MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat

It had an archive in the game. It detailed the social structure, military structure, customs, and history of the Clans, which you play as a member of, from an outside perspective. I was only 8, but I read through the whole thing, end-to-end. I put an album of it on Facebook for posterity when I was in high school.

I decided I wanted to be like them when I read it. I have a much better understanding of them now, and I do not agree with everything. The concepts behind some core tenants still stand for me. Individuals are valued within the context of the Clan. One’s value is based on their contribution to society, but society must value them in order to expect their contribution. If a leader acts in their own interest and not that of the Clan, their subordinates are obligated to challenge them. If the conflict stands, they face in a Circle of Equals. Generally, personal disputes are delayed and adjudicated, but there is a Trial of Grievance if the parties can conduct if they cannot delay. In the real world, I translate these to a value in community, a mandate to not tolerate poor leadership, and good practice in letting cooldown time followed by direct dispute resolve conflict.

Of course, there are questionable things. A caste system, though some Clans allow more mobility than others. Eugenics based on combat prowess for the warrior caste. Promotion by combat for the warrior caste. Poor military strategy based on the concept of honor.

I still consider myself a Clanner, to some degree. Sometimes I try to see if others took it as much to heart as I did, but I am afraid of rejection. I do not know if I could pass various Trials. I know I am too old, now, or at the very least, approaching that. Maybe someday, I will find other children of Kerensky.

In addition, the Secretary of Defense may employ any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.

As I understand, this is not a thing the regular Armed Forces can do, correct? I thought that only the National Guard could conduct non-training operations on US soil and/or against US citizens, barring an invasion or secession. Does anyone know more than me about this?

Why?

No one said anything about pulling SEA into a war. No one said anything about Europe forcing SEA like colonizers. Shit has changed in the past few decades.

NATO is a mutual defense pact. He’s just talking about setting up a similar defense pact in SEA and East Asia.

As mentioned, SEA is relevant because those nations have the potential to be China’s Ukraine.

SEA is likely to be open to some kind of mutual defense pact, as China has been testing borders for a long time, especially in the South China Sea. I believe the only reason they haven’t is because of smaller military, trade relations with China, and the unlikely support of East Asia. East Asia looks down on SEA. If Europe engages in more trade, offers military support, and mediates improved relations between SEA and East Asia, I think a mutual defense pact is all but given. That said, the trade and military support are a tall order.

In any case, this is basically reciprocal action. See the comment about dogs shitting in yards.

I may not be well informed, so feel free to cite sources that prove me wrong, but I’m not 100% convinced about the co-ops being equally competitive or that they’ll be just as profit-seeking.

Yes, individuals outside of sociopathic executives are also driven by profit, but they’re also more influenced by other factors. For example, most non-executives might opt for a more ethical solution over a more profitable solution. This may also carry over to efficiency: maybe a co-op could opt for a more efficient, if less profitable, solution in order to keep prices low. There are several incentives for this: long-term growth, social good of making things more affordable, personal pride in being the lowest price, general lack of desire to optimize for a single metric (profit). Now, these are all guesses. I don’t know of any good studies about co-op behaviors in aggregate versus traditional corporations, but this sounds feasible to me.

All that said, it sounds like you’re better read on this than I am, so I’d love to learn if you can throw some sources at me

You’re making assumptions. Fuck no. What’s happening is Gaza is some of the stupidest ape-brain shit we’ve ever done. So chill out, my dude.

But this lust for vengeance is how Israel and Hamas continued escalating shit. Not a rational brain anywhere in that mess. “They hurt people, so I want to hurt them” is moronic. “They hurt people, so how do I stop them” is how we should be thinking.

What is the purpose of punishment? To reform behavior? Or to make you feel better?

You can claim justice, but in this case, that’s just making you feel better. You want to hurt someone because they hurt others. That’s how we’ve had never-ending wars. We as a species need to grow past this

This is short-sighted. It also reeks of “Fuck you, I got mine!” I know that’s not your intention. I just think you haven’t thought super hard about it. I was the same with privacy concerns.

So let me throw some edge cases at you.

You remember the network time protocol vulnerability that was used to power botnets for a little bit? Well, until everyone upgraded their shit, service providers had to just block IP ranges of compromised machines until enough machines in that block stopped DDoS’ing them.

So what happens when some script kiddy pays for time on the botnet, which includes your box, to smash Wizards while you’re trying to look things up? Or what if someone uses your box as a jump box to go attack some giant corporation, and shit gets traced back to you? Or what if someone decides you’re the unlucky one where their whole goal is to dominate your entire home network, and they get your phone when it’s on your home wifi?

Not all AI is equal. Europe does embrace certain types of AI depending on their production and usage. I work at a company pushing our AI throughout Europe, and the reception is generally very positive.

These LLMs are just shit built in shitty ways. Their problem definition is shit, and the marketing of what they can do effectively is bullshit. There are some LLM efforts that are less shitty, but they’re not very popular yet

I’m not convinced of this. One could argue that profit is waste. It’s an overhead of wealth delivered for value provided. If co-ops are less incentives towards profit, e.g. by not having a tradeable stock to manage, then the pursuit of profit is a lesser priority. This means the overhead is less, which could mean lower prices.

To put it bluntly, if you don’t need to pay dividends to shareholders who deliver no value or huge bonuses to executives at the top, maybe the operating costs could be lower. Yes, the cooperative members would take some of that money as profit sharing among the members, but the working class tends to be less sociopathically greedy than those in power.

Definitely open to feedback. This kind of thinking is newer to me

Got it. That makes much more sense. Thank you for the clarification! And very clear explanation

That all makes sense except the class distinctions part. If whole cooperatives share the capital of the organization, how is there a class divide?

Everything you’re saying about competition and private interest makes sense, with my limited understanding. I just don’t get the class point you made. Help me understand?

Sorry for the late reply, but thanks for the definition. I wasn’t aware of the prioritizing other ethnicities bit.

1. Whataboutism.
2. Commenter said Russian state, not Russian people.
3. I know you’ll ignore this, but this will help other readers sniff out your bullshit.

The problem is that they’re too fucking big. Office used to be the shining star of Microsoft, but now, it’s a total piece of shit. My company recently switched from Google to Microsoft, and holy shit, it’s a downgrade.

Outlook is the biggest pile of shit software I’ve encountered in years. It’s eventually consistent but without user feedback, it’s very slow, meeting rooms aren’t consistent about meeting room responses, email filtering rules don’t work reliably… I could go on.

Word sucks, too. Google Docs is way easier to use. In Word, copy and paste doesn’t work as you’d expect, even from Word doc to Word doc, there’s no templating in OneDrive, there aren’t shared folders unless you set up a whole SharePoint site… I could go on here, too.

It’s this stupid, stupid focus on AI tools. AI ain’t making shit better! AI shouldn’t replace humans or things humans work on: it should augment humans. Products still need development on UX. AI should be incorporated into UX without being shoved down our throats. But these dumbass investors who don’t understand tech are jumping on the fucking bandwagon, and execs are towing the line.

Sorry for the rant, but Microsoft is more than just development tools.

Also, they need to get ads out of my fucking operating system. I don’t want my operating system natively communicating with the internet and recommending news stories. Fucking cancer

I honestly don’t know. If the government declared itself void via some action, then maybe? I really have no idea

People tend to exaggerate in their thoughts anyway, so this is reasonable to imagine someone thinking.

Aren’t most states ethnically associated…? Like… the US and Canada are anomalous. European countries are particularly accepting of other ethnicities but still have a core ethnicity. Asian countries are usually pretty homogenous. I imagine African countries are, too. Latin America, I’m not as sure.

Or am I misunderstanding the definition of ethno-state?

A country is not land. A country is a human construct. Usually, a country is situated on land. The Soviet Union is no longer a country, but several other countries now occupy its land.

A country is usually seen as its government. If the government ceases to function, the country effectively no longer exists.

Does that make more sense?

It comes from a selfish mindset. Yes, you’re threatened, but you’re also promised with reward. It becomes a deviously simple equation at that point.

It’s the same as being mugged in a dark alley against a wall. If you believe there’s no escape, do you acquiesce despite not wanting to give money to a robber, or do you try to fight back and get shot?

I mean, in Judeo-Christian tradition, there’s the story of Abraham willingly sacrificing his son to Yahweh until Yahweh stops him last-second. This kind of behavior is explicitly taught: nothing is more important than sky-daddy’s whims.