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.

We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. !g*mers

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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

OK so basically I'll give a TLDW for all the boomer gaymers and actual boomers who've never gaymed, to comprehend the scope of his clumsy attempt to deceive people in thinking he's some kind of GAYMER badass, and how he's desperate to be seen as one of the COOL kids gaymer crowd, but his terminal out-of-touch boomerism makes his attempted masquerade so incredibly brutally r-slurredly obvious for anyone even remotely familiar with the type of game he's playing on his Tesla-branded (TM) livestreams.

BACKGROUND - POE2: Pillars of Eternity 2

Path of Exile 2 is a vidya where gaymers control fantasy chad characters in an isometric view, to make the characters kick baddguys and monsters in the balls, as the characters gain experience in combat, they level up with better super powers, to kick monsters in the balls even harder.

The game/characters is controlled primarily controlled via the mouse and keyboard, and is called an A-RPG (Action Role Playing Game), in order to distinguish it from all those lame straggy nerdy wimp RPG games which all the 4-eyed losers in highschool played, because A-RPGs are cool and manly

The reason I'm mentioning the genre, is because virtually all A-RPGs are all 90% the same, if you've played one (Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Torchlight, Pillars of Eternity 2), then you've gathered the intrinsic knowledge to have played them all.

All of them are isometric firework fiascos, and all of them follow the core-DNA which was established in the genre defining releases of Diablo 1 & 2 about 30 years ago in 1997 & 2000 respectively.

Well if all of these gaymes are all 95% the same, then what's the point of playing them all? It's because Blizzard (the company which created the Diablo games, along with the famous World of Warcraft) sucks in its current form, and the latest Diablo 4 is shit, and thus Path of Exile 2 has filled in the void.

https://old.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1hoj0wv/3_weeks_after_release_path_of_exile_2_is_top_of/

POE2 is consistently in the top 10 most played games on steam monthly charts, and though it sometimes falls off every now and then, whenever big AAA releases are released within a month, like call of duty or the latest FIFA. Regardless of the fake popularity contest - I bring this up only to indicate that POE2 is currently one of the most popular games on Earth, and while it isn't as big as League of Legends, DOTA2, Fortnite, it's still as popular as it's reasonable for any Game Developer to can ever dream of, and is spoken alot by children, Highscoolers and terminal gaymers IRL that I have actually spoken to.

The 1st Path of Exile 1, was free which garnered a massive playerbase, especially in the poorcel 3rd world !brics and followed the same transactional-scheme as League of Legends, paying only for exclusive skins and appearances and crap, which the playerbase very happy with, because it meant that skill and progress was never bought.

So it's unsurprising why even a giga out-of-touch Boomer like Musk would have heard about a game like Path of Exile 1/2, whereas games like Fortnite are still in a much more younger audience (at least perceived so, and games like LOL/DOTA are way too fricking painful and turbo-neurodivergent, POE2 is instead something relatively noob/non-gaymers could enjoy, and also eventually grind/skill-up their way into the elite ultra-autism vidya gaymer club, and thus POE2 is semi-cooler as a game for a boomer like Musk to want to relate with, to the cool kids younger gaymer memer maymay club

MUSK CLAIMS HE'S TOP IN PATH OF EXILE 2:

Musk has claimed many times on in interviews that he's a top-tier vidya-gaymer, including in Joe Rogan, where he mentioned that he's played a metric shitload of games and is good in them, including in games which are in different genres to that of POE2, such as Starcraft 1/2. All of the games which Musk has claimed he is a super good chad at, all have one thing in common - they are very popular, and have large playerbases and thus non-gaymers would have heard of them. You'll note, as many others have before me, Musk has never claimed to be good in obscure, non-famous games, the type Boomers like Musk would not have heard of - like Rogue Trader compared to Starcraft.

Musk has claimed in Joe Rogan Podcasts that he's in the top 20, top 100, in games like Diablo or Path of Exile!

And since Elon Musk is such a massively dramatarded dramapilled controversial figure, heaploads of people have sought to disprove even these inane throwaway statements. And shockingly Musk Proved them wrong with an account which he controlled in one of his several livestreams, controlling a verifiable character, which has been actually in the Top 10 leaderboard of the month for POE2!!!

(Here's an Indian "article" )

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/social/elon-musk-joins-path-of-exile-leaderboard-after-many-deaths-what-we-kek-in-life/articleshow/116848996.cms

Where players and Musk-fanbois followed his character's climb from the top-1000 players during the Christmas period, to eventually the top-100 players by the time New Year's Eve arrived.

Here's a jannied thread on /r/PathOfExile, which catalogued Elon Musk's character's meteoric rise into the top-1000 Leaderboard, but which was deleted because even gaymer redditors are wingcucks, and the jannies jannied it because no WRONGTHINK. Please very important to note that this thread is from 31 December 2024, before the following shitshow is about to start!

https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1hqq0g8/elon_musk_made_it_into_the_poe2_hardcore/

Here's a comment linking to the Livestream Musk held during the period of the holidays, by one of his fans.

Here is somebody already noting a suspicious activity - that Musk is supposedly talking in Chinese (FORESHADOWING)

NEURODIVERGENT POE2-VETERANS PROVE MUSK'S ACCOUNT IS A GRIND ACCOUNT!

Ok so for the Boomers on rdrama.net @Redactor0Boy , I'll summarize as much as possible how easy it was to demonstrate for people actually well versed in POE2 and A-RPG type games, that they could tell the character/account which Musk played within his December 2024 holidays, was not levelled/grinded by himself, because he displayed the most boomeresk mannerisms and incompetence regarding the playing of the game, during his relatively short, hour long Livestream sessions.

And the reason I went on tangent on what type of game (A-RPG) Path of Exile 2 was earlier in the post, was to demonstrate how transferrable skills and experience are between games in the genre, and that as Musk has claimed he has been a top-tier player in all of the Diablo games since the very 1st in 1997, his inept and incompetent masquerade at his supposed skills in his short 1-hour livestreams makes it all the more hilarious how much of a fricking non-g*mer he is, let alone a fricking A-RPG mega expert cool guy, he wishes the g*mer crow to see him as!!

(1) On one of his inventory tabs, it's called Elon's maps - does Elen refer to himself in the 3rd Person probably. Like someone has been powerlevelling his account, and was like: they're in here dipshit

(2) Endgame hardcore maps/levels/arenas have to be connected by nodes, but in the livestream ELon shows how he clearly has no idea about this as he fiddles with the Map interface for like 60 seconds, trying to click on a grayed out map (which the game tells you need to finish the preceding maps 1st). This boomer move is like your gradpa continuing to click the OK button after he's already exited a program A character as high levelled as Musk's sock-puppet account would have played thousands of maps at this point

(3) He demonstrates he has no notion on what loot is valuable and what is junk, and at some point he just runs past the most rare currency item in the game.

(4) The game POE2 has a nice feature called a "Loot Filter" which basically does what it says - only the highest equipment dropped by monsters/badguys your character kills by kicking them in the balls, are made visible, and the junk filler trash equipment are made to be not even interactable, so as to not waste your time. Elon does not have these filters on during his Livestream.

(5) Musk never once uses Mana potions (a resource to replenish your superpowers juice), even when fighting extremely dangerous enemies - Musk demonstrates a complete absence of awareness of even the existence of Mana potions or how to use them in game.

(6) In all A-RPG games, you have the capacity to loot items lying on the ground by just left clicking on them - Musk goes terminal boomer by DRAGGING each and every item he loots on the ground, slowly into the open inventory screen - which is an option, but not the intended role for the screen by the devs!

(7) Musk doesn't realize when his inventory is full, and numerous time during his Livestream playthroughs, he continuously clicks on items on the ground, not realizing his inventory is full, showcasing his complete lack of understanding of such a basic mechanism - especially as the game has an audio and visual cue for the player to warn them their inventory is full

(8) Elon plays on factory default settings, example not having the game showing your exact health/resources/mama, which contravenes the settings of the most experienced player whi rely on having as much information as possible, the devs turn these settings off and give the player only a UI red orb to show total character health remaining, so as to not overwhelm newcomers.

(9) Elon boasts about destroying trash mobs - low level junk enemies, which fluff out maps and sections of the game, when the majority of difficulty in POE2 derives from facing endgame bosses, thus Elon demonstrating his absence of true undertsanding of teh game. The only endgame boss Elon faces during his Livestream, he repeatedly dies to.

(10) In Path of Exile 1/2, gear have requirements to equip them. But most of the time, this requirement has little bearing on how good the top gear is - some of the best gear in the game, namely those equipment with the best permutation of overpowered stats and buffs and shit, have relatively lower requirements for characters to equip them, whilst relatively mediocre junk gear have disproportionately high requirements to wear, for disproportionately little return in terms of how good they are.

The Youtuber Quin69TV explains how one of the best pieces of gear can even be eqquiped from level 1 onwards. I mention this, because Elon repeatedly boasts to his audience on his Livestream he tries to impress of his lofty giga Gaymer swagness and skill, about the high levels of his endgame equipment worn by his character - not realizing that the equipment levels are indications of requirements to wear, not indications of the powerscales of the loot itself

Musk even goes on to shittalk the loot he's currently wearing, calling them "only level 55" or only "level 40" or whatever, and stating he would soon replace them with a REAL MAN's gear , not realizing that they are literally the best of the very best loot findable in the current iteration of the game, which whomever Indian/chinese powerlevelling poorcel shadowacccount which had powerlevelled Musk's account for him, had gone to extreme lengths to grind on behalf of Musk

Anyways, point is Musk must have paid some Indian/Chinese 3rd worlder !brics pennies (which are worth billions of rands/rubles/yen/rupees in their home poorcel country) for somebody who is an actual POE2 gaming god tier good, who offers to powerlevel characters/accounts, which basically mean they will play the game FOR YOU, in order to get to a set level or grind hundreds of hours per week ingame, in order to find desired loot for westerners with powerful currencies.

