Those NPCs

For something just silly, for once…

This is unedited. It’s a screenshot of a contiguous list of posts exactly as they appeared on my screen. Under a post by SpaceX.

…What is even the point? Are these bots? Is it some kind of AI test? Is it used to boost visibility by creating a layer of fake engagement? Or maybe it’s just random people who enjoy the copy/paste?

I don’t have an answer. It just looks silly to me, but if it works for you, okay then?

Stupid Sincerity

Not much to comment when what’s written here is so eloquent by itself.

The second is a literal call for war in the name of supremacist ideology (under the usual coat of victimism). Not specifically white supremacy, here, but if you’ve seen the overall context you can deduce the answer on your own.

This stops being political propaganda “for Trump.” This is unhinged. Completely lost contact with reality. At this point this doesn’t need any external intervention, Elon Musk will drive himself into a wall, unassisted. Just need to be patient and observe, I guess.

I said it before, but now it’s plain: Elon Musk is waging war on reality itself.

He’s like a toddler with a giant gun. You can imagine the consequences.

Sources:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1830390502836854925
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1829180803722686904

Edit: by the way, let me add a little layer. Posting this crap is easy as a way to criticize the guy. I don’t write down the complexities that go on behind, but then I realize by doing this I just participate in the same broken game. So, beside pointing an accusing finger to the bad guy, there’s a more interesting part here… Why has he posted that first thing?

There’s always this layer. It’s easy and effective to just point the finger to something so plainly WRONG. And that’s quite enough. But if you care about understanding, rather than judging, then there’s more. At least a little bit more. So WHY has he posted something so obviously unhinged? Something that not even Trump would have endorsed?

You could say that Elon is THAT crazy, just shitposting on his own network without giving a single fuck. That kind of ruthlessness and rash sincerity that people seem to love.

But this is, from my point of view, a little bit more and a little bit less. He currently has a beef with Robert Reich, who wrote an article for The Guardian. Openly body shaming isn’t even that surprising.

He likely didn’t intend to “share” the sexist ideology in that image. His mind simply clamped on the positive response triggered by the mocking of Reich’s masculinity. He felt giddy and playful. His brain “folded” there, around his current primary obsession: to hate the guy and see him humiliated. Enough to completely ignore the WARNING flashing sign, of giving way to such blatant misogynistic ideology. His focus blindsided him from the whole context, enough for him to become the butt of the joke.

Just another simple mind.
(Btw, it’s neuroAtypical, neuro-atypical. A-neurotypical must be some creative invention by someone who’s clearly very neurotypical and lobotomized by that same consensus filter they believe being immune from. You’ve swallowed propaganda whole, high T man with a deep throat. Autistic, you are not. Plain fucking dumb and maybe in serious need of help, yes.)

Edit 2:
… there’s, huh, a darker turn about this first message. I can’t find the original, that message is spammed multiple times within 4chan (and the image is at least a few years old). But there are higher resolution versions of the image, enough to be able to see clearly that part of that tiny subtitle says: “He is worse than a Yew.” I’m unaware of the context of the image. It’s funny in a darker kind of way that a simple image from 4chan triggers this sort of Qanon conspiracy derail, but. In the light of this simple coincidence (?), the line “also known as the REICH effect” seems to assume a different meaning. The words were already quite fascist on their own. Mind, this is the sort of pattern matching that powers the greatest delusions. I definitely don’t believe there was actual intent with this ominous hidden meaning…

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Not anymore my fight.

Good for them.

Adding context because it would be otherwise too cryptic: that message posted on MI discord is just advertisement and therefore out of place. Sodium 6 supporting fabric is irrelevant to MI. Old versions of MI that use fabric rendering are incompatible with Sodium 6, and new versions don’t use fabric rendering at all. It’s essentially spam disguising itself as information through a misleading format (the first two lines seem related, but they aren’t).

