January 28, 2013
"

History is ultimately about the cannabalization of the Top 10 wealthiest by the next 90 wealthiest. The rest is just footnotes. This is the essential pattern that emerges from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. The American Revolution was just a war between the New Rich (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et. al) and a few British landowners. The Civil War was just a war between the New Northern Rich and the few slaveholding landowners who owned most of the South. Continuing with this pattern, the Great Recession of 2007 was just a war between Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers (with Goldman Sachs winning, gloriously).

Cash is inherently bubble-producing. “Nothing makes money like money,” as the saying goes, and so as the rich become the ultra-rich, they eventually create a tumor. The situation is unsustainable, and when the bubble pops, the second layer of wealthy individuals are ready to reclaim the seized territory or government handouts.

The rest of history is simply about the minimal goods that the rich can give the poor to keep the system in tact.

"

— Phil Dhingra

January 5, 2013
How To Play Blight of the Immortals

This tumblr isn’t usually used for game related stuff, but nobody wrote a decent guide as far as I can tell. So here’s my very quick intro.

First first thing: DO NOT ENTER THE GAME’S PASSWORD AS YOUR NAME. (Not sure why, but it’s happened twice.) 

Some general notes. BotI is a co-op, slow-form real-time strategy game. What that means is, the game plays out slowly over several actual days. Movement, building, etc. takes hours. Three reasons this is good: 1. you can think through your actions, 2. if you have only a few minutes a day, you can still play. The game doesn’t ask for much time commitment. (You will have to spend 20-30 minutes to familiarize with the game, but after that you only need a few minutes here and there) 3. The time element adds a lot of suspense. 

Assuming you just started your first game of BotI:

1. Do NOT mindlessly collect taxes. There will be a blinking orange text at the top, beneath the coins. You should collect taxes after you conquer or bribe your first cities, if possible.

2. Have a look at the map. You’ll see there are cities and unit cards. Some of these are yours, as indicated by color. White cards are independent, hostile units which don’t move. They are just guarding their cities. You either fight them or bribe them. Black unit cards are zombies. They move and attack. You will have to defend yourself against them and then go on the offensive. The game is won when there are no more black cards. Cities and units are upgraded/built/reinforced with certain colored currencies visible in each city. The coins in the city represent how upgraded the market in that city is, which represents how many coins you will get at tax time. The grey walls around cities reflect how fortified they are. 

3. Click a city. For each city you have 4 potential options, depending on resources and the last action you took. You can upgrade the market (gives you more coins at tax time), upgrade fortifications (gives your units a defense bonus at that city), recruit a new army, or reinforce an army (which sends units to an already existing army, is cheaper, and usually the better choice). In the very beginning, it’s wise to upgrade markets, fortifications, and reinforce armies — not necessarily in that order, though. Read about combat below to help you decide what to upgrade.

4. Understanding combat. Each unit’s attack = base strength + d6 roll per level + fortification.  The top number on the unit card is its base strength. If it is in a city with fortifications, that’s displayed below with an addition symbol. Each unit also has a level, which is visible when that unit is selected, down on the bottom panel. Units fight whenever they meet at a city or on the road. The unit with the higher attack wins, but takes losses equal to the loser’s attack. (i.e. simply subtract the loser’s number from the winner’s.)

5. Trading and bribing. Trading coins with other players and bribing independents use up your 4 daily trades. You should find out which players can use which coins, either by asking them or looking at their cities. To send coins to a player, hit “new” at the top left, then hit the “Trade Coins” in orange text at the bottom left of the panel that appears. To bribe white/independent units, click on their card. At the top of the unit panel on the bottom of the screen, orange text will say “offer them coins”. If you have the coins and trades to do so, this can be a good choice. 

6. Movement. Click on a unit. A “move” button appears next to it. Now you may select a town to move to. This will take a few hours. 

Some other notes:

You can tell a lot just by looking at a city. If there are grey arrows around it, the fortifications are being upgraded. If there is a grey coin at the top of the coin stack, the market is being upgraded. If there is a unit face beneath the city, you can make/reinforce units from that city.  

Units have special abilities, like ranged magical attacks. The range of special abilities is visible as a RED circle when you select that unit’s card. You can also read these from the unit’s card. Don’t forget to use your magic attacks.

