Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: RedKing on March 16, 2021, 03:21:21 pm

Quote from: Maximum Spin on March 16, 2021, 03:17:13 pm

Out here where most homeowners are armed, housebreakers are much, much rarer but much, much less inhibited.

Begs the question of why people would live out in rural areas, if you're under siege by hardened cannibal marauders all the time.

You usually only get, like, one of those a generation.

ETA: Actually, probably not even that. As far as I know, the last time someone's actual house got broken into in my community was before I was born. (It was drugs.) When we have to defend our property, it's virtually always outside the home (eg, outside and in outbuildings)... so it shouldn't surprise you that I don't hold this belief that defense of property is only legitimate against housebreakers.

So you're going on about the need to shoot trespassers and other property criminals because "ZOMG I AM THE LAST BEST HOPE FOR MY NEIGHBORS" and then admit this is a scenario that virtually never occurs outside your power-trip wet dreams. Nice.

What if somebody broke into your outbuilding because they're homeless and are looking for a place to not die in the elements? What if they stole a blanket off a clothesline? Is that a shooting offence?

Sounds like you'd have been right at home as a railway bull, beating up the hobos because they're desecrating the sanctity of an empty train car.

No man, to put it in starker terms you just killed a man because you value material wealth over human life, and historically that's how the United States was formed to the detriment of the people who were already there.

The solution isn't making sure you get to keep your car at the cost of another man's life, it's valuing human life at a higher price to begin with.

It's the American Golden Rule -- do unto others before they can do unto you.

Quote from: nenjin on January 06, 2021, 05:06:02 pm

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Many years ago it wasn't apparent to me how numerous and influential they were.  I was happier with that lack of knowledge, and I'll never be able to return to that.

It's easy to view a mob and be overwhelmed by their sheer numbers, to inflate their influence just by the sheer size of the crowd. Consider that if you combined all the people in America who aren't about this shit and put them on the street, the mob in DC would barely be a drop of water in the ocean.

Its not about the riot, its about the decade or more of republican action that caused people to storm the capitol to ensure their cult leader stays in power.  Its about a president showing check and balances are just words on paper and with enough court stacking and just the right amount of senate seats even the stupidest, most self destructive policy is possible.  Sure there are tons of people that wouldn't do go riot, but they also wouldn't wince if their neighbor did.

To that point, I'd say better than 50% of the callers in to C-SPAN have been pro-Trump, blaming the violence on Antifa or even claiming there was no violence. The rot goes far deeper than the band of assholes on display today.

Also worth noting that Ethiopia is on the verge of a serious and potentially bloody civil war.
After the Eritrean Independence War in the 1990s, Ethiopia has actually been a relatively bulwark of stability in East Africa (certainly moreso than Sudan or Somalia or even Kenya).

The short version is that Ethopia's current Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, who came to power in 2018, has been working to weaken the ethnic federalism that has been the norm in Ethiopia for decades, and as part of this reorganized the military which had previously been dominated by people from the Tigray ethnic group/region. When Abiy postponed September elections in Tigray (ostensibly due to coronavirus), popular outrage erupted and the Tigrayan local government (and ethnic/state militia) began vociferously opposing Abiy's government in Addis Ababa.

Tigray is governed largely by the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which was a major factor in overthrowing the Communist government of Haile Mariam in 1991. They were also on the frontlines of the Eritrean war in the 1990s, as Tigray and Eritrea share a considerable border. The fact that Abiy is seen as "friendly" with Eritrea (he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his work in Ethiopian-Eritrean reconciliation) is another reason for the rift. Further, Abiy is an ethnic Oromo, the first Oromo to be elected head of the ERPDF, a pan-ethnic political coalition of which the TPLF is a member.

It's hard as a non-expert in this region to tell whether this is a crusading reformer running into backlash from an ethnic group afraid of losing its powerbase, or a budding dictator running into popular resistance from within his own ranks. My guess would be, as so often is the case in developing countries, that it's a bit of both. Regardless of who the "good guy" is (or if there even is one), the clashes between the Ethopian military and the TPLF militias (who are well-equipped, well-trained and seasoned) have already killed over 600 and triggered a wave of refugees fleeing into Sudan.

Quote from: Teneb on November 09, 2020, 10:56:23 pm

There are actually threads for pretty much every geographical region, so you may want to keep this as a generic political discussion thread.

Anyone else remember Afripol? And RedKings' Eastasiapol? Me neither. Feels bad man.

Asiapol is still out there somewhere, I just hadn't been keeping it current since I took a couple years' hiatus. I really should update it to talk about the Thai situation and the most recent happenings in Hong Kong. :-/

Quote from: delphonso on November 04, 2020, 09:35:49 pm

Utah made hunting and fishing a constitutional right

Huh, I wonder how that will be implemented. Could go in quite a few different directions, and the new constitutional text doesn't really help. It does include conservation and "future hunting and fishing" as objectives, at least?

They tried that here several years ago. It's not so much about implementing anything as far as using it as a bulwark against environmental legislation. If it in any way curtails someone's ability to hunt or fish, a lawsuit will be raised on the grounds of infringing on Constitutional rights.

It's one of those innocuous-sounding measures that came out of ALEC, that miraculously shows up introduced into dozens of state legislatures with exactly the same wording..

If Biden wins it'll almost certainly be with a Republican Senate, meaning we see very little legislation/action on much at all (especially under the current Supreme Court). Might end up being a victory for the status quo, with some of Trump's biggest executive actions going away but not much else of note.

Biden might have to rule through executive action and bypass Congress.
Which, well...there's a recently-established four year precedent of that, so...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Quote from: RedKing on November 04, 2020, 12:19:26 am

Welp, looks like all the work I did over the last several weeks was a waste of fucking time.

The day's not over yet.

No, but all the projections were 3-5 percent off on average, which totally fucked up the big picture. And part of the reason I did it was to calm my own anxiety about the election, and try to calm my loved ones.

Mission: FAILED