u/Moon_Logic

People often see Willow in Triangle as a bully. She's certainly in a particularily mischievous mood.

But I want to table the turns a bit.

I am not going to talk a lot about Anya. I just want to say that when people talk about Willow's treatmen to of Anya, they forget that there is a reason Willow doesn't like her for most of the show. The first time they meet, Willow agrees to do a spell with her, but the spell shows her a version of Sunnydale where everyone she knows and loves dies. Then when she refuses to try the spell again, Anya insults her and later Anya teams up with a group of vampires that are holding the Bronze hostage and almost gets Willow killed.

But let's talk about Giles.

Willow has two spells she wants to do. She wants to make a artifical sunlight to help Buffy fight vampires and she is still working on making Amy human. To do this, she wants to steal supplies now that Giles is away.

What does this tell us? It tells us that Giles, who has just invested in this new and highly profitable buniess is not only having Willow work for free, he is also making her pay for supplies for Scooby work and for helping a young woman who turned herself into a rat.

It's often pointed out that Giles doesn't pay Buffy, but Willow and Xander also put in a lot of hours of Scooby work and they volunteer at his highly profitable shop. Can Giles really not provide Willow with the supplies she needs free of charge? How about a discount?

If I was Willow, I'd still, too. I'd still from that old miser Giles and I steal from Anya, who call me an "idiot child" after I borrowed her my chicken feet free of charge.

For Europe to have sovereignity in the future, we need to do two things. First, we need to be able to deter Russia. Second, we must cease being dependent on American technology.

The US is not an ally. At best, we will sometimes be able to leverage them against other threats, such as Russia, though we can't depend on our interests always aligning.

The US has shown recently that it is moving away from a soft power approach to foreign policy toward more use of force, both military and economic. USaid has been cut, tarrifs has been used, intelligence has been witheld from Ukraine and the old nuclear agreement with Iran was scrapped and the country was instead bombed. Being dependent on American technology means not being able to stand up to them. If we make our economies dependent on American AI, they can suddenly deny us access. They can make the fighter planes we bought from them stop working.

Europe needs to start developing its own defence, computing and AI technology. This will be ridicolously expensive, but if we don't, the US will use or dependency on them to strong arm us.

We can of course work with other countries who don't have super power ambitions, such as Canada, South Korea and maybe even Japan.

A lot of people say it was offensive to have a black man as the protagonist of a historical game set in Japan.

Now, the seminal game series Expeditions has announced a game where you play as a self created stand in for the other foreign born samurai of the Sengoku Period, namely William Adams. Just like in Rome, you are not playing as Julius Cesar or Adams himself, but you create your own character.

I wonder if we will see the same outcry, though. Both Adams and Yasuke are interesting historical figures to build on. I really enjoyed the Shogun series.

Like with Ezio in Constantinople, being an outsider discovering a culture can be more interesting than playing as someone who is part of it. I wish they had emphasized that more in Shadows, like they did in the Flashbacks.

I am going to show life of Brian to my students tomorrow. They are in lower secondary.

It made me wonder how well the film lines up with scholarship on its setting.

Of course, it is a low budget movie and a comedy film, but what do they get wrong and what do they get right about Roman occupied Judea and the zeitgeist in Jesus's time?

In the last few years, there have been several excellent games set in the HRE. We have Kingdom Come Deliverance, which had a rocky start as a niche game with a troubled launch, but whose sequel became a massive crossover hit. Pentiment is still the last true masterpiece by Obsidian. Not that big, perhaps, but still talked about whenever people complain about other recent Obsidian titles.

And we have strategy games, like EU5 and Crusader Kings, which is getting a Christianity and trade update this year, which will make the HRE more fun.

The new The Guild game also looks fun.

Vikings and Japan are acknowledged markets, but I think we have a growing group of people interested in those German, Umberto Eco vibes.

Once again, I saw a post where someone asked why Willow got off so easy, while Faith and Anya were treated as villains.

Let's go through the timeline shall we. Sorry if this is long, but the reason people believe this is because they tend to forget all the things that happen, so I feel I need to go through it chronologically.

Faith kills Finch by mistake. All the Scoobies agree that she should be forgiven. It was a mistake. No biggie.

Faith tries to pin the killing on Buffy and when Xander comes to speak to her, she first tries to rape him and then to kill him. At this point, Willow is like, maybe she should go to rehabilitation is England.

