the shit out of him. Curious.
Civ IV tried to have their cake and eat it too but you end up with nothing and you're still hungry. The religions use the superficial trappings of ones from the real world but in gameplay terms they're completely generic with nothing differentiating them except which tech activates them. If they're generic why do we need them? Why not just leave it completely abstract like in Civ I? If we're assigning them to real world religions, why don't we give them their own special bonuses like we do with different civilizations?
The approach in Civ IV is kinda stupid both in terms of gameplay and theme. You might as call the religions pokemon because you're best off just collecting them all. Each one in a city adds happiness and gives you the opportunity to build more improvements. Honey, please. This is a stupid gameplay mechanic where you're encouraged to build missionaries to convert all your cities and build the same improvement several times for each religion. I consider this to be what Soren Johnson (designer of Civ IV) himself called a "degenerate strategy" in his seminal piece "Water Finds a Crack". You're doing something that's stupid and not interesting because the game rewards you for it. There's no interesting choices going on here. The other gameplay impact religion has is that basically it makes some of the AI civilizations hate you for no reason. This was obviously intended to stop you from just turtling and being friends with everyone, but it's annoying when you're left with fewer options to pursue in diplomacy.
In terms of history, this is all really stupid. Religious diversity works in America because the Founding Fathers designed our nation around it. In the rest of the world in the rest of history, having many different religions in one city is not a recipe for everyone to love each other. Let's look at the late 1500s, when religion was perhaps the most important in history that it's ever been. You had stuff like Protestant mobs surrounding the convent and yelling lewd suggestions of what the nuns should do. Today in Beirut they've got 15 religious sects and it's not giving them +15 happiness points. It's giving them continuous simmering animosity. Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, great cities that have "stood the test of time" like the ones represented in Civilization are not finding that diversity is their strength. By ignoring these real issues, I feel that Civ IV is demeaning both to America, where we actually solved them to some extent, and to the poor bastards living in those shithole countries where they have to deal with sectarian bullshit on a daily basis.
In 1976 the Lebanese decided that their happiness bonus from being multicultural society was so great that they asked the Syrian Army to come and violently put down sectarian violence experience it for themselves.
Also, what do you do with the Jews and Hindus? If you're putting real world religions into the game they're incredibly important so you have to include them, but they're not like the other ones featured in the game. They're not sending missionaries around trying to convert people. So what do you do? Write special rules for them? Who's gonna do that? You'd need to hire some guy from Hebrew University who also loves 4X to do any justice to it.
Now this is a nice campus.
The way that religion affects diplomacy in the game is stupid in the other direction. Countries won't make alliances with the "infidels"? How fricking naive do you have to be? Are like 4 fricking years old? Let's look at the late 1500s again. I don't have the book at hand at the moment, so this is from memory, but there was an alliance against the Hapsburgs that was something like this: Sweden, Denmark, England, the Netherlands, France, Portugal, Morocco, Algeria, various parts of Italy, and the Ottomans. They'd have added the Moros in the Philippines if they had better communications technology. In Lebanon they've gone through every possible combination of different sects allying with each since 1975. Most hilariously the Druze who have been both allied with and fought everyone else at least once since then. The elites running the country or the faction usually don't give a shit about sectarian hatred except as a tool they can use to manipulate the plebs.
Sana'a Mehaidli. Carried out a suicide bombing against the Israeli occupation force in 1985. I guess nobody ever told her that as a Christian she wasn't supposed to be on the same side as Muslims.
Which takes me back to my original point about how Sid Meier did it with generic temples. It's not because he's some atheist who hates religion. (He's actually a Christian of the actually going to church kind btw.) It's because trying to fit too much low-level detail about religion into a 4X game is really tricky and probably won't work in terms of gameplay or theme. I've always had a strong impression that this feature was basically put in because there was a feeling among (mostly atheist) 4X fans that religion was a big thing in history so we need a gameplay mechanic for it. And my feminine masculine intuition is rarely wrong.
After all this time I spent writing this I really feel like... starting up a new game of Civ IV. It's a great game.
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the dejenerate podcast- it time for hotdogs 16:10
Drinks something that looks like a shot & vapes & sings some shit song in a mumbling fashion & shot & chaser & vape
0:40 The problem- the b-words at steam haven't replied to his email sent at 1pm (it is now midnight). They changed the account password associated with it, but that wasn't him. It was a trailer monkey based in North Carolina!
Takes another shot
1:50 the first account was the r*pe of his steam account, so he can't play EU or Crusader Kings or either fallout. The other r*pe was his windows on his computer closing by itself without him doing it; his computer has been taken over because he doesn't have anti-virus because he refuses to pay 60 fricking zogbucks for that.
3:00 shot & chaser
3:10 He also has hot dogs that need to be used up, hacks like a smoker. He also has candy. He needs steam to email him back. Chews
4:00 He missed getting tickets to a concert because he wasn't notified before it was sold out. They are to blame. Shot. Right.
4:40 He's like that b-word Elizabeth Smart. Everything is fricked and is going to heck, but he's looking forward to those hot dogs though.
5:10 He had Christmas dinner at jinxmother's house and stayed the night on the bottom bunk. The pillows were too thin, like in prison, and he didn't have a proper duvet.
5:55 He sees something on the floor. Looks like a fricking spidey(?)
6:00 Dinner was good though. He didn't get his mom PJs because he has no money. Another shot/vape.
6:30 The Betrayal- Jinxbrother has his own TV and he WAS WATCHING ANIME in front of jinxthinker. It was fricked up and shit.
6:55 He, jinxmother, and one jinxsister (other jinxsister lives too far away) were watching a film with an Asian in it. Jinxmother didn't want to watch it if everyone in it was emo, because she thinks all Chinese people are emo.
7:40 Another shot
8:00 He's going to test drive his NEW GEORGE FORMAN GRILL later on his hot dogs
8:30 He also got an e-mail from united health nation or some bullshit. Oral B toothbrush right is bullshit or something. Jinxthinker is a manual toothbrush chad; electric toothbrushes are scams.
9:15 He's down to 2 Monsters, he will need to acquire more. He wishes he had them concert tickets, right. He also got some new coffees
10:10 All George Forman grills are banging, but his new one is bigger; frick frying pans- george forman is a real butt neighbor.
10:50 When he lived with Jinxgrandma (I believe this is the first mention of jinxgrandma or a living with grandma arc) he bought a George Forman grill, but it eventually became busted.
11:10 He saw someone smoking a cigarette when he went to the shop, like okay that's normal...
11:30 How did they steal the steam account though?
12:15 Basically he's going to make the hot dogs. He gets 10 hot dogs per pack, but 6 buns per pack. So he's going to have to do some advanced math to fit all the dogs in the buns available.
12:50 Calls steam support stupid
13:00 He got a new 2025 calendar
13:20 Shot. Spits it out into a coffee mug
13:45 Let's do some singing because it's Singing O' Clock. Starts some even more shit song. 15:05 Su I sIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDe
!jinxthinkers Can Jinxbrother be reformed?
- FriedFish : She's so uglyโฆ
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I know I keep saying I'm going to leave but I just have to write this piece because I was inspired by @kaamrev's post about the closing of the Rapport. The truth is I have a shitload to say about journ*lism in general and the South African journ*lism scene but some of it would result in me doxxing myself, and quite honestly, most of it isn't interesting if you've never been in the space. I also have a funny story of how I fricked up so badly I almost caused a long-running newspaper publication to close down permanently, but I'd rather push that memory back to the dark recesses of my psyche.
With that said, I never fricked up as badly as the who we'll be discussing today - Verashni Pillay. This is pretty much South Africa's version of G*mergate, and it caused waves internationally. My post will be organised as such:
1. What is Huffpost?
2. Who is Verashni Pillay?
3. Verashni does a hate speech
4. Verashni is in trouble
5. Conclusion
What is Huffington Post
If you're familiar with online journ*lism, you'll have come across Huffpost. It is a left-leaning publication that aims to be hip and trendy while delivering the news. Not all their content is "news" and it also features a lot of clickbait pop culture slop. It's really a terrible site. The site almost died but it was purchased by Buzzfeed in 2020. It was during this time that the site experienced mass layoffs and the Canadian arm of the business was closed down.
Go on the front page right now and see the slop they post. From experience in the media industry, I can easily tell that it is a content mill that you shouldn't trust at all. I can spot the SEO tricks and the common tactics used to increase engagement and exploit the writers. Take a random article on the front page:
The headline is stuffed full of trending keywords. They had to fit in "elon musk" and "obama" to improve SEO on Google. Secondly, the writer never had to leave their desk to write the article. It's literally a longpost based on a Tweet by Elon Musk. All it does is report on the Tweet and the responses to the Tweet. I can promise you @kaamrev puts more effort into his posts than the writer of this article did.
You can also tell it's a content mill by looking at the writer's profile page.
This is someone pooping out three articles a fricking day. 100% he has a quota to meet and he's grinding away trying to achieve it. There is no way you're going to deliver quality journ*lism when you've got to write three fricking articles every day. The only way you achieve that is by writing slop.
The worst part of Huffpost is the writing. They've been bought by Buzzfeed, as I've mentioned, and they write in that "BuzzFeed" voice. You know exactly what I'm talking about. They use Black People Twitter slang and it's incredibly cringy when you see the author is a generic white dude.
Elon Musk is getting cooked on social media for equating the policies of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party to the U.S. Democratic Party at the start of Barack Obama's presidency, after Musk recently pointed to the AfD as Germany's only hope.
Yasss! Elon Musk is cooked! Fricking kill me.
Who is Verashni Pillay
For some reason, a lot of young people in South Africa want to become journ*lists. It's mostly young people who know nothing about the job market, are probably above average writers, and are highly opinionated. The truth is that once you're in the business, it's all about SEO and meeting quotas, and most importantly, YOU DON'T NEED A FRICKING JOURN*LISM DEGREE TO DO JOURN*LISM. So many idiots get scammed into a journ*lism degree that is utterly useless when all that matters is your portfolio. Instead of going into debt paying university fees, you're better off freelance writing and building up a portfolio to work your way to a permanent position (jk those don't exist anymore it's freelancers all the way down, journos don't get permanent jobs lol).
If you're in South Africa, for a long time, Rhodes University was THE place to go to study journ*lism. It had a very, very strong reputation for being a good journ*lism university and for anyone who wanted to become a journ*list it was assumed you'd be going to Rhodes.
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Quick Notes from Holly!
So I attended Rhodes University, got my Masters Degree in English there and also wasted 3 years trying to get my PhD only to fail (I'm currently doing my PhD at a different university while working). I was fricked over by my supervisor majorly and I had a lecturer bully me so hard I attempted suicide, but that's a story for another day. Rhodes used to be a fun university. I arrived in 2014, which was right around the decline of the university.
Rhodes has a reputation of being a bit of a party university, and it's extremely liberal. It is also known for the National Arts Festival which is held every year. The university is located in Grahamstown which is a small town almost entirely dependent on the university for its economy. I was in Grahamstown when COVID-19 hit. Students studied from home so the university was practically empty. As a result, several businesses shut down and the entire town was financially crippled.
Fortunately, I don't live there anymore because the town can't even provide water or electricity to its residents, resulting in mass protests. I mean, they literally go weeks without any water.
I would not recommend anyone go to Rhodes University these days. It's a dead university in a dead town. Also, due to Rhodes's liberal approach to academia, they allow you to mix and match your degree however you want, allowing you to create a custom degree of your choice. I know a couple of universities in the USA like Evergreen do this shit as well. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NEVER DO THIS. If you're going to university, get a degree with a set curriculum that allows you to specialize in a skill that is in demand. Nobody wants a generalist who majored in Psychology and History, or a weirdo who decided to major in Math and English. Anyone hiring is going to take one look, think "what the frick is this shit", and move on to someone who has clearly specialized in a specific task.
Dear lord if there's any advice I can give it's that university is not there for you to follow your passions. There is nothing passionate in a university setting. YOU'RE THERE TO SECURE THE BAG. Pick a degree that is in demand. If you want to go the artistic route, university is not the place to go. You're better off independently working on a portfolio.
Last point I want to make about Rhodes. The lecturers get paid SHIT. It's actually funny how poorly they are paid. Just look at this shit:
A fricking full-blown lecturer is only netting about $25K. Why the frick would you move to a town with no water to earn peanuts?!?!
+++++
Verashni Pillay attended Rhodes University where she earned her degree in Journ*lism. Verashni quickly proved herself to be quite the ambitious journ*list and she wrote for a number of popular South African publications including News24 and the Mail & Guardian. She has won a number of prestigious awards for her journ*lism. I'm not going to list them all because quite frankly I don't care. All that matters is that she was a journ*list of note in South Africa and she worked her way up to eventually become editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post in South Africa.
Verashni Does a Hate Speech
Verashni's woes began when she allowed a blog to be published titled "Could It Be Time To Deny White Men The Franchise?". You can still find the blog post online. The author's name is Shelley Garland and the author basically argues that white men should not be given the right to vote, and that their assets should be forcibly redistributed.
For the sake of stirring drama and outrage, I'll post a few choice quotes here
If white men no longer had the vote, the progressive cause would be strengthened. It would not be necessary to deny white men indefinitely โ the denial of the vote to white men for 20 years (just less than a generation) would go some way to seeing a decline in the influence of reactionary and neo-liberal ideology in the world. The influence of reckless white males were one of the primary reasons that led to the Great Recession which began in 2008. This would also strike a blow against toxic white masculinity, one that is long needed.
A withholding of the franchise from white males, along with the passing of legislation in this period to redistribute some of their assets, will also, to a degree, act as the reparations for slavery, colonialism, and apartheid, which the world is crying out for to be paid.
