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cobysev

@ cobysev @lemmy.world

Posts
18
Comments
480
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • No one is illegal

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  • As a former US military member, I'd like to point out that we consider our foreign bases to be American soil, so anyone born on base is considered a legal US citizen. However, the bases themselves are loaned to us by the host country through legal agreements. Depending on the country, we could have unrestricted use of the space, or we could just be visitors on the host country's local military base with limited space allocated to us.

    I remember in Germany, they have such strict laws against tearing down natural forests that most of our bases had to remain mostly forested. We had very little space to construct buildings on base.

  • No one is illegal

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  • I lived in Germany for a couple years, about 30 minutes from the French border. Every once in a while, my wife and I would cross the border to buy some French wines.

    The border didn't even stop us. There were buildings off to one side, but the highway was wide open, no barriers or checkpoints or anything. Didn't even need to slow down. It was like crossing state lines in the US.

    America is so used to being isolated from the rest of the world, with oceans on either side, that we make a big deal about the two countries that actually touch our border. I feel it just exacerbates our fear of foreign threats, because we're not 100% secure on all sides.

    And of course, a lot of Canadians mostly look and sound like white Americans, so we don't think twice about them, but Mexicans look and sound different, so it's easy to rile people up about the "invading foreign culture" that will "destroy America." It's dumb racist gaslighting, but it's sadly effective against Americans who have never left the country or lived anywhere near either of our borders. Which is most of the population.

  • Team Fortress 2 Classified (fan-made overhaul & expansion) is now available on Steam

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  • Yeah, they must mean the original, since this mod just released today. But if you read their whole review, they don't directly reference the original game once, they just gripe about all the things they don't like about this mod.

  • Team Fortress 2 Classified (fan-made overhaul & expansion) is now available on Steam

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  • I love this negative review. Notice their hours on record.

  • This is why you should respect our vets

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  • As a veteran, I thought this was going a different route when it mentioned "vets." But it's very true. I'd trust a veterinarian as a doctor in the zombie apocalypse.

  • Natural Disaster Risk in the Continental U.S.

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  • The Northern West may have the lowest risk of natural disaster right now, but the Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming is a supervolcano that's way overdue for erupting, and it's gonna take out at least a third of the US when it does. I live on the east side of Minnesota and I'm still in the blast zone from that eventual rupture.

  • Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate - Leiden Medievalists Blog

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  • Ah. Well, that would explain it. Folks usually share current articles, so I assumed this was written recently, not a half decade ago. That's my bad.

  • Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate - Leiden Medievalists Blog

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  • Thank you! That's because I don't have corporate requirements for writing. Nobody's paying me, I'm just doing it as a hobby, so I'm not limited in my writing. I can gush about anything I want!

    I try to stick to the format of walking readers through an introduction to a game. So many times, I see people talk about games but not explain what the game actually is. They assume their audience has some base level of experience with it. So I introduce the games I play so my readers are familiar with them when I get to gushing about why I'm enjoying it.

    Plus, my posts started as sharing a bunch of screenshots of my gameplay, so of course, I try to share as many visual aids as I can while walking through the gameplay.

  • Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate - Leiden Medievalists Blog

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  • I blog about video games as a hobby (all my posts here on Lemmy are blog reviews of games I play), so I tend to write a lot when I'm interested in a game. I'll admit, this is the first time I've been accused of potentially being an AI bot, but I get your skepticism.

    Manor Lords is not a game I'm particularly interested in, because as I mentioned, it was pretty difficult for me and I gave up pretty early on. But it was a unique style of gameplay compared to other city builder games, so the experience has stuck in my head.

    When I read this article, every complaint about modern city builder games reminded me of Manor Lords, and I was disappointed that game wasn't addressed anywhere in the article. I had hoped to see the author's thoughts on it compared to other games in the genre.

  • "Oh wow a kryptonite radiation machine, I volunteer Superman to go inside! Doesn't feel so good does it?"

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  • The value of minerals is based on their scarcity (or companies agreeing to price-fix cough diamonds cough ). If Superman brought a large chunk of gold back to Earth, it would upset the market value of gold, thus devaluing the chunk he found as well as all gold on the planet.

    You can't just "print money." That's how you get hyperinflation. Same goes for rare earth minerals; bring home more and the value for all of them globally is reduced, creating a hyperinflation of minerals.

    If Superman brought home a large enough chunk of gold, he could essentially crash the gold market and then it would be a practically useless shiny rock. He couldn't even buy bread with it.