And for many Indians/Indonesians/chinks, these are actual unironic decent work for money, if you don't find it soul crushing to play the same fricking game over and over on behalf of fat middleclass neckbeard westernoids.

https://conquestcapped.com/path-of-exile-2/service/poe-2-leveling/

It's not even that expensive - here's just one of the many multitude of websites which offer everything from pre-existing accounts/characters, to finding desired loot for customers, to levelling characters to a specific character!

And what's astonishing about these sites which trade 3rd Worlder lifespan for money, is that the most trusted Sites, the ones which doesn't scam and just run off with money, get the best reputations, and ratings on appstores and game forums! As word of mouth spread of specific site/company services, because to many fricking tens of thousands of peeps pay them!

So our boi Musk, literally just hired a 3rdie account grindmaxxer who probably spent like real world hours ingame to create this super powered character for Musk, which he them used to try and masquerade in front of his Livestream audience to look Swag and Cool with

And the worst part was he was shittalking the gear which probably took monumental effort for the Inidan/Chinese super neurodivergent gaymer to equip his butt with! This is the most Boomer shit I've seen in a year!

Also in POE2 there is something called Permadeath-mode, which all A-RPGs have, which is as the name implies, your entire character and all his shit, gets frucking deleted from your account, if he dies, making death the most of extremes, and is considered the greatest of difficulty dividers. Musk actually lost this giga boosted character during the same timeframe, and that 200 hours of effort by the Sexy Indian dude/Chink grinder's effort into the void ahahahahahaahhaa

YOUTUBE COMMENTS SHIT ON MUSK:

We're playing the turboneurodivergent Dawn of Civilization mod for Civilization IV that replicates world history. !g*mers !historychads

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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

Next

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

🇺🇦🇪🇺‼️🚨 Ukranian boys aged 16 - 20 are leaving Ukraine in masses, buses full drive to Europe daily!

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

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) January 11, 2025

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.
Simply not understandable to me. Thought it was a priority. pic.twitter.com/17eluyoJ76

— Julian Röpcke🇺🇦 (@JulianRoepcke) January 10, 2025

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 — 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

🇷🇺🇺🇦 “I do not respect either the leader of today's Russia or the Russian people” — Zelensky, President of Ukraine

Well that’s nice. pic.twitter.com/Cr6UqINi9f

— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) January 5, 2025

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

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 I think, but the whip (population rush) is king. It will allow us to speed up building infrastructure (particularly jails and religious buildings we'll be getting soon) and allow us to control overextension (reducing population outside the Italian core). We're going to continue running it.

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: This might've been the wrong decision. Slavery it turns out is the only civic that becomes outdated. Switching to Caste System now would have been better and helped with a plague later. Not sure when Despotism becomes outdated

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

HUGE NEWS REGARDING THE OWNERSHIP OF CHARACTERS FROM AOSTH AND SATAM!!! (a thread)

thanks to the help of former sega of america licensor, Michaelene Risely, i have been able to get a hold of never before seen court documents between sega and dic: pic.twitter.com/YYBaMBfHK9

— Alex "Nintrendodude" Hedgefox (@Alex_Hedgefox2) January 12, 2025

Background

When Sonic the Hedgehog blew up in America Sega of America worked into overdrive to make new Sonic media to fulfill the west's insatiable lust for the fastest thing alive. This led to the creation of two tv shows by DIC entertainment The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog a network weekday episodic comedy ( the pingas show) and Sonic the Hedgehog (hence called Satam due to its Saturday morning time slot) a syndicated serialized cartoon with a far darker tone. As the only Sonic characters in existence at the time were Sonic Tails and Robotonik a whole new cast was created to serve as side characters:

From left to right: Rotor "boomer" the walrus, Bunny Rabot, Sonic, Tails, Sally Acorn, and Antoine the Fox (french )

Robotonik was also given a right hand named in a cowardly Nephew named Snivley and in this story Robtonik was a made dictator who had taken over the planet Mobius, which is Earth after humans got into a war with aliens and the aliens just nuked the frick outta the earth mutating the people into anime people and the animal and human DNA merged into furries (Mobians and Overlanders/Humans are canonically sexually compatible !furries).

Constructing a sprawling mass of factories to pollute the environment and robotizing the native mobians into his mindless slaves including Sonic's parents and Sally's dad King Acorn who once ruled the land (well he actually he was turned to crystal and stranded in the Void ruled by Ixnis Nagus).

This lore ended up being used as the basis for Archie's long running Sonic Comic (290 issues + spin offs and one shots) with some major modifications and developments.

Anyway this is to say to a whole generation of neurodivergents growing up in the 90s Sally and the Freedom Fighters are as important to Sonic as Tails and Knuckles are and they will fight to the death to defend them (and also goon to sally) despite the fact they have never appeared in a game

Well they actually do make a cameo in the special stages of Sonic Spinball which was created by Sega Technical Institute the fully American branch of Sonic Team which made Sonic 2 and Sonic and Knuckles

The new Information

Sonic Satam ended after 2 seasons with season 2 ending on a cliff hanger of sonic killing Robotonik and Snivley being contacted by a mysterious pair of red eyes. A season 3 was planned but never released. There has been lots of speculation as to why this never came out such as ratings conflicts or some very neurodivergent drama between Satam's creator and Archie's very own careercow Ken Penders because both of them were pitching Sonic movies to hollywood without Sega's consent, but now we know the real Answer:

So, to summarize, SatAM got cancelled because DiC was selling animation cells from the show without telling Sega, and Sega retaliated by forbidding future episodes.

(Also Sega owns all the content from DiC Sonic, even though they're never going to use it) https://t.co/rRJa3K52wL

— The world of Archie Sonic (@archiesonicwrld) January 12, 2025

Sega owns all of the DIC characters and DIC tried to sell animation sells without Sega approval. TBF this is pretty common in the animation world but Sega took extreme umbrance to this and cancelled season 3 on the spot. This isn't huge new info as Sega allowed the use of the freedom fighters and other Satam characters in the great Archie reboot which removed all Archie original characters from the book in retaliation for being humiliated by Ken Penders in the courtroom.

Here comes the cope

Based on what I see here, Sega owns the Freedom Fighters, Could we ever see them show up in other Sonic Media? Imagine if they were brought into the movies.

Sega will totally bring in this decades old characters bros for their new family movie they definitely wont only focus on the super marketable and popular ones

They WILL use them again! It's been decades upon decades. Times have changed. There's new people involved. WildBrain owns the DiC cartoons. The Freedom Fighters are gonna return!

Did Sega frick up or did DIC frick up?

Archie chad calls Sega r-slurred and accuses archie haters of being

Sega and Sonic Team actually just hate fun

To be fair, in this case...They're right.

DIC was selling Animation Cels of the show without permission.

Which you have to be absolutely stupid to do, especially since the show was ongoing.

No, sega is just r-slurred actually.

so they should just let other companies make profit from their property without any compensation?

Yes sega should lay down and die because I hate that freaking company

"Wah I hate this company because my furshit isn't canon."

That's you.

And I have no love Lost for SEGA, especially as a SoR Fan...but Jesus, if you think SEGA is even remotely in the wrong here...

Since we're making wild unfounded assumptions about each others motivations I'm gonna respond by accusing you of being a transsexual libertarian

That was the reason all along? That's curious,I always thought that selling animation cels was something that companies didn't really care about.

Darn what the heck was dic thinking??? Braindead company causing Satam to be canceled that sucks! Maybe that's part of why sega of Japan doesn't want to do anything with those characters/worlds

Anyway the simple fact is Sega fricking hates all of the western lore, veiws it as off model to the current Sonic brand, and is just letting Ken Penders do whatever he wants because they don't give a shit and want all this neurodivergent shit gone.

Tho !comicshitters !furries Sonic's creator is an Archie chad

TLDR: There is an neurodivergent civil war because we found out Sega owns all the characters from the old sonic cartoon and is sitting on them, and that season 3 of the show was cancelled due to the animation studio selling animation cels without Sega's approval. !neurodivergents

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.

H‑E‑B 15g Protein Nonfat Greek Yogurt – 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 H‑E‑B Dairy-Free Coconut-Based Yogurt – 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 – 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 H‑E‑B Dairy Free 12g Protein Yogurt – 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 – 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.

!effortposters

Literally took months of work, even if I only wrote this in a day.

@TomfooleryButNewYear

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.)

@KILL_EVERYONE

I await your upmarsey, even if you won't read this.

@Qar

And here is your effortpost, enjoy and don't forget to not vote!

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.

Part 3

In honor of Civilization week I suggested doing a Let's Play of Dawn of Civilization, a mod for the best installment, Civilization IV. DoC is the spiritual successor to Rhye's of Civilization and turns Civ from a random map game into a total Earth history sim. It is still in development to this day. This is the recently released 1.18 version of DoC with a MASSIVE new world map and several new civilizations.

I want to take a Civilization into space. We will see how long this goes. RfC/DoC is designed to make it difficult to maintain a strong empire throughout history. It is possible I'll shit my pants and my empire will collapse. It is also possible we'll hit a gamebreaking bug or a broken turn at some point. Either way let's fricking go!!!!!!

I asked !g*mers for a vote:

Wait wtf, a tie Between China and Rome

I'll guess I'll have to change my vote to be a tiebreaker.

We will miss out on seeing the expanded Bronze Age and early game but I think this will be more exciting. China is more about casually expanding and fighting a shitload of barbarians. Rome is poised to conquer the world.

Playing on Monarch/Epic

You'll notice that we're currently the "Italic Peoples", and an independent city called Melpum is in the north. Right now we're looking at the "Stability View", the blue overlay is our Core region. We want as much population as possible here. As Melpum is in our core it will not be indepenedent for long.

When the settler unpacks his bags our southern neighbors say hello. I have a bad feeling about these fellers

Roma is founded. We're going to start with a Ballista, Rome's unique artillery.

