Mechanisms of enforcement still need enforcers who respect the rule of law. If the enforcers stop respecting the rule of law and prefer to play power politics then the won’t help you.

Enforcers are part of the honour system. If they aren’t honourable then the system breaks down.

Yeah. I was just thinking about why zombies are so threatening. They represent the total collapse of the social order and a replacement of a large percent of the population of ordinary people with savage predators.

All systems are honour systems at their core. If no one respects the rule of law then laws don’t matter.

But suppose we eliminated 99% of all trucks on the road. Emissions from trucks would then be insignificant in the big picture.

Well that’s what diesel trains do for us. If we could reduce global emissions by 99% across the board we’d be done. Tearing the earth apart for an EV revolution just to eliminate that last 1% would not be worth it.

The new normal is gonna be everyone logging off. Just like how millions cut the cord and got rid of cable TV, millions can sign off social media for good.

The issue with electrifying rail networks is that it’s very expensive and modern diesel-electric locomotives are already over a hundred times more efficient than trucks. So while it does reduce emissions to replace a diesel locomotive with a fully electric train you’re far better off getting hundreds of trucks off the road and adding one new diesel-electric locomotive!

The major theme of the film is awakening from a false consciousness. It’s an existentialist picture. This leaves it open to any of countless interpretations unrelated to gender. I think many more people have interpreted the film as Christian with Neo in the role of Jesus and with some of the names of characters and places having biblical themes. The film’s actual depiction of gender is rather conventional, including the action girl trope shown by the character Trinity.

Taken together, these two details make it very difficult to support the Wachowskis’ claim in the text. If anything, the opposite could be argued.

But how long was it, how much more of this would they have to endure, or could they endure? The breathlessness of the air was growing as they climbed; and now they seemed often in the blind dark to sense some resistance thicker than the foul air.

As they thrust forward they felt things brush against their heads, or against their hands, long tentacles, or hanging growths perhaps: they could not tell what they were. And still the stench grew. It grew, until almost it seemed to them that smell was the only clear sense left to them, and that was for their torment. One hour, two hours, three hours: how many had they passed in this lightless hole? Hours - days, weeks rather. Sam left the tunnel-side and shrank towards Frodo, and their hands met and clasped, and so together they still went on.

At length Frodo, groping along the left-hand wall, came suddenly to a void.

Almost he fell sideways into the emptiness. Here was some opening in the rock far wider than any they had yet passed; and out of it came a reek so foul, and a sense of lurking malice so intense, that Frodo reeled. And at that moment Sam too lurched and fell forwards.

Fighting off both the sickness and the fear, Frodo gripped Sam’s hand. ‘Up!’ he said in a hoarse breath without voice. ‘It all comes from here, the stench and the peril. Now for it! Quick!’

Calling up his remaining strength and resolution, he dragged Sam to his feet, and forced his own limbs to move. Sam stumbled beside him. One step, two steps, three steps - at last six steps. Maybe they had passed the dreadful unseen opening, but whether that was so or not, suddenly it was easier to move, as if some hostile will for the moment had released them. They struggled on, still hand in hand…

— J.R.R. Tolkien. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Uber is different because you use an app instead of calling a person on the phone to order a cab. Furthermore, with an Uber you don’t even have to talk to the driver because they already know your destination.

DoorDash is similar: you use an app instead of placing an order over the phone. This is meaningful enough that many people switched to it even when their favourite restaurant already had delivery because they didn’t want to talk to someone on the phone.

Are you planning to adjust damage and upgrade scaling for throwing weapons? Right now a highly upgraded throwing weapon is ultra powerful. Having 3 of the same one for the same investment would be a significant buff to that play style.

There’s a diminishing returns effect with throwing weapons where having a lot of them isn’t that useful unless your enemy is immobilized somehow. But having 3 that you can throw while an enemy is closing would be very strong with upgrades. You could potentially just be using a stack of upgraded throwing weapons for the majority of your fights and only need to worry about large numbers of enemies.

Now that sounds really interesting! I saw the movie Yojimbo recently and that one depicts a Japanese village full of lawlessness and banditry, but that was set during the samurai era. My impression of Japanese villages today is that they’re rather idyllic places, albeit boring and lacking job opportunities (hence the exodus to Tokyo).

I will check out those authors though. Thanks for the info!

The bigger question is why? And is it universal or is it specific to some places and/or some times.

Like I doubt small Japanese villages are hotbeds of murder. At the same time I fully believe American small towns have a lot of murders. So it’s a pretty strong claim to leap to the conclusion that small towns cause murder.

But they’re not wrong. Look how many people use Uber instead of calling a cab. Look how many use Doordash instead of calling to order from a restaurant. Look how many use self checkout instead of going through an ordinary cashier lane.

People don’t want to interact with each other anymore. They don’t want to make phone calls with strangers. They don’t want to deal with strangers in person. They just want to push a button and get whatever it is that they want.

I think this is some kind of mass stress response to the alienation we all feel from living in modern cities. Of being sequestered into suburbs and having our lives regimented into school/work schedules. We’ve lost the sense of community we had from when we used to live in villages and walk around to get places and we knew everyone around us.

Sniper will definitely need a mini-rework. The ability of any character to enchant a stack of throwing weapons takes away the purpose of the Shared Enchantment talent.

One of the biggest life lessons I learned was from watching the show Breaking Bad. I think we all have a natural disgust / aversion to evil people. While it’s important as a social function for protecting communities from bad actors, it harms our ability to understand evil.

That’s the key. Understanding evil and how good people descend into it is the best way to protect ourselves from walking down that path. It starts with recognizing that bad circumstances and unaddressed feelings of resentment and perhaps a sense of entitlement all contribute to our ability to justify and rationalize our own actions internally.

Hitler couldn’t have carried out the Holocaust without the help of millions of German citizens who rationalized in exactly this way.

Or you’re Putin looking side-eyed at yet another traitorous regional governor!

TIL: the primary function of balconies is murder!

Don’t you know the Dewey decimal system?

The more money they have, the less happy they are. They’re addicted to making money, to watching the line go up and to the right. They’re addicted to trying to destroy the competition and buy them out, to consolidate more and more and more.

They are right when they say that wealth isn’t the key to happiness. They’re riding the bull and they don’t know how to get off.