mezentius

9 ms·

31.
by mezentius 5y ago
The people of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania certainly see it as equivalent, which is why they wanted to join NATO in the first place. Russia had been attempting to destabilize the governments of those countries by providing support to frin
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by mezentius 5y ago
He is suggesting that a no-fly zone should have been instituted prior to the invasion, at the invitation of Ukraine. This would have produced significantly different military and diplomatic implications; it would have required Russia to be
33.
by mezentius 5y ago
I still use WordPerfect 6.2 for DOS regularly, particularly during the beginning of a writing project when I'm most prone to being distracted. If you emulate through DOSBox-X, you can use TTF fonts for screen output, and even print dir
34.
by mezentius 5y ago
This is a bizarre framing of the intervention in Yugoslavia that largely omits its intention, context, and history, other than a brief mention of "aiming to...put an end to anti-Albanian violence in the province of Kosovo." Serbia
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by mezentius 5y ago
Thanks for this. I had the same series of thoughts after reading the article, and struggled to feel more charitable about it. "Shitshow" is a kind description. On my father's increasingly rare good days, I often think of Stan
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by mezentius 5y ago
I would argue that there is a thesis—one that is fairly explicit, shared among various Curtis works, and not even particularly controversial, although it can sometimes feel slippery when presented via Curtis' cinematic techniques. He
37.
by mezentius 5y ago
Another major hypertext authoring tool of the 1980s not mentioned here is Storyspace, which was the emerging standard for reading and creating works of literary hypertext fiction. If you’ve never heard of any of these works—which were somet
38.
by mezentius 5y ago
I'll put it this way: in popular culture, the controversy over the use of atomic weapons by America goes beyond purely what can be proved, and has instead become a proxy war for other contemporary political issues. (This is not a new p
39.
by mezentius 5y ago
My sticking point with that would be the point about the Japanese having "committed to surrender" prior to the bombs being dropped, which can't really be argued convincingly. The dysfunctional Japanese military hierarchy had
40.
by mezentius 5y ago
Yes—and beyond the important question of separate peace, those conditions were seen as too onerous given the perceived need to transform Japan's political and social institutions after the war. Beyond this was the political requirement
41.
by mezentius 5y ago
I would argue the opposite; criticism of the use of atomic weapons on Japan tends to ramp up during periods of increasing skepticism toward American power (e.g., now). Unfortunately, that criticism is rarely rooted in credible historical ar
42.
by mezentius 5y ago
I made a post about this above, but the difference between a negotiated peace and an unconditional surrender is rather crucial. The Japanese were willing to seek the former but found the latter politically unacceptable until sufficient pres
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by mezentius 5y ago
The history does not credibly support this analysis. For Halsey to say that the Japanese were on "the verge of surrender" is somewhat misleading; while the Japanese may have been willing to seek a negotiated end to the conflict, t
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by mezentius 5y ago
You should not be downvoted for this—you are correct. These are exactly the conversations that film executives are having internally, especially on the buying side. They don’t see it as a Twitter thing entirely, but as an engagement with th
45.
by mezentius 5y ago
You're right that these are the sorts of figures that influenced the decision. It's also worth remembering that there were high-ranking members of the Japanese military who questioned the logic of the war or ordered retreats from
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by mezentius 5y ago
This is a good example, although I would be careful about characterizing the entire Japanese military as fanatics. (To his great credit, Carlin is also careful in this regard, and discusses the issue at some length.) The average Japanese so
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by mezentius 5y ago
There is no convincing evidence for this argument. The Soviet Union was deeply engaged in its war against Nazi Germany until the very bitter end, and fully mobilized in that direction. Beyond that, America provided immense quantities of aid
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by mezentius 5y ago
Carlin's podcast on this subject, summarizing other well-researched histories, gives a much better idea of why firebombing and the atomic bomb were considered within bounds. The Japanese government was willing to throw away an appallin
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by mezentius 5y ago
> I wish there was some sort of island or safe haven country setup by cryptographers so they could safely work on crypto without legal issues or crypto being seen as a munition and a threat to government. This has always been a fascinati
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by mezentius 5y ago
Often. Speech, art, and culture do typically encompass politics, because politics are a social activity and therefore a primary concern of the humanities. But the argument that these things are therefore inherently political is specious, an
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by mezentius 6y ago
They don't have to be exclusive of each other. One of the nice features of Parallels is that it can run your Bootcamp partition inside of a VM. Very convenient if you need to do something quickly in Windows and don't want to go th
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by mezentius 6y ago
In some ways games of this period are similar to the movies of the 1920s and 30s, before genres had ossified into their more rigid modern forms. In the same way that you'll find the plot of a 30s movie moving strangely between murder m
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by mezentius 6y ago
Ding-ding-ding . Yes, that is exactly what's actually happening here—and it's happening at a number of large news media outlets, print or otherwise. There is no longer a mandatory retirement age, and the older reporters with more
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by mezentius 6y ago
I immediately thought of Command — it's a very deep rabbit hole to go down, and the sine qua non if you're into this stuff. But if you are not (1) a defense analyst or (2) a retiree you will be horrified to discover how much time
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by mezentius 6y ago
There's a small (and free) indie game called STAVKA-OKH that tasks the player with prosecuting the Nazi war on the Eastern Front—and DOES acknowledge the political and moral issues in fascinating and unexpected ways. It's certainl
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by mezentius 6y ago
If you liked 688(I), I strongly recommend giving Dangerous Waters a shot. It’s a sequel made by the company, featuring submarines as well as surface and helicopter platforms, and is currently on sale. https://store.steampowered.c
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by mezentius 6y ago
Yes, but valuearb makes a good point— it is not always true that a bad peace is better than a good war. There are moments when timely, preemptive military intervention can avoid a more destructive conflict. (The problem is, of course, that
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by mezentius 7y ago
Right-- but often an NPC is merely scenery or traffic, in the sense that their behavior does not compete with your interests. What I found interesting about the football example is that the random strategy of the NPC-oach both suggested a d
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by mezentius 7y ago
>>The best performing variant happened to be random. Some years ago I heard an anecdote from a developer who had worked on a video game about American football. The gist of it was that they had tested various sophisticated systems for
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by mezentius 8y ago
According to Nigel Nicolson in "Napoleon 1812," Tolstoy's fatalistic outlook about the war (if not all of his historical detail) is actually fairly accurate. The Russians didn't fend off Napoleon by understanding the nat

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