Faith rejoins the Scoobies, but she has secretly joined the Mayor. Everyone is a little wary of her, especially Willow, but they accept her back. Faith reports back to the Mayor, who makes a plan to have Willow murdered. Faith wonders for a moment if things have gone too far, but she gets a Play Station, so it's fine. Luckily, they attack the wrong Willow.

Faith goes on to try to unleash Angelus, acquire two artifacts needed for the Mayor's ascension as an Old One, killing a friendly demon and a human in the process. She kills another human, because there is a nice old volcanologist, who possible knows that Old Ones can be killed.

Even after all, when she wakes up after her coma, Buffy is like, let's forgive her, maybe she regrets what she's done. Faith threatens her mom with a knife, steals her body, hands Buffy to the police and laughs when she learns she's been captured by the Watchers. Then she uses Buffy's body to have sexy with Riley, asking him what he wants to "do with this body", giving him carte blanche to act out any "nasty little desire [he's] been itching to try out".

Buffy takes her body back. Faith flees to LA. She takes a job to kill Angel, though consciously or subconsciously hoping she'll fail and die in the attempt.

Wesley feels bad about how things turned out, so he argues for trying to reach out to her. Angel wonders if it's too late. Faith captures Wesley, cuts him with shards of glass and is about to burn him with a spray can flame thrower, when Angel comes in to save him.

Angel grants Faith a full pardon once he understand that she does not actually want to continue what she's doing. Wesley and Buffy are a bit less sure, but they still risk their lives to save her from the Watchers.

Then lets move on to Anya. Anya is a demon whose crimes against humanity goes beyond anything any other major character on the show has done. We can only guess at the true extent. Therefore, let's stick specifically to things that happen in Sunnydale.

People talk about how Willow is slow to accept Anya. In Triangle, Willow tells Anya that she's afraid she'll hurt Xander. Anya asks how Willow could think that. Willow responds that it's what Anya does.

Now, why does Willow harbor these feelings? Could it be because Anya turned Sunnydale into a hellscape, which she is the only one who has seen, where Willow and Xander are vampires and Buffy and Cordelia dies, and that Anya participated in holding tons of teens hostage at the Bronze and ordered her goons to have Willow killed?

Now, since that is so easily forgiven by everyone who isn't Willow, let's fast forward to Anya being left at the alter by Xander.

Anya throws her lot in with D'Hoffryn, one of the most evil and powerful beings we know about and continues her career as a vengeance demon. Her first plan is to torture and kill Xander, but she's unable to do so, and when she finally gets someone to actually wish for her to harm him, she thinks better of it.

Then Anya releases two people killing monsters onto Sunnydale. Now, the kill count her is hard to determine, because Anya's murders are all indirect. She never holds the knife. We don't know how many the giant worm ate, but we do know the spider killed at least one innocent man and would have killed the bullied girl, if Willow had not stepped in to save her.

Now, knowing that this is the second extremely dangerous monster Anya has let lose on Sunnydale, what does Willow do? She goes to Anya and tells her to stop. But Anya doesn't listen. She uses Willow's recent crimes against her and tells her to fuck off.

Only then does Willow tell Buffy who created the spider.

And even after Anya has rebuffed her, Willow summons D'Hoffryn, the most dangerous character she has ever been toe to toe with, hoping that if Anya can undo some of the damage she has wrought and free herself of her Faustian bargain, she may stop what she's doing.

And it works. Anya takes the deal with D'Hoffryn and the Scoobies forgive her. Of course, she's not going to always be grateful for that forgiveness, claiming that other people get off way easier than she did. I'm not so sure.

Then let's look at Willow, specifically her short lived murder phase. Unless, I am mistaken, it lasts less than two days. Tara is killed in the afternoon and Xander convinces Willow to surrender the morning two days later. During this time, Willow kills two people. The first is Warren, who has killed two women, tried to kill Buffy several times and who's goal in life is to subjugate and rape women. The other is a pedophilias, who Clem says has a special liking for "little girls", who gives drugs in exchange for "access".

This actions happen under extreme duress. She regrets them immediately and after Xander talks her down, she surrenders to Giles, accepting whatever punishment he has in store for her, including permanent containment or death.

She almost ends the world, but Xander is able to talk her out of it. Faith's plan to restore the Old Ones only fails, because the Scoobies are able to kill the Mayor with explosives. Anya would have continued to create monsters if Willow had not given her an out. She was just getting back into her groove with the spider monster.