Although this may seem unfair and unjust, allowing white males to continue to call the shots politically and economically, following their actions over the past 500 years, is the greater injustice.
Almost immediately, the article garnered widespread attention both locally and internationally. It got so big that fricking Jordan Peterson commented on it:
Locally, many groups cried racism and attacked Huffpost for publishing the piece. Afriforum, a group focused on the rights of Afrikaaners, accused Verashni Pillay and Huffpost of hate speech.
This did not deter Verashni and amidst the controversy, she fully defended the piece. Thanks to the wayback machine, we still have access to the article.
A few quotes from Verashni to make you seethe:
Garland's underlying analysis about the uneven distribution of wealth and power in the world is pretty standard for feminist theory. It has been espoused in many different ways by feminist writers and theorists for decades now. In that sense, there was nothing in the article that should have shocked or surprised anybody (or so we thought.)
It would appear that perhaps much of the outcry derives from a very poor reading of the article -- or perhaps none at all.
So in response she basically shits on her readers telling them denying white men the vote is pretty normal feminist theory.
Verashni is in trouble
Well, a big plot twist emerged. Shelley Garland does not exist! The whole thing was a fricking prank written by a white man! Not just a white man, but a fucing full-blooded Boer named fricking Marius Roodt. That's a peak mayo name! Roodt wrote the piece to prove that there was little fact-checking done in South African journ*lism and so he wrote a piece where he intentionally inserted errors and he got fricking published! He made an absolute fool of Huffpost, and he's not fricking sorry about it.
https://www.news24.com/news24/i-do-not-regret-it-huffpost-fake-blogger-20170525
Eventually, the backlash got so bad that the article was taken down and an apology was issued.
But this wasn't just a thrashing on social media. There were legal consequences to face as well. The South Africa's Press Ombud found that the article amounted to hate speech, resulting in Verashni stepping down from her position as editor-in-chief.
Since the incident, Verashni has taken on the role of the victim and has framed herself as a victim of online hate mobs. This is ironic as she tried to stir hate mobs against white men. She is just getting what she tried to dish out to others. When speaking on the matter, Verashni brings up many of the criticisms of modern journ*lism that I've brought up and she confesses that the site is basically a clickbait content mill where writers are stretched to meet insane quotas.
"He targeted a stretched newsroom that was being asked to do way too much with too little resources: we were being asked to publish 30 unique pieces of content a day in addition to wire stories and international content from the other HuffPost sites. We had three junior reporters and were refused sub-editors, despite my warning that we would run into legal trouble given the rate at which we were publishing. In addition, the editorial team was under enormous pressure from management to produce traffic and clicks."
https://themediaonline.co.za/2017/08/verashni-pillay-opens-up-about-her-hate-speech-appeal-victory/
She has also released a Ted Talk about her experience and how she got shamed because of the piece.
Quite honestly, it's an annoying video to watch. She hides behind the fact that she is a female BIPOC and argues that her identity is the reason she was attacked, and not the fact that she published an anti-democratic article arguing that white men should not be allowed to vote.
Conclusion
Verashni was knocked down but she's not out for the count. She currently works at radio station POWER 98.7. I have no knowledge of the station or what it does, and I'm not in the mood to research it. Did she learn anything from the experience? In my opinion, no. I don't think she understands or accepts that she published disgusting hate speech. That blog post should have never been published and it was only possible because
a) THE EDITORS ACTUALLY WANT TO STRIP WHITE MEN OF THE RIGHT TO VOTE
b) Huffpost is a content mill that cares more about clicks than facts.
For this reason alone you should never read Huffpost. It's inaccurate garbage mass produced for clicks. So what do you think of Verashni's story? Do you think she got what she deserved? Or was she the victim of a mean prank?
- 24
- 49
We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. !g*mers !historychads
336AD, the Roman Empire is #1 in the world by far but the Roman Golden Age has concluded. We've just conquered Nubia. The Western Roman Empire more or less officially ended in 476AD when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus so we're coming up on the timeframe we're supposed to be dead.
We successfully avoided the Western Roman Empire/Eastern Roman Empire split but more civilizations are going to rise and attempt to fracture off of our existing territory. The Arabs are gonna spawn with a huge butt army ready to spread Islam (which we founded already in Egypt 
) and the European powers are going to start cropping up.
I'll need to prepare for this and be ready to retake this shit at a moment's notice from armies leveraged against me. 
My goal is to vassalize the European powers so I can benefit from their global colonization.
We've had a small archer regiment providing us contact with India but only now I've gotten a scout east who can pass through the Bengal rainforest to meet China. 
They inexplicably hate us for existing as with everyone else in the world, but they're willing to trade. They offer jade and venison for our wine and dyes with a lil gold to sweeten the deal.
They seem to be doing well but we're still #1 in the world by far. Persia is the only empire that comes close to matching us technologically - only they can research something we haven't researched yet.
Persia also has a lot of gold. I might trade them some technology for cash at benefit to them. This will improve relations, and I have a strong espionage network going with them so if they research something I don't have I can just steal it. 
Also, I predict the Arabs are going to BTFO them badly when they spawn.
With the money we gain from the tech trade, we can actually apply more espionage power to steal what they research. DEVIOUS! 
With continued espionage harassment we get our first Great Spy, Locusta*. If a civilization were far ahead of us we could send her to infiltrate for a huge boost, but as we're top dog I'll settle her in Roma for a permanent +12 espionage and small science boost that will continue throughout history. +12 is quite significant early on, so this is pretty advantageous. 
*This is a particularly cool article I recommend reading 
The dipshit Ethiopians continue to be difficult, despite everything we've done for them. Repeated Catholic missions to them have been failures and even the Catholic presence in Aksum eventually disappears. 
They will not bend from Orthodoxy. Even more insulting is that they've now sworn fealty to Persia. 
It's like they think we're a threat to them. All we've done is help them out and attempt to bring them peacefully into the Catholic faith.
They are officially a lost cause. No salvation for them.
Fine, because I have a new black best friend, the pagan Mande in West Africa 
After researching Compass I'm able to pass ships through Cape Verde Peninsula and send a mission to Djoboro
I can't wait to spread the word of Christ and have a new Catholic brother!!! 
Barbarians start to swarm about 400AD. The Roman Roads are a godsend as I can get my dudes quickly from one place to another as different areas get pounded. Byzantion as an espionage stronghold allows me to send spies out use the Citizenship bribery mechanic, this felt like a gimmick but it's actually super useful here. Just like irl I'm able to pay off the huns to spare Constantinople + I get free Hunnic Horse Archers to fight back with 
By 450 it's a full on barbarian invasion 
Did you know a !foidmoment almost caused the fall of Rome? In the 400s Valentinian III had a complete 
for a sister named Honoria. She was notorious for fricking and sucking around the Imperial palace and Valentinian graciously attempted to set her up with a nice senator while he was attempting to fend off the pillaging of hunnic warlord Attila. Honoria was pissed off by this and wrote a gushy love letter to Attila the Hun out of spite.
The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila by Raphael
Attila interpreted this letter as a marriage proposal and invaded Italy directly aiming to claim the seat of Rome, which he felt he gained a rightful claim to. Pope Leo I the Great met with Attila personally and somehow persuaded him to back off.
Our stability is okay, but definitely starting to dip. Okay is not good enough for what's coming. As always, military and foreign trickle down with the rest of the world being buttholes and barbarians up in our shit. Economy and expansion are not booming anymore.
Our treasury is doing alright but could be improved (right now we're running 40% research funding). Domestic could be improved easily with some civic changes.
We've researched Feudalism and now have another Legitimacy civic available to us. We don't have much reason to run Citizenship at this point, other than bribing barbarians, but our military is now spread out enough to deal with them. Vassalage is lower upkeep with compatibility with Thalassocracy. This + the unit upkeep will get us about 30 more GP per turn. We also change to Caste System like we should have ages ago, since Slavery is outdated.
Last time I won by researching "Civil Service" first, completing the final historic victory condition. I undid this so that I could attempt a Space victory instead. We're getting to a point where I'm running out of shit to research OTHER than Civil Service and the Sassanids, our only near-equal won't research it either 
This is kinda funny and forcing me to do things differently. I'm going to discover Gunpowder much earlier than I thought and get stronger artillery. "Civil Service" obsoletes our Legion so I have 100s more of those running around (which is good, they're based). But these slackers really need to research it soon so I can fail
I'll have to help these idiots out a little and sell them another tech at an absurdly generous price.
~472-480AD Ostrogoths pop up right outside Rome. I think this is meant to represent Odacer or Theodoric, right on schedule. The precision put into this mod is 
I wasn't expecting this but I have knights (Lancers) in Roma at this point 
The game does not appreciate that I survived Theodoric. Charlemagne and France spawn as an independent kingdom, taking Paris away from us.
Bourdeoux and Clermont secede too, and we must fight to get them back.
Remember how when Rome spawned we were given a great military advantage? Well now France gets it and I have to pull assault forces from everywhere in the empire to recapture it.
How's that for a Stack of Doom motherlovers 
France's doomstack is defeated by my gigadoomstack and I recapture Clermont. France cannot capitulate for some reason Probably a DoC thing for new civilizations. I don't remember all the rules. I think once "Rise of the French" ends they can become a vassal. I don't want to annihilate them, my goal is to have them become a vassal and take advantage of their colonization. For now, I've taken back a city, taken out their army and shown them who's boss.
I'm fine with just holding Clermont as it gives me foot access to Iberia. I just need to get Roman culture flowing fast.
This will be the first of many as new civs start to spawn.
The Vikings/Norse have arrived for example and introduced themselves in England. They may start to raid, but no threat of secession here.
However, around 600AD a certain guy who cannot be depicted visually is born in the Arabian Peninusla 
Egypt and the Levant is lost 
Most of my army is kicked out and expelled to Knossos in Crete. I don't have enough boats to pick them up in, so they're stranded on Crete for a while 
Conquering Nubia turns out to have been a good idea because it's outside of the flip zone, and gives us a southern vector for attack.
Next time: crusades 
- 19
- 50
We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. !g*mers
Last time, on LPC4DoCF, the Roman Empire had started to fracture. It's 624AD and after a barbarian onslaught, the Kingdom of France declared itself independent. We reconquered Clermont and spared them. Egypt and the Levant have seceded and joined the rising Abbasid Caliphate. Not on our watch
First and foremost. Per @Ulyana request I am starving the Irish to death. They get one cow pasture as a food source until I build a mine for them to toil in and the rest are to work directly on building boats until they perish.
Our stability is now Shaky now that the Golden Age is over and done with. Expansion and Economy is not negative, but not good. Foreign is bad of course (it always is) and Military is suffering a little because of our barbarian wars. Domestic is our only saving grace as we have compatible, modern civics and Catholic religious unity. 
We have room to expand. Obviously. We just lost most of our eastern territories 
Most of my army in this territory got evacuated to Knossos in Crete. I don't have means to transport them yet so they're on a little island vacation for now. 
A long time ago I conquered the Kingdom of Nubia, rivals of Aksum. Aksum were pretty ungrateful little b-words about it, but it's been good land and it's now really paying off for me. Nubia did not secede, so some of my troops were able to evacuate there. This gives me an opportunity to quickly retake Egypt from the south.
First turn and with our cavalry we've already retaken Waset, the holy city of Islam. Easy! Muslims btfo
Oh wait
Oh holy mother of Christ
I now know what it feels like to be on the other end of a "Stack of Doom"
Our reinforcements land, but it's not enough. I'm going to die 
But suddenly they pull back. I send my spies to take a look.
All the beautiful Roman Roads we built are being used by the enemy, and apparently they got distracted by Persia. 
Thank the Lord. This will give us time to retake Egypt and regroup our army.
One of our missions to the Mande finally succeeds, so we have another Catholic civilization along with us and the French.
St. Peter's Basilica in Roma serves as the Apostolic Palace from the base game, which is basically the religious medieval U.N. We control the Pope basically, so we have influence over diplomacy in the Catholic world. Since there's actually a Catholic presence in the world now, we can put something to a vote. We call for a crusade against the Abbasid.
Neither of them want this, but with our control over the religion they don't actually get a say. The crusade is on.
We can even team up with our ancient frenemies of Persia. We've always been in something of a cold war with them, but Turkey is a bulwark to Greece, so helping reinforce their cities is in our interest. Plus our espionage network in Dorylaion has been pretty valuable
Our espionage reveals that after some butting of heads their military strength is about equally matched with Persia, overall. And we are way stronger than them in totality 
They just have their army consolidated.
FINALLY the lazy butt Persians research Civil Service and cause us to fail the third Historic condition. Reminder this is intentional, I want a Space victory.
Civil Service was the only technology I had available to research at this point so it's about time.
We've helped them out so much that they're now pretty advanced, technologically ahead of schedule and researching stuff we don't have. With our spies in Dorylaion we can just steal anything they discover thoughbeit 
By the time the Arabs return with a host of Ghazi we're ready for them, we've retaken Egypt and reinforced the army. They have a slight terrain advantage but we can soften them up with our gunpowder artillery 
We're victorious With a Great General too
After having researched Commune we can now have this guy build an "Armory" as well to speed up production. Roma is still benefiting from the Flavian Ampitheater so we're going to build on there and churn out superbombards and supercavalry
^^^lol he's clipping into the background 
Harun al-Rashi is now willing to sue for peace. He's willing to offer us Jerusalem unharmed or even convert to Catholicism. Some intriguing options here but no 
We're conquering these frickers and taking Mesopotamia.
We're going to have more problems to deal with though
The Moors are about to spawn in Iberia as well.