WoW in 2024 (avoid)

If you really have to, play FF14. Between WoW and FF14 the first is the better game by a very wide margin. Even at a basic, technical level it is a whole tier above. But where WoW main problem has been a terrible mismanagement that made the game in its worst shape and hamstrung its potential, FF14 is at its best and all its content can be enjoyed fully (with a little effort required to the player to juggle some things counter intuitively, but still largely accessible and possible).

WoW is a game that has lost everything, that is the jumbled mess you expect from an old game, that was delivered to the hands of developers less and less inspired, less daring, and less competent. It’s on a constant, sheer downhill, and it’s simply unplayable even if you tried hard while gaslighting yourself in thinking it’s actually interesting and fun. All content is unbalanced, all systems are contradictory and overlapping. It’s like a tabletop sum of rules after an earthquake. No one ever cared to set them right and organize them orderly, they just kept tossing random shit in. (And as it happens in these cases, it’s enough knowing what’s wrong to easily fix. Fixing WoW would be REALLY easy in practice. Whereas pushing FF14 past its limit would be several magnitutes more complex.)

WoW is a fat, misshapen, rich slob that now can’t even move a step without opening an ulcer. It only wails in despair to please have mercy. FF14 is (was) a lean youth with few talents and nowhere to go, but that really tried hard, never stopping reaching, and only now starting to get a little tired.

The conclusion is that despite the significant potential within WoW, the resulting mess isn’t even comparable to FF14, that, despite its major restraints, still delivers a coherent game in all its parts.

What’s here below is just three separate comments (not me) from a forum, like old times.

But fun it is not.

Enjoy the short term cheap reward coming from easily exploited novelty, and the long term failure. Giants die slowly, but die nonetheless.

EDIT: I’m adding this a month+ after I wrote the above. There’s some actual good design, here and there. As long you accept “World of Warcraft” being solely the content of the last expansion, and everything before just an hard disk tax you have to pay. The small island of content that is the last expansion has some merits to it. We’ll see if it’s enough of a World (of Warcraft) to be sustainable. The playable surface of the game keeps shrinking in order to survive. At some point players will fall right off the edge.

The rising tide of right-wing political power,
a black wave sweeping over the world

Quite curious, referring to what I wrote not long ago.

I just mentioned how there are contextual exceptions to the “rising tide of right-wing political power”, like the UK. And American conservatives (lead by Elon Musk propaganda machine) have launched one of the strongest attacks on UK politics.

The point is that it has nothing to do with American politics, the explicit intention is world wide power and control, the fascist regime in our future.

I still believe what I wrote there. You can’t stop this mounting wave with bare hands. I believe these timid attempts at resisting this fascist destruction will be unsuccessful, because that fascist destruction is embedded in our evolution as human beings.

On the merits of online censorship I don’t like what’s happening. Either way. It’s not possible to trust the controllers, the only solution is better rules. Of course all the politics and propaganda do is worrying about WHO seizes power, not how to regulate and use that power. It’s the exact same problem of the “war on truth” that Elon Musk is waging: what’s important is not the “ontology” of the world (WHAT is true, WHAT is false), but the “epistemology” of humanity (HOW we collectively decide what is true and what is false, the process we use to arrive at truth).

This is a war we have already collectively lost, and the price we’ll pay.

It’s something quite useful even in practice. Stop worrying about what is true, stop trying hard to convince others about what you BELIEVE. If you meet some deep conspiracy theorist, even flat earthers. Don’t focus your attention on WHAT they believe, but WHY they believe so. What is that lead them to those certainties. Because they are also just slaves to ideas that pin them immobile.

Until we continue to think about WHO seizes power, we continue only to prepare the way for those fascists. And what will happen when THEY have that control and that power.

Rules cannot be “reversible”, where a group simply seizes control and turns those rules as a weapon against the other party. Rules need to be impersonal and strict. As it happens with truth, once we agree on the process on how we seek it, then we do not need worry about what is true. Because if the process is valid then the destination is always the same. It can be trusted to be always correct. To be better.