Our first settlers on boats go down to found Rhegium at the southern tip of our core, putting us in range of the Greeks. Sometimes the Greeks settle Rhegium or Messana, but since they didn't, we get a settler to do so.

Diplomatic overview of the region. We are the "Roman Republic". The icons to the right show if we have a trade connection, the religion, their attitude towards us, and stability. Greek City States are stable, Carthage is very stable. All civilizations are currently pagan, which functions basically as No Religion, but of slightly different stripes. The Greek City States and us are Olympian, while the baby sacrificing Carthaginians are Baalist.

Most of the pagan distinctions are cosmetic, but it's possible to win a Pagan Religious Victory. Our victory conditions are as follows:

The third condition is unique to Olympianism. The Baalists have some other shit.

It's very possible we could hit this victory on accident. Some people believe if you hit X victory and Y victory later, you didn't actually get Y victory. Either way, I don't really want a Pagan Religious victory, they're lame.

The Historical Victory for Rome is as follows:

Two of these goals will trigger a Golden Age. I'm going to attempt for the first two at least. The "Late Antiquity" goal I'm less concerned with. It's a little RNG dependent on how China, Persia, and India are doing across the world. My goal is to go into Space, but just for keks it'd be fun to hit a Historic victory on the way. If not, oh well, I just want Romans on Mars.

The opening text talks about our "superior political system" as the Roman Republic. I'm going to throw that out the window.

We get a free revolution on the first turn (otherwise it would take turns of Anarchy to change civics). I'm switching to Deification, there's little point to continue running Animism other than that Deification is unstable when paired with a Republic. We're changing that to to Despotism, giving us the "whip" population rush that you would normally get from Slavery in vanilla (since an autocrat can Get Shit Done). With Slavery and Redistribution we have a very stable civic combo.

Since we switched to Despotism, we are now the Roman Kingdom.

Mediolanium (formerly X Chucks Melpum) joins Rome in the next turn. Brennus of the Celtic Chiefdoms (Gaul) greets us, his flavor of Paganism is Druidic. They are backwards as shit you'll note in the score disparity. The Celts are a new civilization in the expanded 1.18 map, previously they were represented entirely by Barbarians and Independent States who were much more hassling. We're going to leave them alone in Gaul to hug trees or whatever for a while.

Many later spawning civilizations get an Advanced Start to get the ball rolling. Due to Rome's unique power of Infrastructure (giving a production boost to any buildings already built in Rome) we're focusing on getting buildings up.

The Roman Legions can build Roman Roads too, this is cool as heck and will help our workers out.

We have settled our core. Padua is a little cramped, but it will make a fine production city with exclusive access to Clams and makes for a strong chokepoint (soldiers can't move around the marsh to the south). The Carthagians didn't settle Iberia yet so we have it to ourself, and we found our first city outside the core in Tarragona. The Green means this is a historical expansion area, which is a little more forgiving than just settling randomly. The key is we want the population in our Core to exceed any settlements outside of the core. If the population outside the core exceeds we get an overextension penalty.

This is of course a very stupid representation of early Rome. Rome did not just pack their bags and peacefully settle the north and south, nor Iberia, but remember that we're simulating the history of the entire world here and have to fast forward through some shit.

We negotitate for Open Borders with the Greeks so our ships can pass through and meet Cleopatra.

"Your head would look good at the end of a pole" indeed

Then we meet Darius of Persia

The Persians are the first with a true nonpagan religion, Zoroastrianism. They naturally founded it, hence the little star.

The foreign advisor notes that all my new friends around the Mediterranean have Shipbuilding which gives them access to War Galleys. These are going to btfo my pathetic little galleys unattended. If I want to conquer shit other than stupid Gauls I'm going to need their boat technology and they are all willing to trade it. Cleopatra, being a dumb foid, has somehow failed to research Writing which is a mere 380 beakers compared to Shipbuilding's 252.

This is an okay trade, just a bit in her advantage.

Now she likes us a little more!!!

Pretty sweet random event, Padua gains a cultural boost

Borders are expanded, not much we can do with that now, but still neat. Saves us from needing a monument or temple.

We meet Buddhist Ashoka of India from a scout in Greece

and even more surprisingly, a still-alive Assyria. I would have expected them to be rekt by the Persian Empire by now, but apparently they signed a peace treaty. Notice in the diplomatic overview that they are the first Unstable civilization (the red dot on the blue thing turned down). This is also another new 1.18 civilization, probably why there's such a generic introduction.

It looks like they might hold Jerusalem. We could open borders/trade, but there's little point to and it risks annoying Persia.

From our exploring, the Mediterranean World looks like this:

We have enough of an army to launch an invasion once we get some ballistae and warships up. We'll have to skip the Punic Wars for now because Greece is the most valuable target.

Speaking of which, they've stirred up some shit

("declared war on !" I think is an independent state, or an unknown civ)

This is probably Alexander the Great.

Unfortunately for Alex, now my waifu is asking nicely for help

She even spots me some cash, she's so cool

Due to my simping, the war effort must move faster than anticipated. One of our precious galleys narrowly escapes a Greek ship. I was hoping for two ballisate, but we have one at least, and enough Legions to fill up our boats, with a War Galley fresh from Tarragona.

It begins

Oh but wait, while we're gearing up for our first great conquest Hannibal "Cute twink" Barca needs to come by to tell us we should have a turn of Anarchy to completely change back our entire political system and lose the advantage of rushing units. I am suddenly tempted to start the first Punic War instead. Telling him no grants a diplomatic malus.

On the plus side, he apparently somehow got roped into this war with the Greeks too, so he FINALLY allows for open borders. But now I'm suspicious he's talking to Cleopatra too

>Will sign Peace Treaty

Yeah, no, not happening

Athens falls with a couple casualties. Shortly after, the Greek City-States collapse into a series of Barbarian and Independent states. Losing a capital deals a massive blow to a Civilization's stability - it's not guaranteed to destroy a Civ by any means, but if the Civilization is already overextended, screwing up their economy, pissing off the world, and losing military battles they're toast . This is the first collapse/civil war seen this game, and it will make mopping up the rest of Greece a bit easier.

Athens is BEAUTIFUL. With three Wonders, it is VERY profitable and will get us a Great Merchant or a Great Prophet pretty soon. This is going to put us in a much more favorable position for our future conquests.

We have an idea on where we stand. We are behind only Carthage and Persia on tech. This is good - China and India isn't past us. Persia has researched Nobility first and gotten a free general from it, oh well.

Greece is conquered. Unfortunately, some butthole appears to have razed the independent city of Sfard. A Persian swordsman is standing right there, so I'm blaming him. Darius is beginning to piss me off. The "Pax Romana" historic goal requires 4 cities in Anatolia and now we only have 3. We'll have to resettle somewhere.

This was the easy part. Now we have about 30 turns to finish several buildings for "Bread and Circuses". I need the Law and Currency technologies for this (mainly Currency, but Law will help). A Great Person is due in Athens in 10 turns, it's a coinflip if I'll get a Great Prophet or a Great Merchant, the prophet would get me Law and the Merchant would get me Currency. I may hoard cash at 0% research funding and 100% fund research after I know who I'll get.

For Pax Romana, I think Carthage may control the Levant, so we're gearing up for some Punic Wars to take both the Levant and Africa. I'll need to settle somewhere in Anatolia to rebuild the city that got rekt and colonize Iberia and Britain. Finally I'll need Egypt, the New Kingdom of Egypt is a bit unstable so they might collapse, that way I won't have to betray Cleopatra but on the other hand she built the Parthenon so it might be advantageous to her as soon as possible.

For the final technology condition, Architecture and Politics are the most in danger of getting researched first by another civ. Persia is closest to this, and they are prosperous and super stable. It may be worth an incursion into their lands to frick them up if we don't get spread too thin.

The Religious Victory doesn't look like it's at risk of hitting. We are going to control 7 wonders probably eventually, but if I don't build many more temples we should be fine.

Ok join me next time if you feel like it These were like barely that many turns but I felt the need to explain my opening moves and now it's almost time for bed

EDIT:

Part 2

Part 3

Intro

Meet WᴏbblierTube733, Transformers enjoyer, Bastille superfan (The shitty Coldplaycore band, not the prison), and possible TIM

How it's going:

r/SubredditDrama: I believe that a popular subreddit for my local community has been secretly infiltrated by neo-Nazis.

Right off the bat, I'm going to say that I am a queer punk socialist who has a personal stake in preventing Nazism from ever returning, so please understand that you do not have to agree with my political views and I don't expect you to (except fuck Nazis).

Solid opener! Let's see how this goes

My favorite type of drama is when someone posts something that absolutely doesn't fit in this sub and then spends an hour arguing with everyone and suggesting they're Nazi sympathizers.

… Username checks out? Like why are you setting me up to dunk on you if you're not a sympathizer?

This thread goes on and on and on, it's worth a read

Cut the histrionics and stop looking for nazi conspiracies behind ever mod decision you disagree with. Frankly, spend less time on the internet picking fights over things that probably didn't happen and I suspect you'll be a lot happier.

[Deleted]

Boo!

okay, we're at 100 reports for this, sorry

A low IQ zoomer spergout doesn't warrant an effortpost on its own, but where there is ruin there is hope for a treasure

How it Started

What's up with the Nazi themed restaurant 'Bier Stube' in Frankfort?

tl;dr: Chicagoland German restaurant displays some of the wrong type of German ephemera. The whole thread is pretty good, lots of and over toy trains with the mark of the beast

This was a pretty good drama eruption that we missed because the Chicago chapter of rdrama is slacking and nobody posts drama here anymore anyway, but I digress.

One day later, a hapless normie posts a sensible take (never do this) and kicks the hornets' nest in the process.

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As an aside, there are some open reportmaxxing opportunities in this thread if you're unbelievably boring into that type of thing

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I believe the post about Bier Stube has misrepresented the restaurant

This post gets dogpiled by nazi hunters and shitty german pub enjoyers alike, and OP is quickly buckbroken into submission.

