This argument seems to be swaying a lot of people to be less anti-AI, even I fell for it at first. It's when AI bros compare AI to something that they portray as worse than AI. Whether that's true or not (usually not), it's still a tactic used to try and trick you.

I got the above (presumably) XKCD example of this tactic from RationalWiki's page on it. I've seen AI bros use the exact same defense for AI water use before. "AI water use? Well, it's not as bad as the meat industry, so unless you're vegan, you don't really care!"

While I'm at it, can we also stop falling for "It's just ragebait bro"? When an AI bro does something disgusting under the cover of it being ragebait, it's still disgusting and worthy of being called out.

i.e. replacing their actual search engine with an AI that will automatically generate random widgets while you're talking to it, and outright adding an AI plagiarism machine to YouTube. I don't even know what they get out of this...

EDIT: Here's a source.

Decided to try Liangguang again and this is how things are going in 1938. Got all of the south in my control, but Beijing got Shanxi and a chunk of Sichuan, and the League is controlled by Fengtian-backed Anqing scum. Not sure who they will side with when war time comes...

This was originally going to be a single post, but I had more ideas and thus decided to expand this idea into a larger series of "if X changes happened to <country> in the 1900s, what would it be like now?" posts. Italics = this is important for a later country. >!Spoilers!<= real life details.

Relevant parts of the timeline - WW1 and before

The path to the formation of Greater Yugoslavia began back in 1913, after the independent nations of the Balkans had united to destroy Ottoman hegemony. Bulgaria's new borders would quickly tear the alliance to pieces, however, as the Bulgarians wanted the part of Macedonia that was promised to them by Serbia, and pretty much all of Bulgaria's neighbors wanted some of their lands. In general, almost everyone wanted a piece of almost everyone else.

While negotiations were still ongoing as to the new borders of Serbia, the Greeks pressed their claim to southern Macedonia, and thus started the Second Balkan War. Romania would intervene soon after and Bulgaria, with two fronts and the Ottomans mobilizing against them, knew it needed an ally. Serbia offered Macedonia in exchange for alliance, which was begrudgingly accepted by the Bulgarians. Albania would also later join the Bulgarian side due to tensions over northern Epirus. After 7 more months of bloody struggle and no real victor, the Great Powers would step in in March 1914, eventually crafting a peace that required Greece to give up its claims on Albania in exchange for some of its claims on Bulgaria.

The Balkans would only know peace for a few months more, though: in July of that year, the Archduke of Austria was shot in Sarajevo, the Austrians delivered an impossible list of demands to Serbia, and the shifting web of alliances in Europe led to war between the Great Powers.

Bulgaria stayed out of it all at first, but it became important in November when the Ottomans joined the war. For the Central Powers, Bulgaria would instantly solve the Serbia problem and significantly help them should Romania or Greece join the Entente. For the Entente, Bulgaria joining them would spell the end of the Ottomans and provide assistance to the Serbian war effort. After years of neutrality and several offers from either side, Bulgaria finally joined the Entente in 1916, and did as the Entente hoped: marched towards Constantinople, and reinforced Serbia.

The relevant parts of the peace deal were that Serbia would be united with the South Slavic parts of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria would receive a plebiscite on whether to join Yugoslavia later, and the Ottoman Empire would be partitioned. However, the Ottoman Empire was dead, and Turkey would not be willing to give up its Anatolian land so easily. Bulgaria and Greece waged yet another war against the Turks, eventually winning and forcing them to agree to grant independence to their ethnic minorities as well as turning the Sea of Marmara coast area into an international zone and handing the rest of Thrace to Bulgaria.

Relevant parts of the timeline - Interwar and WW2

Once peace in Europe had settled in, the plebiscite finally came and South Slavic unity won by a slim majority, thus creating the United Kingdoms of Greater Yugoslavia. This upset the Croatians, as they were the other major ethnic group of the Kingdoms and were still stuck under the Serbs. Despite this opposition, the fragile union held together until Europe was once again bathed in the fires that birthed it.