When going into combat, pay attention to if it’s going to be decided by dice roll. You can’t always avoid that, but you may as well, if it’s possible.

What to buy and when (quoted from smellyterror.blogspot): 

Very loosely: build as much economy as you can survive, and as little defence as you can survive. Spend the rest on units.

Judging what you can survive is the tricky part. Also, if you’re trying to win, you’ll want enough units to get a bit of a lead in the zombie-killing department - but you’re still going to need enough economy to sustain you in the long term.

Often, especially in the beginning, the best option for fighting zombies is to take the initial attacks in your defences, wipe the slobber off your walls, then counter-attack. You’ll need to plan ahead, though, because defences take a long time to build, but you can’t take them with you when the zombies go somewhere else. Work out where you’re likely to be doing some heavy fighting, and get defences down early.

Note that a level of markets adds an average of 2 coins per day. To get the last level, level 4, costs 10 coins. So that will take you 5 days just to make your money back. It’s often more cost effective to add a level of reinforcements so you can capture that 2-market town down the road. Not that you should avoid getting the level 4 markets, just consider whether you have a better alternative. A good example is bribing Dwarf-towns.

December 26, 2012
"If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

— Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

December 24, 2012
Metafilter on survivalists
bardic: A huge number of people in the wealtiest nation in the history of the world are terrified of their neighbors, their fellow citizens, and quite possibly the concept of civic virtue itself.
I don't even bother trying to understand these people any more. They have a right to live as they choose, and I have a right to suggest that they are terrible people for turning their children into asocial, perhaps sociopathic, fellow citizens.
Ghostride The Whip: Well, bardic, we live in a cutthroat capitalist society where something as simple as getting sick can plunge you into financial and personal ruin--and doing anything about it brings up the old boogeymen COMMUNISM and socialism--and you can be fired pretty much at any time for any reason and if you work somewhere where jobs are already hard to come by, it's not like you're finding another one anytime soon.
Furthermore, the press constantly tell you to be TERRIFIED, sometimes for good reason and usually for not and expertly delve into your subconscious to find just the things you should be afraid of, then pour it on and sell you things to soothe your anxiety. (Honestly, I think women's magazines exist just to make up things to make women worry about then sell them the solution in glossy advertising).
Your elected leaders drag you around from boogeyman to boogeyman telling you THERE THERE BE AFRAID OF THAT GUY HE'S THE ONE DOING YOU WRONG while constantly reminding you that we're in a time of war and terrorists are lurking around every corner just waiting to blow you up and no, you can't take grandma's jam home in your carry on because terrorists. And if you question it too stringently, good luck ever seeing grandma again, either because you got locked up or because you wound up on some No Fly List they can't even tell you you're on, much less how to get off it.
And if you get too far afield, there's a whole media complex waiting to tell you about the jackbooted UN stormtroopers in their blue helmets coming to steal your guns so they can sell you colloidal silver and solar power generators while they stoke your already over-the-top anxieties about a society that's gradually getting browner and more Hispanic and more progressive. You couldn't talk to a therapist even if you wanted to because mental health coverage is really tough to find in that health insurance you're always in danger of losing or not being able to afford anymore.
And on top of that, the country you have been repeatedly assured is the greatest, mightiest country in the world and you are the luckiest son of a gun ever born to be a part of it suddenly looks kind of vulnerable and is embroiled in a couple long and costly wars it doesn't seem to be winning or even making any progress in it.
And here's the thing: There's nothing you can do about any of it. Oh, you can vote, but the new boss always winds up looking like the old boss.
But! But what you can do is make sure you're prepared when the whole seemingly-crumbling edifice collapses. You may not be able to rely on your health insurance, but when the shit hits the fan--as surely it must if we're constantly under attack by incompetent yet sinisterly powerful forces--YOU will be the one with the guns and ammunition and food and supplies. You can care for your family by making sure they survive and are comfortable. And more importantly, you are part of the secret club for once in your life. You are finally, finally in control and know something other people don't and can make sure, if nothing else, you and your kids will have food and water when the end times come. As they surely must if these powerful forces (Terrorists! UN Stormtroopers!) are cutting away the very foundation of Our Great Republic.
I think what it comes down to is people are terrified and just looking around for some semblance of control in a chaotic world where multibillion dollar industries and the entire political structure are set up to keep their anxiety on high alert at all times.
Dee Xtrovert: Well, unlike the majority of you (I assume), I actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.
Of those who couldn't leave my city, Sarajevo:
Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the "long haul" - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.
Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of "preparation" to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don't know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity. Today, that still feels like it's worth something.
But here's the main point: "Preparing" for the disaster really didn't do anyone much good. Those who "prepared" ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces. The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams. Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.
We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren't attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I'd take a bite of a friend's salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I'd never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.
Within the domain of those trapped in the city, civility greatly increased.
You often hear how Holocaust survivors felt guilt at surviving. Well, during war, that was a feeling everyone was aware of - people started dying right away (my parents were killed near the start of the siege, for instance) - and there was a palpable enough common sense of karma to make everyone into good Samaritans. None of us understood why we survived while others didn't. I shared food when I had it, even though I often knew I wouldn't have a crumb the next day. Which was no big achievement, because nearly everyone did the same.
Those who'd prepared, well, the majority of them shared their food and whatever else they had as soon as someone else was clearly in need. I can't swear it, but I think they felt a little foolish to have been so self-obsessed, and giving away that stuff might have lessened that feeling. There were a few people who hoarded things until they ran out of stuff - eventually everybody ran out of anything worth hoarding - and they soon became wishful beggars like the rest of us. Again, I can't swear it, but I hear stories, and it seems that these people suffer from post-war trauma, guilt and nightmares more than the rest of us.
Those survivalists, I feel sorry for them. It's no way to live.
December 22, 2012
"

