Fire Emblem series is one of my fav turn based tactics games. Other ones I’ve really enjoyed are Advance Wars/Wargroove, XCOM, Shadowrun, Wasteland series.

Objectively correct.

Oh I built my own from scratch https://github.com/yogthos/newsroom

I haven’t looked too hard to be honest I find I prefer a laptop for any sort of editing.

I use PhotoCraft and LightCraft for my photo processing now which replaced two commercial apps for me. I tried using GIMP and DarkTable before, and found the UX was just too clunky for me. Neither app fully replicates the functionality, but they do enough of what I use day to day, and they feel snappy.

Personally, what I’ve found to be more interesting though are the custom tools I can now easily build for myself. For example, I was able to make my own news aggregator that goes through a bunch of different news sources using rss, scraping, reading youtube transcripts. It doesn’t care what language the source is in, so I can get news from many different countries. Then it aggregates them to tell me what news are most widely reported, how stories evolve over time, find connections between them and give me a big picture overview. It took around a week to build, and it goes through hundreds of news sites each day to give me a briefing. Being able to make apps like this quickly that are customized to your exact workflow is something that just wasn’t easily doable before.

I love how they present attacking the things that fight back first as some sort of sophisticated tactic they uncovered.

the only difference is that Trump is doing it in the open so that everybody can see what the burger reich is all about

At the rate things are going there won’t be a Saudi Arabia for very long.

Oh they’re definitely in a panic, everybody understands that there’s nothing Europe can do materially to keep the war going on their own. If the US and Russia cut a deal above their heads, they’re fucked. And who do you think will be hurt most if Finns cut power off to themselves?

but the very fact that they called tells you that Europe is in an absolute panic now

Turns out Iran can walk and chew gum at the same time.

probably around 150 once the reserves run out

Nice

Exactly, China controls the material base and the Americans can’t money print their way out of this.

The City and the Stars is one of my all time favorites.

yeah seriously

Very telling that you don’t actually provide sources for your state department talking points.

The whole conspiracy theory started with a claim of millions of Uyghurs being supposedly imprisoned story is based on two highly dubious “studies.”.

However, this claim is completely absurd when you stop and think about it even for a minute. That figure 1 million is repeated again and again. Let’s just look at how much space would you actually need to intern one million people.

This is a photo of Rikers Island, New York City’s biggest prison. The actual size of a facility interning ten thousand people.

According to Wikipedia, “The average daily inmate population on the island is about 10,000, although it can hold a maximum of 15,000.” Let’s assume this is a Xinjiang detention camp, holding ten to fifteen thousand people. How many of these would it take to hold one million people?

Let’s do some math:

In reality, one million people would probably take more space; all the supposed detention camps we see are much less dense than Rikers.

For comparison, San Francisco is 47 square miles. Amsterdam is 64 square miles. You’d literally need detention camps that total the size of San Francisco or Amsterdam to intern one million Uyghurs. It’d be like looking at a map of California. There’s Los Angeles. There’s San Diego. And look, there’s San Francisco Concentration City with its one million Uyghurs.

Literally visible to the naked eye from space.

CHRD states that it interviewed dozens of ethnic Uyghurs in the course of its study, but their enormous estimate was ultimately based on interviews with exactly eight Uyghur individuals. Based on this absurdly small sample of research subjects in an area whose total population is 20 million, CHRD “extrapolated estimates” that “at least 10% of villagers […] are being detained in re-education detention camps, and 20% are being forced to attend day/evening re-education camps in the villages or townships, totaling 30% in both types of camps.” Furthermore, it doesn’t even make sense from logistics perspective.

Practically all the stories we see about China trace back to Adrian Zenz is a far right fundamentalist nutcase and not a reliable source for any sort of information. The fact that he’s the primary source for practically every article in western media demonstrates precisely what I’m talking about when I say that coverage is divorced from reality.

Zenz is a born-again Christian who lectures at the European School of Culture and Theology. This anodyne-sounding campus is actually the German base of Columbia International University, a US-based evangelical Christian seminary which considers the “Bible to be the ultimate foundation and the final truth in every aspect of our lives,” and whose mission is to “educate people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ.”

Zenz’s work on China is inspired by this biblical worldview, as he recently explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I feel very clearly led by God to do this,” he said. “I can put it that way. I’m not afraid to say that. With Xinjiang, things really changed. It became like a mission, or a ministry.”.

Along with his “mission” against China, heavenly guidance has apparently prompted Zenz to denounce homosexuality, gender equality, and the banning of physical punishment against children as threats to Christianity.

Zenz outlined these views in a book he co-authored in 2012, titled Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation. In the tome, Zenz discussed the return of Jesus Christ, the coming wrath of God, and the rise of the Antichrist.

The fact that this nutcase is being paraded as a credible researcher on the subject is absolutely surreal, and it’s clear that the methodology of his “research” doesn’t pass any kind of muster when examined closely.

It’s also worth noting that there is a political angle around the narrative around Xinjiang. For example, here’s George Bush’s chief of staff openly saying that US wants to destabilize the region, and NED recently admitting to funding Uyghur separatism for the past 16 years on their own official Twitter page. An ex-CIA operative details US operations radicalizing and training terrorists in the region in this book. Here’s an excerpt:

US has been stoking terrorism in the region while they’ve been running a propaganda campaign against China in the west. In fact, US even classified Uyghur separatists as a terrorist group at one point https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-was-at-war-uyghur-terrorists-now-claims-etim-doesnt-exist/276916/

Here’s an interview with a son of imam killed in Xinjiang https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-19/Son-of-imam-assassinated-in-Kashgar-s-2014-mosque-attack-speaks-out-RqNiyrcRuo/index.html

Here’s an account from a Pakistani journalist who has been all over Xinjiang (which borders Pakistan) claims that western media reports on “atrocities” are lies. https://dailytimes.com.pk/723317/exposing-the-occidents-baseless-lies-about-xinjiang/

It’s also worth noting that the accusations originate entirely from the west while Muslim majority countries support China, and their leaders have visited Xinjiang many times.

• https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/on-eid-xinjiang-imams-defend-china-against-u-s-criticism-1.5425967
• https://www.bolnews.com/latest/2023/07/pak-religious-leaders-nurture-bonds-of-cooperation-with-xinjiang/
• https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/islamic-envoys-say-china-is-protecting-minorities-in-xinjiang-after-five-day-visit

Also notable that whenever western media actually deigns to visit Xinjiang, which is not often, they’re unable to produce support for any of their claims of mass imprisonment and oppression, so they opt for insinuations instead https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9

There’s a further list of debunking here if you’re interested https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/

The whole thing is very clearly a propaganda blitz that US is cynically using to manipulate impressionable people in the west.

liberals are not ok 🤣

I agree, the sanctions have done an amazing job destroying European economy. More is better.

Somebody really needs to make a game show where they pit a liberal vs a toddler to see who has a better understanding of geopolitics.