I found the drama in this post more tedious than the previous one, but your mileage may vary. My main takeaway is that we need to kill all the zoomers and start over.

Most notably, this is where the hero of this story makes his first appearance.

I've never heard of this business before your post yesterday; but as somebody who has worked in the restaurant industry in Chicago, I'm actually 100% certain that if the owners are visibly displaying Nazi memorabilia then this place is absolutely a pro-Nazi establishment and they deserve to be publicly shamed. Stay safe.

There are also some reportmaxxing opportunities in this thread

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SRDine gaywads also got in on this action with their own post about it

I Did Nazi this Coming

The r/chicagosuburbs janitards sticky a sneedpost about the recent spat of sneedposts, warning users not to brigade or threaten violence, etc etc

This is normal jannie stuff, but it was extremely dramatic. There are two separate themes to focus on:

1. Wailing and gnashing of teeth from deranged redditors personally affected by the apparent invasion of suburban Illinois from agents of the third reich. It's the same shit you see in any local sub so I'm not going to waste time on it.

2. The OP of the second bierstube post defending their honor. This also bleeds into the SRD thread I linked in the last section and leads to some very entertaining threads between a self-described maniaposter and legions of God's stupidest soldiers.

The post also seems to have struck a chord with our hero, who makes an impassioned plea to stamp out the nazi.

I was born in Chicago. I've lived my whole life growing up around here. There are a couple of issues being conflated here IMO.

There are a lotta fucking Nazis living in this place, and they need to be called out. There is no reason to associate your business or your person with the swastika, or "WWII-era German history". Posts calling them out are okay within reason (see examples 2 & 3).

Example 1 is a nazi troll. I'm not sure if they're some kid from the north shore looking for attention, or a Russian bot, or just one of the owners trying to astroturf, but that post was rightfully locked down.

Example 4 is a news story. I'm personally (probably) safe, but the a story about rich kid sociopaths from NT or GBN going out and committing hate-crimes is alarming, and should not be dismissed. Hopefully discussions about those stories can be productive and lead to positive changes for everyone involved.

I think that we should not be advocating for violence against anyone, nor do I even particularly advocate in favor of bullying. But if you're "just asking questions" over and over about "how much hitler is too much hitler" because you "wanna start a discourse," you deserve to be ridiculed and mocked on the internet.

But also ban these Nazis every time they show up, please. I can't fucking stand them.

The jannies ignore him, but that's okay. /u/WobblierTube733 is a fucking loser living in Chicago in the winter, so he has plenty of time on his greasy impoverished hands to start hunting these dastardly nazis he just found.

(Also, because there's no point in being detail oriented if you don't draw attention to it in a self-congratulatory way, please note that this is the only place where I use his full username with regular characters so that he'll immediately see the meanest thing I say about him in this post if he follows the crosstalk link and Ctrl+Fs it.)

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, yada yada

Wᴏbbly sets out to destroy nazis where they live: in the subreddits for second-rate public universities.

/r/wsu: Why is this subreddit moderated by a Nazi apologist?

I just went through that user's history. Other than your little subreddit drama, they haven't talked about Nazis, racism, or white supremacy at all. They have only talked about it in the context of some restaurant that hardly anyone knows or cares about. So no, their post history isn't full of gems like this.

You're not a WSU alum and you have no vested interest in the perception of our school other than your sad little axe to grind with a mod that's 8th on the list. I don't care whether they come or go but you can GTFO.

I do have a problem with alumni from your school spreading Nazi apologism on the internet. It's weird telling that you would feel more passionately about telling me to GTFO then you do about a Nazi moderating your subreddit and being affiliated with your school.

Ahhh, the ole "anyone who doesn't agree with me is a Nazi!"

How do you expect people to engage with this argument? You sound like a Nazi who feels called out.

E: lol

I have no idea what the intended gotcha is in this image, but whatever

Hi as a WSU student I want to apologize for how these other commenters treated you. I also want us both to remember that this subreddit is only the WSU students who use reddit regularly, not the majority of the university.

WSU is in a small town in a conservative area with a majority of white students and faculty. There are racists, xenophobes, and homophobes here. They are not the majority of students by any means. But because of the majority-ness of the whiteness, straightness, and cisness here, they are allowed to get away with a lot more than would be allowed at a different university in a different area. I love this school and have found a wonderful and large community of other students and faculty that have my back and that are anti-racist/anti_phobic, so I haven't experienced many issues here. But ignoring the problems of a PWI and brushing them off is also stupid.

OP replies to this one and the thread is funny, but it's all the way down so I'm omitting it for the sake of brevity.

Spurned by the retarded WSU alums (tautology), he tries taking the fight back to the mean streets of Shitcago suburbs with a series of posts calling out the something that everyone who actually cares already knew about.

/r/wilmette: Wilmette is planning to spend almost $50,000,000 on building a new police station.

/r/chicagosuburbs: Wilmette is planning to spend almost $50,000,000 on building a new police station.

This one got removed. There's not much that's interesting in these besides more hysterical from OP. He gets progressively more upset as commenters pooh pooh him and it's pretty funny.

One highlight:

You must be fun at parties.

t. Someone who doesn't get invited to parties

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Okay fine, one more highlight:

I'm a queer punk socialist. You're a neoliberal HOA member. What exactly do you mean by "our side"?

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The battle is lost when OP gets banned for surplus autism , but the war isn't over

/r/ChicagoMinusNazis

Why Did I make this Sub?

I got banned from ChicagoSuburbs for arguing with neo-Nazis, so I made this sub instead. I don't know or care how to moderate a subreddit, but I fucking hate Nazis and I'll be damned if I let them ruin my city/country/world. Abide by normal Reddit rules, and report neo-Nazis so that together, we can keep this community welcome and exciting for everyone.

Mission: To foster a more perfect and inclusive environment for everyone who lives in Chicago and the surrounding areas. To be a beacon for freedom, unity and goodwill amongst all.

Rules:

NO NAZIS. NO FASCISTS. If you read those four words and feel like those are draconian statements, this is not the subreddit for you.

[Insert all of Reddiquette here] You know what the rest of the rules are. If you have any concerns, or wish to flesh out a specific, please feel free to comment here, or post, or DM me. I do not care if this subreddit dies with no members, or if it flourishes into an expansive community. But if you are interested, join me, and we can build it together. :)

>0 Comments

>3 Subscribers

Finale: Full Circle

This goofball raged so hard that he ascended

r/conspiracy: I believe that a popular subreddit for my local community has been secretly infiltrated by neo-Nazis.

>0 Comments

>[Removed]

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Q: Where do you go when the conspiratards ignore you?

A: Back to the beginning

Greetings Dramatards

In 1987, the SAL (Suid-Afrikaanse Lugdiens), or the SAA (South African Airways), operated a small fleet of Boeing 747-200 Combi variants, for its international flights. Boeing was at its peak, and the 747 was one of the worlds most infamous and popular commercial aircraft ever produced.

One of these Being 747-200s was the "Helderberg", which operated often between the Johannesburg Jan Smuts airport (now modern day O. R. Tambo International Airport), and various international destinations.

On the fateful day of 28 November 1987, an uncontrollable catastrophic fire broke out in the cargo area of the 747-200 Helderberg. At some unknown point this fire caused, the breaking and snapping the airplane in half, and the airplane to drop like a stone into the Indian Ocean, a distance away from the Island off of Mauritius.

INTRO: INCONCLUSIVE INVESTIGATIONS AND CONSPIRACIES

"An extensive salvage operation was mounted to try to recover the aircraft's flight recorders, one of which was recovered from a depth of 4,900 metres (16,100 ft)." But due to the inconclusive findings on the cause of the fire, events would lead to conspiracy theories, due to the political tensions between the Apartheid-regime and the rest of the world's Western democracies, and between the 1st and 2nd world during the Cold War.

There was (among radicals the) belief that the Union of SA regime had conspired to assassinate one of the passengers for being a severe critic of the Apartheid government, although who specifically amongst the 159 dead onboard, was supposed to have been singled out for assassination, was never specified aptly or elaborated by conspiracies.

On the other hand, the Bureau of State Security (BOSS), the SA equivalent of the CIA and NSA rolled into one ominous organization, was a very powerful and secretive mechanism of the Union regime, which enacted counter-insurgencies, imprisoned high-level ANC and communist members, and was known to ACTUALLY have assassinated political dissidents during the High Apartheid era.

Additionally, the incredible blanket of secrecy and censorship against media and journ*lists at the time, constantly beget conspiracies or distrust against the Apartheid government, even and ironically ESPECIALLY, amongst the white minority it served to uphold as the dominant class, who themselves began to distrust their own government less and less. By 1987, the year in which the crash took place, the walls were also closing in for the Union regime, and there was already widespread open talk of Apartheid ending, or possible Civil War building, as sanctions had crippled the regime and brought it to its knees. Additionally, the Soviet Union was busy imploding - and with it, the arch-enemy, and external threat the regime had justified for the past 40 years, to enable it to curb the rights and freedoms, of blacks, and ironically whites of the nation state as well, as justification for the regime's existence.

Lastly, and why I go on this long tangent, to explain why this particular crash was fuel for distrust of the government, and why it played such a large role in the late 1980s zeightgheist for conspiracy (at least for the SA whites), was that just 2 years before in 1985, Angolan Communist forces had utterly humiliated the Union of South Africa by parading captured POWs in front of the international world audience!

https://rdrama.net/post/228216/marseyflagsouthafrica-1985-south-african-recces-special

I made a Longpost about it a year ago. But the context is that the public trust (of whites) in the Apartheid-regime and the Union of SA government had been permanently shattered. It was a Watershed-moment, similar in theme as the public trust of yanks being shattered in their government, when the Tet Offensive contravened the Military/Politician narrative that the US Forces were close to defeating communist forces in Vietnam. In 1985, during the long long Angolan-SA Borger Bush War (which primarily occurred on the northern border of Namibia which was part of the SA Union), young men of RECCES (the South African Special Forces; equivalent to Delta Forces), had been captured during a really stupid and unlucky moment during a highly classified covert operation, in which they were operating behind enemy lines in Angola.