Look, I’ve spent my life hovering around the periphery of wealth.

I went to a private high school with rich kids, because I got a scholarship. I went to college because my dad sold his share of a company he built and suddenly had boocoodles of money. I still worked work-study jobs, and on holidays and summers I ran cranes in a warehouse. I was raised comfortably middle class, but I got to see what REAL wealth looked like. I worked in really good restaurants. Like, REALLY good.

Rich people scheme.

It’s that simple. Rich people will think nothing of chartering a private jet to go see a football game, but they’ll scream bloody murder if you try to sell them a bottle of champagne for ten bucks more than they can buy it at the wine store. Rich people know the price of everything.

Rich people plot.

They lay traps. They plan to make others fail.

Anyone who pops their head up gets it sliced off.

There’s a brilliant bit in an early Simpsons episode where Bill Gates shuts down Homer’s nascent Internet business with the words “how’d you think I got rich? WRITING CHECKS?”

It’s fucking true.

And so for every shark there’s a thousand remoras.

Which reinforces their paranoia. You want to know wealth? Sell them drugs. Rich people love drugs.They have an endless appetite. Ever see a woman do a red wine and cocaine enema? I have. And she was in the New York Times social pages the following month for her contributions to charity. Which amounted to a tenth, hell, a fiftieth of the money she’d spent on drugs in a week.

Here’s the secret about “class warfare”: WE’VE ALREADY FUCKING LOST.

"

— posted by BitterOldPunk at 4:10 AM on December 20 [52 favorites]

October 14, 2012
"

Question two: Which one book would you give to every politician?

Answer: One that explodes.

Before you freak out, let’s change the question and see what you think: Which one book would you give to Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Goebbels?

Let’s ask this another way: Would a book have changed Hitler? I don’t think so. Unless it exploded.

"

— Derrick Jensen

5:54pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZGrSRyVIlDNC
(View comments  
Filed under: anarchism 
October 14, 2012
"This week the New York Times published an article about a Dr Michael Anderson, who prescribes Adderall to low-income schoolchildren struggling with their studies. Dr Anderson doesn’t even believe ADHD is a legitimate illness, but he does believe that taking Adderall can help disadvantaged children compete with their more privileged peers. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment,” he explains. “So we have to modify the kid.”

Adderall, you see, is capitalism’s wonder-pill. It optimises your productivity levels, it dulls your personality levels, and it turns you into the closest human approximation there is to a machine. And that’s why, despite the fact that it’s basically speed, despite the fact that it’s ridiculously addictive, despite the fact that it can re-wire your brain and ruin your life, much of corporate America is A-OK with it."