I haven't seen one of these unique civ spawning warning messages yet, I think they only show for civilizations in your vicinity (maybe I missed the French one?). It doesn't really make sense here if the Arabs hadn't conquered North Africa and the Umayyad Dynasty don't exist. 
but whatevs the messages are really cool 
Regardless, we're about to be beset on both sides by muslims 
As well as Christians 
Again... Muslim control? but again
I have an army in the west ready to fight these both the Spaniards and the Moors, but... I'm going to let them go 
In fact...
France is mechanically capable of becoming a vassal now, but capitulation is tricky. You need to batter an enemy into submission in a war until they feel it is hopeless. Unfortunately we don't have much room if France has two cities - if we conquer Bordeaux and besiege Paris and they refuse to capitulate, we're kinda stuck.
Right now they won't voluntarily swear fealty because we're "too powerful". Pretty sure they will still capitulate if forced.
Spain is still in the "Rise of the Spanish" and can develop for now. When the "Rise of the Spanish" event is over I might invade and try to get them to capitulate. If they go to war with the Moors first I'll join them. The Moors usually build an Islam specific wonder in Cordoba, if we can capture it it would rule.
So for now I'm going to let western Europe secede and develop independently, and the Catholic world are now all my friends 
I liked Tarragona but the Silver mine it had is now exhausted so it's less valuable anyway. The one thing that sucks is that muslims now control the Strait of Gibraltar and west Mediterranean, so our mobility is reduced.
I'm focused on eastward expansion instead anyway.
We liberate Ohrmazd-Ardashir from Arab control for our Persiabros.
Gets us some brownie points, and the city was outside of our expansion zone and not really that desirable. If the map is coherent at all, yellow is a "Contested Zone" while red is strictly foreign. Agarum is the furthest south in our contested zone. The Abbasids are willing to surrender it peacefully at this point.
England is about to split. We'll gonna let them go too. 
We're back to Stable. The economy has been a rollercoaster with our conquests but this has been offset by trade route buildings that start becoming available around medieval times. Most notably we now actually have Good Relations and positive foreign stability 
I didn't know such a thing was possible. I guess all the liberation has worked out 
Before there are more European powers on the map, we may as well invade France now. The only other European nation is Spain and they don't like them that much, so they won't be annoyed.
Charlemagne probably thinks we're schizo 
Success! France will now capitulate.
The Kingdom of France is now the "Province of Gaul". They are our semi-independent b-word, we can direct their research, they join our wars, and we can sometimes demand resources. With Bordeaux they will still be able to colonize. We'll just have to help them out in technology a little.
The Mali Empire will voluntarily vassalize as well, but unfortunately for our Malibros we don't really want them. 
There's only room for five vassal civilizations. We do want to maintain good relations though when the slave trade starts tho.
Spain has declared war on the Moors, so we'll take our army from France and join them to retake our western territory. They didn't get a chance to build any wonders, oh well.
We might as well make this into another crusade 
IT'S ON
Reconquista time 
As we retake land we start to get overextended. Time to whip neighbors and enact population control 
Cordoba is defended by a Great General, Abd al-Mu'min. This is the first time we've actually gotten to fight one in combat.
Morocco goes down 
And frick it, let's go take Hungary too, there's a nice gold mine 
Right after Morocco's defeat this crazy b-word declares war on me 
Apparently Spain is dead set on completing the Reconquista and Catholic Roman controlled Cordoba isn't good enough.
She's very stubborn and refuses negotiations even after I retake Tarragona and pillage the heck out of her land.
Only after taking her capital and forcing her to relocate her palace to Santiago does she surrender.
I was going to liberate Cordoba anyway 
She is now a vassal with France as the "Province of Hispania".
Islam has been thoroughly BTFO. There are no more muslim states in the world. The Moors are dead and the Arabians collapsed when Turks took Mecca. We now control from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Sudan and Iraq, with two vassal provinces.
We're Solid stability but getting a little too big for our britches 
and risking a correction. Fortunately I have a couple Great People I've been sitting on who can trigger another Golden Age should it be necessary.
Other rising threats are coming - I think the northern Italian city states are going to attempt to split off around 1100AD, and the Ottoman Empire is going to reconquer all my middle eastern gainz around the 1200s. 
We already have technology to start exploring the New World but the Aztecs haven't even been born yet. That will have to wait until 1300~. I want Roman conquistadors 
- BernieSanders : How to do coffee right : throw it in the sink
-
Homoshrexual
: I drink Folgers and that's good enough for me
- 93
- 50
Dirt
If you buy ground coffee, Congratulations!!!! You are buying dirt!!!!!
Don't buy pre ground coffee ever. Coffee grounds go stale within hours after being ground. When you buy coffee grounds from the store, the coffee is already stale and has been for probably multiple weeks already.
Seriously, that shit is stale before it even reaches the stores shelf.
Bugs
Coffee beans are a little better, not as stale as ground coffee but there are other worries.
Quality control is terrible, with the amount of contaminants very high for coffee beans.
The FDA limits contamination at 10% of the total coffee beans count are insect-infested or insect-damaged.
So yeah, ignore my advice, and keep eating the bugs like a good little NPC.
The other issue is how old the coffee beans are will heavily affect taste quality. Too fresh, and the taste will be too bland, to old and the beans will go stale. Expiration dates aren't accurate methods of determining roast date, so honedtly you are spinning a wheel whenever you buy.
How to Do Coffee Right
The only acceptable form of coffee making is the use of GREEN COFFEE BEANS. Green Coffee Beans go stale as well, but if kept in an airtight container will be good for a good 3-6 months.
Then you roast as much a you need for a week period. There is an art to coffee roasting which I am not going to explain but YOU WILL NEED TO RESEARCH. Also don't start a fire by cooking them too long lol. After roasting, you should put the coffee grounds in airtight container and wait generally between 2 days to 2 weeks lafter roasting. This highly depends on roast and what type of taste you prefer. So play around with it a bit. I personally prefer waiting a shorter amount of time, around 3-4 days.
The before you make your coffee you grind the amount of beans you need for the amount you will drink (obviously). Don't grind all at once. This ensures coffee grounds are fresh for each cup of joe.
Machine and Method
Espresso machines are best (if you can find a good one which is hard). You want to get an all metal inside one though, which honedtly can be difficult to find and expensive. Like $2000 expensive. There are ones with plastic internals that pull amazing shots but you should obviously not do that unless u like consuming microplastics. The espresso machine imaged above is really good, great workhorse, finicky, but a classic. Rancillio Silvia, is its model. This is one of the few espresso machines I still have, since I adore it, but its plastic water reserviir so I would recommend no. Just let me be nostalgic though about pulling a better shot thab you have ever tasted on a $400 machine.
This one is all metal, but obviously, doesm't have as much capabilities:
Europiccola 8, cost around $600-1000 depending on if you know how to find used stuff.
Europiccola is the other espresso machine I currently own and is good. If you are on a microplastic free diet but still like machine precise espresso, this would be good pick up.
Pulling a good shot cna be difficult. Measure out grounds and learn the right pressure ti press the grounds into the thingy (cant remember name).
Depending on machine you might want to learn how to temperature surf. This might be outdated, since newer models might just be better at getting right temp. I had Rancillio I can't remember model, but it was like a classic. Plastic internals, but pulled amazing shots. Had to temperature surf though to get it right.
Crema
Crema is the easiest test to figure out if you pulled a good shot. Crema is layer of golden brown foam on top of the black espresso, that forms NATURALLY.
More Crema = More Swag.
Less Crema = More Strag.
No Crema = You have not only failed at making espresso, but you are also probably r-slurred.
Note on Cappuccino
If you add sugar or anything else to a Cappuccino besides frothed milk and espresso then exit my post immediately. You are a cute twink who I will slam head first into a brick wall.
Cappuccino is amazing. You need a steam wand, bezt ones come attachrd to Cappuccino/espresso machine. Don't use one of those terrible handheld frothers.
You want the container you put the milk into, to be solid metam and it should be in freezer before hand, so its icy cold. Pour milk into container froth, starting at botton then rising to top to create the froth.
Top: Froth
Bottom: Steamed Milk.
You want about 50% froth and 50% steamed milk by volume.
Then you tilt espresso cup slightly like 45ยฐ with espresso already made JUST BEFORE!!!! and you pour in while tilting espresso cup back to facing up.
Cappuccino Art
Cappuccino art is created with how you pour the frothed/steamed milk into te espresso.
Using a stencil, using some sort of cinammon, or whatever isn't acceptable.
Cappuccino art is ONLY achieved through the pour, using additional instruments or methods is not only cheating but also is the equivalent of sucking a peepee.
If you see some fancy desig with a logo or whatever on Cappuccino art, then that person kust used some stencil thing and I give you permission to beat them bloody.
i am not amazing at Cappuccino art, but I am much better than you will ever be. I am not going to share my secrets either. Continue to next section.
Not Espresso
Nowadays I don't even bother and only make Pourover or Mocha Pot for Espresso (rare). Too many iszues finding an all metal espresso machine under 2k so it is what it is. That being said you can pull great shots with Mocha Pot, like Italians do all the time. You just have to he an OG artist not a scientist. You knowimsayingneighbor.
Pour over is an art as well, don't listen to the cute twinks talking about temperature with therm and measuring out yada yada yah. Its an art. You use your intuition. You won't make good coffee this way if you are a nerd.
Speaking of which.
Coffee isn't for Nerds
If you want to measure out evrrything and tempetature whatever, die. That isn't coffee. Italians (the inventors if coffee), pretty much just grab the beans roast them in the oven and grind with simple grinder amd use Mocha Pots. They pull better shots than 99% of coffee shops in America.
Nerds require fancy equipment. If you are an artist, you will require less and less fancy equipment until you can pull a great shot with a handful of green coffee beans, a handgrinder, and a stove.
Alternative to Roasting
You can buy from Coffee Roaster directly and they usually (should) in most cases roast the coffee well and deliver freshly roasted coffee.
I will be honest, this is gay. Straight men don't let other men roast their beans. So if you are gay, this might be good option. If not, stick to roasting yourself.
What Coffee Roaster to Use
While you can roast Green Coffee Beans in the oven, you absolutely shouldn't for many reasons I am not going to get into here.
What you need is a good coffee roaster. These can be expensive, bunch of different types and I don't feel like explaining. Do your own research idiot. Expect to pay at least $200 for a good one though. I have a decent drum roller type one that cost like $300, but there are even better types of coffee roasters some being $600 ones all the way up to like $20,000. Obviously thise ones that aren't drum rollers, can't remember what they are called, but they are OG as shit. You probably don't need one of those though.
Look here for Drum Rollers (my preference):
https://www.sweetmarias.com/roasting/drum-roasters.html
There are other types of coffee roasters, but yeah.
Grinder
Probably most important after roaster. Get the best one you can afford, or learn how to hand grind like a true Italian. Probably cost around 400+ for a decent one.
i have a $500 (?) roaster, pictured above. That model is outdated, but I recommend since its served me well for past 10 years and alnost as good as the Italian hands grinds.
Italy
Most importantly, to make good coffee you will need to go to Italy. If you haven't been to Italy, Congratulations!!!! Your coffee is almost guranteed to be shit.
Putting this one last, since I know this is the biggest barrier to entry and want people to read through thinking they are gonna make some good joe, then realize they can't visit Italy so they juzt wasted their entire time reading a straggy article abiut coffee making.
Import Info on Italy
When I refer to Italy, I am referring to Southern Italy.
"Northern Italy" isn't Italy, its basically Brussells + France + Amsterdam if they were black. North "Italians" can't make Coffee.
-
SlidingDonGER
: It's our drama duty to lay eggs into bongs
- 23
- 51
Basically this all starts, when this lovely wholesome video about totally underrated Biologist channel Team Candiru, about parasitic wasps laying eggs within the living bodies of caterpillar is shown. 
VERY WHOLESOME FAMILY FRIENDLY
as you can imagine with such grisly morbid subjectmatter, the comments section is filled with jokes to cope about the horror of mother nature. Some inane jokes and comments are as follows.
jokes, people relating experiences, some praising the author of the video
You know, everybody having a good time, at the expense of the poor caterpillar which is the subject of our horror entertainment of the video.
AND THEN, our incredibly toughguy scottish cucks arrive when another inane innocuous comment is made
You guys get it, he's taking the piss about the fact that when British accented men with clear and handsome radio-voices are often commissioned to narrate Nature Documentaries, often many of then involving, unfortunate, gruesome and brutal natural events like Lions devouring recently born boks or whatever.
Unfortunately for the commenter, and all other non-Bongland native english-language speakers, whom are not well-versed in the various subdialects of the British Isles, the Narrator of the current video is not a blue blooded evil colonizer Englishman
and this causes seething RAGE and ANGER 
for the Scotbongs in the comment section, because modern Scots want us to believe that they are still badass manly hairy-chested men, instead of the turbo p#ssies and weak meek wimps, whom are even bigger nanny state cucks than their Britbong southern neighbours,
and that they are VERY BADASS and will totally beat up outsiders 
who dares to confuse them for their evil colonizer overlords!
ACTUALLY HE'S SCOTTISH, A MUCH LESS SHIT BONG
"Don't ever call him English again" 
"1. It's a Scottish narrator, don't ever call an Scotsman English he'll break your nose
2. I think it's hilarious that you think there is a commentator sitting in the forest actively narrating this like it's a football match" 
Now the problem is that Youtube comment threads are r-slurred and nonsensical and often doesn't display the order in which comments are made, and often only ever when comments are directed at others, this means that often are difficult to follow past the 1st 50 or so.
