New Testingstan

magic princess wrote:Patroklos. Though in general assimilationist attitudes infuriate me immensely because they're produced on an incredible level by the progressive version of racism and European ethnocentrism. I'm a conservative, not a racist, and that combination means one of my most passionate subjects really is defending indigenous cultural and land-use rights, so it is really easy for me to lose all perspective and just want to pistol-whip some other white person who declares that yes, the natives will all move to NYC, when in fact those who leave the reservations for jobs are usually forced to by economic conditions and move back on retirement because they never wanted to in the first place. Assimilationism is just the white progressive version of genocide when you look at the history of the tribes. But it appeals to their "we can fix all problems by uplifting everyone equally" impulse, so it is their favourite sin. I'm sure Straha can talk on this at great length also.

Cultural genocide might be the term you want.

Jung wrote:Why? I'm just curious.

I can't speak for her, but personally I'm glad I got nuked because old posts are just kinda embarrassing anyway, especially when you spill something personal, but even weak arguments or outgrown politics are things I may not want to see again. (I have chatlogs of myself from 2004 and oh my god if I had a time machine I'd go back and hide my own modem)

Sometimes, that kind of record might be interesting, but it certainly isn't something I'd want in public, 100x so if people are liable to bring it up again.

No, Aaron. Whole tribes in Brasil displaced from their language and way of life literally just drink and drug themselves to death--also happens in other places but I'd need time to bring up specific examples from old readings. It is literal, not merely cultural, genocide, to enact cultural genocide. It leads directly to physical genocide.

Dalton, if you're reading this thread, please give my wife enough time to save all my fanfic posts. Then if you don't like what you're hearing, go ahead and delete my account. I can't bear the board culture anymore, I've drifted too far from it, and I respect you as a friend but I just can't stand it anymore.

Yes I realize that, I'm referring to your assimilation comments. Assimilation is the nice way of saying cultural genocide.

So...why would they ban you over that? The thread made me grind my teeth, no doubt. But nothing awful.

I just think the assimilationist creed is powerful enough in their governing ideology that I'm going to have someone come down on my head like a hammer.

Based on the leeway shep got for over a decade, you might have to go a lot further for a ban.

He got that because Mike protected him, partially as an attempt to keep a few conservatives around. Most of the intelligent ones either left or learned to shut up.

Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in. God damn it.

Gands wrote:Based on the leeway shep got for over a decade, you might have to go a lot further for a ban.

You know, if you wanted to, the thread could probably do with your perspectives on the matter, considering your own native ties in Australia. All I know is that just 'cause I get ahead of myself and suggest something stupid like goat herding doesn't magically make indigenous people no longer deserve land and sovereignty, despite Patroklos' efforts to link the two.

Shep was also never banned, he only deactivated his account himself.

Losonti Tokash wrote:Shep was also never banned, he only deactivated his account himself.

That's the most hilarious thing about Shep's years at teo. Despite numerous warnings, temp bans, being told that others would be banned for what he did, shit storms, etc, he was the one who decided it was over.

I think shep won TEO.

magic princess wrote:You know, if you wanted to, the thread could probably do with your perspectives on the matter, considering your own native ties in Australia. All I know is that just 'cause I get ahead of myself and suggest something stupid like goat herding doesn't magically make indigenous people no longer deserve land and sovereignty, despite Patroklos' efforts to link the two.

I'd like to, but I just can't be arsed. Patroklos is clearly dug in, so it'll just turn into more endless texts that wind up being little more than "yeah/nah".

Guv'ness you've crashed TEO Is not loading!

timmy wrote:Guv'ness you've crashed TEO Is not loading!

Hilariously, this forum's hardware is so over speced it could run both SDN & sb.com without noticing besides the increased traffic utilisation (which is the expensive bit in Australia).

And Perth, Western Australia idea of bad weather is just hot summers. Rain, lightning & flooding what is that?

Apparently Mal, we did stop the signal.

RogueIce wrote:Apparently Mal, we did stop the signal.

xon wrote:

timmy wrote:Guv'ness you've crashed TEO Is not loading!

Hilariously, this forum's hardware is so over speced it could run both SDN & sb.com without noticing besides the increased traffic utilisation (which is the expensive bit in Australia).

And Perth, Western Australia idea of bad weather is just hot summers. Rain, lightning & flooding what is that?

lol, offer to host it for him.

By curiosity, wouldn't there be some legal considerations to be had if SDN moved from Canada to Australia ? Some copyright laws and other things ?

No idea. He used to have the forum hosted separately from the board, in his basement I think.