The RECCE men were disgorged from a submarine under the cover of night, and made their way into enemy territory in Angola, under pitch darkness. Only to discover to their horror the next morning, that they had camped in an empty field; what they had though was a dense jungle, was in reality nothing but an island of dense plant growth within a sea of flat grass and crops. And their boot tracks upon the night dew had been discovered almost fricking immediately, leading to their capture.

After a brutal firefight, the survivors would be paraded by the Angolans on international TV, embarrassing the SA government who had denied the presence of SA forces inside Angola, to the world at the UN, and more importantly their own citizens, while also shattering the trust white Safricans had in the regime. Combined with the coming home of crippled and wounded white young men from the Angolan border all the time, where they were forbidden from even telling their families where they lost their limbs, with the government lying about the perpetual expanding of operations, there was growing discontent.

In this context, it can be more easily understood why this specific Airplane crash, in this specific unique moment in time, would cause such consternation, when compared to the rest of the world's plane crashes, where the circumstances were comparatively benign.

But the distrust towards the Apartheid regime was so extreme, that many rejected the inconclusive findings of Flight SA295's crash and/or cause of the fire in the cargo area, which led to speculation or conspiracies that the government had planted bombs or incendiary devices to scuttle the plane during its vulnerability over the Indian Ocean, as part of an elaborate assassination attempt.

And to be clear these conspiracy theories weren't just the usual UFO nutjobs and allegations were so extreme, to the extent that even the ANC TRC (Truth-and-Reconciliation-Commission), a Commission which investigated Apartheid crimes in 1994-1996 under the Nelson Mandela administration, that they reopened the crash-investigation a near decade later, because so many of the dead passengers relatives disbelieved the government investigation from back in 1987, and had petitioned for the new liberal order, to reopen the investigation!

THE EVENTS:

https://tailstrike.com/database/28-november-1987-south-african-295/

====(from tailstrike article)

Flight 295, called the Helderberg and flying in the aircraft livery and colours of South African Airways, took off from Chiang Kai Shek International Airport (now known as Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport), on a flight to Johannesburg via Mauritius. Dawie Uys served as the captain of the crashed flight.

Flight 295 had 140 passengers and six pallets of cargo on the main deck. The master waybills stated that 47,000 kilograms (100,000 lb) of baggage and cargo were loaded on the plane. A Taiwanese customs official performed a surprise inspection of some of the cargo; he did not find any cargo that could be characterized as suspicious.

At some point during the flight, a fire developed in the cargo section on the main deck. The crew's checklist advised the crew to initiate recirculation of the air in the cabin and to open the cabin doors to let toxic gases out of the aircraft. However, the checklist operated under the assumption that the fire had been extinguished.

Since the fire was probably never extinguished prior to impact, the recirculation fed smoke and toxic gases to passengers, and the opening of the door allowed in oxygen that fed the fire. A crew member went into the cargo hold to try to fight the fire, but he left behind a charged fire extinguisher either because he could not access the fire, or because it was too hot to stay in the hold. Investigators later found molten metal on the fire extinguisher.

At 23.49h the crew reported Mauritius Approach control they had a fire on board. An emergency descent to FL140 was carried out. Mauritius ATC cleared the aircraft to FL50, followed by an approach clearance. The captain's response was the last radio contact with SA295. The aircraft had somehow lost control, broke up and crashed into the Ocean.

====(end tailstrike)

After communication with Flight SA295 was lost for thirty-six minutes, after midnight, air traffic control at Plaisance Airport (Mauritius) formally declared an emergency.

The investigation by South African authorities had concluded that the fire began to destroy the aircraft's important electrical systems, resulting in loss of communication and control of the aircraft. At exactly 00:07 UTC (4:07 local time), the aircraft broke apart mid-air, the tail section breaking off first, due to the fire beginning to burn the structure of the aircraft, and crashed into the Indian Ocean, about 134 nautical miles (154 mi; 248 km) from the Plaisance airport.

Other theories given for the ultimate demise of the aircraft were that the flight crew eventually became incapacitated by the smoke and fire or extensive damage to the 747's control systems rendered the plane uncontrollable before it hit the ocean.

LONG FLIGHT:

Now one thing peeps need to know is that commercial Airplanes don't always like flying over oceans, as they tend to be actually more dangerous to land on land. Thus, many international flights prefer to hop over land stops, even on a detour for international flights. Typically an international flight would prefer to fly across Egypt, then towards South Africa, and avoid flights over large bodies of water, like the Indian Ocean.

But in 1987, South Africa was a Pariah State, and suffering Sanctions from like half of all members of the United Nations, including the majority of Western Liberal Democracies, and significantly, the majority of African states, which by this timeframe had decolonialized and obtained independence from their Eurocuck overlords, and most of whom were Subsaharan black peeps, not too pleased with the maltreatment black people received in the segregated Nation State of the Union of South Africa, and thus forbade trade, diplomacy or even the landing of aircraft in their airports, or the docking of ships at their docks.

Thus, for international long-distance flights, to far away places like Japan and East Asia, Safrican commercial airplanes, were pretty much forced to fly across the Indian Ocean

The makeup of the passengers included South Africans returning home, as well as Japanese, Taiwanese and some Australians.

https://www.key.aero/article/flying-springboks-great-detour

FLIGHT RECORD:

https://asn.flightsafety.org/asndb/326653

Now the reason why the type of airplane of SA295 or Helderberg was mentioned, namely the Boeing 747-200 Combi, was to illustrate the makeup of the plane. The Boeing 747-200 Combi consisted of a passenger area (the 1st 2/3rd of the airplane), and a cargo area (the last 1/3rd of the airplane). The fire would start at some place within the cargo area, away from human eyes, which is why it took longer than average for the crew to identify where exactly the fire was originating from, when the cockpit fire-alarm warnings began to be activated.

Picture of reconstruction of the airframe as by the Investigation Report.

In the flight recorder, it could be heard that the cockpit crew become surprised when fire-warning alarms rang out of nowhere, several hours prior to the last contact and crash of the plane. The strain in the pilot's voices could be heard as this unholy nightmare scenario was one of the worst possible things to experience, for an airplane midway over an ocean.

The pilots desperately pulled out their manual checklists to determine the origin and cause of the fire-alarm. This might seem stupid to us laypeople, but apparently locating a fire source is especially difficult, as the idea is to do so well before it can do any damage, and fires on a commercial airplane can occur in many of the nooks-and-crannies of a vast aircraft like the 747.

In these flight recordings the sound of more circuit breakers popping (I don't know what precisely that means - i presume warning circuits to show electric flow between systems have ceased), and the pilot can be heard swearing in Afrikaans & English: "Dis die feit that albei fokken afgegaan het, wat my versteur" / "It's the fact that both turned off at the same time, which disturbs me"

These circuit breakers going off one after the other indicated that electrical wires were being eaten by flames somewhere in the airplane, and the horror of this comprehension could be heard in the voices of the pilots. The alarms did indicate that the fire was occurring within the cargo area, however.

But the real gal of this event! Was that some of the very wires the fire was busy eating, was that of the flight-recorder itself, which would only exacerbate the conspiracy and mystery of the events of Flight SA295.

ZUR TAPES:

Now because of the burning of the onboard Flight-recorder, the only audio records we have of the entirety of Flight SA295 was those of the beginning of the Flight-recorder, before the electric wires got burned and the interaction of Captain Uys and the Mauritius Airport control tower recording, when Captain Uys requested a declaration of emergency, and the subsequent complete radio silence less than an hour later.

https://www.avcom.co.za/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=261611

However in South Africa, in Johannesburg, South African Airways, also operated an International Radio Station called ZUR (frustratingly I could not locate any explanation for the acronym), which kept track of all of the South African Airways planes around the planet. The reason for this?

Remember when we talked about how South Africa was a Pariah State? And how they basically had to skirt the airspace of most of Africa, and many Western Democracies? Well ZUR allowed SAA to keep track of its fleet of aircraft, and direct them if problems or emergencies arose. It was only one of 2 Nation States on earth which provided such a service - the other being Bongland's British Airways.

WELL GUESS WHAT

The ZUR tape-recorders were missing. These ZUR tape-recordings are supposed to run all day 24/7, as the fleet of South African Airways' Springboks commercial airliners travel across various timezones, well outside the waking hours of Safrica, and the communication between the ZUR Johannesburg base and international flights preserved.

The tapes for the ZUR base communications for the night of 27 November 1987 was available. The tape for 29 November 1987 was there. But NOT the fricking tape for 28 Nov 1987

As you guys can only imagine, it was this discrepancy in the aftermath crash investigation which exacerbated conspiracies, even during the era of extreme censorship, as word-of-mouth discontent and suspicion broiled. The missing ZUR tapes are apparently legendary for Safrican airplane neurodivergents, though that is beyond my own capacity to verify.

Thus, the missing ZUR tapes indicated a sinister cause of the fire.

https://www.avcom.co.za/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=261611

Some forum posts by aviation neurodivergents regarding "Two-Fire" theory regarding Flight 295 about 12 years ago.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/helderberg295/posts/10161117563728150/

There's even a Facebook page about SA295

CONSPIRACY:

So what exactly is the conspiracy theories exactly about, according to South Africans? Why was there a cover up by those disbelieving the official government crash investigation reports. There are 2 schools of thought.

Assassination:

It's believed that one or some of the passengers aboard the Helderberg were liberals or anit-Apartheid advocates with influence coming to South Africa to stir dissension and groomercord, amongst both black and white South Africans, or were reporters coming to expose more crimes-against-humanity of the Union regime or whatever. This would not even be an unprecedented action by organs of the state like BOSS (Bureau for State Security), which in fact DID assassinate ANC and other communist leaders, often outside of South African borders, because the Apartheid authorities liked to remove dangerous agitators away from SA shores, because they desired the veneer of authenticity.

