Lu Xun

Reading list: Chandler's The High Window Oscar Wilde's Intentions (essay collection) Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller Fiston Mwanza Mujila Tram 87 Secret Records of the Sino-Vietnamese War Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Also, FYI, I'm on GOONS' shitlist and it's only for political reasons that your alliance isn't stomping me now. === In other news, Charlie has a phenomenal socialist reading possible. The protagonist is from the poorest segment of the working class, the foils tend to be parodies of rich and middle class children, and Willy Wonka is, besides probably being a pedophile, a mad industrialist working off slave labor imported from overseas. It's incredible how f-ed up the books you read as a kid become when you're an adult.

Clarification: were such peace terms ever sent to Syndisphere?

@Sphinx I'd correct you concerning the claim that Communism (excepting in the Ukraine) is taboo as Nazism is in Germany. Kazakhs, for instance, voted to keep the Soviet Union, and "Ostalgie" is a cultural phenomenon in East Germany. Sweeping notions of cultural norms are difficult in democratic countries as "dissidents" are usually kept around and entertained as an "opposition", instead of locked-up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie As to the general problem with socialism and similar notions, I'd pinpoint it as labor discipline. In a capitalist system, the threat of poverty and income inequality imposes harsh labor discipline on the workforce; if you don't work, you don't eat (excepting if you come from certain groups with inherited wealth). In socialist systems with strong safety nets, the incentive is much weaker. On the other hand, the crucial problem with capitalism is that citizens / laborers suffer from "the tragedy of the commons". One example could be Indian industrialization, which in the previous decade, has suffered from an under-educated and malnourished workforce. An Indian peasant, moved to the factories, might not be able to read the instructions on operating factory machinery, resulting in injuries, damage to capital goods, and poor-quality production. More tangential to the developed world would be the case of the United States. Primary and secondary education in America is generally seen as a mess, despite the United States having some of the best universities on the planet. To compensate, skilled immigrant labor is brought in from Europe and Asia, with the outcome being a brain-drain of talented labor in their home countries as well as the perpetuation of American competitiveness despite lax treatment of the proletariat due to, in Marxist terms, the "reserve army of labor". Healthcare is another American example where, due to the costs of medical treatment, people avoid preventative care, resulting in increased mortality and reduced productivity due to sick days and significant medical treatment.

Are you going to buy an upvote / downvote bomb or what? Or would you like a free sample?

Commienazi ****. Incidentally, given the time period and content of the propaganda, it's a Godwin.

Got someone you hate? Want her/him to be downvoted into oblivion? Not going to be able to get the KERCHTOG hate machine to do your bidding? Call me. The basic rate, FYI, is 1 upvote / downvote for $100,000. This is a very accessible price.

As you well know, I think the worst of the forum's Karma system. I think it's overly politicized, and it's a sad replacement for actual discourse. Given the recent KERCHTOG outrage at my statements, I've considered instead the possibility of buying my way to like 8000 upvotes as a sort of FU, but I'd think that's sort of a drastic step. Instead, I am offering to sell my upvotes and downvotes. The beginning price is 1 billion for 10000 upvotes / downvotes, and of course I will exercise personal discretion on who is allowed to receive upvotes / downvotes. I believe this will help debase the quality of the upvote / downvote system as an indicator of poster quality, and help move Orbis forward to better forums and better communications. I am well aware that this post and my other posts will be chain-downvoted as a result of this, but seriously, it's Inst. Why should he care? In general, I would also like to point out that this is now an exchange for vote buying on these forums. If you'd like to buy / sell upvotes / downvotes, including those on me, all are welcome!