But even so, usually u can get the gist of arguments which popped up down a thread.
basically in this one clip, for example we had 3 different slapfights 
ongoing at the same time!
The "52% of Scots voted to remain with the English though, so number 1 isn't exactly true lol" is one train of fight about how not all Scots hate england and the Independence movement and Nationalism is a joke
The "we were Lied to regarding our nations value, debt and prosperity. Had Theresa May not been a lying cow Scotland would be independent" is random sneed about Mommy May raping wingcucks further down the thread
and the "He doesn't... it's pretty hilarious that you think he does because he made a joke" comment is calling the other scots pathetic for blowing this internet tantrum 
way out of proportion as the original comment was obviously an oblivious yank having made an innocuous comment!
This video was posted 4 years ago, yet the comments would continue this great debate for over a whole year lmoa.
Anyways it doesn't get anymore interesting, just constant sperging about 
scotland. IS. NOT. ENGLISHHHHH 
!britbongs also, @Aevann does this count as a non-reddit source of drama?
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The Nagus
The cold open drops more foreshadowing than sunshine on my butt: Sisko wants go to Bajor with Jake- he plans to visit The Fire Caverns (later revealed to be home to the Pah-Wraiths and they will be the site of Sisko's last confrontation with Dukat in the final episode)- Rom is acting like Rom and he quotes our first ever Rule of Acquisition (Number One, no less- "Once you've got their money, never give it back". As the episode progresses we get the sixth rule too- "Never allow family to stand in the way of opporunity")- we see Grand Nagus Zek, his weird staff and his huge manservant Maihardu. Loads of important shit gets shown for the first time this episode (EDIT NB: Because some r-slurs need it spelling out- the writers did not preplan anything in DS9 and merely returned to these ideas later on). This is also the first proper "Ferengi Episode"- a controversial concept as a lot of people don't like them. Although there were some rotten Ferengi episodes, there were plenty of good ones and I've always had a soft spot for them because they show a slice of Star Trek life from a different cultural perspective- a window into another way of thinking and existing within a setting we've only seen from one perspective in the past. Also, they're kind of like Fiddler on the Roof in space.
The Nagus has arrived on DS9, apparently on a cooming expedition. He intends to indulge in five of Quark's most popular holoporn programs. They would tone down the gooning implications in later seasons (and the holosuite would be used more for recreations of the Battle of Britain, somewhat-self-indulgent Rat Pack knock-offs and copyright infringing James Bond parodies- no seriously... Paramount got threatened with legal action by MGM after 'Our Man Bashir' in Season 5. How New Line's Austin Powers avoided this I don't know) but here in season 1, the message is clear as to what people are paying for in the holosuite:
They were together in real life btw: deal with it...
At least he's not really a Jeet
Zek invites himself to dinner at Quark's apartment. Side note- Ferengi use chopsticks and a lazy susan. There he explains his real reasons for the visit: he plans to use Quark's bar to host a biznez meeting to discuss Ferengi biznez, especially Gamma Quadrant biznez. He's chosen Quark's bar because apparently only Quark can arrange some uncomfortable-looking Ikea furniture in a room for short men with big ears to sit on. During the dinner Zek expresses disdain for BIPOC attending the hoo-man school so Rom tells BIPOC not to go there any more. BIPOC is less than happy about this and matters are not made better because Chief Obrien is currently teaching classes because the casting budget for this episode was already stretched by the Ferengi characters & would not cover Rosalind Chao's fee while Keiko is on holiday. This is the same Chief Obrien who literally had to fix every replicator on the station a few weeks back- now his wife's away he suddenly has all the time in the world to moonlight as a teachercel.
Getting back to the meeting: Nagus Zek explains that it's important that the Ferengi expand into the Gamma Quadrant so as to exploit a market where the unfounded reputation they have in the Merchant-phobic Alpha Quadrant can't ruin their chances.
Everyone agrees that this is an unreasonable goyim misrepresentation of a simple hard-working people.
But Zek feels he's too old to lead his people into this new frontier and he announces that he will now appoint a successor... Quark.
Nobody's impressed and spend the next few days low key threatening Quark- someone even tries to assassinate him. Compounding his woes, Zek suddenly dies leaving Quark without any support. Odo suggests doing an autopsy but everyone laughs as Zek's body is already gone- upon their deaths Ferengi are vacuum dessicated and the dishes of their remains auctioned off. One piece of Zek is worth 20 bars of gold-pressed latinum and is expected to double in value by the following year.
I'm not sure what Ferengi do with these powdered remains but those of great men like Zek sell for a high price and generally increase in value over time.
Quark tries to play it tough and act like he knows what he's doing which leads to this bizarre scene:
Turns out the bomb was Rom and Zek's useless son. They then try and blow Quark out of an airlock- something they're only prevented from doing by the reappearance of Zek who faked his death to test his useless son. A test his son failed uselessly. So Zek must remain Nagus and exploit the Gamma Quadrant personally, a task which will have huge implications in season 2. Far from being angry at his brother, Quark is just pleased he's not a complete failure as a Ferengi. For some reason Rom does not face charges for attempted murder.
There's a B plot about Jake teaching BIPOC to read which isn't worth getting into except for this bit where they goon over a hot Vulcan girl:
The first true Ferengi episode is... fine.
It lays the foundations for a lot of future Ferengi culture- their society is not one of true capitalism and free markets but rather a rigidly hierarchical one based on monopolies and price-fixing with the Nagus sitting at the center dictating everything and taking a cut of it all. Later we will learn of the Ferengi Commerce Authority which creates an impossible web of red tape in the Alliance which can only be navigated via extortionate bribes. This is why Ferengi have to gouge the life out of any non-Ferengi they do business with: their margins are so narrow due to all the bureaucracy and corruption.
Quick note on gold-pressed latinum: it's not a currency- it's a commodity and therefore it's price presumably fluctuates. Latinum is a metal, liquid at room temperature, which cannot be synthesised or replicated- hence it's intrinsic value. The latinum is traditionally pressed into sleeves of gold (which can be replicated and therefore has no real value besides looking nice) which are shaped as slips, strips and bars. Although the value of latinum fluctuates 100 slips make a strip and 20 strips make a bar. There are also bricks which are massively expensive but I don't know how many bars make a brick. I think that if you consider a slip to be worth about $1 you are in the right ball park. Other non-replicatable materials include dilithium crystals and possibly uridium (a fictional metal, originally invented for the 1980s vidya of the same name, from which starship sensor arrays are made) because the whole reason for the Cardassian occupation of Bajor was to strip-mine the planet for uridium. I suppose it's possible that different materials use different amounts of energy to replicate and it might just be more energy efficient for the Cardassians to mine the stuff. I suppose it's also possible that Cardassian replicators (which the show has established already as being a bit shit) can't do it but Federation ones can. Anyway...
Vortex
Jeff Lynne from ELO (or an alien who looks a lot like him) comes aboard DS9 and gets involved in some plot to rip off a Faberge egg thing Quark's trying to sell to a pair of twins (it is never explained why Jeff's involved in this). In the ensuing fight Jeff shoots and kills one of the twins and is arrested on suspicion of murder (although the twins fired first, it was Jeff who pulled a gun on them) while the surviving brother swears revenge.
I do wonder how they cast these twins and who got the decision on which one lives (and gets most of the speaking lines) and which one dies. Did they share both salaries equally? After all- they wouldn't have gotten the gig unless there was two of them.
Anyway, Jeff is one of those tricksy types who gaslamps Odo into believing he can lead the constable to his people- as proof he shows him a shapechanging butt-plug thing he keeps in a locket (why the heck was he allowed to keep this in his cell?).
Sisko and Dax go to Jeff's home planet and find them to be authoritarian buttholes but this week's interpretation of the Prime Directive demands that Jeff is returned to be executed without trial. Odo gets the gig to take him but re-routes to a nebula where Jeff says Odo might find his people. Of course he can't and it's just a stasis pod where Jeff has stashed his daughter (how did he get it here?). The shapechanging butt-plug is a key. He's a dissident, you see and was just trying to protect his daughter (from what? Are they a persecuted minority? We never find out).
The twin shows up in a sharp pointy-looking starship (must be a nightmare to dock) and there's a bit of action which, I'll grant you, does look nice...
...but this whole story makes no sense and Jeff's bullshit about the Changelings (this is the first time we ever hear Odo's people referred to as such) just feels like the episode itself bullpooping the audience into wasting our time watching this because we thought something important might occur. You might also notice a lot of "never explained" and "for some reason" bits in this review- that's never a good sign. There's also this bit where a rock falls on Odo's head and knocks him out- how the frick does that work? He doesn't have a brain.
It's all so disappointing.
Dramatis Personae
Another alien mind-virus has everybody on the station acting weird except for Odo. It was brought on board by a Klingon ship which asplodes after coming through the wormhole after cutting short their planetary survey mission into the Gamma Quadrant. I can't help but wonder how a Vor'cha class battlecruiser can blow into pieces right next to a busy star port and yet not cause any damage to any other vessels or the station itself.
One Klingon is successfully beamed over before his ship asplodes and mumbles one word before he dies; "victory". He carries his own personal logs which have suffered enough damage as to take a while to decipher (or maybe they got the logs from the cruiser wreckage, I can't remember). While this is happening Odo has a massive spazz in Quarks...
...but quickly recovers. This is never explained but is clearly his reaction to the virus. Quark also doesn't seem affected but his usefulness is restricted for reasons you'll see in a minute. Everybody else starts acting paranoid and weird and turns on each other forming into two groups- one loyal to Sisko and the other seeking to overthrow him, led by Kira. The Klingon logs eventually show that the exact same pattern of events occured aboard their cruiser but the significance of this is downplayed by Obrien (acting as Sisko's enforcer while Sisko hides insolently in his office and DNGAF) who, correctly, points out that Kingons tend to get promoted by assassinating their commanders. How the frick things like a Gamma Quadrant planetary survey mission get done under these conditions is unfathomable. The Klingons found some kind of ancient alien historical archive and it somehow causes people to reenact ancient historical events, presumably this was supposed to happen under more controlled circumstances than we see happening here.
There are two good things about this episode: the first is the subtle way the characters are afffected by the archive- they retain their sense of selves and their motivations seem consistent with their previously established characters. Kira's initial reasons for toppling Sisko is that she thinks he and the Federation are a threat to Bajor, Dax is an old man who is full of reminiscences and Obrien is a chippy and bad tempered Irish shit. The second reason is Kira being crazy hot. I never remember finding Nana Visitor this attractive before but, God-she is sexy AF and some of her antics in this episode are particularly coom-worthy.
God I wish I was Quark right here...
Avery Brooks is quite good doing Sisko's Nero act in this episode (Brooks was always better playing bad guys) and it causes him to make a strange alien clock instead of playing a fiddle. the clock was a really nice prop and we often see it in the background in his office during subsequent episodes:
Possibility of making a Starshit hole
I'm thinking we need to have a hole dedicated to SciFi TV and movies- particularly shows like old school Star Trek, Stargate etc. I'd be willing to put 50,000 DC towards it if other people could help raise the other half of the cost. I also have no ability with CSS or banner creation. IDK, what do you think?
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On tonight's episode:
We begin the NewJeans Saga. Join us for a brief look at the history of the major players in the scandal, as well as the opening volleys of a feud that could alter the landscape of pretty ricefoids shaking their hips on stage for ever.
Who is MHJ?
What exactly is, a NewJeans?
Why do I keep using Twice for the OP?
Find the answers to all of this and more, right after these messages from our sponsor:
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programing.
Christmas Thread Theme
Introduction
On the morning of November 28th, 2024, an official representative of the superstar Kpop group NewJeans announced that the members would be holding a press conference to address the ongoing dispute with their record label, ADOR. Two weeks prior, on November 13th, the group sent a letter notifying ADOR of numerous issues that they considered to be breaches of their contract. Per a (standard) clause in the contract, ADOR had 14 days to respond to and ameliorate these breaches. If it failed to do so, NewJeans would have the option to terminate their exclusive contract, without penalty. With the 14 day deadline set to pass at 12:00 AM KST, November 29th, it seemed premature to call a press conference. However, the group was planning to board a plane to Japan in preparation for promotional activities later that evening, and expressed their wish to update their fans on the situation before ADOR could take advantage of their travel to control the media narrative.
They know what they did
And so, at 8:30 PM, the members of NewJeans and a PR representative met with the press to announce their response to ADOR's failure to rectify the alleged contract breaches. What followed was a bizzare press conference that saw members claim their contract was terminated and that they:
-
were no longer under contract with ADOR after midnight
-
would not need to pay a termination penalty
-
would begin seeking other oppurtunities while finishing scheduled events with ADOR
And the really bizarre part...
- would not seek to confirm the termination of their contract via legal action.
This, of course, raised numerous questions amongst the entertainment reporters present who have a solid grasp on how contract terminations work. I'm sure the dramatards in the audience who understand contract law, or are capable of tying their own shoes, have many of the same questions. Thankfully, the girls took some time to take questions from the press.
An excerpt from the press conference. Did you understand?
Always a good idea to check the specifics after terminating the contract
Leaving the world with more questions than answers, the members of NewJeans boarded a plane to Japan to resume promotional activities, setting the internet ablaze with discussion of what was in the future for NewJeans. Well, in order to predict the future, one must first understand the past.
And that past can only be found...
...In the K-Hole.