  • Nobody likes self checkouts

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  • Nobody likes self-checkouts

    Tell that to my local Walmart. Every time I grocery shop there, there are lines down the aisle for the self-checkout. Meanwhile, I walk past the self-checkout and jump into a regular checkout line with maybe one person in front of me.

    I remember when self-checkout first became a thing and people complained that it was corporations' way of cutting jobs and understaffing stores to save a buck. People were very anti-self-checkout.

    But force people to use it enough and they eventually adapt. Especially the younger generations who don't want to deal with other people. They'll willingly stand in line for half an hour if it means they don't have to give a simple greeting to an employee at the register.

    I will say, one of the positives I've seen to the self-checkout are all the people who use it as an excuse to hurt large corporations. Customers aren't "stealing products," they're just not trained well enough to notice when a product doesn't ring up correctly. I'm kind of sad to see that this practice of "undertrained customers" hasn't hurt businesses enough that they've given up on the self-checkout yet.

    Me personally, I just avoid them altogether. Why wait in long lines and go through the work of ringing myself up one item at a time when I can just dump my cart onto a conveyor belt and swipe a card? It only costs me a very brief "hello" to another human being to skip all that extra work, and it keeps more positions for employees available.

  • Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate - Leiden Medievalists Blog

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  • I was hoping the article would mention Manor Lords. It's a medieval city-building game where you fight against brutal changing seasons and invading enemies, hoping to eventually develop your own kingdom from scratch. And you can plan your city pretty early on or grow it from a single small farm. It's surprisingly difficult because there's not a set progression. A single bad winter can kill off your entire civilization.

    The article mentions building curved roads rather than just straight plots of land. Manor Lords sort of plots its own roads based on where NPCs travel most. So if you put a well in a central location and a farm off to one side of a strip of homes, roads will automatically form in desire paths between resources and homes. Your city infrastructure can follow these desire paths while expanding, or cut them off and force your citizens to form alternate roads around new buildings.

    I haven't played much of Manor Lords because it was so difficult. I was having trouble keeping a civilization alive with neighboring armies ransacking my villages, or not stocking enough resources before winter set in to survive the season. But it seems like a game the author of this article should check out.

  • Unless you're in a militia, owning an AR-15 is just LARPing

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  • As a former military member, I can attest that there are escalation measures in every conflict. Every act might trigger a response from the opposition. So it's very important to weigh every action carefully before performing it.

    In this particular situation, escalation appears to be the end goal of Trump. He wants people to rise up, because it gives him an excuse to declare Martial Law and shut down blue states, as well as stopping elections from continuing until the "escalation" is under control.

    Think of Star Wars, Episode III. Palpatine was a senator, causing mayhem and chaos in the background to cause civil unrest among the Republic. Once he was outed as a Sith Lord, he survived the assassination attempt on his life and used the attack and disfigurement of his face to convince the government to grant him temporary emergency control of the government until the "threat of the Jedi Order" was under control. Then he conveniently forgot to return his emergency powers, declared himself emperor, and formed the Galactic Empire.

    This is kind of what Trump is doing, in a sense. Martial Law is emergency military control over a nation granted to an individual. Elections aren't held during Martial Law. If Trump can enact Martial Law and prevent us from holding the November elections, he can further solidify his power over the US. He's already started up the "we shouldn't have elections" rhetoric again.

    ICE is already violating the law, breaking our Fourth Amendment rights, and kidnapping people in the streets. The federal government has given them a free pass to do it. But they're just waiting for us to have enough and act in anger or violence in return so Trump can send in active duty military members to take over control of the state.

    We can't let it get that far, so we're doing everything in our power to protest peacefully and hold the line. Eventually, he'll realize he won't get his way and he'll move on. Or he'll push ahead anyway and we'll have more of an excuse to end his dictatorial reign.

    Right now, we're just gathering evidence. When this is all over, we can use the legal system to punish all involved in the human rights violations. But as long as Trump is in power, we just have to hold the line and document everything. It seems like nothing is happening right now, but we're letting Trump "Fuck Around," so later he can "Find Out."

  • Unless you're in a militia, owning an AR-15 is just LARPing

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  • I'm specifically referring to a civil war breaking out. We're trying to stay peaceful as long as possible here. As long as protestors aren't attacking ICE, Trump has no (legitimate) excuse to send in active duty troops, which he had been threatening to do.

    The MN National Guard has been mobilized by our governor and are prepared to deal with active duty military if Trump sends them anyway. That's the whole point of the National Guard; it's a state's protection against an overreaching federal government.

    If all that fails, then citizens themselves need to protect one another. And that is when things have truly gone sideways.

    Things are messed up right now, but there's still a chance to recover from this. Once actual war breaks out against our civilian population, that's when we're truly fucked.

  • Unless you're in a militia, owning an AR-15 is just LARPing

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  • I was in the US military for 20 years. The Air Force, specifically. We trained with the M16A2 rifle for years, then later upgraded to the M4 rifle. The AR-15 is the civilian variant of those rifles, so I bought one to train in my own personal time. Pretty much the only difference is the AR-15 doesn't have a burst mode, which shoots 3 rapid-fire rounds per trigger pull. That's illegal to own in the civilian sector.

    The military had us train on the weapon only once every couple years, and then later, they decided to save money on ammo by only training us if/when we deployed. And training was a day-long course of breaking apart the weapon, reassembling it, then firing on the range and qualifying with targets. Hardly enough time to practice.

    My wife also served, but she had very little experience with guns in general and was barely passing her qualifications. She's a small lady and had trouble holding up the large weapon. So I bought the AR-15 so we could practice at home. I even added a bull barrel to it, which adds 5lbs to the rifle, to help train her arm strength for the M4 qualifications.

    We're both recently retired now, but we're living in Minnesota near the Twin Cities, so I'm glad to have my AR-15 readily available. I pray I never have to use it in defense, but it's an option if things go sideways in my home state. There are already civilians here defending their street corners with AR-15s on display, to deter ICE from patrolling the neighborhoods.

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  • Yeah it was my Reddit app too. But when I switched over to Lemmy, there were a lot of initial issues with the app, and the dev would vanish for months before responding to complaints.

    He was very reactive when he came back, addressing every issue people pinged him on. But then he'd just be gone again and any further issues were stuck until he decided to return.

    I remember that being a problem I had with his Lemmy app in the beginning. I specifically remember webm files didn't load at all, until I pinged him right before he pushed an update and he added it to his patch. But then his patch broke a few other things and nobody could reach him for another 3 months.

    I still can't remember what the final straw was for me, but I had an ongoing issue that had no resolution until the dev decided to show his face again and I decided that was it. I needed an app with a more reactive developer.

  • What was your most catastrophic miscommunication with someone else?

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  • When I was living in Japan for a few years, I ended up dating a Filipino lady for a while. But she had no concept of colloquialisms; she took everything I said 100% literally. I quickly discovered that the English language is riddled with colloquialisms and we use them constantly.

    One evening, she had called me maybe 6 times over the course of a couple hours. On the next call, I picked up and said, "Damn, you're killing me!"

    She immediately broke down crying. She wailed, "Why would you ever say that?! I would never want to kill you!"

    It took maybe a half hour to calm her down and get her to understand that this is an English expression and not meant to be taken literally. She finally agreed that I didn't mean it, but she told me I'm not allowed to use that expression again, because it hurts her heart to hear me accuse her of wanting to kill me.

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  • I actually switched away from Sync. I forget why, it's been a while, but something about that app was bothering me, so I shopped around and ended up on Voyager.

    The lack of profile pictures and custom username fonts is probably the only downside to Voyager. But I love everything else about it. And it's free; I had to pay for Sync to get rid of ads and other junk in the app.

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  • I turned 24 in 2008. I had been serving in the US military since I turned 18, and in 2008, I was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, my second military assignment after 3 years at Misawa Air Base in Japan. I got orders in 2008 to relocate to Osan Air Base in South Korea for a year, with a follow-on assignment to Germany.

    In January the very next year, I would marry my wife and she would join the US Air Force as well, leaving for her basic training literally 5 days after our wedding. Oh, and we got married over webcam, from opposite sides of the globe. I was stationed in South Korea and she was living in Nebraska at the time, so we mailed the marriage license back and forth to pre-sign it, then we did the ceremony over Skype from our respective bedrooms. We would meet up in person later that year in Germany for my fourth military assignment (and her first).

    I'm turning 42 this year and have been retired for almost 4 years now, after serving for 20 years in the military. I'm fully retired, as the military kind of beat me up physically and mentally. My wife and I both qualified for the coveted "100% Permanent and Total Disability" through the VA, so we can afford to be retired at such a young age.