I've been hearing about a lot of new projects in the pipeline, and one issue with them is that most of these are late-game projects and potentially quite gamebreaking. A player who amasses a large number of projects, no matter what happens to infrastructure and improvements, can continue to maintain significant advantages over other players. National Projects being destroyable in similar ways that improvements are could help deal with this. This wouldn't apply to say, nuclear weapons or missiles, which can quite trivially remove improvements, but to ground attacks and naval attacks at a significantly reduced rate compared to improvements (say, 1-10% of improvement destruction rate). In a long-term war, one thing we could see is that nations end up losing expensive projects like Space Program and so on, helping to increase damage in long wars. And National Project destruction could similarly be a function of the number of National Projects; i.e, the more Projects you have, the more vulnerable you become to Project destruction. One way to think about it is that players have continually asked for the ability to nuke cities away, which would be absolutely devastating to upper tier nations and to an extent gamebreaking. Projects, to an extent, are a surrogate for cities as they're bound by the same city / project timer. But projects, on the other hand, aren't cities, and when you destroy a project you're not necessarily wrecking a 10 billion city, as you might if cities were destroyable.

Kadin, they weren't losing, and are possibly still not losing. During Knightfall, KT bulked up a lot of resources after the initial overgrown raids were over. The same was happening here, with T$ making 60-120bn after having dropped the war from NPO's side. So T$ got hit. There is still Farksphere, which techincally doesn't exist anymore. Fark remains allied to The Immortals, but they've lost the rest of the Farksphere, which downgraded to an ODoaP. Farksphere continues to grow in strength, but whether they'll honor the NAP (downgraded to ODoAP) is another question, and the other way alliances can escape the Farksphere NAP is to just break straight out of Farksphere. From what I've been hearing from there, there's a reasonable amount of antipathy for BKNPO. === Since Knightfall, when it became obvious that alliances could sustain wars for inordinately long periods of time, the war meta has changed. Wars are no longer decided by the blitz, but on the defender's ability to sustain combat. If they wait for long enough (as with NR-Pantheon), they might get rescued, #1, and #2, even if they ultimately surrender, they manage to destroy the opponent's economic capability in the interim, allowing "neutral" third parties to boost.

#1, they didn't surrender (yet), and this is worded as gobbledegook in order to avoid saying "we surrender". It simply implies that KERCHTOG accepts the surrender term required by Coalition B. #2, the winning side gains advantages by dragging this war on. Likewise, neutral alliances gain advantages as they profit from increased resource prices (expensive tanks, expensive planes). I think the only people demanding a swift end to this war are people in the losing side, as well as fatigued / tired participants in the winning side.

Sorry, I forgot to tape it, but I'm up to 800 million in lost Keno dollars right now! So no, it's already been done.

What a ridiculous non sequitur and strawman argument. Thread derailment anyone?

You have to understand what KERCHTOG is. BKNPO's high-tax system was obviously superior to theirs, and while BKNPO's response rates were never comparable to KETOG's, BKNPO had a better understanding of the war system in the game. That's to say, KERCHTOG lives in and lives off a lie. The underlying belief behind being a KERCHTOG member is that KERCHTOG is superior, and that BKNPO etc are weak alliances that deserve to die (because, despite being weak, if they're left alone they'll end up establishing a hegemony). If that belief is abandoned, however, KERCHTOG is reduced to the status of Pantheon. You have 40-60% inactive rates in core KERCHTOG alliances, and while most of these players will come back for rebuilding when the war ends, if they stop believing in what's effectively a divine mandate, these players won't come back. ==== That said, it's reasonable to assume that KERCHTOG was just stalling for time. There are a variety of factors that are unfavorable to Coalition B (i.e, lack of ideological control of Farksphere, diminishing blocs, as well as the continued economic growth of alliances outside the war, and the formation of the Astra bloc that's a dual TCW / Rose protectorate). The only real cost to KERCHTOG would be its member count, and KERCHTOG has been holding up relatively well there.