It is true that Willow potentially could have killed several more people during her rampage, but I get the sense she barks more than she bites. She seems to try to kill Giles when he tells her Tara would be disappointed in her. She sends a comet after Jonathan and Andrew, but she tells Buffy to run after Xander and Dawn to warn them. She never goes for the kill when she has one of her friends at her mercy. She does not kill Xander on Kingman's Bluff, and she knocks Anya out three separate times without harming her, even saying, "You can't chant if you're sleeping." It would be easier to just kill her, but she doesn't.

So, no, I don't think anyone was ever to hard on Anya and Faith, especially not in comparison to Willow.

I must say that I am really excited that we're returning to the modern era in Shadows, Resynced and Hexe.

I do wish Shadows had focused a bit more on the arrival of the Portuguese, the introduction of firearms and the displacement of Yasuke, though.

But starting with the second game in the series, we got a ton of games set in the modern era, and they were all set somewhat close to each other in time. This made the games feel somewhat connected. A lot of the games were connected, like how you follow Ezio for three games, travelling to several major Renaissance cities.

It's not that I am not grateful that we got Odyssey and Origins. Those are great recreations of the ancient world. But it is harder to recreate the world of 2000 years ago. It feels more alien, and as a result, there's more of a fairy tale feel to those worlds. Julius Caesar and Cleopatra feel more like Shakespeare characters than real people, especially compared to James Cook and George Washington. The same goes for Socrates and Alcibiades and Kin Leonidas.

The early modern period feels both close and far away. The events that shapes our present are taking place. New technology is rapidly transforming society. Compare that to Odyssey, where most battles are fought with shields and spears.

I wonder if we'll stay here for a time after Hexe, or if we'll leap back to ancient times again.

The game leans quite heavily into the stereotype of Spartans as stoic bad asses, while Athenians are shown as silly dandies and gadflies.

Why do we never see Socrates and Alcibiades, the two most iconic Athenian characters, involve themselves in the war?

Why is Brasidias the only one who gets to be cool?

No, I am not going to say Saddam was a nice guy. I mean, he nationalized the oil, built infrastructure, health care and supported women's rights, but when it came down to it, he was a very brutal man. His difficult upbringing defined the man he became.

That being said, I get why he went after Kuwait.

Imagine you are Saddam. You are finally the true leader of Iraq, not just puppet mastering. You've killed all your rivals in the Ba'aht part plus a few more for good measure. All is good. Iraq is rich.

Then a new Shia regime establishes itself in Iran. That's not good. They want to spread their revolution westward. More than half your subjects are Shia. Could they turn on you?

All your neighbors are scared shitless. The US is pissed, because they have been named the Big Satan. But there's a solution. If you do a quick grab for the Shatt al-Arab waterwar, the US and their allies in the Gulf will surely agree to sponsor you with a few loans.

But then this quick little military campaign ends up being a toral failure. The Iranians rally around their new theocratic overlords to protect their homeland. The war drags on for 8 years and is incredibly destructive. What's more, the US admits they are selling weapons to the Iranians as well as to you.

At the end, your country is in ruins. You have a large army you can't afford to demobilize.

But surely your friends will agree to forgive the loans, right? It's only fair. Your people paid with blood, why shouldn't the Gulf states contribute something? Wasn't it all about Arab solidarity? Us against the Persians?

Wrong! The Gulf states want their money back. You refuse. They respond by increasing their exports, dumping the price of oil, which means you now have no way to earn money.

Now, one of these little ingrates is a tiny country with no natural borders and only a puny military and loads of oil and invested wealth around the world.

Fast-forward a Bush, and the US spends several years negotiating the forfeiture of the loans that started all this.

Does Saddam's narrative hold up, or should he have just started on a down payment plan?

Imagine some complex issue is happening. The issue difficult to get a good grasp on, because the subject matter is controversial and the available information is limited.

You open up a national newspaper, and you find an article discussing the issue. The issue is described as something new, yet you've been aware of it for weeks. As you read, you start to suspect you are reading an ad verbatim translation of a two month old article from a different language newspaper. The only thing that's added is a quote from some "expert", who heard about the issue the same week.

The article is terribly outdated. The information is refers to is highly limited and its analysis does not reflect where the discourse has gotten. In fact, last week, you watch a video or listened to a podcast, where an enthusiastic amateur gave a comprehensive account of the issue, citing multiple newspaper articles as well as other influencers.

In more and more areas, I feel like traditional media is lagging behind. Journalists are generalists. They don't know the subjects well enough and they often don't have the luxury to do proper research. They can also often seem gullible, spineless, tendentious and only capable of seeing one side of an issue.

Whereas many influencers mimic the strict discipline and dependence on sources and clear argument of academia, journalism is quick, shallow and written to be quickly absorbed.

