to keep games safe

Really ups the clarion call to pirate the hell out of it (or not play it at all).

< English language not allowed… again. LEMMY IS WEIRD. >

So low-strata fascists are typically like low strata cultists^† in that they’re typically drawn in by neo-nazis (or whoever) giving an ounce of regard to them when they’re alone and socially isolated. The indoctrination and costly identity markers follow.

At least this is my take based on stories I’ve heard from those who have escaped hate groups, militant groups and dangerous NRMs. Transition from membership to outsider (optimally involved in more benign social groups) is difficult and takes a while.

That said, fascists are dangerous both by being politically active (in the US, politically active in a system where safety checks have been stripped away or subverted) and by being violent or engaging in direct action. And in these cases, doing what is necessary to stop them can qualify as self-defense.

† As a cult researcher, I feel the need to define this, since cult is a loaded word. By low-strata cultist I mean a low-rung member of a dangerous NRM or seller from an MLM.

The thing is, where Putin has oligarchs that would dump him in a hot second if he dropped a bomb, Trump is absolutely eager to blow shit up and doesn’t care / can’t process the consequences of dropping the first nuclear bomb in hostility^† and breaking the black ice.

In Trump’s first term no-one in the Department of Energy or the Department of Defense brass were MAGA loyalists, even though many considered themselves Republican, conservative and endorsed US military interventionism and adventurism. So when they were told (for instance) to nuke the snot out of North Korea to give them what for, Mattis was there to say no. None of the later secretaries of defense under Trump (Shanahan, Esper, Spencer, and Miller) would have authorized a nuclear strike either. And if one of them did, the generals under them were likely to resign than carry out such an order.

Enter Project 2025’s Schedule F plan, which is going to retire all the old brass US loyalists that are sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States (and mean it) and replace them with Trump loyalists, who, when asked to launch a nuclear strike against somewhere in the other side of the world will say Yes Sir! (or By Your Command ) or ( With Pleasure ) whatever the going evil-empire affirmative salute is.

So it is a likely possibility non-zero not-insignificant possibility President Donald J. Trump will order a nuclear strike during his second term, and it will be carried out by the department of defense. He still really wants to express his fire and fury and show the world his dick is absolutely the biggest.

I thought about this during Trump’s first term (and pondering the possibility of Hope, Montana getting nuked – three times! – at the end of Far Cry 5 ), imagining that unlike Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone bullying his principals to launch a first strike, Mattis would be there, steak-knife in hand to save the world from a rogue president. He actually did, just without the confrontation or the need of a steak-knife. But it means the Heritage Foundation is forewarned this time.

† Yes, technically two atomic bombs have been dropped in hostility, but after Castle Bravo / Bikini Atoll we quietly shifted from the atomic age to the nuclear age. It’s a significant difference. Hiroshima had about a 15KT yield (12-18KT estimated) while Bikini Atoll had a 15MT yield (that’s 1000x Hiroshima). US Peacekeeper missles carry ten MIRV 0.5MT warheads and bombs dropped from airplanes are 2.1MT. So yeah, we’ve had atomic war, but not nuclear war.

Hard Habit To Break by Chicago is pretty straightforward, but I liked it on the radio as a kid because it’s peppy and has an orchestra.

Decades later I get access to music service libraries and give it a listen.

I was a jerk and you left me, and now you’re with another guy. I’m not sorry. I’m not going to do better. But I have an orchestra!

I still like it, but have perspective now.

Behind the Bastards did a good one two-parter recently on liberal media which helped the rise of the NSDAP party, and how that compares with US politics today. Even Jewish owned newspapers identified more with elites than Jewish commoners, and so were happy to underreport the violence and hate rhetoric of the National Socialist German Workers Party, even when they were literally gunning down communists and labor unionists.

The media agencies do not identify with the common public even today, which is why we still rely on blogs and curators, and have to cross reference news stories to see what the common reported facts are, and if they’re consistent from different primary sources. This process is a necessary artifact from the George W. Bush administration and the international war on terror, which was already a foray by the US into fascist rhetoric and autocracy. From then it’s been Secret Hitlers all the way down.