Pre-Knightfall / Knightfall (2017-2019) -The global crypto-hegemony gets fed up of beating up on IQ all the time, and decides that a new political direction is needed. -BK attacks Rosesphere, roughly losing the war, but getting a NAP of 6 months signed. -TKR begins attacking the former members of the crypto-hegemony, and Syndisphere believes it's next. -TKR is believed to be attempting an upper tier consolidation. -TKR and NPO begin to make up and improve relations. -TKR gets preempted by Syndisphere, and to their surprise, despite warming relations with the IQ bloc, IQ attacks TKR. -IQ's plane strat causes damage to be disproportionately taken by Syndisphere, at least early on in the war, as IQ planestratting prevents Radiosphere from hitting IQ. IQ counters that Syndisphere's attack strategy is not suited for updeclare work, and as Syndisphere changes to planestratting, damages reduce. -Talks begin about hitting IQ next war. -After what was then the longest war in PnW history, Radiosphere surrenders. Post-Knightfall (February 2019-May 2019) -Radiosphere disbands, with Guardian and GoG going to KTsphere, forming KETOG, and TCW somehow becoming a BK affiliate. -Chaos forms, and IQ sees it as an attempt to hit them. -Prefontaine calls out Roquentin for apparently violating pre-war agreements that IQ would break up and that NPO would abandon BK for Syndicate. -NPO moves into Syndisphere instead, or what's left of it. Surf's Up (Late May 2019 - Mid June 2019) -Nova Riata launches its grudge match vs Pantheon, and against a husk of an alliance, it quickly defeats Pantheon, absorbing both its allies (The Federation) and many of its members. -A day of high-tensions ensues as four major blocs go to high militarization (what was then T$-NPO might be excluded). -This ends with KETOG hitting Chaos, to many people's surprise. -Work by Akuryo, Sphinx, and Dio (currently Rose-sphere, TCW leader, and NPO FA) discovers that Nova Riata has been manipulating the markets for at least a month with a timing-attack exploit generating around 217 billion, at then-current prices, of resources. This becomes a major scandal and eventually BK uses this as an excuse to hit roll Nova Riata, ending in NR's disbandment. -While Chaos, to that point, was doing a good job holding KETOG, with the line of control being roughly 3,000 score, after NR falls, Chaos begins to weaken as resistance becomes less coordinated and effective. -A leak implicating Sphinx in an attempt for T$-NPO and BKsphere to hit KT-sphere and Chaos respectively is disclosed. -The Surf's Up war between KETOG and Chaos falters out, and within a week KETOG and Chaos launch a preempt on BKsphere, citing the leak as a CB. Dial-Up War (Mid June 2019-Present Day) BKsphere phase (June 16-Late June) -BKsphere is out-tiered by the now KERCHTOG (including Arrgh and Rose) coalition and quickly crumbles. BK itself is quickly wiped out by an initial probing attack by KT, and counters are followed up on by Rose and Chaos. -BKsphere begins calling in its treaty web one-by-one to honor their treaties and join the grinder. The two points of surprise are that BKsphere, despite being made up largely of new alliances of questionable military reputation, actually moves in to defend BKsphere. A second point of surprise is that the alliances move in one by one, with the full deployment of BK's allies taking over a week. In contrast to Chaos moving in its protectorates over roughly 48 hours, the delayed and staggered response compromises BKsphere's military effectiveness. T$ phase (Late June) -T$ and NPO, as part of a secret agreement with BKsphere, begins to hit KETOG, limiting the war to only KETOG. But the level of intervention is generally ineffective, and at least at the earliest stages, Syndisphere takes significant damage. NPO functions as reserve and limits its deployment. -BKsphere's plane counts continue to drop, signifying its lack of control and that it is losing its war. KERCHTOG elements claim that Syndisphere is reining NPO back from intervention, as the Syndicate has traditionally been in opposition to BK. -NPO's ally, Horseman, enters the war and quickly leaves as it's unused to a losing war. It joins Farksphere instead afterwards. -NPO, without warning, engages Chaos, quickly losing its planes in a massive attritional gamble. This breaks T$'s promise that neither it, nor its affiliates, would extend the war. A shitstorm ensues on the forum as NPO and T$ leadership break out in very public fighting, with t$ accusing NPO of humiliating its ally and NPO, in the back room, accusing t$ of wishing to feed it to KERCHTOG, as NPO was part of the original target list. -T$ and its core affiliates exit the war, indicating their disgust at NPO. NPO phase (July-September) -Surprisingly, the now Coalition B (BKNPO) grouping begins to stabilize its plane count and begin pushing back from the 2250 score tier. -KETOG elements react in terror and assume that now that NPO has entered, they are going to lose the war. Famous, and self-humiliating, posts by Sir Scarfalot can be seen to corroborate the atmosphere, at least in KETOG. -Frontier Records and TFP exit the war, weakening Coalition B, now that BK has begun winning. -BK launches an attack on TFP and Frontier Records' successors. Part of the claim involves accusations of deliberate sabotage by TFP. The immediate CB involves a treasure transfer to TKR. Frontier Records disbands, with elements forming Clan Callan and Sanreizan. Clan Callan is immediately hit, as it is protected only by TKR. Sanreizan, however, is protected by the Syndicate. -BK's sphere suffers under the pressure of prolonged war, as many BKsphere members joined BK not out of ideological loyalty, but because BKsphere seemed the most powerful on the treaty web, and the most capable of providing protection. Minor alliances ask for permission to peace out, some is given, some is not, but some leave anyways. -KERCHTOG takes less damage, however, as Surf's Up already cleared most milquetoast assets. KERCHTOG shows remarkable member stability, but some elements take disproportionate damage.-OFA leaves the war from Coalition B's side, being a loosely-strung together alliance built up of raiding elements. Accusations, perhaps true, of bad leadership in OFA explain what's happened. -GOONS and GPWC are founded, the former being an invasion alliance of Something Awful members, and the latter being taken in from a Manhwa forum frequented by NPO members. This is the cause of much trepidation in KERCHTOG, as KERCHTOG forms the elite structure of PnW and newcomers are not welcome. Likewise, both GOONS and GPWC are seen as threats as the former consists of experienced SA browser game players, while GPWC's sheer numbers provide a massive economic spike to the Coalition B side. -Ming Empire and North Point surrender or white peace out of the war, having taken severe damage while in the KERCHTOG side. -The Brotherhood of the Clouds exits the war from the Coalition B side. -Carthago and OWR depart from the Coalition B side and sign treaties with the Syndicate. -NPO feeds its protectorate Dark Brotherhood to raiders from The Syndicate and House Stark. -A dispute arises between T$ and BK over what BK perceives as war dodgers, from the Arrgh alliance, residing in a T$ protectorate called Terminus Est. T$ Phase II (October 2019 - Now) -Treating negotiations as having failed, BK attacks Terminus Est. T$ counters for its protectorate, dragging The Syndicate and its core allies once again into the war. While Coalition B had obtained control over almost all tiers during the war, barring the very low, the T$ attack destabilizes Coalition B's control and their control tier is pushed down to 4000 or 3000 score. However, Coalition B restabilizes and begins to push up again, with about 14-18 opponents not yet submerged. -With the deterioration of NPO and T$ ties, NPO launches attacks on T$ protectorates. Surprisingly, the T$-NPO treaty is renewed, so that NPO remains attacking its sphere partners. -GOONS and GPWC enter the war on the Coalition B side. KERCHTOG's lower tier control becomes minimal. -Farksphere, a third sphere that might have turned the tide for KERCHTOG, agrees to sign a non-aggression pact with Coalition B. Many players who wearied of the war or found that they were subject to unbearable fatigue had moved into Farksphere, from both Coalition B and KERCHTOG. -Farksphere allies, believing that BKsphere had intended to hit them and wanting to fight, begin to desert Farksphere core and downgrade their treaties with Fark into oDoAP. -North Point, having exited the war and with a 3 month NAP guaranteed, begins building a bloc made out of Coalition B deserters and other micros. This includes the Brotherhood of the Clouds. -An attack is launched on Carthago and OWR, presumably because of their realignment to Syndisphere. -Syndisphere and KERCHTOG accepts Coalition B's demand that surrender be a precondition of any peace talks. This was a major hold-up prolonging the war. -The conflict rages on, with no end in sight. === I suppose as an addendum you could also include AK's cheating scandal, but unlike NR's, it had no military bearing on the war as the resource generation was never linked to AK senior leadership and no one made the choice to hit them as a consequence.

