They definitely shouldn’t have paid a penny.

They should have been first in line for the reintroduction of the guillitone and then assets seized and distributed to those whose lives they ruined and continue to ruin.

But paid? Heavens no.

Agree, good on the crew for not trying to push through and turning it around. But these planes seriously should not be flying.

He’s busy hosting a celebration for his brave Resistance against the Republican Tankie Fascist Wumaos.

it’s too hard now to tempt people with money.

I mean, when your only real chance of survival hinges on being able to surrender fast enough, money is not really an incentive. There needs to at least be the ghost of a chance of living. The fact that they are fielding marines who can’t swim doesn’t remotely surprise me, they have almost nothing left that resembles a professional soldier.

Can I get that with the puppet dictator bundle?

Puts on lib hat

Well you see, this shows that the war is basically already won and that Zelensky is getting back to governing affaris because they don’t need to pay attention to those (sorry which slur are we using right now? The hordes one again? Got it) asiatic hordes anymore.

Throws off hat in disgust

Is making a mod for a game like Stellaris easier than making a game?

It depends on the scope of the mod and game relatively (and what engine you would be using for the game), but I would say generally yes assuming you are working on a game that has a good framework for mods already. Stellaris definitely does, and you can absolutely find tutorials that will help you with that process.

It depends a bit on what you are setting out to do and your own skillset. Is it just going to change things under the hood, are you adding assets? If you are adding assets, can you do the art or do you have someone else you are talking to for that.

Those are questions you’d have to answer for making a game too of course, but generally you can expect a mod to be a smaller scale.

The advantage of making your own game is you would be a lot less beholden to the rules of the game in realising the vision you have. As an example if you want to make a really indepth ground combat system, that would be a very hard thing to implement into Stellaris because it just doesn’t do much to model that layer.

Is the mesh fence supposed to keep Estonians from fleeing? Because a barbed wire fence is sure going to do a whole lot of nothing against a military.

Seems to be real, he took a plea and left the UK already. He had to admit guilt to sharing state secrets. Plea was about as good as he was going to get, and given existing health issues makes total sense for him to take it.

I am honestly still floored he got that much, but I am pretty stoked about it.

I don’t talk to religious folks in the West enough, is Abrahamic not more commonly used, since that covers Islam as well?

You’re not wrong, there is a LOT of political apathy from folks. Especially younger working age people who are just determined to get a job and keep their head down. If you join politically active groups that is obviously not the case, but those can be smaller.

Do you mind if the resources are in Japanese, or is English preferable? I have more of the former, but some of the latter.

1. I think a lot of people have unfortunately just kind of internalized the “China bad” propaganda, and have definitely internalized the “DPRK evil kidnappers” line. People very strongly do not want to be embroiled in a war and disagree with the leadership’s willingness to basically be a forward operating base for the US. If there is one thing you can usually find widespread support for in Japan (minus the fascists), it is not engaging in overseas military operations.

However, there is a really encouraging silver lining here. While the older generations almost uniformly hate China, the younger generations increasingly say they have a positive view/affinity for China. I think a recent survey had something like 10% of the older generations had a positive view of China, while 40% of younger generations did. Especially among anyone that has traveled there. It’s a trend I hope continues.

2. Realistically, I think they’d go socdem-liberal honestly, at least right away. If they could start to align more with China that would be great, but there would be some big changes needed internally here for that. For example, recognition of the atrocities comitted by Japan in the past. I think that kind of recognition and apology are possible though, existing political parties already hold that position.

The Red Purges were so effective that there really isn’t much socialist ideology at a national level right now, even in the socialist and communist parties.

3. Basically, yes. I think a lot of people in the cities don’t think about it, because out-of-sight is out of mind. But if you put the question to them, people at the very least seem to think the bases should be further outside residential areas. Every time the USian forces commit a crime, public sentiment worsens and never really recovers.

America can assassinate but its defenses are not necessarily good…

Castro would probably argue that first point too.

To some degree I think it is inevitable, a lot of their influence is predicated on being the sole superpower and their imperialism. We can see that right now with the advent of other multpolar power blocs.