So this is to say this is totally on brand for the media. And as the election has now shown us (hindsight being 20/20) this is totally on brand for the US public.

It does. I know I tend to underestimate myself, especially when my major depression symptoms kick in hard and I just sleep for months at a time. But sometimes I can help. Sometimes it’s just sweeping floors, or making clever art or being a sympathetic ear to other people who have given up.

We don’t know our futures, and small opportunities to help can still happen.

The very worst sober-gaze-into-the-abyss case is we become another point added to a statistic. Another hate crime victim, another suicide after our benefits were cancelled. Slightly better than that is being the next Mahsa Amini (the victim of the Iranian morality police who sparked the last major civil unrest), or the next George Floyd. But while we will have some of these, we’ll also have survivors who can help to assist other survivors, or to drive the movements toward justice and prevention. These are the beams that make the structures of our moral and political systems that don’t depend on violent enforcement.

In the meantime, make art, make observations, make memes, make conversation. Stay alive for sake of staying alive, because there are a lot of unfilled roles in the progressive social movements we need.

Thank you. I had no idea what he was talking about. Though I should have

A dark age is a low-data age. It’s not dark as in a slow development age. We see the end of the Islamic Golden Age (areound the 14th-15 centuries) as as time when advancement in the Middle East slowed as astronomy and algebra were reinterpreted as sorcery against God (except when done for the religious authority or the caliphate / sultanate). Compare witchcraft and witch burnings in the late middle ages and early reniassance. Anyhow a lot of smart people got executed by the religious authority, and so development slowed, allowing Christian imperial interests from the west to catch up.

This won’t be a dark age even as the US state tries to bury what happens in disinformation campaigns. There’s too much archeological data to be available. Though future civilizations may not prioritize studying what happened while we navigate some great filters like the climate crisis.

It’s going to suck and people will die, and some atrocities will be so heinous as to require memorials and denial movements, but it will be super hard to bury the records.

The US is going to join Russia as a has-been, but it was always a genocidal bully, and deserves to crumble like Rome.

Because of course it did?

This was super-expected.

And match the red on the poster!

This was actually cultivated in the aughts. George W. Bush endorsed multiple secret units of Christian soldiers from the US Army and USMC to serve as Chosen do perform missions for God, which is why Spiritual Readiness was figured into the CSFF readiness assessment.

Spiritual readiness was about being a Christian Evangelical loyalist (that is the white Christian nationalist movement we’re facing today). Commanders were reassigned in the Obama era, and Spiritual Readiness was revised to become more inclusive (they’d still really rather you believe in some higher power), but the units of commandos for God are still around.

I dunno what happened during Trump or since, but since Flynn is still doing Flynn things, I assume they’re standing back and standing by.

I bet he’d have volunteers, and would feel better if he gave it an actual try.

But he appears too homophobic to kiss a pretty boy that loves him.

So inside Mr. O’Neill’s mind, he feels too femmy to be a Linux Catgirl, and while he hoped becoming a Navy SEAL and even shooting Osama Bin Laden for FBI and for the President of the United States would assure him of his manhood, he still feels his inner princess inside him growing like a kudzu and strangling out his masculinity.

And this is why he, again, a fucking Navy SEAL who has performed real operations for the United States, has to pick on civilians for who they voted for, even though defending that right IS HIS FUCKING JOB AND OATH.

O’Neill is an asshole and a bully, and I pity him for his gender dysmorphia, but there is help out there if he wants it.

We do what we must because we can.

Is this a reference to A Feast For Crows?

Outlawed, yes, but that doesn’t preclude their use by nefarious interests.

The alternative to communism is drift towards monarchy.

< James Bond Opening Boilerplate Sting >

Want.

As a necromancer fighting unit, the skeleton is easy to tear apart, so their tactic is to ambush or overwhelm with numbers and hit you with weapons before you can disable them. So they’re best against unarmored opponents.

Archers might be more dangerous if they are strong enough to pull a war bow like a longbow.

Clever necromancers will make bone molds and craft critical bones out of ceramic or bronze or steel in order to make more resiliant units, but these often require different animation spells. Some expeimentation has been done with bone powder and ceramic.