The Main Players
HYBE
The illegitimate love child of Kim Jong-Un and Xi Jinping Bang Si-Hyuk
HYBE Corporation, initially founded by Bang Si-hyuk in 2005 as Big Hit Entertainment, is the largest of the big 4 record companies in Kpop, with a market capitalization almost 4x greater than that of their next largest competitor, JYP Entertainment. Their success is directly tied to that of their most popular group, BTS, who during their heyday, generated more GDP for South Korea than the Korean domestic airline industry. This great financial success provided Big Hit Entertainment with the opportunity to acquire numerous smaller record labels including Source Music, which would later go on to debut the girl group Le Sserafim, in 2019 and Pledis Entertainment (Seventeen and Formis9) in 2020
With these new labels under their belt, Big Hit Entertainment restructured itself as HYBE Corporation in 2021, structuring all of their various sub-labels underneath the new Hybe Label division. During the years proceeding the re-structuring, HYBE developed plans to debut numerous gril groups, and leading these plans was the former Visual Director for SM Entertainment, Min Hee-jin (MHJ).
Min Hee-Jin
Born in 1979, MHJ began her career in Kpop as a graphic designer for SM Entertainment (one of the other big 4 companies in Kpop) in 2003. Eventually she was promoted to creative director, where she oversaw all visual branding for a number of SM's gril groups, including Girls Generation, Red Velvet, and f(x). Her impact on the industry in this role was massive, as she shifted artistic direction within the industry towards the idea of more experimental "concepts".
You can think of a group's concept as the overarching theme of the group, impacting everything from album art, photoshoots, music videos, and costumes to public behavior and even the type of music the group produces. The concept of an artist can remain static for years on end (think of how Motley Crue have always been party boy rockstars), or change over time (compare the early music and style of The Beatles to their later work.)
Leaving SM in 2018 due to burnout, it wasn't long before she found herself hired by Big Hit Entertainment to oversee the rebranding to HYBE Corporation. It was also announced that MHJ would be the creative lead for multiple new girl groups, as well as the producer for a label that HYBE would launch in the next few years. MHJ took part in initial planning for a new girl group with Source Music, but in 2021 HYBE established the ADOR sub label and named her as the CEO. The first act to debut under ADOR would be the girl group MHJ had begun developing with Source Music, NewJeans.
NewJeans
Upcoming January 2025 Vogue Korea cover featuring NewJeans
Auditions for Mhj's new girl group began in 2019 under Source Music. Initially planning to debut in 2021, this was pushed back to 2022, ostentibly due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Officially debuting on July 22nd of 2022, NewJeans quickly became one of the biggest acts in all of Kpop. Their achievements speak for themselves:
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First idol group in history to occupy the #1, #2 and #3 spot on every chart in Korea for 3 consecutive months with Ditto, OMG, and Hype Boy
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NewJeans surpassed 5 billion total points on Circle Digital Chart in only 64 weeks, second only to BTS (53 weeks)
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First girl group to ever chart 5 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 in the same calendar year in K-Pop history
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Set a Guinness record for fastest artist to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify and also became the fastest Korean act in history to reach 3 billion streams
Newjeans debut single and MV, Hype Boy, released July 22nd, 2022.
This groups massive success on the charts led them to become one of the most sought after brand endorsements in the advertising industry , with them eventually going on to work with Nike, Coca- Cola, McDonald's, Apple, Levi's, and Calvin Klein. NewJeans was so successful on this front that In April 2024, Forbes Korea reported that the group had earned โฉ30 billion (~$20 million) in advertising in the course of a single year. to put this in perspective, Patrick Mahomes had total estimated off-the-field earnings of $25 million in 2024.
You know you've made it big when even your slop meal gets to go on tour.
Hanni
The Vietnamese-Australian member of a Korean girl group's English male name is Harry.
Born to Vietnamese parents in Melbourne, Australia, Phแบกm Ngแปc Hรขn's (20) first experience in the entertainment industry was as a member of the Australian kpop dance cover group AEMINA. In late 2019, she was the only person to pass the Plus Global Auditions, the first set of auditions for the girl group that would become NewJeans. Hanni is widely considered to be the best vocalist in the group
Minji
Marcus the Cleanup Queen
Born in Chuncheon, South Korea in 2004, Kim Min-ji began training with Source Music in 2017. She was likely the first member selected for NewJeans, as she was the anonymous face of the Plus Global Auditions that selected Hanni. Often acting as the de facto leader, Minji is the oldest member and one of the best dancers in the group.
Dani
Her male English name is Demitree.
In 2005, Danielle Marsh was born to an Australian father and Korean mother in Newcastle, Australia. Moving back and forth between Australia and South Korea as a child, Dani's first experience in show business was as a child actor in South Korea. She began her kpop career as a trainee at YG Entertainment ( the last of the big four Kpop companies), leaving the company and joining Source Music in July 2020. Probably the most popular member internationally, Dani is a talented vocalist who provided the Korean dub of Ariel for the live action Little Mermaid movie.
Haerin
This Kang's name is Stephen
Originally from Seoul, South Korea, Kang Hae-rin dropped out of middle school in 2020 at the age of 13 to begin training with Source Music, later earning her GED. A taleented singer and dancer, Haerin is also a global ambassador for Dior.
Hyein
(Male name) Collin is the reason we need pedobear.
Lee Hye-in was born in Incheon, South Korea in 2008, making her the youngest member, or maknae, of NewJeans. Getting her start as a child model, she also was a member of a kid's group called U.SSO Girl from 2017-2018. She later went on to star on a YouTube children's channel called PocketTV. She eventually joined ADOR as a trainee in 2021. Despite being the youngest member of the group, Hyein has the most showbiz experience in the group.
Now that we've had a chance to meet the stars of our story, we are finally able to see where the NewJeans/ADOR drama truly began. But first, it's time for a...
Cookie Break
After the success of their debut single Hype Boy, NewJeans quickly followed up with the lead single of their self-titled debut EP, Cookie. As @0BS3SS10N mentioned in the comments of our previous episode, there was something a little off about this song.
With most of the song in Korean, the lyrics, once translated into English, are something else:
Now, these lyrics wouldn't be too bad in and of themselves, at least compared to western music, save for one small problem; the majority of the group was underage when the song was released. At the time of release, Dani and Hanni were 17, Haerin was 16, and Hyein was 14(!). Only Minji was over the age of 18 at the time. This generated a great deal of controversy in western markets due to the sexual tone of the lyrics.
https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/wdclrx/newjeans_cookie/
A solid summary of the drama
As @ftincel touched on above, the scandal was complicated by a report of a pattern of weird, borderline pedophilic behavior surrounding MHJ. She had numerous pictures of underage girls and a 15 year old Brooke Shields on her Instagram, and had also been accused of over sexualizing underage idols while at SM Entertainment.
HYBE, ADOR, and NewJeans themselves argued the song was actually about burning a CD for someone (to bake a CD is a euphemism for burning a CD in Korea) and that the translator who worked on the MV above had mistranslated the lyrics. Most Westerners didn't buy this, pointing out that two of the people in the group (Dani and Hanni) were native English speakers. However, as is common with scandals related to Kpop idols, there were plenty of fans who were ready to eat up the cover story.
https://old.reddit.com/r/NewJeans/comments/wkle0q/serious_discussion_thread_the_cookie_and_min/
Let's see what /mu/ had to say at the time:
You know it's bad when even 4chan thinks you've gone too far
I think this is a compilation of translated comments from Korean sites. If not, someone needs to investigate this guy.
With all of that background info and the Cookie drama out of the way, we can begin our story in earnest.
The Beginning of the End
The Audit
On April 22nd, 2024, bombshell news dropped that HYBE would be launching an internal audit of ADOR and it's executives, due to concerns that MHJ was trying to attract investors to take the label independent. At the time, HYBE owned about 80% of ADOR, with the remaining 20% being held by ADOR executives, predominantly MHJ.
HYBE alleged that MHJ and a VP at ADOR, identified only as Mr. L, were working in collaboration to "free" ADOR from HYBE. The scheme included Mr. L passing classified info about HYBE to MHJ. Mr. L had previously worked with HYBE, most relevantly during its IPO, before being transferred by the company to ADOR. Once HYBE became aware of the plan, the audit was triggered, executives electronics were examined, and plans to remove MHJ as CEO of ADOR were initiated.
Illit
For her part, MHJ released a statement alleging that the audit was an illegal attempt to oust her as CEO In retaliation for her accusing Illit, a new Kpop group under HYBE's sub-label, Belift Labs, and their producers of "copying" NewJeans.
https://www.koreaboo.com/news/min-hee-jin-official-statement/
April 23rd and 24th
The next day, April 23rd, HYBE responded that it had clear evidence that MHJ had been planning to take ADOR independent long before Illit had debuted. The main piece of evidence for this was an unreleased internal document detailing MHJ's plans.
https://m-en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20240423006400315
On the 24th, various ADOR executives tried to distance MHJ from the discovered internal document, but a report from Dispatch (basically the Korean TMZ) revealed that she had almost $73 million in put options on HYBE.
April 25th
The Next day, April 25th, HYBE made public it's initial findings from the audit and stated it's intention to report MHJ to the police.
A leaked conversation between MHJ and another ADOR executive, A
In response MHJ called her own press conference that day, which ran for almost 2 hours.
the entire press conference summed up by mhj lawyers pic.twitter.com/3qrfngiz3H
โ ๐ชโท (@JlNSONYEONDAN) April 25, 2024
During this press conference MHJ touched on a number of topics, including:
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Reiterating that the only cause of the audit was an internal complaint she filed over Illit's "plaigerism"
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Complaining that her shareholders agreement that she signed with HYBE was unfair and currently being renegotiated.
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Alleging that she was promised NewJeans would be the first of HYBE's new girl groups to debut. Instead Le Sserafim was allowed to debut first. (Remember this one, it will be important later on)
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Claiming that she would take legal action against HYBE for seizing her and other executive's electronics
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Stating that all of ADOR's internal discussions about seeking outside investors and breaking away from HYBE were merely jokes
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Tacitly admitting that she would consult a Korean Shaman to help make business decisions (again, more on this at a later date)
The entire press conference is a trip, and this all is just a snippet. We'll do a deep dive into the press conference and it's after effects next week, but for now, let's see how the internet reacted:
Reddit Reacts
Warning:: May contain spoilers for future parts of the saga.
https://old.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/1ca2gc4/hybe_launched_audit_into_ceo_of_newjeans_agency/
https://old.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/1ca90ty/hybe_initiates_audit_of_adors_management/
https://old.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/1ca90ty/hybe_initiates_audit_of_adors_management/
/mu/ Reacts
That's all the time we have for this week, but I hope that I was able to whet your whistle for the drama we have ahead, because theres quite a bit of it.
On next week's "In the K-Hole"
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A deep dive into MHJ's April 25th press conference and auxiliary accusations!
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The parents of NewJeans speak up!
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New legal challenges!
-
And much, much more, all next week!
I hope you enjoyed this episode, as well as your upcoming holidays. A very merry Christmas to you all and yours...
... From the bottom...
... Of the K-Hole.
My profile and flair color is 28bca3 
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This post isn't meant to really get into the personal details of me dealing with intestinal candida (it sucked), but instead to serve as a good starting point for anyone also dealing with this or anything similar. Mainly this is because all the information that's easy to find is absolute dogshit and filled with terrible advice. All the actually correct info is buried in studies and guesswork. So this post serves to act as a nice handy collection of my personal findings and the sources that helped me.
First is finding out if you even have candida/SIFO, SIBO, gluten intolerance/celiac disease (if you get tested for this, make sure to have gluten for a few days before the test to avoid false negatives), and/or something else entirely. My symptoms included dry flakey skin on the face, sand like stool with white transparent pieces alongside it, a toenail infection that appeared from nowhere, and symptoms that got worse with whole grains compared to processed grains (whole wheat flour bothered me a lot more than white wheat flour).
It is worth keeping in mind that there are no reliable tests for this or similar ailments, so knowing exactly what you have is hard to pin down. Thankfully many of the long term fixes are the same, with only some stuff needing to be altered. The general rule of thumb is to introduce things one at a time and remove them if they start to bother you, this includes things like supplements as well as food.
I would also caution against prescribed solutions; they don't fix the underlying cause of your issues. All they do is buy time, and tax your liver in the process. Of course I don't think they are never helpful, just don't use them as your first option. The ones I tested are terbinafine (needed more than the 3 months prescribed, somewhat useful), itraconazole (made things much worse, avoid), fluconazole (slightly useful, didn't do much), and nystatin (safest and weakest of the ones I took, but by the time I was taking this things had progressed far enough that it wasn't effective. Do make sure to avoid the liquid solution though, it has sugar alcohol which will just make things worse).
With all that being said, here is a tier list of a bunch of things I tried with an explanation of why it helped/didn't help/made things worse. You will notice I list brands; this is not because I am a shill, but because the brand you buy does make a huge difference with all this. Sometimes I would try the same type of product from many brands, but one or two would perform noticeably worse.
God Tier
Member's Mark Organic Virgin Coconut Oil (
)
Despite what my title says, if there is only one thing you add, make it coconut oil. Coconut oil has had by far the biggest impact on my recovery, and it's not even close. This is because coconut oil has saturated fatty acids that are excellent for killing bad stuff in your gut. The 2 most studied acids are C12 (lauric acid) and C8 (caprylic acid), however it is likely the other acids are also helping. All these saturated acids combined have 3 important abilities; they strip the biofilm from candida (this is what candida uses to make itself resistant to traditional antifungals, making coconut have strong synergy with other antifungals), they directly kill the candida, and they feed good bacteria to fill the void dead candida leaves behind (this ensures the candida has a harder time reestablishing itself). The only real downside is eating coconut oil (preferably room temp to ensure the acids don't break down) is nauseating and vile, thankfully the next item solves that issue.