Now, I have to qualify my arguments a little bit. There are some things traditional media is good at. If you want to know what is happening today, then they are the quickest. It is they who have the best access to politicians and other important people in society.

Relying on influencers often means getting things after the fact. The best analysis comes in hindsight, once the information is gathered and disseminated by many people, both in traditional and not traditional media. And so, traditional media still has a purpose. It has not been made completely relevant.

I need to define what I mean by influencers. I am using the term extremely broadly, but I want to define two sub groups.

The first I like to call the enthusiastic amateur. This groups consists of people with a special interest in politics, history, music, movies literature, travel or whatever. I don't really distinguish between people who are doing this full time and people who do it just for fun. Whether they are doing it full time or they are truly amateurs, what sets them apart is that they are self made and started out as amateurs with a special interest. They may have a degree, but they are not academics, journalists or retired politicians.

Second is the semi professional. A lot of these people might better be referred to as just professionals. This groups mostly consists of academics, who do podcasting as a hobby or side gig. They are people who work in the field they are talking about, but they are not journalists.

Some of the content I include in this category is a bit messy. I get a lot of my international political analysis from The Rest Is Politics and my national political analysis from Manifest Media. One of the podcasts I listen to from Manifest Media is Mimir and Marsdal. Both Mimir and Marsdal are journalists, who used to work in traditional media. Marsdal still works as a journalist and editor, while Mimir's day job is as an MP for the Red Party, but their content is the type of long form analysis associated with non-traditional media.

I do not include podcasts produced by traditional media companies.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to the travel influencer Doug Barnard, especially his content on Iraq, and his videos from inside Sednaya prison in Syria and talking to Iranis on the Turkish border. I earlier said that what sets traditional media apart is access and ability to report quickly, but even there, influencers are starting to give them a run for their money.

Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union and current day Russia is the same thing in any way that matters. It is giant multi-ethnic bloat with a highly centralized, totalitarian regime of European Russians.

Its Achilles-heels is always that it prioritizes Empire over prosperity. Here you have a massive population, endless real estate and more natural resources than you know what to do with. You could have built a ridiculous wealthy and prosperous nation. Instead they are obsessed with expansion, and so they get bitch slapped by smaller countries like Japan and Afghanistan in totally unnecessary wars.

Instead, they are like, wouldn't it be cool if we controlled Manchuria? or we want Crimea and Ukraine back!

If all that oil and gas money was funneled into civilian infrastructure instead of the war machine, imagine what a country it could be.

But no matter who is in charge, the modus operandi remains the same. Let's expand our territory and area of influence in the most brutal way possible.

Terje Rød Larsen og Mona Juuls sønn døde i natt. Thomas Skjelbred og John Christian Elden har kastet seg rundt og skrevet en kronikk de har fått alle landets aviser til å trykke, hvor de forklarer at de egentlige skurkene her er det norske folket og Janteloven.

Elden jobber for Rød Larsen og Juul. Dette burde reflektere dårlig på dem og brukes som et bevis for at de har null anger for noe av det de har gjort. Det burde ikke være greit å sende advokaten sin foran seg på denne måten, så man slipper å måtte stå for det som blir sagt.

Obligatorisk: Jeg kan unnskylde menneskehandel og korrupsjon. Det er denne offerrollen jeg ikke tåler.

I think it is clear that we are at the very end of the era of Pax Americana.

The US has threatened military force to gain territory from their NATO allies, they have ridiculed their allies for the aid they've given the US in their overseas wars, and they cast doubt on whether they will honor article 5.

Yes, NATO'll have an issue if Russia starts to show muscle in the Artic, but the US don't want them there either. What matters is that Europe has been shown that playing nice with the US doesn't pay.

The Gulf States must feel completely betrayed. They have to be idiots to ever trust the US again once this Iran fiasco is over.

The US has terminated most of its foreign aid efforts. China moved in quickly to exploit the vacuum left behind.

Many tourists and foreign workers have been harassed, detained and deported.

Whatever happens after 2028, I am convinced that the US will continue to lose its soft power and then quickly its military influence. Fewer countries will see any benefit in cooperation with the US militarily. The next time they want to intervene militarily somewhere to protect their interest, they are going to find it harder to get the support they need to pull it off. Nobody will want to buy American planes, weapons or military technology.

Soon, we'll see the US start to lose its cultural dominance and its dominance in tech and IT.

They might still have some allies left in the Asian Pacific, but I think Europe, the Middle East and Africa are done.

It's not going to happen all at once, but that's where we're headed in the long run.