In December 1939, the League of Nations essentially ceased to exist. This left the fate of the League-administered international zone up in the air for a while, but it was effectively dissolved when Yugoslav and Turkish troops moved in. At first, they took what was on their side of the straits, but border clashes began over Constantinople (which the Yugoslavs would change to its Slavic name of Tsarigrad) - spanned both sides of the Bosporus, mainly on the Yugoslav side, but inhabited mostly by Turks. These clashes would soon be dwarfed, however, by the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia: the Germans, Italians, and Hungarians attacked, and the radicalized Croatians seceded and joined the Axis. With both of its major enemies now in the Allies, Turkey made the choice to officially join the Axis as well, and escalated the border conflicts into war. Surrounded and fragmented, Yugoslavia stood no chance, and the royal families went into exile.

Officially, the area was partitioned: The Ustaše collaborator state in Croatia was granted Bosnia, other territories claimed by the Axis powers were annexed, Italy administered ethnic Albanian territories in the name of their Albanian puppet state, and the rest was reorganized into Reichskommissariat Balkan under Nazi rule. However, this RK really only existed on paper, as most of Yugoslavia was fraught with resistance to occupation almost immediately.

Said resistance came mostly from 3 groups: Tito's pan-Yugoslav Partisans, the Serbian Chetniks, and the Macedonian/Bulgarian IMRO. The IMRO had been an issue in the UKGY's internal politics before, as Macedonia was still considered part of Serbia in the union, but they still rose up against foreign occupation. These groups' different alignment meant that they never really worked together, mostly infighting but also sometimes tolerating each other to focus on the true threat. This infighting escalated into open hostility once the German occupiers began doing harsh crackdowns on innocent villages due to Partisan activity, but these crackdowns also gave the Partisans more recruiting opportunities: villages targeted would have to choose joining the Partisans or getting slaughtered by the Nazis.

Despite the Chetniks turning on the Partisans, the Partisans (and IMRO to a lesser extent) were still being major thorns in the Axis side, and occupying all of this territory was a large sink of Axis men and materiel that could be of use elsewhere. The breakout of the Italian Civil War also made Axis occupation much more difficult, as the Italian garrisons were rather suddenly not even Axis-aligned any more. This was not helped by the Allies forcing Turkey to divert much of its army from Yugoslavia to other fronts. The south part of Yugoslavia was essentially under complete rebel control. The Allies would begin officially coordinating with the Partisans soon after, and eventually organized the pro-Allied resistance groups under one united front.

Eventually, Partisan control over central and eastern Yugoslavia was so great that even the Nazis realized that they were screwed and pulled out of the territory, paving the way for the complete liberation of Yugoslavia once the Ustaše were defeated. In the final peace, Yugoslavia's annexation of the European side of the straits was made official, and it also gained its claims on Italy up to and including Trieste.

Relevant parts of the timeline - Cold War

After ripping itself free of the Stalinist sphere, Yugoslavia would be stuck balancing the influences of Washington and Moscow. Despite officially being neutral, many Yugoslavs could not stand to see its fellow Balkan states be brutally suppressed by the Soviets, and thus supported anti-Soviet uprisings in nearby Hungary and Turkey. Other than this covert support, Yugoslavia stayed out of the various proxy conflicts between the great powers around the globe and started the Non-Aligned Movement to attempt to keep the Cold War from growing even further.

However, in the 1970s, Tito would realize an awful truth: his days were numbered, and his personal influence was playing a large role in keeping his SFR together. Thus, the 1970s would see his attempts to reform Yugoslavia into something that would outlive him, with a major point in this being moving power away from the presidency.

After his death in 1980, Yugoslavia would reach its most unstable. The Kosovar Albanians would demand their own Republic. This would make the tensions between Serbian supremacists and Yugoslav reformists reach a fever pitch, but the latter would win out and continue reforming Yugoslavia and granting more autonomy to the republics. Kosovo would be separated from Serbia, for fear of things falling apart if they continued to militarily suppress the ethnic minorities.

During all of this, the status of Tsarigrad was an important question: the Bulgarians were trying hard to hold on to their prized city, launching campaigns of Bulgarization ever since they got it, but this would never be enough to deal with the millions of Turks in the territory. With support from the Turkish government, the area would revolt in 1988. Though this would be put down, it still showed that the Bulgarian system of managing this area did not work, and they begrudgingly let go of it. But reconstituting Tsarigrad as its own Republic wouldn't work: there were just too many people there, and they wanted independence rather than equal status. As a compromise, the area was granted the new status of an autonomous republic, leaving it mostly self-governing but also separate from the main systems of Yugoslav governance.