Swanson EFAs Coconut Oil Made with Certified Organic Coconut Oil
Is this as potent as eating coconut oil straight? No. However it goes down a lot easier so is what I'd recommend you use if you don't find eating coconut oil enjoyable. I take 2 of these a day with good results, you can take more or less but I found that to be a good sweet spot.
Silk Organic Unsweet Soymilk (
)
Soymilk has gotten a bad rep, mainly because the people who drink it look more like 
and less like 
. However this is undeserved imo, the belief that it negatively affects testosterone was debunked and it has a lot of benefits. Unlike basically every other plant-based milk, this one is high in protein making it good for keeping calorie intake high (hard to do when dealing with candida).
When it comes to candida specifically, I find that this specific brand of soymilk does suppress candida unlike most other milks I tried. I believe this is because this soymilk has gellan gum whereas other milks do not. I do believe the soy itself is helping though, as when I combine this brand of soymilk with soy protein powder (listed below) the candida killing ability is amplified. I believe this is because gellan gum acts as a carrier that helps the soy reach the small intestine intact, whereas other sources of soy without gellan gum breakdown before they can reach the small intestine. Since gellan gum is kinda a pain to find by itself (and even more of a pain to work worth), I suggest just buying this soymilk instead. I also find that things like coconut and ginger are more effective when I take them with this soy milk, again I'll assume the gellan gum is responsible. I try and have around 2-3 cups a day, preferably with my coconut and ginger.
365 by Whole Foods Market Unsweetened Original Soymilk
This is the only other brand of soymilk I could find with gellan gum, and sure enough this one also works great (though not quite as effective as the Silk). I find this brand also tastes better and is much cheaper than the Silk brand. So why do I not recommend this one? Because shopping at Whole Foods makes me want to 
. By all means though, if you live near a Whole Foods and don't hate shopping there (I don't know if I should envy or pity you), buy this brand of soymilk instead.
Swanson Premium Full Spectrum Ginger Root
When dealing with candida, you will probably find yourself dealing with bloating and general stomach upset. Ginger is godsend for dealing with this, as taking some throughout the day helps alleviate the bulk of these symptoms. This ginger root isn't very strong, but it's cheap as chips, so even taking twice as many compared to other brands you'll still come out ahead. I find taking 3-4 a day works for me, though this is something you can easily test yourself.
Swanson Premium Vitamin D3 - Highest Potency (
vitamin D levels have fallen, billions of IU must be absorbed)
Candida really hurts your Vitamin D absorption capabilities, or maybe having trouble absorbing vitamin D causes candida, or maybe both, hard to say. A study (link below) shows that the RDA for Vitamin D isn't high enough for many people. So adding a vitamin D supplement is worth considering. I personally found it had a massive benefit to me, especially when I started talking more than the RDA (I originally took 2000 IU a day). I take 10000 IU a day, which is an insanely high number that you almost certainly don't need (however I do, even 8000 wasn't enough). Start small, and increase by a little (2000 IU increments) as needed. If you can get frequent blood tests to track your vitamin D levels as you increase the dosage, even better.
Swanson EFAs High Concentrate Omega-3 - Mini Softgels (
)
Most people are not getting enough omega 3s, however this isn't caused by just diet. People's ability to convert fatty acids into each other (and the efficiency they do it) seems to be dependent on genetics. Through trial and error, I found that my ability to convert ALA into DHA is remarkably poor, so even though I had a good amount of ALA in my diet the lack of direct sources of DHA became a problem. This most likely negatively reduced my testosterone levels and thus hurt my body's ability to regulate the candida in my gut. Unless you are eating omega 3 rich seafood frequently (you probably aren't), I suggest taking an omega 3 supplement. This one is derived from Alaska pollock, which has much more DHA than EPA. However, you probably want a supplement that is more balanced, so you probably want to take a supplement that uses anchovy, sardine, mackerel, and or krill. Try different kinds of omega 3 supplements and see what works for you, this one requires more trial and error than most supplements I've found. I take 3 of these a day, which is a lot, but necessary with how little DHA my body seems to be able to make naturally. Do keep in mind to not take more than 2g total of fish oil a day, as that can cause digestive issues.
Useful
STRAGE (pronounced fa-yeh, not straggy 
) Total 5% Yogurt
Adding yogurt to your diet once you start to recover (don't take it until you see an upward trend, the sugars can cause issues) is a good idea. It's not necessary, but I find eating some yogurt every other day helps keep things regular. STRAGE yogurt is one of the best, and it's cheap. It seems that however they make the yogurt seems to keep more of the cultures alive than other brands, which is ideal. STRAGE also makes some of the best tasting yogurt in the budget segment, which is nice.
STRAGE BestSelf Lactose Free Plain Low-Fat Greek Yogurt
If you cannot have lactose for whatever reason (
) this is a great yogurt to have. I find it's not quite as powerful as the regular STRAGE (maybe because it doesn't have the parchment to keep the yogurt moist?) but when the alternative is nothing, this yogurt will do.
MYPROTEIN - MYVEGAN Pea Protein Isolate Powder
Pea protein tastes like shit, it is by far the worst tasting protein powder (with only hemp protein being close). However it seems to do a good job at managing candida, most likely due to the same compounds that make peas green. If you can stomach the stuff, this is worth adding to your diet. Do be mindful that it's high in iron, which might be a bad thing depending on what your iron levels are and what else you eat. I eat 13g of this a day in a smoothie (recipe listed below).
Spinach (and all other dark leafy greens)
Spinach has the same candida fighting powers as pea protein does, and is much more palatable. I suggest eating it raw, as that preserves the most amount of the candida fighting compounds. Just like pea protein, spinach and other dark leafy greens are high in iron, be careful. I eat 50g of this a day in a smoothie (recipe listed below).
Swanson Ultra Goat Whey Protein Concentrate Powder - Pasture Fed
Goat whey is shockingly awesome. It tastes great, is easier on the stomach than cow whey, and has good candida fighting power. The only real downside is price and shelf life, I suggest signing up for Swanson emails and waiting for a good discount (more than 30% off) to buy. Don't stock up, as this stuff has one of the shortest shelf-lifes I've seen in a protein powder. I eat 12g of this a day in a smoothie (recipe listed below).
Swanson Premium Oregano Oil 10:1 Extract
Oregano oil is one of the few recommendations the health blogs get right, it is very effective. Combine it with other candida killing stuff to prevent the candida from forming a strong biofilm. It isn't the most effective candida killer, but it certainly doesn't hurt to add to your diet, so it's an easy addition. I take one of these a day.
Nature's Way Premium Herbal Peppermint Leaf Capsules
Peppermint doesn't really do anything for SIFO, however it's great against SIBO which you might also have. SIBO also tends to emerge in those recovering from SIFO as bad bacteria fills the void the candida leaves behind. For these reasons it's worth taking some form of peppermint, just to be careful. This brand however is overpriced and not very strong, I instead recommend the next supplement.
Swanson Premium Peppermint Oil with Rosemary and Thyme - Enteric Coated
This peppermint supplement is way stronger than the Nature's Way brand one, and the enteric coating ensures it is more effective when it reaches the small intestine. I don't think the rosemary and thyme do anything, but they don't hurt either. I take 1 one of these a day.
Swanson Superior Herbs Milk Thistle - Features 80% Silymarin
This one becomes God tier if you take any of the liver taxing prescription antifungals. Your liver can get absolutely hammered by these drugs, and milk thistle is a great supplement to keep your liver working at it's best. If you don't take any prescription antifungals, the value of milk thistle is questionable, however it doesn't hurt to add. I take 1 of these a day.
Pure Encapsulations Magnesium (glycinate)
Magnesium glycinate has really only one job, make you go. When taking some antifungals, you may find yourself having trouble using the restroom, magnesium glycinate helps with this. Excess magnesium works as a laxative, so take 1 when you can't go.
Swanson Premium Activated Charcoal
Do not take these preventatively, they can mess up your gut and prevent other things from working. However these are nice to have as backup for whenever you get food poisoning. This is because getting food poisoning is a wonderful environment for candida to return, and charcoal puts a stop to that. Take 1 or 2 of these immediately after you start to feel the effects of food poisoning. The next day, take extra coconut, ginger, and probiotics (if you take any) to help your gut biome recover.
Klaire Labs SFI Health Saccharomyces Boulardii Probiotic
Saccharomyces Boulardii would be God tier, however it conflicts with almost every other thing on this list, and all those things combined are more effective than this one probiotic strain. Saccharomyces Boulardii does a great job at killing candida though, it produces C8 (caprylic) acid while it's inside your intestines, which is amazing. Saccharomyces Boulardii dies really easily though, especially to coconut. Thus it's probably best to not bother taking this, unless you have a coconut allergy (like my mom), then it's your best hope. Of all the brands of Saccharomyces Boulardii, this one is the best, both in terms of efficacy and for not having FOS/inulin/acacia gum/chicory root (this stuff feeds candida like crazy, avoid at all costs).
Meh/Mixed
Losing weight
When I first started tracking my weight when dealing with all this, I was 200 lbs. I dropped all the way to 145 lbs in just a few months (I was losing about 5 pounds a week). This did not improve or hurt my candida situation, and was entirely caused by my inability to eat any carbs during that time. I do believe it is very important to have a healthy weight, and losing the pounds absolutely helped me in other ways. However, it had literally no effect on my gut health, so don't think losing weight should be a goal when it comes to candida (especially if you are already at a healthy BMI). However, losing the weight really wasn't hard. If you are having trouble losing weight, cut all carbs from your diet (your body doesn't need carbs) and enjoy the lost pounds. If you find this too difficult, stop being a fricking baby and get it over it fatty.
MCT Oil
My initial research showed that C8 (caprylic) acid was the most important compound for killing candida, so I tried MCT oil to replace coconut oil. This didn't work, coconut oil is way more effective and it isn't even close. However it doesn't hurt to add this if you need more fat/calories in your diet, just know you should combine it with coconut oil, not replace it.
HโEโB 15g Protein Nonfat Greek Yogurt โ Plain
I tried this yogurt alongside a bunch of yogurts, I found this one just wasn't as effective as other yogurts. Worth trying if you don't like/can't find STRAGE yogurt, but I really do suggest trying that one first.
Higher Harvest by HโEโB Dairy-Free Coconut-Based Yogurt โ Unsweetened Plain
Just like the other HEB yogurts, this one just wasn't that effective. I assume that HEB just doesn't keep the cultures as alive as other brands like STRAGE, so it isn't as effective. Not bad by any means, just meh.
STRAGE Creamy Dreamy Cream Dessert - Stracciatella
Honestly this is here just so I can b-word about this flavor from STRAGE. This flavored yogurt has so much lemon juice (I presume for freshness) that I can't taste anything else. I'm pretty sure it has the same efficacy as the normal STRAGE (besides the fact this yogurt has added sugar), I just wanted to complain about the taste.
Boars Head Sauerkraut (
)
Sauerkraut is one of those foods that food blogs and health sites often recommend. I found it did jackshit. It didn't make things worse, but with how god-awful this slop tastes, I suggest avoiding it.
NOW Foods Soy Protein Isolate - Natural Unflavored
Shockingly ineffective, I presume because the soy compounds break down before they can reach the small intestine, as this does work when combined with gellan gum soymilk. I suggest trying soymilk with gellan gum first. Only add this if you want more soy (
), or you want a good complete protein powder with no sugars that isn't pea protein.
Meyenberg Goat Milk
Goat milk does work, however the insane price and the really short shelf life make adding it to your diet a huge annoyance. If you have a great source of goat milk, sure, go for it. It just isn't worth the hassle for most people though, just buy goat whey.
NOW Foods Olive Leaf Extract
I tried this, and noticed literally no difference. It might work, but I really doubt it does anything.
Swanson Superior Herbs Olive Leaf Extract
I tried this brand to see if the NOW brand one was just too weak. This one is certainly stronger, but again, it didn't do anything.
Swanson Ultra Alpha Lipoic Acid
This didn't do anything for my candida, it did make my hair have more volume (
) and nails stronger, which was a weird benefit. However, it didn't do anything candida related. This would probably be more effective if you don't have the same fatty acid conversion issues I have, but still, why deal with the extra step when you can just have an omega 3 supplement?
Swanson Premium Bee Propolis ()
I felt this did literally nothing. Apparently propolis only really does stuff if it's gathered from a local place so it has compounds adapted for your local climate. I have no idea if that is true, because it's shockingly hard to find local beekeepers that sell the propolis.
Swanson Premium Garlic Oil Concentrate - Triple Strength
Another product that I noticed had literally no effect.
Kirkland Signature Organic Ground Saigon Cinnamon
I noticed literally no effect when adding this to my smoothies, then I saw the consumer reports article about how cinnamon has lead and stopped taking it. I noticed no difference.
Central Market All-Natural Smooth Peanut Butter โ Unsalted (
TFW Jimmy Carter Marsey)
Most food blogs and many health sites say that you should avoid peanut butter. This is bullshit and Jimmy Carter slander. Digging deeper shows that one source advised against it if you have candida because you might have a peanut allergy. I'm sorry, if you have peanut butter frequently and just now realized you have an allergy; you are a braindead r-slur. You actually probably want peanut butter, because peanut oil blocks iron absorption (good if you have a lot of food with iron like myself), peanuts are a good source of fiber (hard to get safe fiber with candida), and have a nice amount of protein. If you cannot have peanut butter, God has abandoned you, don't blame the candida.
Central Market peanut butter is my recommendation, it tastes good, has a nice amount of oil, has no fillers (frick you Skippy), and isn't expensive.