Speed and the city: meet the Adderall-addled adults of New York

fucking jesus this is a stark explanation of capitalism’s consideration for workers as human beings

(via tipsforradicals)

(via tipsforradicals)

October 13, 2012
"[T]he actual facts of the sacrifices repel us when we see them: basketball geniuses who cannot read, sprinters who dope themselves, defensive tackles who shoot up with bovine hormones until they collapse or explode. We prefer not to consider closely the shockingly vapid and primitive comments uttered by athletes in postcontest interviews or to consider what impoverishments in one’s mental life would allow people actually to think the way great athletes seem to think. Note the way ‘up close and personal’ profiles of professional athletes strain so hard to find evidence of a rounded human life – outside interests and activities, values beyond the sport. We ignore what’s obvious, that most of this straining is farce. It’s farce because the realities of top-level athletics today require an early and total commitment to one area of excellence. An ascetic focus. A subsumption of almost all other features of human life to one chosen talent and pursuit. A consent to live in a world that, like a child’s world, is very small."

— –David Foster Wallace

October 13, 2012

(Source: humanlegacy)

October 13, 2012
"

“Somebody gets the surplus wealth that labor produces and does not consume. Who is the Somebody?” Such is the problem recently posited in the editorial columns of the New York Truth. Substantially the same question has been asked a great many times before, but, as might have been expected, this new form of putting it has created no small hubbub. Truth’s columns are full of it; other journals are taking it up; clubs are organizing to discuss it; the people are thinking about it; students are pondering over it. For it is a most momentous question. A correct answer to it is unquestionably the first step in the settlement of the appalling problem of poverty, intemperance, ignorance, and crime. Truth, in selecting it as a subject on which to harp and hammer from day to day, shows itself a level-headed, far-sighted newspaper. But, important as it is, it is by no means a difficult question to one who really considers it before giving an answer, though the variety and absurdity of nearly all the replies thus far volunteered certainly tend to give an opposite impression.

What are the ways by which men gain possession of property? Not many. Let us name them: work, gift, discovery, gaming, the various forms of illegal robbery by force or fraud, usury. Can men obtain wealth by any other than one or more of these methods? Clearly, no. Whoever the Somebody may be, then, he must accumulate his riches in one of these ways. We will find him by the process of elimination.

Is the Somebody the laborer? No; at least not as laborer; otherwise the question were absurd. Its premises exclude him. He gains a bare subsistence by his work; no more. We are searching for his surplus product. He has it not.

Is the Somebody the beggar, the invalid, the cripple, the discoverer, the gambler, the highway robber, the burglar, the defaulter, the pickpocket, or the common swindler? None of these, to any extent worth mentioning. The aggregate of wealth absorbed by these classes of our population compared with the vast mass produced is a mere drop in the ocean, unworthy of consideration in studying a fundamental problem of political economy. These people get some wealth, it is true; enough, probably for their own purposes: but labor can spare them the whole of it, and never know the difference.

Then we have found him. Only the usurer remaining, he must be the Somebody whom we are looking for; he, and none other. But who is the usurer, and whence comes his power? There are three forms of usury: interest on money, rent of land and houses, and profit in exchange. Whoever is in receipt of any of these is a usurer. And who is not? Scarcely any one. The banker is a usurer; the manufacturer is a usurer; the merchant is a usurer; the landlord is a usurer; and the workingman who puts his savings, if he has any, out at interest, or takes rent for his house or lot, if he owns one, or exchanges his labor for more than an equivalent, — he too is a usurer. The sin of usury is one under which all are concluded, and for which all are responsible. But all do not benefit by it. The vast majority suffer. Only the chief usurers accumulate: in agricultural and thickly-settled countries, the landlords; in industrial and commercial countries, the bankers. Those are the Somebodies who swallow up the surplus wealth.

And where do the Somebodies get their power? From monopoly. Here, as usual, the State is the chief of sinners. Usury rests on two great monopolies, — the monopoly of land and the monopoly of credit. Were it not for these, it would disappear. Ground-rent exists only because the State stands by to collect it and to protect land-titles rooted in force or fraud. Otherwise the land would be free to all, and no one could control more than he used. Interest and house-rent exist only because the State grants to a certain class of individuals and corporations the exclusive privilege of using its credit and theirs as a basis for the issuance of circulating currency. Otherwise credit would be free to all, and money, brought under the law of competition, would be issued at cost. Interest and rent gone, competition would leave little or no chance for profit in exchange except in business protected by tariff or patent laws. And there again the State has but to step aside to cause the last vestige of usury to disappear.