Relevant parts of the timeline - Modern day

No amount of reform would save the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, as the turn of the century had arrived and brought with it a wave of reform and revolution across the world. This influx of new ideas would only decrease the popularity of the ruling system, a process already started by the Turkish revolt. And so the League, with their hold on power slipping ever further, decided to let it go rather than risk their beloved state collapsing. The '00s would see Yugoslavia's slow transition from a single-party state to multi-party democracy.

And yet, even in a democratized system, socialism still runs in the veins of Yugoslavia: the Titoist economic system had proven itself during the economic miracle of the 50s and 60s, and the Yugoslavs are still reluctant to abandon it completely. Though external companies working within Yugoslavia still use the capitalist systems, their own companies and factories are still mostly worker-managed.

In terms of geopolitics, the FRGY remains a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, but with the chaos in its neighbourhood, it has had to walk a fine line between neutrality on the world stage and intervening to keep some semblance of stability in the Balkans. An early part of this was pushing Albania, a country increasingly reliant on Yugoslavia for its safety and economy, to reform and democratize as well. Some have called for annexing Albania and uniting it with Kosovo, but cooler heads have prevailed so far.

Yugoslavia's actions, particularly this aid to Albania, have put it at odds with the increasingly nationalist Greece, and a Fourth Balkan War may just be on the horizon if things don't cool off...

Statistics

• Population: ~50,100,000 >!(The combined areas would have around 44m people OTL today, but I added in the ~4.1m people killed and displaced by the Yugoslav Wars, since they never happened here, as well as another 2m to account for their kids, increased immigration, and other increased sources of population growth. For comparison, the former Yugoslav states OTL currently have a population of ~19.6m combined.)!<
• Area: 347,929 km2 >!(For comparison, the OTL former Yugoslav states are around 204,601 km2 combined.)!<
• Capital: Belgrade
• Largest city: Tsarigrad/Constantinople (~15,000,000 citizens)

What's the worst that could happen?

Hopped over from KR and decided to play Austria for something familiar. Then I got both of these from the same start (different branching timelines due to me save scumming after Fiume)...

Decided, just as a little joke, to send volunteers to every possible war as Syndiefrance. This is the result of that in 1937.

American politics have never been the same since the collapse of the Whig Party, the 1860 election, and the Civil War soon after. The largest Whig splinter was the Republican Party, with the pro-slavery, anti-secession splinters forming into the CUP. For a while, the two-party system continued, except with the centrist CUP remnants continuing to struggle along and occasionally winning some states.

That changed around the turn of the 1900s, when the SPA arrived on the scene. It was never fully successful, but it caused a spoiler effect that the shock of its creation and progress contributed to the creation of the Libertarian Party to defend American capitalism and, more generally, "traditional American values". With the SPA splintering off the Republicans and the Libertarians splintering off the Democrats, more voters would look to the CUP as a bulwark of relative political stability, and it began winning more states. With 5 major parties now, the process of electing a President by simple majority wouldn't work any longer, and parties would start having to form coalitions with each other so that someone could win 51% of the vote.

The Republicans, losing lots of support to the other parties by now, made a tough decision: shift to the right to disrupt old Democratic and Liberal strongholds in the South. This "Southern strategy" did not sit well with a lot of their old voter base, and some of them formed the New Whig Party to maintain old Republican values. The Democrats would eventually shift left in kind during the desegregation era.

With 6 major parties now, even with the coalition system, the Electoral College is showing its problems at this point. Almost everyone agrees that it needs to go, but what will replace it? And will America survive the transition intact?

(Made this map ages ago and I've mostly forgotten the old details by now, so I had to write up something new. No, I do not have any candidates in mind for the different parties, America and the world are probably very different by now so who knows what OTL people would be doing and believing here.)

This run is just strange. First it was the weird bug with Albania and Macedonia (reported), now we have a swarm of Paraguays.

(The word "Paraguay" appears around 8 times in this screenshot.)