Using a bomb, or an incendiary device to disguise the assassination device, to destroy the airplane over the Indian Ocean, away from prying eyes, and outside SA borders, would have been the type of methods employed by powerful entities like BOSS.

This conspiracy theory holds less weight amongst other conspiracy believers, because the idea of the SA Government sacrificing about 100 South Africans, and one of its commercial airliners just to kill one undesirable target holds little water, and would even be unprecedented for Apartheid authorities. The reason being is that the white government was neurotic about valuing white lives.

Whist it didn't value black lives at all, the incredible small white population of South Africa, meant that white populations were precious to the government, even the dissidents, and the government Police or even Military police seldom at any point from 1940-1993 ever killed whites, even white anti-Apartheid advocates like Breyten Bretenbach, whom they just jailed or exiled from the country.

https://af.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breyten_Breytenbach

So to wholesale murder 100 whites to silence even an influential detractor (the specific passenger whom isn't even decided) would be outside of the MO of historic regime behaviour.

Gun-Smuggling

During 1987, due to being sanctioned by basically everyone which mattered, the Union regime was on its knees in terms of the ability to self-sustainably construct domestic products, much of which they could not craft locally, like weaponry.

While South Africa could and DID in fact craft much of their own warplanes, tanks, armoured vehicles and small-arms, they could not do so for everything, and their industries were becomnning increasingly shackled. Thus, according to this school of conspiracy thought, the regime authorities endeavored to smuggle arms even via their commercial airliners from places like East-Asia which were mostly neutral with regards to Human Rights slapfights in the UN and more willing to trade on the black market with pariah states.

The military operations in Angola was bottomless in its thirst and requirements for equiment and ammunition. According to this theory, high ranking government officials, army leaders and South African Airways officials were all in on the conspiracy, and were the ones to immediately destroy the ZUR tapes pertaining to the Helderberg SA295, even under the fear that some of the weapons, bombs missile fuel chemicals, or God alone knows, they suspected were the cause of the fires upon the Helderberg, because the transport of military hardware had to be done under supreme secrecy and censorship.

Additionally, South African Airways would be breeching International Law, as the use of civilian commercial aircraft to smuggle weapons is forbidden. SA was already enough of a Pariah state, and the discovery, or at least proof of such cargo could lead to the banning of the SAA in many countries, or at least it is theorized such would be feared.

THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH:

Now it's important to understand that immediately after the Helderberg SA295's crash became news to South Africa, the 1st theories for its crash had been terrorism, as in ANC or other communist factions had planted a bomb to destroy the aircraft, in a similar way in which the ANC was bombing schools, police stations and courts within South Africa, to pressure the White government to end segregation and begin democratization. It was initially believed that somebody sympathetic to ANC communists, like chinese spies had smuggled an incendiary bomblet into the cargo of the Helderberg.

It was only after the ZUR tapes absence was noted, that the conspiracy theories and public turned hostile towards the South African government itself.

"Rennie Van Zyl, South Africa's head crash investigator, examined three wristwatches from baggage recovered from the surface; two of the watches were still running according to Taiwan time. Van Zyl deduced the approximate time of impact at 00:07:00, around three minutes after the last communication with air traffic control"

"Immediately after the crash, the press and public opinion suspected that terrorism brought down Flight 295. South Africa, then under the control of the apartheid government, was the target of terrorism both domestically and internationally, and offices for SAA, the country's flag carrier, had previously been attacked. Experts searched for indicators of an explosion on the initial pieces of wreckage discovered, such as surface pitting, impact cavities and spatter cavities caused by white-hot fragments from explosive devices that strike and melt metal alloys found in aircraft structures. Experts found none of this evidence. The investigators drew blood samples from two of the recovered bodies and found that the bodies had soot in their tracheae, indicating that at least two had died from smoke inhalation before the aircraft had crashed, and concluded that some of the passengers would have already lost their lives even if the pilots had successfully reached the airport.

https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-helderberg-disaster-was-this-the-cause-of-the-

"Van Zyl took the voice recorder to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington, DC, both to show his goodwill and to ensure neutral observers. Van Zyl believes that if he had kept the CVR in South Africa he could have been accused of covering up the truth."

https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/32753-south-african-airlines-crash-combi-fire-mystery

Additionally the cargo manifest created at Taiwan could not be trusted by the investigators

DEEDSEA SEARCH:

Finding the black box and voice-recorder was a monumental undertaking. And the lead investigator Rennie Van Zyl, was incredibly disappointed when they found the recorder basically contained nothing of the flight log, as it was cut off by the fire basically just when the important action started. And you'll understand his frustration once you realize the magnitude of effort the SA government made to find it.

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fall-of-the-helderberg-the-crash-of-south-african-airways-flight-295-ef6261a01b46

"The search area is described as being comparable in size to that of the wreck of the Titanic, with the water at 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) being considerably deeper than any previously successful salvage operation. South Africa mounted an underwater search, named 'Operation Resolve', to try to locate the wreckage. The underwater locator beacons (ULBs) attached to the flight recorders were not designed for deep ocean use; nevertheless, a two-month-long sonar search for them was carried out before the effort was abandoned on 8 January 1988 when the ULBs were known to have stopped transmitting (at the time a ULB had to generate sonic pulses for thirty days)"

"Steadfast Oceaneering, a specialist deep-ocean recovery company in the US, was contracted at great expense to find the site and recover the flight recorders. On 6 January 1989, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was salvaged successfully from a record depth of 4,900 metres (16,100 ft) by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Gemini, but the flight data recorder was never found."

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMISSION:

Now again to put into perspective just how widespread distrust there was within South African society about the Investigation Crash report of Flight SA295, and how foul play was suspected by both black and white safricans, the conspiracy movement continued onwards for 7 full years, well unto 1993, when democratization took place, and the Mandela Administration took power under the ANC party. And that many of the dead passengers had applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which took place from 1995-1996, where perpetrators of crimes-against-humanity during Apartheid were offered the chance of Amnesty by the Mandela Admin, if they confessed their crimes.

https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/

The whole TRC event is worth its own Longpost, as pretty much everyone was unhappy with the results. TRC could to force anyone to confess, only interrogate officials and was drama-central. Whitoids felt it was commies lynching revenge, and blacks felt apartheid officials got off scot free.

Point is the reopening of the Air Crash Investigation was authorized by the ANC, so it was a pretty seriously considered conspiracy theory!!

https://gist.ly/youtube-summarizer/flight-295-the-mystery-of-south-african-airways-tragic-journey

In the years since 1987, several pilots of South African Airways had allegedly come forward to claim that they were aware of South African airways were in cahoots with Armscor, the South African Armaments Manufacturer. Armscor apparently sued the pilots and journ*lists about these articles, but not much came from it as far as I can gather.

They still exist today, and still make weapons for the current government by the way

https://www.armscor.co.za/

KLATZOW INTERVIEW:

Basically, there was one guy called David Klatzow, who was a forensic scientists who was retained to work on the case by Boeing's counsel around the time of the official enquiry. He deeply distrusted the SA investigators.

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fall-of-the-helderberg-the-crash-of-south-african-airways-flight-295-ef6261a01b46

=====He subsequently criticised the Margo commission for spending an inordinate amount of time looking into "relatively irrelevant issues" and that the commission ignored the most important question, what was the source of the fire and who had been responsible for loading it onto the aircraft? Klatzow believes that there are certain irregularities in parts of the commission transcript that indicate that something on the CVR transcript had to be concealed.=====

=====Klatzow put forward a theory that the fire likely involved substances that would not normally be carried on a passenger aircraft and that the fire was not likely a wood, cardboard, or plastic fire. South Africa was under an arms embargo at the time; the South African government therefore had to buy arms clandestinely. Klatzow's theory postulates that the government placed a rocket system in the cargo hold, and that vibration caused the ignition of unstable ammonium perchlorate, which is a chemical compound used as a missile propellant.=====

Klatzow had argued that Captain Uys would have been in contact with ZUR station and as a SAAF reservist, he would have followed orders from the Union regime not to land the Helderberg at Taiwan once fire had been detected, because discovery of illicit cargo upon investigation of the fire could have led to South African Airways being banned from international flights.

He was the primary guy interviewed in 1998 TRC for the Helderberg.

This specific TRC hearing was very shit and inept.

"Klatzow was invited by the TRC to explain his theories and cross-examine witnesses. Unlike most other hearings of the TRC, the hearing into Flight 295 was conducted in camera, and without any representation from the South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Klatzow considered the CAA untrustworthy because it had participated in the official enquiry, which he considered flawed. A number of key aspects of Klatzow's theory hinged on his criticism of the actions of Judge Margo during the official enquiry, yet Judge Margo was not summoned to answer any of the allegations made against him."

"The TRC concluded that nothing listed in the flight manifest could have caused the fire, a conclusion that was met with controversy within the public."

Basically it all went fricking nowhere, and everybody was upset. The former judges and investigators were upset, because they literally weren't invited to even stand in for their actions. The families were upset because they were cucked.

Here's the original transcript which TRC commission (alongside video tapes of the interviews) was pressured by the public to release in 2000, because the answers and the TRC's conclusions were so unsatisfying. It's very boring, and in my personal opinion mostly conjecture, which is probably why the TRCtards wanted to get on with other much juicier apartheid fish to fry.

https://sabctrc.saha.org.za/documents/special/helderberg/56321.htm

END:

And uhhh, that's pretty much it, the mystery is still pretty much unsolved, and the majority of the families decry the findings of the original Air Crash investigation and that of the TRC. Of course most accusations are in fact still hearsay, and the mundane reality is that the Helderberg crash could in fact have been due to unfortunate circumstances rather than conspiracy.

Some pictures.

!africans

(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.

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 Lwów, 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.
He suspects corruption, bribery, and fake numbers to be the reason. pic.twitter.com/7fNPaZulrL

— Julian Röpcke🇺🇦 (@JulianRoepcke) January 6, 2025

I would disagree a bit, taking into account other recent analyses of missing manpower on the Ukr. side.
🇺🇦 has no manpower problem, but an infantrymen problem. People simply don’t want to die in the first line & do everything to be put into other units of the respective brigades.

