You got me laughing with this one. And I gotta say, you writing something that sounds like a mix of our in-jokes and the crazy "
Thirty H" harry potter fanfic and still following it with your formal sign-off has me chuckling!
All credit goes to the special effects team behind Robot Jox.
Peak 80s mecha stop-motion shlock, and SF writer Joe Haldeman's only screenplay.
excellent example I mean I vehemently disagree with Blackstar's statement that "marx's idea of communism is impossible because you have to keep modern economics and organize modern industry"
Only, Blackstar didn't say that.
She said "Communism as described by Marx likely isn't possible if only for the increasing sophistication needed for modern economics" and then went on to talk about how complicated modern industries are. In other words, you are talking about "modern economics" the ideological position, she is talking about "modern economics" in the sense that you need a butt load of organization to make modern products. She said nothing about what alternate modes of organization she thinks would work, only that she thinks Marx's ideas wouldn't.
(And like, the last volume of Das Kapital came out 130 years ago, there are alot of Marxist takes that have built on Marx's foundations. Modern Marxists of various kinds have all kinds of specific disagreements with Marx, just like modern Capitalists can acknowledge that David Ricardo was wrong about comparative advantage while still recognizing him as being a great thinker.)
I think this talk about the MFA is missing the point a bit. Klim is a hawk, he was biased towards the last two options, if we explicitly knew that the MFA or 'doves' were full on against this then that would balance our perspective so much that the bias would now go the other way. In my opinion, I think if we do end up choosing an option that explicitly goes against our characters implicit biases, in any situation, then we really ought to work hard to ferret that out.
Right. We were given ample warning of Klimenko's biases, he, like Voz, has been grousing about "weakness" anyone gave him real talk about any of the past crises. And we had ample warning that the hawks were shitting in the information steam in an attempt to get the Politburo to get aggressive with France and kick down what they saw as the rotting structure of French domination in Africa.
And remember, we live in the world where the British empire destroyed itself in epic fashion when Churchill invaded India, wasting the lives of ordinary British soldiers, breaking decades of promises, ruining the plans of those who wanted to transition the UK to ruling an empire powered by oil rather than an empire powered by Indian sweat and so trashing the political capital of any kind of British imperialist hard enough that the country's empire was abandoned extremely rapidly once saner heads got Britain out of the Indian quagmire.
(That we have hardly heard about Britain since means that they've likely been doing extremely well out of all of this. British attempts to maintain the empire in OTL weren't just bad for the people being massacred, it also starved Britain itself of resources better invested at home. TTL's Britain is probably alot closer to OTL Japan.)
So it makes sense that we have a strong wing of people who think they can repeat what happened to Britain to the much weaker France with ease. Of course, they forget that WE didn't destroy the British Empire. The Indian resistance and Churchill's stupidity destroyed Britain's empire. We just made sure the Indians had guns.
All of this is to say, people not only need to be aware that there are hawks polluting the information stream that gets to our office, they also need to be aware that the hawks aren't going to be Saturday morning cartoon caricatures. They'll be smart guys who want to make the world into a better place and who have glommed on to elements of their historical context that help them argue their views.
Even if Balakirev is less of a hawk than Klim and Voz have been, the hawks that will be around will still be giving him persuasive arguments for why one naval taskforce, or one brigade of VDV can make the world better if only he'll support them in the Politburo.
Yeah I did get the feeling like the writing on the whole mfa thing crossed over from "giving characters biases that need to be kept in mind" to "actively hiding basic contextual information from the player in a completely different way than previously established so there's basically no way to predict it"
This is horse excrement.
Klimenko's biases had been very well established before the update and all the contextual information was right there in his description of the crisis. Dealing with imperfect information and our PoV character's biases are a normal part of this quest, and this crisis was no different from any of the other times that we as a group have been taken in.
And hey, I trusted Voz way more than I should, despite taking Malenkov's warnings seriously before Voz gained power and I backed Mikoyan sacrificing the cavalry officers to preserve his own hide. I'm not better here. I just seem to be better at deciphering Klim-speak, which is a skill with a definite shelf life. I am sure I'll trust the wrong PoV character again in time.
But don't blame the quest for being what it always has been.
Increasing readiness to a specific level already declared isn't by itself escalation. We are going to the next tier of soviet DefCon, something the french and americans are also doing. This doesn't tell them by itself we are willing to provoke more conflicts. The real escalation would be upping the readiness level beyond what NATO has.
I know other people are saying this, but I want to echo for effect: extending the crisis as more and more of our, our allies and our enemies militaries mobilize is definitely a form of escalation.
But they are edible , right? So whats the problem? Or some species that are being replaced were more delicious? Well , its unfortunate then , but in exchange for fallen food quality we get increased food availability, so it probably isn't that bad
Oh no, it's bad.
See, no environment on Earth is exactly like any other environment, so native organisms are better adapted to the local conditions. And since organisms exist in a web of interdependancy, an invasive species displacing a native fish will mean that the native ecosystem will be destabilized in fun and interesting ways.
Like, say, a fish that local predators don't like to eat gets to breed out of control, stripping away vegetation in the river, resulting in more erosion, leading to human structures getting overwhelmed by too much silt, reducing electricity output, getting in the way of barge traffic, leading to more flooding in areas where human structures aren't designed to handle floods, as well as the fisheries of the river collapsing causing destitution among river communities, plus, as the local birds that nested in the reeds on the river banks go into decline because the eroded banks no longer have enough reeds, the seeds those birds dispersed in their poop are no longer dispersed, meaning the forests go into decline, which means the animals that ate those plants go into decline, and on and on and on.
So this catfish problem? We'll be facing billions of roubles across the USSR just in damage to infrastructure and human habitations, let alone the costs of degraded hydro capacity and extra dredging that needs to be done to maintain shipping routes or the damage to rural livelihoods. Of course, since the catfish were introduced as food, paying fishermen to go after them aggressively should get the problem under control enough for the prior ecosystems to mostly bounce back, especially if combined with better environmental standards for industrial wastewater and sewage discharge. The problem to this bright side? We're playing as a bunch of Bolsheviks and thus have to wait for sensible ideas to percolate through our characters' thick peasant-hating skulls.
So going off topic a bit just how bad are our environmental problems considering the catfish issues and the lake that occasionally combusts.
My bet is they're worse than OTL. Casual use of nuclear earth moving, replumbing the waterways, MUCH more development, the utter ravaging of Central Asia (like, I don't know if we'll even be able to save the tepid pools that the OTL Aral Sea has been reduced to) and I get the sense that farming is more extensive and the use of fairly nasty agrochemicals is at least as bad as the OTL USSR (which overused agrochemicals to a comical degree).
See, the thing is, I'm not mad like this at the people who are hammy about it and just going "GLOURIOUS REVOLUTION!" because they're obviously joking and it is, for lack of a better term, funny. Even if they blow up the quest, I'm not going to hold a grudge. It's parodic, and having fictional characters do appalling things in the spirit of parody is interesting.
For real. Just because I wouldn't find starting a nuclear war in a quest fun, doesn't mean the people who do want to do that are bad people who shouldn't be allowed to have fun.
Violent movies have been shown to make filmgoers less prone to violence and aggressive thinking. And there are indications that violent books and games have similar effects on people. Catharsis is real and good for you, roleplaying as a bad guy is OK. And so on.
So those of you who want to see everything burn, as long as the QM enjoys your contributions you are good with me. This part of the ride is going to be great for you and I will see you in Valhalla, shiny and chrome.
But I am genuinely disappointed in the people who voted to violate the backsides of the Algerian people with a rusty pole because they trusted the moral purity of our current PoV character.
Remember people, we picked Klim because he is mildly less peasant-hating and we wanted to try and address long-standing issues that were being neglected, and would have continued to be neglected, by anyone else. Not that the rural situation is actually good yet. Klim has just made it a bit less cursed. But he's also a homophobic, anti-union war hawk who who thinks the West will fall as soon as he gives the rotting structure one good kick, moans anytime anyone tries to protest against the many injustices going on inside the USSR like a Reagan loving boomer and thinks our actually pretty brutal criminal justice system goes too easy on people.
You can trust him as far as you can throw him.
Looking back I must personally apologize to
@fasquardon for dismissing his genuine concern as overblown.
I appreciate you taking ownership of your decisions. That's actually pretty hard core.
As for my vote:
[X]Advocate for Accepting the Terms
Like, of course.
Regards,
fasquardon