Sprouts Creamy & Unsalted Peanut Butter
Another good peanut butter if you don't live near an HEB/Central Market. Plenty of oil, no fillers, and tastes good. Do avoid the organic Sprouts peanut butter though, it tastes worse and costs more.
Swanson GreenFoods Formulas Seaweed Vegetable Complex
Another supplement that didn't seem to do anything. It also has a lot of iodine, so that could be a problem. Best to not take this one imo.
Nature Made Men's Multivitamin 50+ Tablets
It's a good idea to get a multivitamin, as your body has trouble absorbing vitamins when you have candida. Also, you will probably be avoiding food sources of some nutrients anyway, such as vitamin C/fruit. However this one just isn't very good, and is the only multivitamin I have found that goes out of stock frequently, which is kinda a pain when you should be taking this daily. I haven't tested many multivitamins, as many have CoQ10, prebiotics, whole foods (some of which feed candida), and iron, which should all be avoided if you have candida. I do have a couple I want to test, but it takes months before I feel comfortable passing judgement.
WestSoy Organic Unsweetened Plain Soymilk
This brand of soymilk doesn't have gellan gum, so it's efficacy is reduced. Shame, as this soymilk tastes way better than the Silk soymilk and is shelf stable.
Member's Mark Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
Almond milk is a net neutral with candida. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't help. If you want a milk for smoothies and the like but can't/won't have soymilk, this is your best option. This brand isn't any better or worse than others, they are all the same as long as they are unsweetened. I recommend this one because it is really cheap, which is nice.
Blue Diamond Almond Breeze Unsweetened Vanilla Almondmilk
Same as the Member's Mark, what brand of unsweetened almond milk you buy doesn't matter.
365 by Whole Foods Market Unsweetened Almondmilk
The best tasting almond milk I have tried, so my recommendation if cost is no object and you are fine shopping at Whole Foods.
Filtered milk
This is the only product listed here I haven't personally tested. However, if you must have cow's milk, make sure it's the reduced sugar/filtered milk. Galactose feeds candida a lot, so it's best to minimize how much milk sugar you have. Don't confuse lactose free with reduced sugar, lactose free milk merely replaces the lactose with more galactose, which is actually worse.
Bananas
Bananas are a real crapshoot; they are either a net negative or positive depending on how much candida you have in your gut. My recommendation is to avoid them until you don't see any signs of candida, then reintroduce bananas slowly.
Bad
Chobani 14g Protein Non Fat Plain Greek Yogurt
Chobani yogurt has an additional culture that most other yogurts don't have, L. Rhamnosus (
). This strain seems to be a favorite for candida, and I found that candida likes to feed off of this strain. Avoid all Chobani yogurt, and not just because Chobani yogurt sucks.
Higher Harvest by HโEโB Dairy Free 12g Protein Yogurt โ Unsweetened Plain
For whatever reason, this specific HEB yogurt gave me severe bloating. If I had to guess, I'd say it's the corn starch. Avoid.
Blueberries
This is when I realized the low FODMAP diet is bullshit, not because sugars aren't the problem (they often are), but because the source for FODMAP is a complete sham. You will often see blueberries as low FODMAP, but according to actual data, they are quite high in fructan which I'd hardly consider low FODMAP. Best to avoid fruit until you start to recover, and avoid berries most of all.
Cranberries
Despite having less fructans than blueberries, I found these had the same issues that blueberries had with functionally no difference.
Disastrous
Lactose free milk (doesn't matter what kind)
Lactose free milk is something I saw some sites recommend, and shows the person (or AI) writing that article is a moron. Lactose free milk is the single worst milk you can have. This is because galactose is one of candida's favorite sugars, and lactose free milk has a ton of galactose due to the galactase enzyme they add. This enzyme turns the lactose into additional galactose, which is horrible if you have candida.
Central Market Icelandic-Style Skyr Low-Fat Yogurt โ Plain
For whatever reason, this specific yogurt gave me extreme issues. Problems literally lasted a week. Caused by the unique strains added to this yogurt that normal yogurt does not have. Avoid at all costs. I have no idea if other skyr yogurts also cause the same results, no way am I testing that though.
Levels Grass Fed Whey Protein Powder, Vanilla Bean
This cow's whey gave me a great deal of issues. I am unsure if it was the stevia, the monk fruit, the cow whey, or something else. All I know is that it gave me issues, best to avoid. I de plan to test unflavored hydrolyzed whey at some point, as it would have less milk sugars and no fillers. However hydrolyzed whey is very expensive, and I am happy with the protein powders I use already.
Anthony's Organic Pumpkin Seed Protein Powder (
)
I actually have tested pumpkin seed protein and I am pretty sure it's fine. However this specific brand should be avoided at all costs. I bought some to try and it was horrid, the seeds were burnt cause it to be bitter, and it gave me mild food poisoning. I reached out to the company and they offered a refund and then ghosted me lmao. Thankfully Amazon got me my money back, but I would avoid this brand at all costs after they pulled this nonsense.
NOW Foods Betaine HCl
HCL is one of those things many sources recommend, and I have to disagree. Despite not having enough stomach acid, HCL gave me nothing but issues. It gave me nausea, and burning stool. That's not to say it can't work for some people, but I'd look at other things first and only use this if you have actually been tested for stomach acid levels and don't have enough.
Swanson EFAs Black Cumin Seed Oil
Black seed is another often recommended cure for candida. I found it made it worse, not better. However black seed did help me sleep better, so do take a look at taking some if you have insomnia.
Sadaf Black Seed | Nigella (
)
Some sources say the food version of black seed is easier on the stomach so I tried some. Nah, still gave me issues, did taste nice though.
Swanson Ultra Zinc Carnosine - Featuring PepZinGI
Some say candida is caused by zinc and copper deficiency, what they don't say is that if you are not deficient taking zinc or copper will just make your candida worse. Candida uses these minerals to build biofilms, avoid.
Swanson Ultra Albion Copper
See the zinc entry above, avoid.
Florastor Probiotic
I have tried many Saccharomyces Boulardii probiotics, this is literally the only one that made things worse. They claim to use a potent patented strain, that in reality, I think is shit. They add lactose and claim they add it because it's vital for efficacy, I have a sneaking suspicion it's because the strain is so weak it would die without the sugar. Avoid, take a different Saccharomyces Boulardii probiotic if you want to go that route.
Swanson Probiotics Lactobacillus Rhamnosus with FOS
I have a feeling that Lactobacillus Rhamnosus feeds candida, I can't be 100% certain because I have really only tested 2 things with this strain, however both made my candida worse. This product also has FOS, which will make your candida worse, avoid.
NOW Foods NAC
NAC is something a lot of people recommend, however I believe recommending this is borderline negligent and potentially dangerous. NAC does work, but the side effects are too numerous to ignore. NAC causes extreme changes in mood, it causes your heart to be taxed, and seems to be potentially addictive. I took this for only 3 days and noticed these effects near immediately, and thus stopped. Concerningly, I noticed minor withdrawal symptoms after I stopped taking it. If there is only one takeaway from this post for you, it should be this: AVOID NAC AT ALL COSTS.
FOS/inulin/acacia gum/chicory root
These are found in a wide variety of products, from probiotics to protein bars, so make sure to read ingredient labels to avoid these. These are all prebiotics that feed candida and over bad stuff like crazy, if you find you can't have chicory root, this is most likely why. Make sure to avoid these, the effects don't last awhile, but they are potent.
Smoothie recipe
A smoothie is a great way to deal with candida, here is my recipe that I have modified to be as effective at suppressing candida as possible (ingredient order is the order I put them in the blender carafe, yes it matters):
50g of spinach (use a scale)
25g of protein powder (I use 13g of pea protein, and 12g of goat whey, but feel free to use whatever you like. I suggest avoiding flavored powders and incomplete proteins though.)
2 cups of soy milk that contains gellan gum (can swap for almond milk, but soy is better)
1 tbsp peanut butter (make sure it's well mixed, you want a good amount of oil, but make sure to leave some for when you get to the bottom of the container)
optional 1 banana (only add if you know fruit is fine, fruit can make candida worse at the early stages)
Blend together at a high speed (too slow and the spinach won't incorporate properly)
That's it, pretty easy and effective, take with coconut and ginger for best results.
Frequently asked questions:
Will I be able to go back to regular foods? Probably. Once I started getting my omega 3 levels up and taking coconut regularly, I was able to go back to eating like normal with only a couple exceptions. I still avoid food with FOS/inulin/acacia gum/chicory root, and I can't go crazy with carbs (150g a day is about my limit, but you shouldn't be eating more than that anyway tbh), but otherwise I am able to have food with no issues.
How long does it take to recover? Impossible to say, as it depends on what the underlying issue was. I found it took about 3 solid months after taking omega 3 for me to be able to eat normally again, and I predict it will take about 8 months for my gut and muscles to go back to normal. However, it only took about a week for all my symptoms to go away without eating carbs, so if you plan to stay keto you should recover pretty quickly.
How does one get candida? No one quite knows yet, I suspect I got mine from taking antacids for too long, being born from c-section, and not having enough omega 3s, but it's impossible to be certain. We might know in a decade or two, but it's still a mystery for now.
Why did you bother writing this? Honestly, I doubt anyone here will find this information useful, but you never know. The main reason was because all the articles and blogs talking about candida are comically wrong and I wanted to call them out. Many still tout the low FODMAP diet, probiotics, and prescription drugs, which I found made things worse, not better. If even one person finds this post helpful, mission accomplished, as even one post like this one would've saved me a year of issues.
Why do you not recommend probiotics? (This is for you, @MouthFarting). As emerging studies are starting to reveal, the bacteria and fungus (you have both, and hundreds of kinds!) in your small intestine are specifically adapted to you as an individual. What this means is that any product with probiotics you take will not be as effective compared to instead supporting what you already have, due to both decreased adaptability and variety. This is why coconut is so powerful; it kills bad stuff while also feeding good stuff at the same time. These native probiotics were given to you by your mother via natural birth and breastfeeding. This means if you were only fed formula and/or born from c-section (I was born from c-section, and always had digestive troubles even at a young age) your native gut biome is at a disadvantage and needs help. Giving probiotics to infants (Visbiome has a specific product for infants that is very promising, doesn't help us adults though lol) can prevent this, but giving them to children and adults won't work the same way. We aren't exactly sure why this is the case, but we know very little about the small intestine anyway.
What about poop transplants? (@AnnoyinTheGoyim) This is a real thing that seems to work for some patients, and do nothing for many others. The main reason seems to be, as explained above, that transplanted poop just can't adapt to the small intestine as they have an outsider's disadvantage. Theoretically a transplant from your mom might be more likely to work, but that carries all sorts of practical complications and is untested at scale. It's also worth keeping in mind that we do not know much about the small intestine, we have hundreds of strains of bacteria and fungus in our gut, but scientists still don't know just how many and we don't know most of them. This is because 99% of all the total bacteria/fungus in our small intestine are from only an estimated 40 strains, yet those remaining hundreds of strains seem to have an outsized impact. We simply do not have the cowtools to examine these strains in detail before they break down and die. There is also a deep concern that just putting things in peoples butt without knowing exactly what we are doing could create the next Ebola or aids, which is probably best avoided. So, for now poop transplants are a rare procedure used sparingly, they will most likely be replaced with a potent suppository or enteric coated oral capsule once we identify and isolate more strains.
Any other tips? Buy a food scale and bathroom scale, seriously. Keeping track of exactly what you eat and how much you weigh is super helpful, helped me a lot when testing various things. I also suggest drinking filtered water and avoiding fluoride toothpaste, new studies are showing that fluoride causes havoc on your gut, and is probably one of the main causes of candida in the US. Switching away from fluoride toothpaste helped a ton, though it took months to notice. Finally, avoid consuming tea tree oil, it's toxic, yet some toothpastes have it and some sites recommend it anyway...
Sources
Below are the various studies, sources, and papers I used to help find what items deal with candida, keep in mind that just because it is a study does not mean it is 100% accurate. However these studies do help shed a light on not just what works, but why it works.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circ.148.suppl_1.14841 good study on why current RDA for Vitamin D3 is bupkis.
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aac.02323-19 explains why Gellan Gum might be a super useful tool for delivering stuff to the small intestine intact.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10302699/ a general-purpose study, the parts talking about omega-3, vitamin D, and vitamin E are particularly intriguing.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10113668/ a study talking about the antifungal effects of stevioside (a compound found in stevia).
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/card9-deficiency the reasons why some people develop candida and others don't is still largely unknown. However CARD9 might be one of the causes, this page is a good starting place for learning about the genetics side of things.
https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/other-nutrients/essential-fatty-acids#sources in my opinion, this is the definitive resource for learning about essential fatty acids. It explains how each works, and also breaks down what foods have good amounts of each kind. Most sources only give total amounts of fatty acid, so having a source that breaks down the amounts into specifics is invaluable. The link should take you straight to the sources of fatty acids section, which is a great place to start imo.