I think things can be done to accelerate that decline, many of which the US themselves are engaged in, but I don’t think it will be a sudden revolution right now. I think we will continue to see a gradual decline in US influence as other actors get stronger and stronger while the US pretends everything is fine. I think by the time we see actual revolution in the US the USA as an empire won’t really exist anymore.

We exist! With the disclaimer that while I am not natively from Japan, I’ve lived here virtually my entire adult life, over 20 years now, and am naturalized. I am involved with local marxist groups.

Interestingly, Marxism had and continues to have immense influence on intellectual traditions here. It really first came to Japan through universities, and a lot of that continues today. At least at the university and graduate level. A lot of the MEGA project work was done out of Japan, surprisingly enough. If the puppet government and the US hadn’t come down hard on post-war communists in Japan (see: Red Purge), I think it is very likely we would be a socialist state today.

There is definitely a lot of resistance towards US influence that has grown in recent years, I won’t say it all comes from socialists as much as it comse from people who have just been disenfranchised with the US. This is especially true, unsurprisingly, in regions that are directly hosting military bases, particularly in Okinawa/Ryukyu. Which is basically double occupied by Japan and the US. Theft, sexual assaults, drunk incidents are all pretty common side effects. A helicopter actually lost pieces of the helicopter while flying over an elementary school not that long ago. These are all things that have a lot of people really fed up. All the hot dog and hamburger “Friendship Days” they host can’t really make up for these things.

A big issue recently is the relocating of a US base closer to residential areas in Okinawa. Okinawa governor Tamaki refused, so Tokyo courts mandated that he had to approve the permits. The deadline came and went and the governor has refused to do so. While the permits did get rammed through eventually (the governor never caved, Tokyo just went over his head) he delayed everything about four years and significantly eroded public trust in Tokyo.

I don’t necessarily think this is a sign of a full decoupling from the US, but it is definitely an element that has significantly impacted the public perception. I think the average person here would still consider the US an ally, but wants to be less reliant on the US economically and militarily.

THIS time it’s the most important election of our lifetimes! Don’t dare voting for third party, wait until next time.

Next time: now this one is the most important…

It’s possible, but our current leadership couldn’t be anymore a US lapdog so it’s hard under them. That same leadership has basically controlled Japan since ww2 by the way, outside of one very short period. That party is increasingly dropping in popularity though. We have a large “communist” party, but after the red purges they’ve become basically socdems at the national level (I am involved in some local activities with them though and there’s good folks there).

There’s definitely areas/leaders that are pushing back more and more against that, especially any area that has to deal with the US military bases and all the problems they cause. The governor of Okinawa in particular.

With some radical shifts of leadership and maybe a couple more doohickeys, it’s possible. Maybe I am optimistic though.

The strategy of sanctioning the country you are economically reliant on, but who is not reliant on you, has been doing gangbusters so far. This will really be the masterstroke that finishes them off. Them being an intentionally ambigious pronoun usage here.

Also, Putin’s Shadow Fleet sounds kind of badass, I am not going to lie.

Absolutely. There’s no way a real human being would be linking to fucking state.gov’s fact sheet. I don’t think normal human beings would even open that website.

Giving citizens access to the outside world

They have access to the outside world. They have limited access to the western world, but there was a whole faculty at the university I went to there with many other foreigners. Plenty of students study foreign language and international studies. They have plenty of western-style restaurants, I had pretty good pizza there, just not all of the precious brand names.

These people always act like the DPRK is some kind of tribal village that has no contact with the rest of the planet. If you suddenly open up the internet to them, it wouldn’t be the massive culture shock that westerners think. There would be surprising things, sure, but it wouldn’t blow their mind.

They suck at Internet.

Actually, quite the opposite. They are excellent IT workers really. I am in that field and there has been instances recently of companies hiring remote contract workers to later find out they are actually from the DPRK. They don’t do anything malicious, they just do good work. The only issue is the company could possibly end up in violation of sanctions, or they probably wouldn’t care.

What I eventually ended up doing was focusing a lot of bandwidth on those routers .

Wow, what an elite brave hacker. He…performed a DDOS attack. What a regular Crash Override, I hope he put on his typing gloves before attempting such a fearsome hack.

If I want to buy Lenin bedsheet sets, do I need to go to a Multi-Lenin Marketer or a Multi-Linen Marketer? Which one has the most authentic socialist sleeping experience?