At least it's not Nazism. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/world/europe/italy-racism-daisy-osakue.html

Communism is actually a confused term given that it's the name of Marx's utopian society, wherein the concept of property has been abolished and everyone's needs have been met. In practice, Communism tends to refer to political entities that are under the control of a one-party Marxist-Leninist state, usually with a planned economy as well as a police state. As to whether it's reductionist, I'm pointing out that, in contrast to Sphinx's claim that denizens of the former Soviet bloc detest communism, that people's experiences and memories of the Communist period vary, especially when nationality comes into play. An Estonian is more likely to have a negative view of the Communist period, given that Estonia is doing well in the post-Communist era. A Russian, especially an elderly one, might miss the Soviet Union and the certainties they grew up with. Or, they might have more nostalgic views of when the Soviet Union was great, even if their living standards were little to brag about.

Peace is a lie. May you keep the war-ongoing and spend another 6 months arguing over the grammatical norms in the surrender document.

More that for him, Communism is a form of Russian imperialism. In Russia itself, it has much respect because Russia went to crap after the Soviet Union died. Eastern Europe, on the other hand, did not in the whole have a good experience when the Warsaw Pact died, but they got money and investment. They were invited to the EU. Excepting hellholes like the Former Yugoslavia, most of the former Warsaw Pact benefited with the death of the Soviet Union. As with most historical phenomenon, there are always winners and losers. The Warsaw Pact was a net win for Soviet elites and a disaster for the semi-industrialized states of Central and Eastern Europe.

Keno is about 3.5% expected loss per game (but high variance means that you're more likely to lose the invested sum early unless you're playing a couple of hundred games and have the bankroll to survive 85% loss rates). Dice is about 1.5% expected loss per game, so Dice is less a source of losses. From an economics point of view, gambling games are about expected utility vs expected value; i.e, if randomly winning 50% of your initial bet is worth more to you than the fact that you'll lose around 3.5% of your bet per game on average, you decide to gamble. Basically, with a large number of Keno or Dice games played, you can assuredly expect to lose money (unless the rumors are true and someone's broken the Keno PRNG).

https://npowned.net/pw-war-statistics/nation/173328

Effectively speaking. I thought I had enough play to be honest about my politics, I guess I was mistaken. Still, are you sure you don't want to read The Fountainhead together? Seems it might be fun doing so with GOONS. We'd probably end up consulting secondary sources on the life of Ayn Rand, whose notorious reputation I think we're all aware of, or on the libertarian movement. The alternative for me right now is to go through Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and I'm fishing through feminist Discords to try to develop an alternative feminist reading of the text beyond simply that it's patriarchal trash. I think it's too much to ask for for Chandler to be taken as a feminist, and that the standard misogynistic reading of The Big Sleep should be taken at face value. But there's a second reading there, not as to the who, but as to the why, which may be more fleshed out than simply a rehash of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily". “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." [Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”

I've had a copy of The Fountainhead that I've been meaning to read for a long time, and I'm into book clubs, so I thought we could read it together. Y/N? 3 Chapters a week seem okay to you?

At least until January.

Retarded workarounds: Getting war number: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=14102&display=war Bypassing War Screen: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/airstrike/war= [number goes here] https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/groundbattle/war= https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/navalbattle/war= https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/missile/war= https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/nuke/war= https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/fortify/war= https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/peace= https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/cancel=

I've been talking about this publicly, but the Syndisphere war stats mysteriously stopped updating on the graphs page after they became involved with Mythic. Could these stats be updated so we can see how well Mythic did vs Syndisphere? Edit: