The only idea I really have for a mechanic doesn't really fit that theme. Filibuster: Spells that have filibuster should always be sorceries. When a filibuster spell is cast, no more spells can be cast for the remainder of the phase, and triggering filibuster ends all "until end of turn" effects.

Think about it, what are the possible ways you can meaningfully interact with another empire in Stellaris:

• Fight a war against them.
• Become buddies with them (Commercial pact, research agreement, participate in each other's wars, etc.)
• Build branch offices on their planets.
• Perform a LIMITED number of espionage operations on them.

And that's it. As a result, that basically defines the roles you can take on the galactic stage as:

• Warmonger
• Diplomat
• Megacorp
• Shadow-state

It means you will essentially always look at other countries under these four lenses. Do I want to invade them? Do I want to befriend them? Do I want to build branch offices on their planets? Or do I want to manipulate them using a very limited set of espionage operations?

ALSO, it means every time you design a new custom empire, it can only really affect the galactic stage through one of the four interactions above.

But there are so many more ways that countries can interact!

Below are just a few examples of types of international relationships that would add a lot more depth to Stellaris if added (inspired from real world politics):

• Resource producing/consuming empires. As mentioned above, increase the effect empires have on galactic market prices. You don't have to make a full supply/demand model like Victoria, simply make the base market fee higher, the base prices higher, and make prices more sensitive to supply/demand from other empires. Also let the player see what contribution other empires are having on prices. Therefore, a player that trades on the market will have some inherent strategic interests in other empires in the galaxy. Perhaps there is an empire that produces and sells a ton of crystals which drives their price down on the galactic market, and so the player has an interest in keeping that country peaceful and stable so he can keep buying those crystals. So, he guarantees that country and participates in wars to defend them to keep the crystal mines running. Boom, you just created a unique and interesting diplomacy/gameplay interaction.
• Galactic-scale tourism. Implement some basic level of tourism across empires so that planets that invest in tourism can get an extra boon of income and growth at the expense of others in the galaxy (where relevant, obviously an inward perfectionist would not be penalized). Perhaps there is a panel where you can see the top 10 most touristic planets of the galaxy, the number of tourists visiting

I am working on some Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy empires this afternoon, and during a species creation, I couldn't think of what traits beyond the two I had to apply, when I... clicked next. It caught me off guard and I couldn't figure out why until I started scrolling through all my created empires.

5 traits, all the way down. I have no clue where I picked up the habit or why I would feel compelled each time to use all five traits to begin with. It gave me a good laugh at myself for placing an arbitrary standard for my empire creation.

Is there anyone else similarly who usually does all 5 traits to start? What other non-enforced habits have you picked up in Stellaris?

Hey everybody, today I will attempt to piece together all my thoughts and recommendations for Serbia in TNO, both gameplay and lorewise. Note that I'm just a fan and don't have any deeper information, I'll just try to not contradict what official information we have while making up a good part of the story.

Serbia up to 1962

Kingdom of Yugoslavia, founded in 1918 and officially named so in 1929, has in principle been in opposition to the Axis in the interwar period, especially to Italy, with whom it had territorial disputes in Dalmatia. However, with the French, Yugoslavia's traditional ally, falling to German invasion in 1940, pro-German options in Yugoslavia gained more traction. As a result of this and increasing German pressure, Yugoslavia agreed to enter the Tripartite Pact on March 25th, 1941. However, only two days later, army generals led by Dusan Simovic led the coup d'etat which ousted the regency and gave still underage king Petar II full royal powers. The coup was in direct defiance of Hitler's will, which made Fuhrer furious. Invasion of Yugoslavia began on April 6th, 1941, and ended eleven days later with total German victory. The victorious invaders divided Yugoslavia amongst themselves, leaving Serbia as a shell of it's former self under Comissary Government of Milan Acimovic. The legitimate government fled to London, vowing to continue the fight.

This didn't sit right with the Serbian people, who across Yugoslavia divided themselves into two resistance groups against Germans and their lackeys - the nationalist monarchist Chetniks of general Dragoljub Mihajlovic, and multinational communist partisans of Josip Broz Tito. Initial advent of the uprising forced Germans to replace incompetent Acimovic with an old general Milan Nedic, who was despite his hesitation, finally coerced into assisting the occupator with his large popular authority. Nedic's right-hand man was Dimitrije Ljotic, leader of the ultranationalist and antisemite movement ZBOR. While Ljotic lacked Nedic's popularity, he in turn was more fanatic and loyal to Berlin than him.

The uprising soon lost it's momentum, and partisans and Chetniks broke their uneasy alliance to enter an open civil war, both (albeit Chetniks significantly more) willing to enter arrangements with Germans to defeat the other side. But their chances were quickly declining. USSR, the rolemodel and ideological supporter of partisans, was crushed in 1942, and the British, who provided support to Chetn

Good Afternoon all, I am hoping to find advice about my legal standing in a rather unique and desperate situation.

I apologies if the following is rather long but I thought it most helpful to include all relevant details.

We are based in Tower Hamlets - London.

I operate a small food and drinks stall once a week on private property that is located nearby a busy London market, but is not part of the market itself.

We have operated there for over 13 years and have had direct contact with several council departments including the licensing team, the market team, waste collection and Environmental Health.

In our operation we have always maintained a level of communication with the council to ensure that we are doing everything required of us.

After being closed for closed for the lockdown period, we reopened during the first lift of the lockdown in July 2020.

At this time there was an increased council presence at the market than we had previously been used to due to distancing requirements and a new one way system for the market itself.

However the enforcement team sent was new to the market and had to learn on the job the ins and outs of how the market operated.

Though our business is not technically under the jurisdiction of the market organisers/enforcers, we followed all of their advice and requirements as we felt this would be the most responsible response in the face of the safety measure for the pandemic.

I mention this as though we are a private business, I feel it lead to the inexperienced enforcement team thinking we were normal market traders.

On one day of service, a particularly over zealous council representative demanded a license that we had never previously to provide in our 13 years of operation.

My employee explained that we had all other relevant documentation and had never been required to show this license she wanted before and he didn’t now what it was, but he was told that if he did not produce the license we would be fined £500.

Frustratingly I was unavailable on another job so he couldn’t call for advice which caused my employee to shut down for the day.

When I arrived later in the day and spoke to the council representative it quickly became clear that she did not understand that we were operating from private property and she was asking for a market or pavement license (though in speaking to her it was obvious she wasn’t all that sure what she required and had mostly been on a power trip.

However by this stag

A Necessary Introduction

Grim Dawn is categorizable as a dark fantasy, apocalyptic narrative built around elements of the supernatural, the sinister, the horror-cosmic and, perhaps less evidently in comparison, the stark facets of man and men. While the game is filled enough with mentions of ancient cults, cataclysmic wars between gods and terrifying forces from unknown beyonds, the truth is there is a substantial amount of lore information about the way Cairn grew to be before being thrown into chaos, complete with its own set of social issues, political abuses, cultural struggles and economic turmoil.

It's clear the game will owes its presentation to unholy apocalyptic Cairn, and that there is consequently not much interpretation of other events possible without seeing them through this particular lens. In this sense, there is no Korvan without Korvaak, no Malmouth without Marcell and the Fleshworks, no Erulan penitentiary system without Warden Krieg, and no Arkovia without Mogdrogen. There is no Cairn without the Aether, Ch'thon, the Witch Gods or what have you — but there is a part of it that, within all of this, is also worth exploring.

As someone who is a lore buff wherever he goes, I've enjoyed Grim Dawn's discrete and environmental storytelling for a while now. After a few talks with some friends as of late, and seeing how it's rather often that (mostly) non-mythological lore questions are asked, I think there is space for a post about Cairn's social organization and political history.

What is, at all, Cairn?

The game contains only a portion of the vast territory the game consistently points to as Cairn. At times, there has been speculation regarding whether Cairn is the world itself at whole (as Earth to humans) or rather a large region that would carry its name. We do know, for a fact, that the Erulan Empire does not have its capital particularly close to any of the game's locations, considering living spaces such as Darkvale, Homestead or New Harbor are essentially town-like, whereas Port Valbury seems to be an urban settlement with strategic value (maritime commerce and logistics, undoubtedly) and Malmouth is cited as an "industrial capital", but not a political one, and various texts from the dissolution of that very city's council point to the fact the Imperial authority did not reside there.

If one looks at the game's map image, there is no other urban-looking surface that could indicate a city surely equal or greater to Malm

INTRODUCTION

This post will attempt to explain the differences in how Filipinos and Indonesians see ethnicity and the nature of the two societies. A couple of years ago I did some posts on the Philippines and Indonesia like TL: DR Reasons for the failure of the Philippines’s foreign policy,

The post will be organized as follows

1. LATITUDINAL VS LONGITUDINAL ARCHIPELAGIC STATE
2. AUSTRONESIAN CORE
   1. ETHNICITY AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
3. ETHNO-CULTURAL DIAGRAM
4. RELIGIOUS-CULTURAL LAYERS
5. MULTIPLE SOCIETIES VS MAINSTREAM FILIPINO SOCIETY
6. HIGHLAND AND LOWLAND SOCIETIES
7. BLOOD, LOCATION, AND CULTURE

Many, like Samuel Huntington's in his book Clash of Civilization (1996) label Indonesia as Islamic, and the Philippines as Western, but beyond these simple labels, people are left hanging. Little is done to describe the structure of the societies, how ethnic groups and religious minorities are organized. The four takeaways from this post are:

• Indonesia is a longitudinal archipelagic state-aligned by trade and a shared lingua franca. The Philippines is a latitudinal archipelagic state orientated loosely by trade with China, and later on, shared religion.
• In Maritime Southeast Asia, there are cultural layers, such as Sanskritization, Islam, and Christianity.
• The Indonesian state believes Indonesia consists of multiple societies. While most Filipinos and the Philippines state assume there is mainstream Filipino society.
• The Indonesian state defines ethnicity by blood and keeps detailed records of regions' ethnic composition. The Philippines' state doesn't keep such data.

This post will be the beginning of a series of posts I will do about Indonesia and the Philippines. The purpose of this particular post is to provide a very rough framework for looking at ethnicity, culture, and religion in Indonesia and the Philippines. I won't get into the "why", that will be for subsequent posts.

I decided to do this post, because Indonesia's importance to the Philippines is understated, and its importance will increase markedly after Indonesia moves its

Longtime lurker, with my very first reddit post

I’ve been visiting and reading this sub for long enough to see the mood of the other posters, like mine, is very dark indeed. Many of us feel hopeless, trapped, exploited and helpless.

We can see the system slowly grinding down towards failure and compromising the care patients have a right to expect. At the same time I feel that medicine no longer really offers me the kind of life we see our older colleagues (rightly) expect as the standard for senior professionals. I don’t feel like a young man at the start of a flourishing and prosperous professional career, the world my oyster. I feel like a schmuck, tied to a failing organisation, with £60k of usurious debt, and a future of below inflation pay rises stretching out forever.

The situation at the moment seems very hopeless; demand is rising inexorably with the ageing population. There appears to be no political will to make the large sacrifices that an adequately funded NHS would require over the longer term. So the budget will get squeezed – and the largest part of the budget that can be squeezed is staffing costs.

I think its worth looking deeper into why the scenario above, one very familiar to us all, looks so inevitable. After all, we are all professionals in a shortage occupation, in a field with enormous growth ahead of it; why aren’t these golden years to be a medic?

The key to this is in the failure of the price mechanism in the public sector. The iron law of economics is that high demand = high prices. As there is so much demand everyone is bidding up the price of the good – and this high price signals to producers that there is an unmet need, ultimately leading to higher output. The price of something is a finely calibrated communication leading to the correct amount of output of a good. The relevance of this to medical labour should be clear. So why am I driving my Nan’s 20 year old golf and not a nice Jag?

By contrast, in the public sector, rising demand pushes up against the wall of the budget; if the budget has no room to grow, then the demand leads the organisational bureaucracy to try and squeeze down the price to stretch the budget further. You can see how the price mechanism goes into reverse. Ultimately this is self-defeating – no-one becomes willing to sell the good, or their labour. This is one of the fundamental reasons planned economies fail; without the automatic signal of a free-floating price then even well planned, ration

I may have bitten off more than I can chew. It's been a few hours now, and I can't even remember where this started, but suffice it to say, I feel like someone who took the red pill but has no way of comprehending what the choice even meant. Bare with me. As per custom, apologies for formatting. I'm on mobile.

Is this even the right sub for this? Apologies. I didn't really know where else to ask. Or what I'm really asking, if anything at all.

When the first corporations were created—in the sense of being a legal entity—it was on the premis of "limited liability"." My understanding of what that means is:

■If a company goes under, an individual is only liable for the debts of the company up to the amount of the individual's investment in that company. ■Private property cannot be seized from the individual to pay the debts of the company. The individual may willing choose to sell these things to raise the money they legally owe as part of the corporate debt vs investment obligation.

When I asked my boyfriend the title question, his response was this:

Imagine you created a corporation with a couple friends. Everything's good. Then one "friend" goes and does some shady shit like charters a private plane to an island where they rape teenagers, and charges the company's account for all of this. Someone finds out, your company gets sued, you're fucked.

At this point, I'm like, fair enough.

If only I had let that suffice.

I'm the cat that Curiosity killed.

Now I'm thinking;

So... a corporation is a way to protect yourself if you have poor choice in friends. I mean, we can never truly know someone, but if your BFF is pedo, you either knew it or you're an idiot. Maybe I'm just jaded.

Hhhmm. C-suites skirting the laws and consequences under the guise of corporations happens all the time. Like owners of a water bottling company barely liable for that company poisoning an area's local water supplies.

WTF. If I poisoned someone, I'd be held liable, in just about every way possible. To the extent that my state has the death penalty and express lanes.

Then the rabbit hole went political. It seems nowadays most things do, but this was inevitable as I spiral down the loops of bureaucracy that gave corporations some of the same rights as citizens in how they financially support political figures.

See: BCRA McCain-Feingold 2002 [ELI5 Citizen

Author's Note: this was such a nightmare to compile. I had to go through the last 9 editions and carefully select the most recent materials. Where possible, a rulebook was consulted, BL was avoided as much as possible. Anyway. Consider this a mostly definitive compilation of how the Imperial nation governs itself.

Geography & Size

> Spread across the galaxy are over a million planets claimed in the name of the Imperium – a vast number, yet only a tiny proportion of the stellar systems in the galaxy. [--] Some Imperial worlds are clustered around relatively stable warp translation points, often branching out from key hub planets to form tightly knit alliances of trade and mutual protection, such as the Realm of Ultramar or the systems surrounding Terra. The majority of inhabited worlds, however, are separated by immense voids. Isolation and varied environments ensure a wide range of cultures and levels of technological advancement, but so long as the Imperial Tithe is paid – a charge on manpower, manufacturing and psykers levied upon every colonised planet – worlds are largely left to self-govern. Over the ages, all manner of planets have been colonised – cold, airless rocks, sweltering lush worlds and nearly everything between.

>

National ideology and security

> Untold millennia have passed since Humanity took their first tentative steps into the dark void of space. Stellar empires have risen in glory and fallen in ruin, but always Mankind has endured. Now it faces its most desperate war for survival against an endless onslaught of horrors bent upon the absolute destruction of the Human race.

> [---] > Everywhere the warp touches, insanity and boundless mutation follow, and the twisted worshippers of the Dark Gods of Chaos are rarely far behind. Nor are these the only threats faced by Mankind. Countless alien species teem through the darkness between the stars. They ravage Humanity’s far-flung domains even as they feed their rapacious appetites, or expand the boundaries of their own xenos empires. [--]At any one time the Imperial Guard fight across a hundred warzones and upon ten thousand planets.

> [---] > Yet despite constant calamities, the Imperium did not just endure, it grew. Each year, hundreds of new planets were added to the fold, even while others were lost. Unstoppable in its momentum, the Imperium churned on. Explorator fleets were launched like clockwork from every forge world. Relentlessly, they soug

Here is our Op Ed piece the Arizona Republic with the Beer and Wine Distributors of Arizona (representing 11 beer distributors in the state). These distros houses also carry the big three and craft and they have partnered with us. ABI-Inbev is neutral and will not fight us.

http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2014/12/04/arizona-craft-brewers/19914259/

In the Op Ed we identify our opponents. We hope to bring them back to reality and join our cause.

Part1 | Part 3

Postmortem

When the Petrel got close enough to Earth-space to start sending messages, things got crazy quickly. First, the entire ship needed to be quarantined to prevent possible contamination from the alien species, and then suitable research facilities needed to be organized to investigate the artifacts. Representatives from every faction had opinions about every aspect. What does it mean to humans that another space-faring species has been found? Who will go recover the wreckage and how? How will first contact with this species be implemented to avoid a similar catastrophe to this one, or worse, biological contamination from humans to the aliens? Accidentally killing one ship is bad, but what if humans accidentally kill off an entire planet? It wasn’t long before a massive research effort and its parallel diplomatic effort were under-way.

The first breakthrough came from Information Specialist Almasi Mwangi herself. On the long journey back to human space, she had successfully identified markers in the recovered data storage media that allowed her to separate recordings of voice and video from other digital data. This meant that some of the alien ship’s logs could be replayed. This was jumped on by linguists who, by comparing the alien’s logs of the encounter with the Petrel’s logs of the encounter were able to construct a sort of Rosetta Stone for the alien language. This in turn led to learning the ship’s name (Dawnflower), the names of the crew, how their communications equipment worked, how their star charts worked, and much, much more. Humans now knew where the rladii-occupied planets were and how to communicate with them. It also caused bureaucrats and intelligence services across the Factions to realize how vulnerable humans were to other aliens capturing a human ship. There were going to have to be some serious redesigns for future deep-space ships.

Another set of breakthroughs came from a team headed up by Danish physician and biologist Mark Ruthgar and his team. The frozen pair brought back were indeed a middle aged male and female (named Gnolder and Nagla, according to the linguists), and the female was pregnant. This gave the biologists an unexpected bonanza of information about anatomy and reproduction, as well as tissues for understanding what dis

Graak was trepidatious as he approached the halls of Justice. This had long been a sacred place where one went to be sentenced for their crimes by the Arbitons. In reality though, the crime would have already been judged by the arresting officer. His species was an uplift species, discovered during their iron age and shot forward 2000 years in a matter of decades. The Arbitons were assigned by the galactic council for a term of 40 cycles whereby an elder species would shepherd the new race forward while also providing stability, civilization, and most relevant to Graak, justice.

The first term was served by the Ailani, a race of bipedal reptiles whose history had been defined by war. In their minds, the -purpose of the individual was to contribute to the whole. The law was to assure that all members of society contributed and knew the punishments for failure. Infractions were dealt with harshly. Graak’s own father still beared the reminder of the consequences of failing to push his children harder in school, 100 scars across his back given to him and 500 others by the High Arbiton of the city. Graak had a few minor infractions but none had left visible marks.

This past cycle, the first term had come to the end and the Ailani were happy to have fulfilled their obligation. They held little love for the Bufon peoples and had left with little fanfare. The populace was generally happy to see them go but unsure of the next guiding species. Graak had heard that they were also bipeds, though of a mammalian lineage. He also heard they were carnivores. At least the Ailani also ate plants.

****

Graak entered the hall which had been significantly changed since his last visit. The previous appearance had been intimidating, a long open hall whose columns and raised seating were designed to make the offender feel small. Now it was a small, somewhat cozy office, more like his Doctor’s waiting room than a place of judgement. Seated behind a glass barrier was another Bufon. She actually looked bored and was dressed in comfortable if professional clothes. Graak approached her window quietly, hoping to make a good impression then stood there as she hit a few buttons on her keyboard.

“Name?” she asked suddenly, causing Graak to jump a little.

“Graak crack Quuurack,” He answered. “I’m here…,” he continued but was cut off by her raising a finger.

“Just answer my questions. Do you have your citation record or number?”

“Yes,” he answered, then returned the slip of

Hello all,

This is gonna be a long post.

In celebration of Binance listing UST and LUNA breaking 100$, I would like to update my original post nearly half a year ago on the Terra ecosystem. There's a ton of euphoria right now, and so its always good to take a look back at the fundamentals.

A lot has changed since then and by now I'm sure many more people have heard about Terra, maybe even used some of its dapps. For those that are brand new, I recommend reading my original post first. For those wondering if it's too late to get into LUNA, I will present why I think LUNA still has much room to grow. I won't cover every protocol, just the ones I think are most interesting/significant. Still, there's a lot to go through so let's get started.

A quick refresher

Terra is a blockchain developed by TerraForm Labs based on Cosmos SDK (this is important because it allows Terra to connect to all other blockchains in the Cosmos ecosystem, more on this later). Their main products are a suite of algorithmic stablecoins, the most prominent being UST tied to the dollar. UST retains its peg through its relationship with LUNA, where LUNA absorbs the volatility of UST. LUNA is minted when selling UST, and burned when buying UST. In practice, 1$ of LUNA always equals 1$ of UST, even if UST loses its peg. This creates arbitrage opportunities, where if UST is at 1.50$, you can sell 1$ of LUNA for 1.50$ UST and immediately bank 50% profit. This increases supply of UST as people sell LUNA for UST and the peg returns to 1. In reverse, if UST is at .50$, people buy 1$ of LUNA with .50$ UST, which decreases UST supply until the peg returns to 1. Again, videos on this below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HLiZxkbxfY&t=917s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL8tcVHyHMM

Stablecoins are the most important product in all of crypto, no question about it. I honestly can't imagine a time without stablecoins when people took profits into BTC, itself a highly volatile asset. But stablecoins are also not a risk-less product, they are subject to regulators scrutiny and issued by sometimes shady companies (cough...Tether) that may or may not have the funds available to prevent a bank run. A decentralized stablecoin for defi is a no-brainer, and UST is the best of the best currently (DAI is ba

All Italian leaks and infos in PW

Following the announcement of Penelope Web (PW), we have been given dozens of leaks of how Italy will look after the update. So, to bring some order in this confusion, I organized all the infos from the leaks and Dev Diaries on the future of the Italian Empire. Feel free to add anything I might have missed and you can find the original leaks in the links. I will periodically update this page as new leaks and infos are released.

With that, enjoy !

Index :

Part 1 : Italy’s content in the Dev diaries

Part 2 : Italy’s paths : - Fascist Italy - Democratic Italy - Red Italy

Part 1 : Italy’s content in the Dev diaries

In 1962, Italy is in a desperate shape. Despite having achieved everything it could desire, a unified country, an empire and a sphere on it’s own, after ww2, the Empire has a in 1962 a devastated economy, a stretched thin army and unsatisfied allies desiring spoiling the fascist dictatorship of her hardly gained territories. Furthermore, the succession of Mussolini’s son in law, Galeazzo Ciano, as Duce didn’t help to alleviate the country’s problems. Here are the Italian sections of each dev diary.

“There is much on the Duce's agenda. The far reaches of the Empire hold great opportunities, some of them yet untapped; economic planning and expansion of the state owned civilian air company should help tie together the vast territories under Italian lordship. The lifeblood of the regime, oil, will continue to flow, while promotion of fascist industrial organization and Italian agriculture shall continue to carry forward the organic development of the Italian economy. As for foreign policy, Italy's alliance with Japan and the other Triumvirate countries will be reaffirmed as a safeguard against German aggression. Finally, in internal politics, safeguarding the Duce's regime against all threats is of paramount importance: the royal court and the fascist gerarchia should be kept under close watch, while also making sure that those who are personally loyal to Ciano and to Ciano alone maintain their prominent positions in the party and the government. As the OVRA, the fascist secret police, works tirelessly to protect the peace and order that fascism brought, the great yearly Littoriali will be organized once more, to showcase to the world all the achievements of the Italian regime. Ciano, as loyal as ever to the fascist cause, will make sure that the legacy of 1922 w

A couple weeks ago, this thread by u/Dirtyfaction asked about the Soviet's Cold War tank industry, including how the USSR's WW2 experience influenced its postwar tank building plans. I finally had time to type up a response focusing on the Soviet tank industry's transition from wartime to peace, how it applied (And had to unlearn) the lessons of war, and how the postwar situation created its own unique challenges for the tank industry.

Thought I'd post in here, as it raises some interesting points of discussion about the Soviet WW2/Cold War tank industry.

The Tank Industry at War

During WW2 the USSR's tank industry experienced a lot of teething problems. The introduction of an entirely new line of tanks starting in 1940, disruptions to industry and resources caused by evacuation, and the extreme strain mobilization placed on the home front all caused serious quality control issues in 1941-43.

Before the war, Soviet tank building had remained bifurcated between two production complexes. One was plants focused on military products which had specialized machine tools and experienced personnel but generally built vehicles in handcrafted (Though still large in comparison to other states) semi-standardized batches instead of truly continuous mass production consistent with principles of Fordism – there was a clear ceiling of how many vehicles they could be mobilized to produce at war.

The other was the civilian tractor and locomotive industry, which had the latest in assembly lines well-suited for mass production in large facilities but lacked specialized equipment and qualified personnel for tank production. Attempts were made to integrate civilian and military plants to modernize production, especially with the adoption of new tank models in 1940 (The T-34 and KV). But this process was incomplete when war began in June 1941. Of the three largest modernized plants (In Kharkov, Stalingrad, and Chelyabinsk), only Kharkov had mastered mass production by 1941.

Making matters worse, because the T-34 and KV were still in their infancy many problems remained in their design which needed to be improved in production, both basic imperfections as well as limited reliability in their engines and transmissions. While improvements were identified which corrected many deficiencies, the start of war meant that the imperfect models were instead rushed into mass

Its called cellular democracy and it could be implemented as a federation of communes. Its a bottom up system consisting of cells with ~500 people. These cells would elect a level-1 councils for themselves, these councils would then elect a regional level-2 and so on as many time we need to cover a nation (or the world). Each council levels authority would involve matters that effect multiple sub entities inside its represented region. This system would make it possible for each cell to experiment with different kind of politics, economics, taxation and ideas.

As for the economy the coolest setup imo would be for these communes to be socialist inside, but for the inter-communal dealings some kind of fair market or barter system would be preferable, to avoid a large scale planned economy and all the bureaucracy and inefficiency that comes with it. But it would also be good to run perpetual social, political and economic experiments in the form of experimental communes for example the Nordic model or market socialism.

The sustainability of the system would be better I think, given the localized nature of it. A set of communes are less likely to pollute the environment than a corporation or another top down system. If its not enough by itself, different council level regulations could be implemented to make the climate action more dynamic and tailor fitted for the different regional needs.

Let me know what you think. Please try to think at least one positive and one negative aspect of it. Also how it could be better.

Of course the game is still very much in development and the absence of this is not the end of the world or anything, so yes, this is petty, but I am nonetheless concerned about the political system and Austria.

To get to the point, the current internal political system as we've seen it would be entirely incapable of simulating Austrian politics (and to a lesser extent other nations, but this problem is most obvious in Austria).

This is especially troublesome considering how the game is supposed to progress organically by game systems.

While there isn't much wrong with having politics be approached through interest groups, the thing is is that (most notably) Austria's various ethnicities were almost always at each other's throats and would rarely assemble under an "interest group" other than one that is near solely nationalist in nature.

The Aristocratic/Landowning/Noble interest group, for example, makes no sense since the Hungarian nobles and the Croatian nobles hate each others' guts, as do the Bohemian and German nobles, and are all vying for different policies.

This is a problem that can't be solved by a flavorful renaming (ie how UK has "Anglican Church") either.

The most obvious solution would be to have multiple of the same interest groups in Austria for different ethnicities, but that would be a hellish thing to manage.

Furthermore I'm curious on how the government of Austria-Hungary would be modeled since (in short) the two halves of the empire functioned independently and had separate parliaments, but also shared three common ministries, and every so often delegates of the two parliaments would meet to fix the common budget, etc.; this cannot be modeled well by just having Hungary become a puppet nation or something since the Emperor still was directly involved in its state politics (actually, in both halves, there was a period during which the parliaments were so dysfunctional that MPs would agree to create a deadlock just so Franz Joseph could pass pre-agreed upon laws directly from his authority).

So that's the conundrum I present. Should Austria have multiple of the same groups? Or perhaps a group for each ethnicity, which takes on different sub-issues that typically have a group all to their own? Or maybe just something entirely unique?

I don't want to be entirely negative so I'll forward one of my better ideas, that being as follows: Austria has two interest groups per major ethnic group. Much like how the player can form a 'gov

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

The Maqdasyin are Arab residents of Israel. They have many rights but they don’t include voting in national elections.

Generally, these are Arabs that became residents of Israel after the Six Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem after Jordan illegally attempted annexation of East Jerusalem.

Initially these Palestinians were against any kind of normalization with Israel. This attitude is still strongly represented but to date there are now over 12k requests for Israeli citizenship.

There is a lot of pressure against those who want to become Israeli citizens and there is a huge bureaucracy that makes citizenship very difficult. It is up to Israel to make this process easier for Palestinians who want Israeli citizenship

Maqdasyin of Jerusalem

Dear Google,

I have been buying pixels for a while and I just have to say I am furious after every interaction I have with the google pixel "department".

• The wait for a representative can take hours at most times of the day. After a new phone is launched you might not even have an option to call as it will be greyed out on the support page.
• Customer Service reps are usually not knowledgeable. I just feel exhausted repeating problems which usually result in them reading off a page to factory reset the device.
• CSR have trouble making decisions. Almost every time an issue arises they need to ask a manager about it. After 10 minutes on hold, they return with a response that clearly shows they haven't understood the issue so you ask a follow-up question and again you wait 10 minutes, and so on. The hierarchy and bureaucracy in google are tragic.
• Many times they will transfer you to an email chain where they will just have someone who clearly is not reading the notes as you the same questions again.

I am tired. Why are you having me leave feedback every interaction the past 5 years if you don't actually do anything to fix it. You invest in marketing but give such bad experiences to your customers.

Do better!

Hello there! Today I had a session that was unfortunely entirely a combat(in waves), this occurred because I underestimated the amount of time the battles would take.

But proceeding, I am here to ask if any of you have tips on making the combat bureaucracy more smooth and quicker without losing any or very little depth. One technique I recently adopted is to begin the turn of the next player when the last one is finishing calculating damage or something like that, I return my attention when he/she finishes it(the basic math), and then return my attention again to the current player's turn. The only problem is when the next player wants to interact with the same creature/environment than the previous player, nonetheless it works well.

I am asking for general and specific tips, the general should apply more to the players and GM since systems vary. In these next paragraphs I will quickly explain how a typical turn of combat works, even using what happened today, to support any ideas for tips specific for this kind of system.

System is Deadlands: Hell on Earth by Pinnacle Entertainment, I am using basically all the expansions books(brainburners, last crusaders, etc.)

I) Pre-draw of cards: If the players are aware a threat is coming, I ask them what would they like to do, adding the info they are allowed to know, so for example: "The patrol hounds of the Combine(faction) are coming, they are currently 100 yards away, but should get into combat distance within 10 seconds, what do you do?". Generally they do stuff according to their skills and threat in hand, so the ones with guns get to higher ground, the stealthier get in the shadows, the tanks and diplomats get into the frontlines, you get the idea, this part is quite nice overall, can't see huge improvements

II) Draw of cards: So the turn works with the famous card deck of 54 cards used worldwide, each card represents a moment in time and they have their own hierarchy, in decreasing order of acting we have Joker, Ace, King, Queen... down until Deuce. And who picks the same card will dispute suit agaisn't suit, in decreasing order, again, Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs.

The players use one deck while the GM uses another separate one, if the cards match, they act at the same time, so a player with a Queen of Hearts will act at the same time as the Patrol Hound draws a Queen of Hearts.

The amount of cards drawn(ramdomly) from the deck is based on a Quickness(trait) roll, in average you

It was hard to contain my excitement. Bav’ka had finished explaining my scans to everyone. It turns out the gravity on Earth was similar to every other planet except the Antwyn and Jyngt home worlds. The Jyngt’s because the gravity was stronger and the Antwyn’s because it was way less. However I learned that aside from the one thing I could eat pretty much everything they had, whether I would like it or not it would be up to me.

I had also been given a glass of water. Honestly it tasted amazing but then again I had been drinking recycled and filtered water from massive tanks on my ship. So anything was better than that. It was passable but that didn't meant I liked it.

I looked over at Gal-rug as we moved out of the sterile medical bay. “So...” I trailed off before I went up on my toes, my hands behind my back. “Before we go to the crystal garden can I get my phone from my ship so I can take pictures?” I asked it quickly and he gave a bark of laughter and slapped my shoulder, nearly causing me to hit the floor. I managed to catch myself but it was a close one.

“Of course, Rox-ie.” He grabbed my shoulder and gave it a rather friendly squeeze and I smiled at him. This was honestly one of the best days of my life. “I believe the Grog will be one of the first to embrace you as siblings in this Union, you love battle and ethanol. I can’t believe you have just as many variations as we do!” I continued to grin at him as he said it. I had learned that fermenting vegetables and fruits and distilling alcohol was a massive part of Grog culture. He had been absolutely over the moon when I told him that we were similar and that we had many variations of how to distill and make alcohol.

He lead me down the hall and I walked behind him and next to At’kat’vo. “So your species doesn’t drink?” I asked it casually and his antenna twitched.

“No. We cannot consume ethanol. It causes extreme heat distress and our nervous systems shut down. Very painful death.” He clicked his mandibles together and I nodded, trying hard to ignore how creepy it looked.

“The Jygnt are the only other species who imbue regularly. The Ilthi drink too but it is rarely.” Loril-ee said it as she continued to write in her notebook. “We do not. We can’t process it so it moves through us and we receive no benefit from it. The Hant and Krent don’t drink either. Hard on them, small amounts get them obscenely drunk and massively ill the next day. However they have found other ways to get similar effects

Thanks to everyone here for helping me keep my hope up. It was an oddly satisfying feeling to know I wasn't the only one feeling what this sub represents.

After a year of back and forth bullshit with the Spanish bureaucracy my visa was finally approved. I'm leaving in March and if I can help it..... Never coming back.

I wish you all good fortune in your attempts to leave what used to be a pretty great place to live, raise a family, get educated, etc. but is sadly now a dying nation full of authoritarian sycophants.... And all the rest of us caught in the middle.

Godspeed to you all

https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/why-no-call-to-smash-capitalist-production-in-lenins-the-state-and-revolution.html

I read this article last night, and it's been throwing me for a loop ever since. I assumed the critique would more or less be the one that Cockshottites and others have of the Soviet Union: that it was essentially the planning bureaucracy which prevented ascension to the Lower Stage of Communism.

What I encountered was vastly different, however. First off, he starts by comparing Lenin's understanding of Socialist Production with that laid out in Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution, a piece critical of the Soviet Union on exactly the grounds I expected Kliman to adopt. He said the failure of both pieces was that they confused the smashing of the capitalist state and the smashing of capitalist production, and for that reason neither piece offered a substantive break with capitalism.

To Kliman, the break with Capitalism is not merely a break in management, but a break with the productive process itself. He criticizes State and Revolution and the Fundamental Principles for adopting the position that accounting, management, and book keeping were what differentiated Socialism from Capitalism. He said this left the fundamental premise of Capitalism, the productive process, unaltered, and that to have a substantive break with Capitalism a Socialist state would need to answer the economic questions left unanswered by Lenin.

My question is this: what does he mean when he refers to the economic questions? He talks about opportunity cost and distribution, but why doesn't a Democratic plan represent a break with Capitalism? What about the productive process would have to change according to Kliman? I'm just trying to understand this critique. I've heard people argue the USSR was state capitalist and that it was only ever developing Communism (at least before the NEP/Bureaucratic Collectivism/Destalinization depending on which Left tendency you're talking to), but I've never heard someone say that the Soviet Union as a project was doomed from the get go because of it's understanding of Capitalist production.

Furthermore, why does he endorse Parecon? What separates Participatory Economics from the model laid out in the Fundamental Principles?

Thanks in advance!

Do your worst!

Link to part one.

4: OPHAR

• Ophar is the servant who dragged Kandawire to safety from her childhood home, and is now her right-hand man for kinetic operations. He (and presumably Kandawire) have lived beyond their years due to life-extending treatments "available in this terrifying, exciting new world of possibility." He does not know exactly how old he is, as records were not kept in the chaotic Banda settlements from which they hail. He still experiences shock at the pace at which everything had changed from the "suffocating heat and variety" of the old world, to the "austere" reality of the new world, "already obsessed with laws and regulations."
  • "The people were already learning deference, Ophar noted. They were forgetting the anarchy, and reverting to the long-run, servile type. Commands rarely needed to be enforced, here -- they were taken on enthusiastically, drunk in by a populace who still remembered the alternatives."
  • Ophar reflects that he would definitely be dead had he continued to live in the old world, but views it nostalgically and seems to miss it in some ways.
• More scholars have come to Himalazia than warriors. The Palace is already struggling to feed itself, importing much of what it consumes from lowlands far away. "That trend, Ophar thought, could only continue. It was, after all, a ludicrous place to build a city."
• Officials in the rapidly growing bureaucracy, "which they were already beginning to call, with absurd pomposity, the Adeptus Terra," sourced their robes from obscure places, with their origins buried under "cipher-protected security and knowledge-keys." The robes are intrinsically tied to the positions, which are "prized targets, offering a route out of poverty for the gifted and the well connected. ... competition was fierce and privileges jealously guarded."
  • Looking the part is extremely important in the Imperium. Ophar finds it "astonishing" that his outfit gives him passage to all sorts of places. He is kitted out "a brace of stolen ident-pulses and lockwords, bur he rarely needed to use them. Just the sight of his uniform... was enough for most purposes."
  • **Ophar seems disdainful of the dress employed by the bureaucracy, and echoes the Custodian Samonas's notion that the names being chosen by the new regime for its offices are ridiculous. In the first chapter, Sevuu notes with app

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

This is your 15-minute Monday report in 3949 words.

##Diaspora Affairs office will cut bureaucracy for diasporans with a new "repatriation center"

Dozens of young repatriates from several countries were invited to the 'Repatriation Week' event for introduction and exchange of ideas.

Office chief Zareh Sinanyan: repatriation is a very difficult decision, but I am sure that it will be the brightest decision in the life of all the young people present. Young people continue to repatriate despite the difficulties since last year.

We're currently forming a repatriation integration center based on the experience of other countries. Its goal is to eliminate քաշքշուկ so our repatriated families will only have to deal with one office that will address all their problems.

We're also working with several companies to act as intermediaries to help the repatriates with employment in their respective fields. //

ARCTX representative: we signed a cooperation memorandum with the Diaspora Office to address the IT expert shortage in Armenia with the help of repatriates. //

https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1071103.html

##startups received grants to improve the quality of life of disabled residents through assistive technologies

A competition was held. Revive Acceleration Program gave grants to 4 tech startups on Monday to help improve veterans' lives. It's a joint project by the government and the UN.

Labor Minister: we invited one of the winners to Armenia and reached an agreement. Our care centers will have "tech rooms". Our startups have great potential in the prosthetics industry. We're ready to help them capture international markets. When the products are ready, we will sign purchase contracts to help veterans in Armenia.

UN representative: these are quite innovative solutions. //

Winner AIP Tech: our product is a biodegradable bioactive substance that will replace bone. When we have a large bone defect, it is more desirable to have a material that will break down over time and cause the natural bone to grow in its place. [some "universal soldier" magic shit] //

Winner Oqni is an Armenian startup that produces lower extremity prostheses with the help of artificial intelligence, which also helps with the recovery process.

Winner Sheral produces limb prostheses using carbon fiber.

Winner Key2enable is an American startup that offers tools for communication and learning.

https:/

I do not own SSB nor the right to call any of this Cannon. As always those pleasures belong to BlueFishcake.

Also I did do the back of the envelope calculations for this one. I remember it being said somewhere that the invasion was 5 years in the making- I believe it and I have mad respect for whatever underpaid logistics officer made it work.

Last

Chapter 2:

Baron Al'mor Drist woke to the sound of his rooms door buzzer. He grabbed his service pistol and went to look through the one-way view screen on the door. A young woman in a regal dress flanked by two armed guards bearing the royal crest stood beyond. Al'mor holstered his pistol in his waist band and with a small sigh pressed the button to switch it to a two-way.

"I am Lady Drail'le'a, 6th Princess of the Shil'vati Imperium, 1st daughter of Duke Ri'sal Than'ax and her Majesty the Empress," the young woman gleefully began the moment the screen flickered to life.

It took all Al'mor had to resist either saluting or roling his eyes. He knew of the Than'ax girls, knew of their economic achievements, and knew that the one before him was the less accomplished of the two.

"I've come to personally insure that you get your deployment orders for the upcoming campaign," she said taking an omnipad from the guard on her right. She spun it to face the camera so he could read it.

"This says I'm to deploy from the spaceport in 2 hours."

"Indeed it does."

"It's dated for yesterday. Why is this the first I'm hearing of it," he asked as she handed back to the guard.

"Now that is the question isn't it? It seems that our dear Princess Meat Grinder- I mean our dear Second Princess, forgot to send the deployment orders to all but her most loyal supporters." Drail'le'a smiled mischievously. "When the 5th Princess and I realized her oversight we set about rectifying it immediately. Now if you'll excuse me there are still ten others in this hotel that I must contact," she said with a slight curtsy. Then she was off down the hall with guards in toe.

He didn't linger at the door long before he started to go about throwing on his old uniform. Fortunately for him he'd never successfully kicked his shoreleave habit of keeping his bags packed with anything not in immediate use. Perhaps fortune was the wrong way to put it. It had ruined his attempts to convince his fiancee- fiancees t

Hello all,

This is gonna be a long post.

In celebration of Binance listing UST and LUNA breaking 100$, I would like to update my original post nearly half a year ago on the Terra ecosystem. There's a ton of euphoria right now, and so its always good to take a look back at the fundamentals.

A lot has changed since then and by now I'm sure many more people have heard about Terra, maybe even used some of its dapps. For those that are brand new, I recommend reading my original post first. For those wondering if it's too late to get into LUNA, I will present why I think LUNA still has much room to grow. I won't cover every protocol, just the ones I think are most interesting/significant. Still, there's a lot to go through so let's get started.

A quick refresher

Terra is a blockchain developed by TerraForm Labs based on Cosmos SDK (this is important because it allows Terra to connect to all other blockchains in the Cosmos ecosystem, more on this later). Their main products are a suite of algorithmic stablecoins, the most prominent being UST tied to the dollar. UST retains its peg through its relationship with LUNA, where LUNA absorbs the volatility of UST. LUNA is minted when selling UST, and burned when buying UST. In practice, 1$ of LUNA always equals 1 UST, even if UST loses its peg. This creates arbitrage opportunities, where if UST is at 1.50$, you can sell 1$ of LUNA for 1.50$ UST and immediately bank 50% profit. This increases supply of UST as people sell LUNA for UST and the peg returns to 1. In reverse, if UST is at .50$, people buy 1$ of LUNA with .50$ UST, which decreases UST supply until the peg returns to 1. Again, videos on this below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HLiZxkbxfY&t=917s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL8tcVHyHMM

Stablecoins are the most important product in all of crypto, no question about it. I honestly can't imagine a time without stablecoins when people took profits into BTC, itself a highly volatile asset. But stablecoins are also not a risk-less product, they are subject to regulators scrutiny and issued by sometimes shady companies (cough...Tether) that may or may not have the funds available to prevent a bank run. A decentralized stablecoin for defi is a no-brainer, and UST is the best of the best currently (DAI is backed