COVID has taught its lesson, we simply ignored it. You can say “vaccines are safe”, or “vaccines are dangerous”, or even deadly. Whatever. The problem here, again, is not WHAT is true. The problem is that these statements are REVERSIBLE. Do you understand? A group will say vaccines are safe, the other group will say “they” are trying to kill us. These “truths” are reversible.

In the current American conservatives rhetoric, they are waging a war against the ESTABLISHMENT. Against a mirror fascist kingdom of bankers, Disney, Google, Democrats, the media, Hollywood, WEF, Soros, Bill Gates and so on. Trump is fighting against the establishment. Biden has been a puppet on strings, under the control of greater hidden powers. They are always victims fighting for freedom. THEY ARE THE RESISTANCE.

Why?

WHY?

Because “the resistance” is fucking REVERSIBLE.

“Good vs Evil” is a reversible concept, therefore completely useless. It can never be a valid motive. If we want TRUTH, we need RULES, not reversible abstractions.

The now very popular “racism about white people” is the result of yet another reversible concept. Same as the Elon-mispelled #TwoTeirKeir: why aren’t white people being protected? Why protect only the muslims? Reversibility is probably the most used tool in right-wing rhetoric right now.

I don’t want to be that guy, but reality and truth AREN’T FUCKING REVERSIBLE. They just are. Immune to wishes and desires.

That’s why to reply that message I tried the only valid way: why don’t you go asking Alan Moore what he thinks about his work being used for that propaganda? Because I know Alan Moore, and his actual politics, fairly enough to deduce with a reasonable amount of certainty he doesn’t agree with that message… “Death of the author” notwithstanding, that’s quite evidently a perverse manipulation of those works. Because on the surface, to someone who never actually read V for Vendetta, those concepts are reversible.

If your whole argument about COVID and vaccines is about an appeal to authority, then you’ve FAILED. Because the authority CAN’T BE TRUSTED. Appeal to authority is a fallacy and, to stay in theme, it is NOT a valid process to seek truth. The truth around COVID was easily reversible, and that’s what happened. It was seized and reversed. The appeal to authority is an heuristics, and it is valid and practical within that specific context. A very limited application that you can use when you are aware of what it actually is.

That’s why it failed, because the PROCESS of seeking truth during the times of COVID was deeply WRONG. And what you’ve done there? You paved the way for that disinformation, spreading like wildfire, paved the way for those actual fascists that now know how to use those strategies. When they’ll wage wars against YOU, rather than a virus. Against your culture, your race, your sexuality. You have given them the weapons they will use against you.

If you want to regulate freedom of speech, because, obviously, defamation and hate speech aren’t part of freedom of speech (technically there are issues of recursion and self reference, if you want to study the problem formally), then the important point is that those rules cannot be reversible.

You need to make rules thinking ahead, understanding how those rules will be used when you aren’t anymore in control. You need to defuse that bomb so that it can never be used.

Meanwhile, I continue to read Elon Musk as an insight on how corrupt a mind can be. I don’t have an obsession, or hate the man. I hate the symbol he fashioned himself into. I hate those wild attempts at seizing control of the “truth.”

The Reality of the Simple Minded

Here we are again, I swear this is the last.

Using Elon to prop up the argument, but he isn’t the target in this case.

Of course he’s using this as yet another political leverage. This time it’s slightly less questionable since it’s a topic worth of discussion. But as it happens with everything worth discussing, then the quality of the discussion matters.

This is about the case of Imane Khelif at the Olympics. Elon obviously “opposes this”, as most Republicans, the important part is to define what is exactly that is being opposed and why.

