Xerodin

Veterans were also victims of the orphan crushing machine, usually recruited from impoverished areas with the promise of a stable job, health care, and education. They were once broke high school kids from podunk towns with zero opportunities for upward mobility. I think the left in America is missing a huge opportunity to take advantage of the fetishization of veterans. A few charismatic veterans who espouse a leftist platform can lend a lot of pathos for the cause from the view of the average ‘red-blooded American.’

I mention it partially to be a contrarian, but also to not lose sight of the fact that there are people who wake up everyday to leftist ideology, and some of those are going to be American active duty service members and veterans. Mike Prysner has done a lot to help people leave active duty while planting the leftist seeds in their minds with his Eyes Left Podcast, and his work with The Empire Files has been great, too.

It’s anecdotal, but I’ve had a lot of luck myself convincing veterans to go down the pipeline of “Bernie Sanders baby’s first socialist thought” to full-blown commie who reads Lenin and abhors American Empire.

Do they really count as veterans?

In the literal, yes, they served in the military. But it’s more of how they self-identity. Some refute the title of veteran altogether. Others still use the moniker as a means to get in with other veteran’s groups and begin changing minds. Educate, agitate, and organize works on veterans, too. IMHO, I think purity testing someone based on prior military service does the left a disservice.

What about American dissenters and civil rights activists like Andy Stapp?

Holy shit, I haven’t thought about this in years! I remember back in 2008 I had a copy of Stepmania on a flash drive and played it on school computers during class.

I had the exact same thought when I read the premise. One of my favorite indie games of all time.

The second sentence of the Wikipedia article literally says about 2/3 were American citizens.

The section on ‘Exclusion, removal, and detention’ says “[s]omewhere between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were subject to this mass exclusion program, of whom about 80,000 Nisei (second generation) and Sansei (third generation) were U.S. citizens.”

So yes, second and third generation Japanese Americans, natural born citizens, were held in American concentration camps.

British Columbia, a Canadian province.

Why does he look like Tim Allen if he was stung by a dozen bees and huffed some paint thinner?

That fantasy looks like the Western government offering tax cuts and incentives for a private company to set up shop in a rural town, hiring a bunch of employees for as little money as possible, cutting corners in safety and quality to boost their revenue from the investment, and ultimately delivering a shit product by comparison. Then, when the public finds out, the company will “downsize” by laying off most of the employees they hired, stranding those that are laid off in a rural town they can no longer afford to move away from while protecting the company’s profits.

The CEO gets a bonus for record profits, a couple hundred people’s lives are ruined, a small town has to deal with the fallout of high unemployment and the socioeconomic issues that come with that, and the Western government is at a loss of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. Lawmakers get their kickbacks from the company in the form of political donations and lobbying vacation trips.

I’m sorry, my internet friend, but I have little hope for that fantasy without significant change to the system at large.

For single player fantasy, Outward is my favorite game to get immersed in. It has a bit of a steep learning curve, but the survival mechanics and lack of a leveling system really aid in the feeling that you’re getting better at playing the game as your gear gets better. The combat encourages patience and preparation rather than jumping into the fray and swinging wildly. And the magic system, good lord. There are several vague categories, but the best way to describe it would be ‘ritualistic.’ There are spells with fairly benign effects on their own that, when used in conjunction with other spells or effects, produce deviating or beneficial results. And the NG+ mechanics are fair and balanced while offering a boost to follow-on playthroughs.

The most significant barrier to entry is the learning curve, mostly learning about combat, patience, and the stability system. But it’s my personal favorite.

I’ve been listening to a lot of post-hardcore punk lately. To cherry pick a few of my favorites from lesser known bands:

I Met a Yeti - Cherry Blossom

Dwellings - Devices

AnimalJam - Pm Ny Wadi

Coletta - Raspberry Cough

Not without a search warrant.

That was a large part of the charm for me in Tunic. The core mechanic was collecting pages of the instruction booklet as you adventured so you could learn the mechanics of the game. The other part of that being the manual was written in an unknown language* and you’d need to infer what the instructions meant using context clues. It was an absolute blast and hit the dopamine button when I figured out some puzzles.

*Btw, if you know, you know

In political party terms, a liberal is someone who supports the economic system of capitalism but wants to give concessions to the general population (free healthcare, cheap public transportation, etc) to placate the people from changing the system. The idea is if people are making a somewhat decent living then they will be less disgusted with the ludicrous amount of money the actual wealthy make and won’t revolt. Messaging from conservative parties has purposely conflated liberals with leftist (socialism/communism) ideology in order to tie it to the Red Scare and convince lower income people that the idea is meant to take more from working class people.

tl:dr - 2021 Ever Given shipping blockage but worse

It’s much more complicated and impactful than that. Commodities may take multiple trips through the canal in different forms before they become final products, and more sophisticated products that require multiple raw material sources spread across several vessels multiplies this problem. Vertical monopolies have min/maxed costs and revenue such that they’ve determined it’s cheaper to refine one material in country x, pay to ship it to county y for further refinement, then pay to ship it to country z for final assembly before shipping it a fourth time to where it will be sold. Companies that are not vertically integrated simply buy the materials they need to make their product but those materials have already been on a similar journey being sold from one company to the next, the price going up for each stage of refinement.

The alternative route around the southern tip of Africa adds roughly 2 weeks to shipping time. Many companies rely on materials constantly arriving in a timely manner so they can continually produce products to be sold. Adding a 2 week delay to receive a material and a 2 week delay to ship their product immediately puts a company at least a month behind on production.

If a product would require materials that went on multiple trips through the Suez canal then attempting to shift to an alternate route would dramatically increase the time it would take to produce. Simplistically, this causes a supply shortage and results companies losing profit and raising prices across all sectors.

The Houthis are trying to stop the Palestinian genocide by hitting capitalism in the balls. In a nutshell, if large companies start seeing a significant hit to their bottom line then they’ll begin pressuring the lawmakers and world leaders that benefit from those companies to stop the genocide.

Genocide stops -> Houthis stop attacking shipping -> companies get their profit

This doesn’t even touch the quagmire of politics in the region…

Should’ve added the /s at the end, my dude. Sarcasm detectors don’t work on Internet text.

Also, after reading your comment I immediately thought of the gummy block ships from Kingdom Hearts and lol’d at myself.