— Julian Röpcke🇺🇦 (@JulianRoepcke) January 6, 2025

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

In Madiba's modern rainbow nation there is a lot of intra-racism between the various races, and often it is forgotten how non-black-vs-white racism is still prevalent, and thus when such altercations does rear its head, the fireworks starts to fly, like it did this Christmas holidays.

During a FlySafair (an air passenger company which started in 2014) flight during 26 December, from the city of Durban to Cape Town, a black woman had a massive altercation with air hostesses, which was recorded on cellphones by other passengers.

The flight crew onboard a FlySafair flight didn't want to serve her more alcohol, in response she physically assaulted the air hostess and verbally abused passengers and the flight crew. Nobuntu "Nobs" Mkhize was then arrested for being unruly, once the airplane landed.

Now this happens about once every 6 months, but what made this particular incident riling up the Coloured population was what was specifically said by the black woman, to the Coloured flight attendant during the recorded altercation: "You're a coloured from Mitchells Plain, all these gold rings but no degree. Right now when we land, I'm going to take an Uber home. You don't even have a [driver's] licence. You don't even have a car."

Combined with the fact that she was an arrogant high level SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) employee, throwing her weight and position around, like typical ANC high level arrogant members, this really rustled the jimmies of our coloured population!!

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2024-12-28-sabc-employee-in-hot-water-after-allegedly-making-racist-remarks-and-disrupting-flight/

====(from timeslive)

In several videos that have gone viral on social media, the woman is seen in a heated altercation with flight attendants who are trying to calm her down.

In one of the widely circulated videos, she is heard allegedly making racially-sensitive remarks against the coloured community.

"You're a coloured from Mitchells Plain, all these gold rings but no degree. Right now when we land, I'm going to take an Uber home. You don't even have a [driver's] licence. You don't even have a car."

The SABC released a statement on Saturday acknowledging the woman was an employee and condemning her actions.

"The South African Broadcasting Corporation has noted with concern audiovisual material circulating on various social media platforms featuring a staff member travelling on a South African airline."

The woman also allegedly threatened to get the airline employees fired and the incident broadcast on SABC news channels.

====(end quote)

https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/nobuntu-nobs-mkhize-under-fire-for-alleged-offensive-comments-762edf59-610d-4045-8686-513b1b018e97

Now during her drunken spat, the Mkhize said a shitload of racist stuff, including coloured women are only good for "spreading their legs"

Thus the DA intended to take her to the SAHRC (South African Human Rights Commission) for racism.

"Mkhize, who is reportedly the brand manager from SABC, caused a stir when videos taken aboard a FlySafair flight to Cape Town went viral on social media as she was filmed labelling women from Mitchell's Plain as uneducated and unable to drive or own motor vehicles."

https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/you-cant-think-you-can-get-away-with-it-sahrc-to-take-flysafair-passenger-to-equality-court-20250103

This incident went so viral, that even the Patriotic Alliance ( the new ethno-nationalist party for Coloureds in Safrica, which was created last year during June 2024's election) submitted a complaint to the SAHRC (South African Human Rights Commission), to have her jailed.

Also completely fricking hilarious for me in this incident, was this one interview for the Deputy President for the Patriotic Alliance, who appears to me to be a Xhosa/Zulu dude, and lmoa this guy is fricking thirsty for coloured chicks, the way @Sneedman is for Holly

I don't know if the guy is 1st generation coloured, or if he was just raised in a Xhosa upbringing but he speaks in a total Xhosa accent.

During the interview he says "a beautiful Coloured Lady" which is so bizarre cuz it had zero bearing with the situation lmoa

Anyways comments sneed.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=925489679785507&id=100069734502518

For further context, in the past 2 decades there had been friction between Coloureds and mainstream ANC black peeps, for many reasons, but primarily due to BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) policies which promoted and gave preferential treatment of black peeps over coloureds in government positions or tenders, in a country with 25% unemployment this causes lots of friction. Whilst many whites are in the very least middle class, most coloureds are not, and thus this government mandated affirmative discrimination, which can only exist in which one racial group vastly outnumbers the others, have actively screwed over coloured populations, which in turn voted overwhelmingly DA for the past 25 years, and since the Western Cape the province of Cape Town, is dominated by the Bong and Coloured demographic, they have remained an island of DA, instead of ANC

Other sources of friction between coloureds, and especially ultra pro-ANC black peeps, have manifested itself when previously poor black women especially have lorded their power and status over coloureds. It must be understood, that while ultimate political, demographic and social power had transferred between whites to black peeps since democratization, coloureds have remained relatively as poor and 2nd class via sheer economic momentum in the Western Cape/Cape Town, and have not been enfranchised as drastically as their black peers, who they feel have excluded them deliberately through tribal wingcuckery.

A common theme is that coloureds feel they were too brown for the Union apartheid days, and now too light skinned for the ANC, so a powerful & influential black woman, lording her SABC job over an air hostess, a relatively meagre job, REALLY reinforces that salt in the wound of modern Coloured-VS-Black relationship in modern

Also of other hilarious note, is during the video of the altercation, the drunk woman, Nobuntu threw coke at the hostesses and other passengers trying to detain her in her drunken unruliness (cuz it was during a fricking plane flight mid-air), and this coke throwing is being sighted as ASSUALT by many publications and reports, which i find fricking hilarious!

OMG this racist b-word threw coke at me, this is assault ASSAULT!

Here's a chud-adjacent safrican griftoid commenter, making a massive mountain out of a molehill of the event

Interviews of DA coloured officials, and basically everybody is super upset.

"This Nobuntu must be arrested because what she did in that plane was pure terrorism. Imagine people fighting right inside the plane ." Lmoa

"As a white south african i am absolutely appalled at this element of racism that still exists in our country. Shocking"

"Me too😢" HAHAHAHAHA

"This is another clear demonstration how money, education and political privilege don't equate to intellect, etiquette even humanity. This coming from an whole brand manager! How tacky indeed.🚮🚮🤮"

"You can take them out of the bush but you can't take the bush out of them." random Boer boeing along

https://www.iol.co.za/mercury/news/flysafair-places-sabc-employee-nobuntu-mkhize-on-no-fly-list-after-flight-altercation-5b23f246-7d3f-47b7-9f56-dd32aed1ee48

And Uh, the IRL plane jannies perma-banned her from flying on the FlySafair airline.

And uh that's about it. ANC spokesmen condemned her, and lots of peeps were typing very angery comments on Facebook.

Meanwhile my dad was like: "as long as they are each other, they'll leave us alone for a bit" lol

!africans

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?

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://old.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyVII/comments/i967ja/how_faithful_is_the_ff7_remake_to_the_original/

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.

Russian is acquiring territory at a rate of 100 dead/km². Another 50 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 changer… 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, and…

— AMK Mapping 🇺🇦🇳🇿 (@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."

@DaddyReagan

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/

4- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-16/putin-says-russia-recruited-more-than-430-000-to-army-this-year

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

— HotSotin 🇫🇮🇺🇦🇮🇱🇹🇼🇺🇸 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.

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.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 10, 2024

It actually isn’t 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.

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 10, 2024

I know a lot of people are currently obsessed with Russia’s 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 absolutely…

— 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.

First, there is this pervasive idea that being mobilized into the military is basically a death sentence. Which is entirely untrue.

— 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.

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.

— 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
Russian military: we have manpower problems
Russian soldiers: we have manpower problems

People on twitter: RUSSIA HAS INFINITE MANPOWER AND WILL LAST FOREVER

— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) December 14, 2024

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.

— 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

— 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

Yes I will be posting personal drama, with groomercord screenshots because I'm fricking angry and neurodivergent.

So some guy asks about the copyright system on YouTube striking down a video with Undertale music, which is usually fine for use no problems.

so I just link him the publishers FAQ on that music specifically to help him, no problemo, while also saying frick copyright because I hate copyright CUTE TWINKS

Then some millennial funko-pop corporates worshiping CUTE TWINK FUNKO CUTE TWINK FRICKER

Says how Im big bad and STUPID because nu-uh actually copyright is le based and cool, because I now own it for 2000000 years.

>Umm sweaty copyright is le good, this is such a bad faith bad take argument.

SHUT THE FRICK UP!!!!

>DO NOT SAY FRICK COPYRIGHT!!!!!!!!!!! DONT DO IT!!!! IN BOLD

Guess what prick, im depeicting you on my cool secret drama website as a soy-marsey

So I (enlightened and smart person) respond back how intellectual property is made up bullshit because how can you even own an idea, its not like a bar of gold, where you physically own an item and can stop someone taking it from you with like a GUN

GUESS WHAT MARVEL!!!! IM THINKING ABOUT SPIDERMAN RIGHT NOW AND YOU CANT STOP ME BIPOCS. IM THINKING OF SPIDERMAN AND YOU CANT STOP ME!!!!!!!!!!

>Dont be this person

FRICK YOU DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE

So I very eloquently say why I personally would not even benefit from copyright autism, because who the frick cares about Minecraft YouTube Videos, god forbid of my lost income from some thirs worlder reposting my YouTube shorts and getting 20 views. WHICH BY THE WAY I CAN SEE WHEN THIS HAPPENS AND NO REUPLOAD HAS EVER CRACKED ABOVE 1k VIEWS, SO THIS DUMBASS PROBABLY DOESNT EVEN KNOW THAT!!!! HES JUST SOME CUTE TWINK MOD DEVELOPER FOR CUTE TWINK PAY 2 WIN MINECRAFT SERVERS. GOD FORBID I MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE SOME DATA AS TO WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT.

<--- Me

hes dumbass response where he just tells me what the law is, COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT.

that i dont give a shit what the LAW IS, I think copyright on a philosophical level is bullshit!!!!!!!!!!!!