Here’s the argument is “men don’t belong in women’s sport.” That’s the slogan, let’s see what’s behind it. This image obviously depicts a woman. She’s not Imane, she’s instead the italian athlete who lost to her and rose the whole controversy. So, just to put things in a simpler way, the thesis is that Imane Khelif is a “man”, therefore she should be disqualified. We are at the level of pure analysis here, no opinions involved.

…Well. I agree? This is wrong. There must be something wrong, obviously, since that headline is quite absurd “Male boxer declared winner in women’s boxing match.”

In this case Elon is just grooming as always and only expressing disconcert, so he isn’t actually openly lying about some fact.

A quick trip in the comments of course lets you take a nice sniff of the cesspit:


And so on across all comments.

Dudes… She ISN’T trans. He isn’t trans, whatever. This simply isn’t a person who’s born in a way and transitioned A to B. It’s just plain false and it takes 10 seconds to verify. I don’t call Elon Musk out here because he didn’t directly make the false claim.

She’s just not trans, it’s not an opinion.

So what’s the matter? This is a born woman who produces high testosterone levels. Naturally. Do you want to make rules against this? Okay, but that’s what the discussion is about then. Do you want to “tweak” the definition of what a “woman” is? Okay, it’s just a word. But in the case of transgender issues it’s quite obvious that right-wing parties are adamant about what one is born with. Are you born with a dick? You’re a man. Are you born with a vagina? You’re a woman. This is what most Republicans would agree with. Ok?

This athlete who you are now criticizing, is born with a vagina.

So, if you now want to turn around the story into “this is a man”, then you at least need to provide a different definition of what a man is. Because apparently being born with a vagina isn’t sufficient anymore to be considered a woman.

Again, the problem with these idiots isn’t that they have different opinions, but that they are so stupid that they will eventually contradict themselves. The reality of the world will always smash against their ugly faces: you just need to be patient and wait. It’s never about two parties fighting, it’s not about opinions. It’s just about fighting reality because you are a dumb, arrogant idiot.

Do you want to change rules in sport? Okay, these rules need to be at least rational, so that it’s possible to apply them in practice. If your definition of what man and woman are is ambiguous and contradictory, then you aren’t going anywhere. Kamala notwithstanding.

So do you want to change rules? Ok, how?

Should have Michael Phelps been disqualified because his body was conformed in a way that gave him physical advantage? Should NBA players be disqualified when they go past a certain height, so to keep a more even field for everyone else?

Sports, in general, is the domain of the exceptional. We celebrate world records, not better averages. We celebrate exceptions, natural talents honed through hard work. We remember winners, not losers.

So, in a realm where exception and exceptionalism are celebrated, how do you define a “norm”? You can of course, it’s an open debate. There’s also the fact that these events exist to make money, so you want to enhance that exceptionalism.

I propose that we measure the testosterone of ALL women athletes, then configure a point system so that the performance is then multiplied by a factor set by those testosterone levels. It’s an actual proposal. It would probably create a more even playing field. But is it reasonable? Of course not. If you turn sport into accurate science you end up essentially with a mathematical equation. Even in the case this would be possible, it doesn’t make for interesting, fun spectacle to watch.

So what do you want, exactly?

That person is not trans. Definitely not a “man” either, unless gender is now solely determined by hormone levels. Hello, medication then allows you to switch genders, is this what you want? It’s an actually complex matter, can’t be solved with a convenient slogan.

I’ll just be here, observing. Laughing again when reality eventually comes and smashes all the teeth off your face.

Welcome to reality, loser.

Always funny when it becomes an infight. Enjoy your racism.

EDIT: There’s some actual complexity coming out of this. To be correct I’ll report everything known up to this point.

The discussion is moving from the false accusation of being transgender, to having XY chromosome. Yet another yardstick, I guess. But does this have some basis?