The site itself was hosted in the US.

No idea what he's doing now.

Oxymoron wrote:By curiosity, wouldn't there be some legal considerations to be had if SDN moved from Canada to Australia ? Some copyright laws and other things ?

Nothing that matters to be honest.

Both Australian and Canada legally need to honor DMCA takedown requests. At least for this server's ISP, there is no automated takedown process and the only people look at that email queue work normal office hours and I'ld give it good odds I'ld be told before network access was disabled.

This isn't a joke by the way, forums.spacebattles.com was taken out for ~20 hours or so by a single DMCA takedown request for content linked from it. The complain didn't go to the website, but the hosting provider who just disables network access. A DMCA takedown request could legitimately kill Michael Wong's internet permemently untill he responds to the takedown request.

RogueIce wrote:Apparently Mal, we did stop the signal.

mang how weird would it be if you could actually do that with radio shits

"its too late I already sent the message"

"lol wrong. WARP NINE!"


actually stopping the signal might be hard, cuz the distance you travel would mean it spreads right the fuck out and would reform behind any obstruction you put in its place

but you could prolly get ahead of it and jam the signal at least

chuck's doctor who videos have a really long opening

now i love longer than one minute openings and shows that lack them are garbage that piss me off

and the doctor who theme is good stuff

...but it is kinda a lot on a 10-20 video.

so for my worldbuilding brain thing i'm thinking about castles right now

one of them is meant to look "built for war", and indeed it may have been many centuries ago, but that isn't its purpose anymore

anyway, among the built for war aspects are narrow, winding corridors, random dead ends (heh get it, DEAD) and shit like that, so if there was an army trying to get through to the VIPs inside, they'd be forced into single file with poor visibility and so on, giving a big advantage to the defenders


but at the same time, this castle is nowadays used as a more modern headquarters too. and it makes me wonder: how the hell did they actually do those modernizations??


take for instance the war room. the room itself is pretty spacious, but the way to get to it is one of those curvy corridors. canonically there's a large screen and a 3d table sized holographic tank* in that room in the modern era


those are solid state precision electronics, so they prolly weren't brought in as parts and assembled inside (which would explain a lot of stuff, perhaps they could use small tables pushed together, since a large one wouldn't fit through the turns, stuff like that... but that doesn't work for everything).... so how the fuck did they get in there?????????


i betcha ppl restoring/modernizing real life castles have dealt with all this stuff before, but i'd prefer to just ponder it myself rather than look that up lol

perhaps they cut a hole in the roof above that room, and lowered the equipment in with a crane or helicopter.


* the holographic tank is like a cube with screens on each side, but instead of regular tv screens they do the whole hologram trick. i'm pretty sure we could build one of those with today's technology but it'd prolly cost like ten million dollars



or how about lighting? back in the day, uneven or dark lighting might be an advantage, limiting the enemy's sight. but today, you'd probably want something a little more friendly

so installing light strips would be cool. they'd prolly use strips of LEDs today. but 1) how will you retrofit such an annoying structure with electricity and 2) how much of a pain will it be to hang them and 3) what if the wire is cut?????


i think the easiest way would prolly be to surface mount everything, using masonry screws to drill into the stone. the lines into the building can drill through the outer wall, avoiding some hassle of running cable thorugh all the halls (Except for the lighting)

they'd prolly dig a trench from the grid to a newly constructed electrical house inside the wall. (the castle might also provide its own generators, but grid power is hella useful regardless). then it is distributed through more underground wiring into each of the main structures


then from there, surface mount the LED strips. one nice thing is the ceiling prolly isn't too high, you can get by with a step stool rather than trying to maneuver a ladder through those corridors

they can be like newer christmas lights, with a parallel circuit so one node going bad doesn't darken the whole strip. But the main power feed itself could darken the whole thing if it got cut. might put it in metal tubing to help prevent that, or maybe it can just be high enough that it is unlikely ot happen by accident


in addition to a pure lighting strip, there could also be a helpful signal light to guide people through the maze (which can be turned off if you want the more authentic old time experience!)



soooo yeah, bringing the old castle up to date would be a big, time consuming, expensive job, and prolly not something you'd want to do all the time; i could see them wanting to use the same wiring for 80 years just because it is such a pain in the ass to get in there and redo it. but at the end of work, you'd have a way cool castle that is a beautifully old timey "utilitarian" style successfully merged with pretty modern styles and technological advancements


just like the monarchy itself lol

funnily enough I've actually been doing some world-building for a contest. guess i'll repost it here after i'm done.

sweet