That stupid low IQ APE.

I cant actually say slurs or really insulting shit to him, and honestly my arguing is fricking pushing it already, because this is on some level a professional space for YouJewbers, and Ive already got banned once for calling someone an r-slured cute twink.

SO IM HOLDING MY TONGUE

OH BE MORE CONCISEEEE?????

YOUR FRICKING DUMB REPLY WAS LONGER THAN MINE?

WHAT IS 300 WORDS TOO MUCH YOU FRICKING MONKEY BRAINED NEANDERTHAL R-SLUR?

I even touch on different topics in my response, i think Im pretty circinqed , unlike this NEIGHBOUR. Im fricking angry.

especially that HR emoji at the bottom, you fricking butt doesnt even understand the basics of what I write and this fricker with his lil emoji frickl you.

My final word, in hopes of getting bazniga end cool comeback.

But NOPE I need more HR fricking Emojis passive aggresive, Ill shwo you passive aggresive, I only do full on aggresive.

You are a poor tortoise, but brother its a pitbulls world.

WHY DOES EVERYONE THIKNK I NEED MENTAL HELP!????????

EVERY TIME I SHOUT AND SCREAM ONLINE EVERYONE SAYS I NEEED HELP

I WILL NOT GO TO THE MALE FEMINIST.

Rdrama.net tell me im right.

AITA, (im not)

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 sIIIII^IIIIIIIIIIDe

!jinxthinkers Can Jinxbrother be reformed?

Wingcuckus Maximus:

/r/politics

finds its own Rule34. Dies from a massive orgasm after Trump found guilty

https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1d4emcb/megathread_former_us_president_donald_trump/

It's /r/politics again as they go ballistic after learning Kamala lost because Bezos didn't want any curry for dinner

https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1gc0cdv/jeff_bezos_killed_washington_post_endorsement_of/

And again as the postpresidentium depression sets in and they turn on themselves

https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1gl4df4/this_time_we_have_to_hold_the_democratic_party/

/r/facepalm jerks off as hard as imaginable over some vague analogy

https://old.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1dt8bj4/no_additional_words_needed/

/r/europe shits itself to death as they realize how buckbroken they are that a bunch of hillbillies decide NATO's faith every 4 years

https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1gkbjnu/whats_the_mood/

/r/europe again as they have a massive circlejerk session over a couple hundred Russians protest against Putin in…Berlin?

https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1gtedi4/photos_from_the_russian_antiwar_opposition_march/

Big Brain WINGCUCKS

/r/economics has a informed polite deba…SIKE! VIOLENT YEARLY CIRCLEJERK over taxing unrealized gains

https://old.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1f2eubo/should_the_worlds_richest_1_who_gained_42/

/r/economics comes to the rational conclusion that Boomers HODLing their 401k and Roth must be liquidated to free up capital

https://old.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1ef14i6/boomers_iron_grip_on_76_trillion_of_wealth_puts/

Bedlam over at /r/unitedkingdom as Redditors support droning the Taliban (not for reasons you think)

https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1dr57et/jk_rowling_says_david_tennant_is_part_of_gender/

/r/unitedkingdom bend and contort the English language to its limits to stay away from acknowledging "R*pe Bad"

https://old.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1gllcy3/20_men_jailed_for_over_219_years_for_rape_and/

Severe Wingcuck territory

/r/fauxmoi unanimously passes the bill "DRUMPF IS DONE" after TAYLOR shows off a Kamala tattoo on her clitussy

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1fe0af6/taylor_swift_endorses_kamala_harris/

/r/Canada seethes and writhes in impotent anger over becoming a part of Nazi Germany 2.0

https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1hh03i5/donald_trump_says_canada_becoming_51st_us_state_a/

And again seethes when some brave Canadian soldiers sacrifice their Reddit account over expressing disdain at becoming a part of Jeet Empire (Beta release)

https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1hcl06b/nearly_half_of_canadians_favour_mass_deportations/

The catty b-words over at /r/makeupaddiction are jealous af of you babes

https://old.reddit.com/r/MakeupAddiction/comments/1cg1cxi/i_tried_matching_my_shirt_today_did_i_get_it_right/

/r/politicaldiscussion comes to a darning conclusion: It happened because it was already happening

https://old.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/comments/1gksts4/why_did_kamala_harris_lose_the_election/

/r/literature asks how to get men read slop again. Tons of soys rush in to fill up the vacuum with the "I Do" they never got to say

https://old.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/1dfmr92/how_do_we_get_men_and_boys_back_into_reading/

The Cult of Wingcuck

/r/Antiwork has a Biblical revelation that inflation is a conspiracy created by the top 0.01%

https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/1bb9wml/inflation_benefits_the_rich/

The comrades over at /r/politicalhumor has ordered you to laugh, capitalist pig

https://old.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/1eno3xa/shes_trying_so_hard_to_be_relevant/

/r/iwantout creates an emergency suicidal emigration helpline megathread in the wake of the election

https://old.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/1gkv77m/megathread_emigrating_after_the_us_election/

/r/transgenderUK unleash the most lethal weapon onto their opponents: their most exciting sport

https://old.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1g1hfg5/teenage_trans_activists_release_6000_crickets_on/

/r/agedlikemilk hurts their back after a person saying rehabilitative justice works is found out to be a serial killer. The duality? The person is a BIPOC (+) but said it on Joe Rogan's podcast (-)

https://old.reddit.com/r/agedlikemilk/comments/1b98xl5/sheldon_johnson_excon_who_appeared_on_joe_rogan/

/r/leopardsatemyface has a brutal reckoning with /r/thathappened

https://old.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/1glqf4d/and_so_it_begins_as_seen_on_bluesky/

Let's end 2024 on a happy note where everyone is having fun and getting along

https://old.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/comments/1h48n1y/mexican_origin_story/

cc: !chuds !dramatards !gangstalkers !burgers !BIPOCs

By most popular subreddits

/r/worldnews : Chuds mad at foid

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1czgp4x/spanish_deputy_prime_minister_declares_that/

/r/science : Chuds mad at neofoids

https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1g906o9/a_large_majority_of_young_people_who_access/

/r/news : Libs mad at coof not being taken seriously in our current year of the lord

https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1f5maik/police_in_a_suburban_new_york_county_have_made/

/r/books : Nerds mad yo brotha wants all the BIPOCs to be gangbangers

https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1e9ra6v/why_colorblind_writing_is_tonedeaf_and_why/

/r/TIL : Redditors mad that "picking the bar of soap" is actually good

https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/18vlkrb/til_that_you_shouldnt_use_soap_to_wash_your/

/r/nottheonion : Libs mad at JoeRogan making podcasts cool enough for TawkTuah becoming the 3rd most popular podcast

https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/1frtzq4/the_hawk_tuah_girls_podcast_talk_tuah_becomes_the/

/r/art : Reddit poors mad at art hoes for portraying white trash as white trash

https://old.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/1b513ka/american_batshit_capidolism_digital_2024/

/r/futurology : Redditors mad at the Chud for pointing out the Indian menace long before Elon made it cool

https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1bgfshi/once_jobs_are_automated_what_will_be_the_point_of/

/r/LPT : Redditors mad at told to not be so mad

https://old.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/1h5c7e5/lpt_dont_go_to_bed_angry/

/r/askreddit : Redditors mad as other Redditors rush to paint themselves as nice guys

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1cpee62/someone_asked_why_so_many_decent_men_are_single/

Across Reddit

https://old.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/1gsbpn7/aitah_for_telling_my_wife_the_newborn_is_her/

https://old.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/1gq12fq/aita_for_serving_only_vegan_food_at_my_wedding/

Get a load of this bozo serving $15000 worth of plants. Even Redditors aren't having any of it.

/r/whatif : Libs mad at the unimaginable fantasy scenario (that was the exact purpose of the sub)

https://old.reddit.com/r/whatif/comments/1gna7n5/what_if_trump_ends_up_being_really_good_for_the/

/r/pics : Chuds mad at confusing GOCK

https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1e7xhnm/two_photos_of_our_marriage_one_from_2021_the/

/r/self : LIBS mad at Trump supporter for daring to say Trump supporters are not stupid

https://old.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1gnd7sr/dems_accuse_trump_voters_of_being_stupid_yet_they/

/r/hypotheticalsituations hyperventilating as they realize the greatest election interference was on Reddit

https://old.reddit.com/r/hypotheticalsituation/comments/1fzvc6p/1m_but_trump_wins_the_elections_or_0_but_kamala/

/r/the10thdentist : Friendzoned virgins cry out in pain as one brave dentist stands up for the truth

https://old.reddit.com/r/The10thDentist/comments/1ft8k7b/straight_women_and_men_cant_just_be_friends/

/r/louisville : Fried Chicken Chuds mad at lib for saying they don't want to listen to a hick blabbering on about God Emperor Trump while selling them an overpriced shoebox

https://old.reddit.com/r/Louisville/comments/1gqhaqz/non_maga_real_estate_agent/

/r/pics : Chuds tell breeder to touch grass

https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1gjeaes/this_dad_voted_harris_for_my_6_month_old_daughter/

/r/canadapost :

https://old.reddit.com/r/CanadaPost/comments/1h7cv7f/just_learned_how_garbage_cp_really_is/

Bonus Content : Rdrama Encores

X (formerly chiobu)-core : Chingaporeans mad at their country's name being abbreviated

https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1han58q/52yearold_man_from_spore_dies_after_getting_a/

Carp-core : Soys mad at someone calling WoT Crap

https://old.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1ajln1j/are_the_wheel_of_time_books_overrated/

Pizza-core : even Redditors are disturbed

https://old.reddit.com/r/food/comments/1dn3c86/i_ate_this_colossal_meal_from_buffalo_wild_wings/

cc: !chuds !dramatards !gangstalkers !burgers !BIPOCs

Stay tuned for the most lib infested, chud infested and in general most wingcucked posts of the year (coming tomorrow)

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 finalé 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?

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 45° 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.