Yes and no. The fact that it is all unconfirmed and currently impossible to prove one way or the other. I’ll post the relevant excerpts:

Who’s Umar Kremlev? …Wellll

Another nice guy, although this isn’t a “proof”, especially if you share certain views. The actual public facts are these:

That was the russian-2023 case, the current one, though, is still somewhat ambiguous:

Whatever you opinion is, the facts here indicate that “having YX” chromosomes is an accusation that hasn’t been proven at this time. One way or another. It’s still up to debate if this can be yet another rule to use to determine whether someone can participate or not. As I said, it’s a legitimate debate, and a legitimate choice.

Summary: she is not transgender. She naturally producer higher testosterone levels. It’s currently unknown whether or not she has XY chromosomes due to the confidential nature of the tests.

EDIT 2: I started saying this wasn’t targeting Elon Musk specifically, since he didn’t directly share explicitly false claims… But wait long enough and he ends up openly endorsing even the blatant fake news part:

Zero integrity, if there ever was a doubt.

The Woke Mind Virus

I guess Elon Musk’s brainrot has now gone too far, beyond any hope of recovery.

Is defamation part of free speech, now?

We can start from something breezy, as he says:

Who could disagree with “what is FAIR and RIGHT”?

I guess it is fair and right to despise diversity you don’t like. And note that “blasphemous” is there for a reason. There’s a religious undercurrent to all of this. Isn’t it wonderful?

While feverishly shitposting, Elon Musk got to this. The Olympics are now a target of right-wing zealots, this is in the news. What I don’t expect to be in the news is the actual defamation:

Continuing right below:

Note again the undercurrent: “occult opening ceremony” in the first post, and “demonic” in the second. Why? Because of the rabbit hole of conspiracies that Elon Musk intends to groom.

If you check the timestamps of these posts you’ll see that they weren’t written during the ceremony, they only started to appear afterwards, after the machine of propaganda was set in motion. Elon Musk got the cues and jumped on board for the ride.

At this point one usually gives the benefit of the doubt. Some people might have seen those images and thought it was actually a dude with his balls out in front of kids, right? RIGHT?

Yet the video, if you go look it up, is so blurry that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t purposefully done so to create the illusion for something that could be otherwise debunked in two seconds. The other static images that are used as “proof” are even harder to take seriously, because you really do need to have a deranged mind to think the dude has “his junk out”, rather than a tear in his stockings.

But my point here is different. I jumped to conclusions without even opening the video, and without even looking the other images. For me, Occam’s Razor here was simply enough to reach a reasonable conclusion WITHOUT any other evidence, until proven otherwise. Just think about it. Do you think it PLAUSIBLE that an official performer at the Olympics took his dick out in front of some kids, and to be broadcasted across the whole world during the opening ceremony? Just like that?

And do you think any of these idiots retweeting this shit in outrage, a day after it happened, cared to verify? Verify for what? It was already evident, no need to spend 5 minutes to actually find a different angle that would easily debunk the whole thing. Do we REALLY need further proof to realize that this dude INDEED did not take out his dick in front of everyone?

But isn’t it funny? Aren’t you LAUGHING? Isn’t it all a meme, defamation and everything included?

Do we hand wave it away like another funny meme?


















Of course this is actually illegal as it is serious defamation. But do you think anything will come out of this?

Obviously not. If you scroll back up, you’ll notice that Elon Musk wrote his message ending with a question mark. He often uses this strategy of leading questions so that the public he grooms will complete it, while leaving the door open to claim innocence for himself.

He just asked a question. It’s just the internet. It’s all a funny meme. Haha, have you no sense of humor?

Do you think anyone rectified the misinformation that was broadcasted all over the place? Do you think anyone apologized? Do you think it would even matter?

Mission accomplished. Reinforcing biases is always the goal of propaganda.

Have you seen season 4 of The Boys? Well, if you haven’t then you aren’t missing anything worthwhile. If you did, then you probably remember that little bit in episode 2 about “Truthcon.” What’s incredible for me isn’t that what we see in fiction is now an accurate description rather than an exaggeration. But that we have embraced it all. This is our world and we simply embraced it all without any reaction. We’ve all been brainwashed to accept the worst, and just answer with a fatalistic shrug.