The usurer is the Somebody, and the State is his protector. Usury is the serpent gnawing at labor’s vitals, and only liberty can detach and kill it. Give laborers their liberty, and they will keep their wealth. As for the Somebody, he, stripped of his power to steal, must either join their ranks or starve.

"

— Benjamin Tucker

October 10, 2012
"The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd; the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are."

— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

(Source: maanlovejoy)

September 25, 2012
Yer a Wizard Harry: OCCUPY BATMAN

dresdencodak:

daleberan:

At the heart of a repetition compulsion, Freud says, is the fact no genuine pleasure is derived from the act. Think, for example, of the cartwheeling lovers in Plato’s Symposium, who as hermaphroditic man-woman combos live a harmonious existence until Zeus tears them asunder with a…

Brilliant essay. Full text here.

Dale Beran is also the creator of the phenomenal webcomic The Nerds of Paradise and writer of A Lesson is Learned, but the Damage is Irreversible.

September 25, 2012
US academics' report says drones kill large numbers of civilians and increase recruitment by militant groups

mohandasgandhi:

The CIA’s programme of “targeted” drone killings in Pakistan’s tribal heartlands is politically counterproductive, kills large numbers of civilians and undermines respect for international law, according to a report by US academics.

The study by Stanford and New York universities’ law schools, based on interviews with victims, witnesses and experts, blames the US president, Barack Obama, for the escalation of “signature strikes” in which groups are selected merely through remote “pattern of life” analysis.

Families are afraid to attend weddings or funerals, it says, in case US ground operators guiding drones misinterpret them as gatherings of Taliban or al-Qaida militants.

“The dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling ‘targeted killings’ of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false,” the report, entitled Living Under Drones, states.

The authors admit it is difficult to obtain accurate data on casualties “because of US efforts to shield the drone programme from democratic accountability, compounded by obstacles to independent investigation of strikes in North Waziristan”.

The “best available information”, they say, is that between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed in Pakistan between June 2004 and mid-September this year – of whom between 474 and 881 were civilians, including 176 children. The figures have been assembled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which estimated that a further 1,300 individuals were injured in drone strikes over that period.

The report was commissioned by and written with the help of the London-based Reprieve organisation, which is supporting action in the British courts by Noor Khan, a Pakistani whose father was killed by a US drone strike in March 2011. His legal challenge alleges the UK is complicit in US drone strikes because GCHQ, the eavesdropping agency, shares intelligence with the CIA on targets for drone strikes.

“US drones hover 24 hours a day over communities in north-west Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning,” the American law schools report says.

Their presence terrorises men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves.

“These fears have affected behaviour. The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims.”

The study goes on to say: “Publicly available evidence that the strikes have made the US safer overall is ambiguous at best … The number of ‘high-level’ militants killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low – estimated at just 2% [of deaths]. Evidence suggests that US strikes have facilitated recruitment to violent non-state armed groups, and motivated further violent attacks … One major study shows that 74% of Pakistanis now consider the US an enemy.”

(Continue reading…)
I would like to place further emphasis on this statement:
The number of ‘high-level’ militants killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low – estimated at just 2% [of deaths].
Is it worth it? Strategically and ethically, the answer is a resounding “no.”

September 25, 2012

johnjlm:

I love these.

Fuck you, Mitt.

(via reasonedoverreaction)

September 13, 2012
"So, instead, here is a recipe for writing a hit popular brain book. You start each chapter with a pat anecdote about an individual’s professional or entrepreneurial success, or narrow escape from peril. You then mine the neuroscientific research for an apparently relevant specific result and narrate the experiment, perhaps interviewing the scientist involved and describing his hair. You then climax in a fit of premature extrapolation, inferring from the scientific result a calming bromide about what it is to function optimally as a modern human being. Voilà, a laboratory-sanctioned Big Idea in digestible narrative form."

New Statesman - Your brain on pseudoscience: the rise of popular neurobollocks (via merlin)

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