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/familial-candidiasis/ another basic page that just explains that sometimes recurrent candida seems to be genetic, also a good starting point for learning about the genetics side of things.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8893526/ study that tested the antibacterial and antifungal abilities of 10 essential oils, useful when looking at healthcare and beauty products to buy.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9357398/ this study tested the biofilm disruption capabilities of essential fatty acids and how that compared to just using fluconazole. Really shows how important the biofilm is when it comes to killing candida.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10820302/ you might be familiar with the low FODMAP diet, this study helps show just how bullshit that diet is. Mainly because the group that lists what foods are low and high FODMAP does not provide hard data or any actual evidence that the foods they test are high/low FODMAP. Turns out a lot of that data is wrong, as this study shows. The most interesting example found in this study is that brown rice is actually higher FODMAP than any other kind of rice tested (4x more fructan than the 2nd highest rice).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559102/ while it turned out fructose was not the issue, this study does help shine a light on how genetics plays a big factor in all of this.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9631991/ a good summary on the efficacy of fluconazole, and how the standard 3 months prescription is simply insufficient for dealing with fungus.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31215785/ another general-purpose study about candida and how diet plays a role.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10865912/ it turns out candida is a huge problem for those with artificial implants, as this article elucidates.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7161696/ a neat paper about how candida operates and a good insight into how and why it's so dangerous.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/abs/10.7326/M22-3469 a doomer study that proves that candida is becoming more common, concerningly we don't know why.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_oil#Composition_and_comparison the Wikipedia article for coconut oil is surprisingly detailed and provides a nice breakdown of the ratio of different fatty acids in coconut oil.
Literally took months of work, even if I only wrote this in a day.
You wanted to know about supplements, this probably isn't exactly what you are looking for, but do check out black seed oil, coconut oil, ginger root, vitamin D, and www.swansonvitamins.com (not sponsored lol, they just have great prices and save me literally hundreds of dollars. Do wait for sales, they have them all the darn time and are often 35% off all Swanson brand stuff or higher.)
I await your upmarsey, even if you won't read this.
And here is your effortpost, enjoy and don't forget to not vote!
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The forge was an influential rpg forum run by a weirdo pervert named Ron Edwards. He was a pretentious twat who said that vampire the masquarade caused brain damage.
https://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/marginalia/3777
Originally it was started in 1999 as Hephaestus's forge.
https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/ppmt00/tabletop_rpgs_the_fall_of_the_forge_how_a/
They discussed the design and making of tabletop rpgs and developed the gns theory or big model theory .
It's outlined here
https://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html
Forgeworld produced some great games like Apocalypse world and Dogs in the Vineyard which is Mormons fighting 
demons who want to molest children
https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/binarydoubts/dogs-in-the-vineyard/
https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/professorprof/dogs-in-the-vineyard/
but also bullshit like Bliss Stage which was made for demons who want to molest children
https://writeups.letsyouandhimfight.com/purplexvi/bliss-stage/
https://systemmasterypodcast.com/2019/04/08/bliss-stage-system-mastery-145/
It was essentially Neon Genesis Evangelion but not the Neon Genesis Evangelion of the anime or manga adaptions but the Neon Genesis Evangelion of the pornographic doujins found at every Japanese con.
https://old.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/353js6/bliss_stage/
That is not a link for those. Look up your own "Shinji chad " or "Shinji cuck" porn ya sick frick.
The Forge defined all players as wanting one of three things: narrativist, which wanted story, simulationist, who wanted realism, and gamist, who wanted to have fun and play the game. They hated the latter two and worshipped narrativism as the one true god.
Certain g*mers compared it to an evil cancer or a cult
https://verbus.livejournal.com/1649.html
The Forge was controversial even when it was still going
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads%2Ftell-me-about-the-forge.355613%2F
Here is the Forge in all its glory
https://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/20/
Osr or "old school roleplaying" is another weird rpf cult that is either diametrically opposed or partially overlapping with the Forge
https://livingmythrpg.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/rpg-theory-living-myth-vs-forge-theory/
Ron Edwards compared gms running railroady games to child abuse.
https://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=18707.0
The forge closed in 2010
https://stargazersworld.com/2010/11/03/the-end-of-the-forge/
Reaction was mixed
https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-is-the-forge.159851/
Ron Edwards claimed it had fulfilled its purpose.
https://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=25257.msg244501#msg244501
He was coping
Many fans and detractors still exist and still hate it
https://www.wizardthieffighter.com/2019/a-bad-turn-of-words-fantasy-heartbreaker/
https://refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/remembering-the-forge/
My own thoughts on their theory is that it's far too narrow. Every player has his own agenda that might include aspects of all three and other motives. It's a radical simplification of a hopelessly complicated muddle. Most of the forge alumni agree.
Also while Ron Edwards is an butt he's not a male feminist and didn't make a game for male feminists about playing a male feminist . Unlike Black Hat Matt Mcfarland and Beast the primordial. How can you hate Ron Edwards or Byron Hall, the author of fatal the worst rpg ever made,
https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/315746/fatal-and-kiwifarms-a-match-made
https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/169760/review-of-fatal-rpgnet-rpg-game
when neither of them are actual male feminists?
https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/314992/beast-the-primordial-good-lord-above
https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/273950/beast-the-primordial-is-the-game
https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/272482/reddit-dive-into-beast-the-primordial
https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/271029/what-did-people-actually-want-from
https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/223552/beast-the-primordial-is-a-bad
https://rdrama.net/post/109832/fresh-beast-the-primordial-on-tg
https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/200508/beast-the-primordial-or-trans-lives
https://rdrama.net/post/32502/4chan-daicusses-beast-the-primordial-the
The best link in this post is these two:
https://rdrama.net/post/23466/beast-the-primordial-is-terrible-or
https://rdrama.net/h/traditionalgames/post/255495/fatal-friends-review-btp-books-whitewolfrpg
Live by social justice die by social justice
A forge alumni learned this lesson far too late.
Let that be a lesson to you all: be a chud.
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Africa isn't exactly known as an intellectual hub, though the continent has produced several successful academics. For anyone interested in receiving the best education possible on the continent, South Africa is the ideal destination. This has been both positive and negative. On the plus side, immigration into the country for academic purposes has allowed the country to attract some of the best talent on the continent. On the downside, it makes entry into university tougher, as it means you're competing with the entire continent for limited spots.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/best-universities-africa
When looking at the best universities on the continent, you'll notice that it is dominated by South African universities, with the University of Cape Town consistently taking the top spot. Over the course of my academic career, I've interacted with a few of the top universities and I'd like to share the most entertaining controversies that have emerged from them.
Some of you don't like suspense, so I'll list the three universities I'll be discussing before I begin. I hope you enjoy the read.
3. Rhodes University - #RUReferencelist
2. Stellenbosch University - Pissgate
1. University of Cape Town - Decolonsation
With each university, I'll be asking you a key question. I'm writing this after taking some promethazine pills so I'm feeling warmly sedated. Consequently, this is the theme song for the longpost:
Rhodes University - #RUReferencelist
As I've mentioned in passing a few times on the site, I attended Rhodes University for most of my academic life. I was attracted to the university because it's located in a small town and it has a reputation for being a liberal university with a notorious party scene.
You'll notice that Rhodes University isn't on the list of top African universities, and there's a reason for that - Rhodes does not partake in any ranking system. The university is quite smug about it, and it claims that it has influenced other universities from around the world to do the same.
https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews/adecadelaterrhodesuniversitysayswetoldyousoonrankingsobsession.html
In reality, from going to a few universities in SA and spending plenty of time at Rhodes, it's pretty obvious that current year Rhodes is easily trounced by most other universities. The school and the town it's in have been on a steep decline in the last few years and it shows no signs of slowing.
But I'm not here to rag on Rhodes. I'm here to discuss #rureferencelist. I've mentioned this movement in passing in other longposts, but I'll outline it again. As you know, South Africa has a r*pe epidemic, and academic settings aren't immune to this plague. During the 2010s, many female students at Rhodes complained about being r*ped by men, and the university not doing anything about it. I don't doubt that this is the case, as there were a few times dudes in my residence would tell me about their sexual escapades and sometimes, what they described was r*pe. In my opinion, a lot of men commit r*pe without knowing it. Some of it is a product of just being ignorant about consent and boundaries. S*x is a social act, and the skills to partake in the activity in a harmonious way with others requires learning and experience.
In 2016, the women of Rhodes decided they had had enough. Anonymously, a post was made on the popular Facebook group RU Queer Confessions, Questions and Crushes. The post featured a list of about a dozen male students accusing them of r*pe and domestic violence. Women then gathered in a humungous mob and went to various male residencess to find those accussed of r*pe. On that night, I was in my residence room (it was a single room I had to myself) and I was hitting my bong. This was when marijuana was still illegal (it was decriminalised in 2018), so I had to be careful about it. Imagine my shock when stoned me suddenly heard loud banging on the residence building's front door and I peered out the window to find an angry mob of women. For some reason, the weed had me paranoid and I thought they were coming to get me for smoking weed! Fortunately, I wasn't their target, but there were 3 men in my residence who were.
They managed to kidnap some of the men on the list and I'm not quite sure what they did to them, but I'm sure it was unpleasant. The university condemned the protestors, claiming that it was wrong to publish the reference list and accuse men of r*pe publicly when they hadn't been tried legally. The women did not like that, and they continued to protest. On one day they took their shirts off. I'm not sure what the logic for the shirtlessness was. Sorry I can't provide more clearer pictures. I used to have them all on an SSD but I lost it and the images seem to have been pretty much scrubbed off the internet.
The #rureferencelist received international attention, but the university which, as I've said, has a liberal persona, surprisingly stook to its unpopular decision to condemn the protests and the reference list. An interdict was obtained to put a stop to the protest which, of course, meant the use of police force. Following this, the university took disciplinary action against the girls, resulting in many of them leaving the university.
One of the people who was punished was Yolanda Dyantyi, who was found guilty of kidnapping, insubordination, and defamation. She was excluded from the university, which is a big deal because that goes on the record, making it next to impossible to find enrolment in a different university. When this happened she went on social media to complain and claim victimhood. I googled her to see what she's up to these days, and holy heck she's STILL going on about it, like literally hours ago.
Big Question: How do you interpret the shirtless protesting?
Stellenbosch University - Pissgate
So I'm currently studying at Stellenbosch University where I'm completing my PhD. I'm enjoying the university and I think it has very, very competent educators and the academia standards are much higher than at Rhodes.
In truth, these two universities are pretty much the complete opposite of each other. While Rhodes has a liberal persona, Stellenbosch takes a more conservative approach. This is in part due to the fact that it has lectures in both English and Afrikaans. This has made it quite the popular school among Afrikaaners, which is a conservative segment of the population. The school also has a reputation for being racist. When I was a wee young high school student choosing what university I wanted to go to (this would have been in 2012), I didn't even consider Stellenbosch because of its reputation.
I'm studying remotely, so I've never spent significant time physically at the university. Consequently, I can't say whether the claims are true or not. However, I haven't experienced anything remotely approaching racism in my interactions with the university. If anything, they seem to take the "colour-blind" approach instead of focusing on identity politics. This is quite different to Rhodes where identity politics is the be-all end-all.
One event that stirred up discussions about racism at Stellenbosch in recent years is #pissgate. This story involves two main characters: Babalo Ndwayana (a BIPOC) and Theuns du Toit (a mayo, I'm guessing Boer considering that last name). After a night of heavy drinking, Theuns returns to the residence and enters the room of Babalo where he proceeds to urinate over his laptop and study material. Babalo records the incident on his phone, and on the video, you can tell Theuns is quite wasted.
The video was distributed, resulting in widespread condemnation and protests. I mentioned race previously because this was interpreted as a racist incident. Theuns was expelled from the university, and Babalo pressed charges against him. Don't take this mean that Babalo was out for blood, as he was actually quite sympathetic towards Theuns.
On Reddit, you can see the heavy debates on Reddit over whether the incident was racist.
Big Question: is Theuns a racist?
University of Cape Town - Decolonsation
Technically, I did attend UCT but it was not for a degree. I just did a short course and obtained a qualification in copywriting. I do wish I had attended UCT instead of Rhodes. I have a cousin who went there and it's clear that she benefitted greatly from going to such a prestigious university. It's bullshit that 17yos have to make big decisions like picking a university when they're so young. I didn't consider shit about rankings, just "muh artsy school good!". Seventeen-year-old me was dumb. That promethazine got me drowsy as heck now, but we're going to fight through until the end. We're almost at the finish line.
A topic that has frequently arisen in recent years in the South African academic scene is the concept of decolonisation. The argument is that we have an education system shaped by the West and its worldview and ideals, to the exclusion of indigenous knowledge. This is a product of colonialism. Hence, to truly be a decolonised State, one must restructure the education system and implement one that better suits the needs of all identities, especially those BIPOCs.
Personal thoughts? Well, they're not wrong in their assessment. However, this becomes problematic once you take it to the STEM side of things. How does one decolonise mathematics or physics? Well, some have tried, as you'll soon learn.
In 2016, a discussion panel on decolonisation was held among students. In the video, we see a woman passionately talking about how necessary it is to decolonise the school. She argues that to do this, we need to completely do away with science and start from scratch. She states that among those who practice witchcraft in Black culture, they believe it is possible to send lightning to strike someone. How could science possibly explain this?! It can't and that is because science doesn't take into account Black perspectives. Not everyone in the room agreed with her, with one man stating "it's not true!". The boy was scolded by the leader of the panel and she made him apologise. I beg of you, please watch the video. It's got absolute bangers in there.
The video clip went viral, leading to many laughing and making especially fun of the idea of abolishing it. Of course went viral on Reddit and it was used as proof that woke nonsense had infiltrated everything (I don't remember whether "woke" was the word used in 2016). It got so big that even Thunderf00t dived in!
Big Question: Is science denialism for brainlets, midwits, or geniuses?
Conclusion
Darn, a BIPOC about to dose off. I'm outchea nodding like a mfer, fr fr. I can't think of much to close off. Thanks to whoever recommended that I play The Stanley Principle. It's a great game, so unique, and I'm thoroughly enjoying. I'm going to wait before I dive into The Beginner's Guide because I want to do it while on LSD, which I'll do at the end of January 2025.
Tune in next time when I attempt to define postmodernism.
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