It’s alright. There’s nothing to worry about.

Sources, if they continue to exist:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1817273263761817710
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1817159524505067860
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1816967522622587246
https://x.com/OCanonist/status/1816985039890157925
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1817250700780335139
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1817251824744751296
https://x.com/EvaFoxU/status/1817251337081434538
https://x.com/EvanAKilgore/status/1817200244104253708

Predictably, they are still grooming on one side, and turning it into an HILARIOUS meme on the other: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1817299858962698379

Meanwhile, the grooming and mocking continues.

Meanwhile (2), he’s reposting this.

Quite the headline to make the intended impression, right? Maybe that timestamp in the article should give an hint, but of course most people see that and think it’s something new.

If you look up the actual article (at least it’s true), you realize it’s about the case of Helmut Kentler, who died 16 years ago, and referring to a fact “in the late 1960s.”

But let’s have some convenient outrage now.

Meanwhile (3), Elon Musk posted a deepfake “ad” of Kamala Harris. Without specifying it was indeed deepfake and parody. A look at the comments indicates lots of idiots fell for it, and obviously Elon Musk uses this conscientiously… Meaning that he knows and exploits these effects, like the opportunist he is.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1816974609637417112

Notice that “parody” isn’t shown anywhere. If you retweet this, the part at the bottom where it says “from Mr Reagan” also disappears.

When defending from this, Elon Musk didn’t link his own original message, but the original that was clearly marked as PARODY:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1817775398047937009

That Elon Musk is an hypocrite and an opportunist shouldn’t shock anyone:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1589390597798125568

When he was the target, he quickly reacted, of course. Do you think he’ll now permanently suspend himself?

It’s obvious here that it’s not the nature of that original post, the problem. Absolutely not. The problem is solely the absence of the flag as parody. As he himself said. Note that in his original post he didn’t simply retweet the post, otherwise he would have preserved the message stating it was parody. What he did, instead, was to EMBED the video, so that the original message would be completely hidden. The intent is obvious. The first message with “parody” hidden away, has 129 million views, the one correctly flagged as parody instead only 12.3 million views.

Has he apologized for removing the flag? Of course not.

On the other hand, lets be clear. Gavin Newsom post is also all wrong. “Manipulating a voice in an “ad” like this one should be illegal.” No, you idiot. It only needs to be clearly marked as parody. Deliberate propaganda that is EASILY proven false should be illegal. Like the stuff I described here above. Stop wasting time on the useless while what matters is given a free pass.

The image itself is completely idiotic either:
“The origin of the video isn’t known yet.”

What?! It’s a repost from a different message. There’s a link right below. The origin doesn’t fucking matter, these things are everywhere. It’s the DELIBERATE USE of disinformation the problem. And here it’s all about Elon Musk HIDING the message indicating it was parody, not the existence of the video. That’s all.

Meanwhile (4), and I’m going to stop here because it gets boring, more actual defamation:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1817946408126665049

But what gets my attention here is how Elon would expect to solve this. The latest outrage is all about California and schools hiding stuff about kids from their parents. As if this is a government taking kids away from the rightful authority of their families.

So lets assume here what Elon says, and that Megan Fox is abusing her children. So who’s going to prevent this crime? If the state can’t do anything because parents of these kids have the utmost priority, and Megan Fox is the legitimate parent of these kids, what is this “child abuse” based on? Who decides?

That’s the funny thing about Elon. He’s such an opportunist that you can just wait long enough (usually days, if not hours), that he ends up contradicting himself:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1813786437172748575

I guess Elon Musk has more authority over someone else’s kids, enough to defame Megan Fox calling her child abuser?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1813941222463217866

…So who’s in charge in the case of child abuse, if not the state? What happens when parents abuse their kids but the state can’t intervene to break the parent-child relationship?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1814049253502632185

So who are you to have a say on Megan Fox kids, huh?

The best the “left” can do for humanity, is to go extinct

I guess I have to start by saying that I’ve been a “leftist” all my life, and while I completely abandoned the position as an ideology, and only judge things in practice, my views haven’t changed at all. And they haven’t changed now. So that title there looks like a contradiction, yes, so I’ll explain why here.

I’m tired as an observer about this endless fight and division into two factions. I only see humanity, and it’s about time that we face the consequences of our choices. I usually see things from a much higher level, for me politics are just one layer of human culture and evolution, of a species as a whole. But lets leave all this part about grander statements and lets focus on the more practical. I think it’s obvious that, world-wide (and post-Covid) there has been a rising tide of right-wing political power. There are obviously exceptions (like the UK, but due to effects of post-Brexit), but I see these as local events that don’t have lasting effects on the greater tide. I see this kind of change as inevitable. And, to be honest, I also see a pattern being followed very similar to the rise of fascism in Europe.

It doesn’t matter if its true fascism, if it’s close, or if it’s just a rhetorical argument to demonize what’s happening, what matters is an undeniable, progressive cultural hegemony of the right, that has probably started its rise before Covid, but was greatly accelerated by it. As I said other times, Covid didn’t change anything, it wasn’t a turning point. It only accelerated patterns (in the economy, culture, and everything else) that were already being enacted. We see things happening sooner, but not different things happening.

For all these reasons, this isn’t a “war”. This isn’t a fight. This isn’t a struggle between left and right, or good versus evil. We are all together in this, we are all part of the same wave. No matter the internal struggles and little battles, the overall tide is unchanged. It can be delayed, but it can’t be averted. And at the point we’re at, I’m not even sure a delay helps anything.

I do believe, after what I’ve observed through the years, that what we consider the “left”, worldwide, is either an hollow hunk, or a sock-puppet moved by the right for its own agenda. A convenient, animated straw man. All the left does in practice these days is either aping the right, or provide alibi. All the Republican strength and rhetoric exists because they have an enemy. All the propaganda, fake news and all that shit is effective because there’s a left that provides a target. The function of the left is to either delay the inevitable, or just add confusion. It’s like riding a bike with training wheels: it’s time to either go or crash. Can’t keep dragging forever and getting sunk in the “lesser bad”.

I am a pessimist, so I don’t believe there’s an happy way out. But I’m also a realist, and I’m perfectly conscious that I don’t have all the pieces, and I don’t know the outcome. When it comes to real threats like climate change, what the scientists don’t tell you is that we are already way, way, WAY too late. Sure, it’s not all the same, and a minuscule shift in the trajectory can save some millions of lives. But what Covid should have taught you, is that those who die are left behind and quickly forgotten. The world is made by who survives. Those lives lost cease to be perceived. What we are deep down: sugar-coating machines that constantly remove trauma from perception. We live in denial within self-serving artificial worlds.

This process we belong to as humanity can’t be faced as a struggle between two parties. It’s just one whole. And it’s about time that humanity, as a whole, faces the outcome. And takes responsibility.

The only way out of it, whether extinction or improvement, happens still from within. Those Republican idiots drunk on propaganda need to wake up. It’s not about control, it’s not about the supremacy of a group over another. They need to have the power to make their choices, so that the stage is clear of all the smoke. Once they stop having an enemy to blame their frustrations on they will see the reality of what’s around and what they’ve brought upon themselves. They need to crash into reality. And reality is blind and deaf to propaganda and rhetoric.

(though, of course, Republicans being as dumb as they are, would rather pray than fix anything, and in the end blame god as the cause of their woes)

Accelerate, go against the wall at full speed.

We all need to crash into reality, and hope to survive the process.

Yes. Let them win.

Get It Right

I’ve been watching little bits and pieces of Soaryn’s Forgecraft (this will be gone in 2 months, fyi) and it was funny to see him retracing the same steps of ChosenArchitect.

Soaryn is testing Neoforge on 20.4, so dealing with MI, whereas ChosenArchitect is on 20.1, dealing with GTCEu Modern.

Exhibiting the same issues and ultimate aversion to this flavor of tech…

Both start steam age with full AE2 systems. They start at the end, so to speak.

The interesting part here is that they expose an inherent flaw in GT design. Soaryn was adamant NOT HAVING a compressor for the plates. Why? Because he’d rather order tons of hammers and then craft as many plates he needs at once. This type of behavior cascades on everything else. Why have all these machines all sort of nested recipes, with big motors containing smaller motors, containing other components, in a neverending microcrafting spiral?

This problem is made worse in modern iterations of GT. Originally, and still in GT6, the mod is designed around the concept of scarcity. It takes effort to go mine ores with a pickaxe, so you care about ways to squeeze out more from the same amount of material. But in modern contexts with resource generation, large veins and 3×3 fast hammers, the problem of scarcity is gone. And not only is gone, but the math is all wrong. You will speedrun through the early game much faster by SKIPPING the intended way while consuming materials inefficiently. Because you don’t care about lowering the costs, you care about crafting speed. Production speed.

The good old problem: machines have crafting times, the crafting table does not. You can always produce faster by using a crafting table than the “competing” machine.

What is the point of AUTOMATION when doing work manually is more efficient?

That’s why I’ve been observing, and making my own design experiments aimed to fix certain problems. In the context of infinite resource generation, making a mod progression turn around improved processes that utilize materials more efficiently is a pointless mechanic. Because there’s no difference if a plate costs one or two ingots: they are infinite. To fix this, my intention was to start progressively removing recipes from the crafting table. Remove the convenient option to better guide toward the intended path.

The “on boarding” has always been the real problem of GT with new players. The wall that you immediately meet, with the number of resources and micro crafting ramping up immediately. The first LV circuit being a hurdle because of the number of small components that go into it. But my own goal here is not to reduce the scope, but to shift it around. You get told to do STACKS of circuits, and if you spend time CALCULATING the costs all the way up the processing chain, you end up with big numbers that feel daunting.

Taking recipes away from the crafting table means setting up machines that do the job. And once you have those machines, you can also go the minor length to connect them for proper automation. At the end of this you have a processing chain that delivers circuits to you. One or a thousand.

Repetition is what is necessary for automation to exist. But if the manual path is more time efficient, then you’ve defeated the purpose. The “meta” of the game has broken the intended design, and the result is not improved. You are just giving players the wrong expectations, and deserve their complaints when they say GT is not fun to play.

As a general rule: everything that’s constantly on demand can be as convoluted as you like. It’s all automation. Whereas everything that has single uses, or occasionally required, should have be craftable in one step, or as close as possible to that. (and btw, rules are then made to be broken, you just need to be aware why they exist so that when you break them you know what you’re doing)

People sometime make fun of the fact that in my modpack I “merge” large parts from previous GT versions, but I always saw what I was doing as a kind of GT Greatest Hits Remix. (Originally I intended to go from GT2 onward, and then out, including Vintage Story, or Pyanodon and AngelBobs). I’m experimenting and moving around the wider context of how the different parts connect and work together. Using Create or even Farmer’s Delight cutting board because it forces a player to process items one by one manually. No batch crafting. Leading to a more natural adoption of machines. Using machines becomes MORE efficient, not worse. And once you jumpstart this process, everything that is part of production will happen in its own processing branch, and never on the crafting table. You either automate, or stop to play.

But just as a music remix is made of samples of other songs, the same applies to what I’ve done. Take it and remix it yourself any way you want. Change one thing or many. Take inspiration or copy. Do whatever you feel like doing.

My modpack was never meant to be an end. It was meant to be a platform. Whether or not it is used that way, that’s what it was intended to be.