ObamaSama [he/him]

Ay yo? I’m in Fukuoka right now and had no idea this was a thing, I’ll have to check it out tomorrow. A bit far from the city center but definitely worth seeing

They’re certainly not great but I’ve had quite a bit of success with them over the years and met some great people. There’s not much space to be genuine or show much about who you actually are through a short bio and minimal text conversations so I think it’s best to view them purely as a means to get to a first date where you can properly meet someone. I would always try to schedule a date within the first day or two of matching with someone before being buried within their feed of dozens/hundreds of new matches every day. Spending weeks messaging trying to get to know someone first is just setting yourself up for disappointment. Don’t get your hopes up just for matching with someone or take it too personally if you get ghosted, it’s just the nature of the game. I think my fiancée and I exchanged less than a dozen messages before meeting up and instantly clicking in person, it’s the surest way to know if you’re compatible or not

Victoria 3 is the only paradox game I’ve gotten really into, it’s super heavily focused on economy and internal politics rather than building doom stacks to paint the map. It’s also a lot less intimidating to get into as there’s less micromanagement needed to do well (especially after the recent overhaul to trade). I really enjoy the fact that the majority of the game is focused on improving the internal conditions of your nation rather than on fighting your neighbors. You can become an absolute economic powerhouse with just a few well managed states and good trade deals, simply capturing territory is often a bad thing as you will inherit their problems. You can join (or form) power blocs with friendly nations to get preferential trade deals and prevent other nations from bullying you into submission. There is a well fleshed out system of gradually enacting social progress by manipulating which social groups are in power, you can absolutely transition to a full command economy with universal healthcare, education, and social services but it’s far more involved than just pressing the communism button

Synthesis: simply lie down with your short partner and scoot down the bed a little so she feels really tall. Also, hug often on stairs (escalators especially)

There was a period in my life where I would go for weeks without uttering a single word, needless to say it didn’t have a great effect on my mental health. I’m quite an introverted person that enjoys solitude but being trapped in a solipsistic daydream was a VERY bad time

Playing Victoria 3 with my gf and trying to make Great Qing great again. Seems impossible to get a handle on bureaucracy but other than that it’s going surprisingly smoothly. The US started a war with Japan in order to open trade so that’s been fun to watch from the sidelines, I haven’t played enough to know the best way to support one side (also want to help Mexico fight the great satan). This is the first game I’ve played in a while so I’m not sure if the previous system of microing trade convoys is gone entirely now or if it’s a quirk of the Qing trade laws? I don’t know how to properly handle shortages and such when I can’t just send out a few trade ships

Oblivion remastered does look really good sometimes, especially the character models. I thought I’d miss the charm of the original goofy potato faces but am consistently blown away by how good they look now nearly every time I talk to an npc. It’s everything I’d ever want in a remaster, great visual upgrade and minor qol fixes while leaving nearly all the original jank. If only it wasn’t such a pain to mod…

I guess it’s a good thing I hadn’t noticed it being down yet but I am also a big slop connoisseur. I have no technical expertise to offer but am quite interested in its continued existence and would happily contribute for any hosting costs

I got my gf to try Victoria 3 and now she’s totally hooked. I think I may have found the one pals

Making your own kimchi is quite easy! Not sure you’d use enough to justify it but it’s a fun weekend project. It’s basically just fermented cabbage with chili powder, I don’t think mixing spice into already fermented sauerkraut would work well though. If you want suggestions for “proper” dishes you can make with the basics my staples are bibimbap, bokkumbap, mapo tofu, laziji, nikujaga, and Japanese curry. All very easy and certainly representative of KR/CN/JP cuisine (China obv has huge variety but I prefer sichuan dishes)

Impersonating feds to hand out theory (in gmod rp servers ofc) would be insanely based

I don’t know where you are or what types of cuisine you’re interested in trying but I’ve been able to find decent Asian grocery stores pretty much everywhere in the US, Latam, and Europe. Just getting some basic stuff like gochujang, kimchi, mirin, dashi, sichuan peppers, doubanjiang, sesame oil, etc. opens up a TON of fun dishes. I’ve recently been having a blast cooking Japanese food with my girlfriend, mirin and hondashi are really the only things needed to transform local ingredients into quite authentic tasting Japanese dishes. Same principle applies with Korean and Chinese, you only need a few key ingredients and then you can go wild and cook pretty much anything

Well originally all the TCJA cuts were set to expire at the end of this year, I imagine in their hubris they never expected trump to win again and extend them indefinitely. Biden was more than happy to reap the benefits while he was in office while not having to piss off the rich by making a show of ending it early. He could cope and say that it’s only for a few more years and the dang parliamentarian would make it too hard to repeal anyway. It’s a classic example of them letting republicans take the heat for things they also want and then setting them up for some super progressive tax policy like 21% corporate tax rates when it’s their turn to hold the bag. I do genuinely think they never expected to lose a presidential election again after trump 1 so the plan was to just let it run its course instead of, you know, actually doing anything while in office

Obama was so incompetent he let eight 9/11s happen under his presidency

That’s pretty cool, great find! Did you just find it in a dry riverbed?

🇷🇴 uhhh I have no horse in the race but from my time here I think Eastern Europeans are pretty chill. It’s probably better to have some dissenting voices in that echo chamber rather than letting them fall into a solipsistic nightmare?

I really enjoyed the food I had when I was in Czechia but after being in a lot of other Eastern European countries it didn’t stand out too much. The beer is inarguably the best in the region though and I’ve ended up drinking a lot of Czech beer in other countries. I think my favorite meal so far has been in Romania though, Italy certainly didn’t live up to the hype. I would also put Slovene above Czech food but I’m biased by getting homemade goodies from family there

I hate how they feel so untouchable and act with complete disregard for any kind of humanity. And I hate even more how the “civilized world” continues to prove them right

I do agree but would prefer to say that the disbelief still exists, it just becomes reflexively directed outwards. When someone who is fully bought into ideology is confronted with contradictions it’s the external evidence that is somehow wrong. The disbelief is always still there but their conviction to ideology is strong enough to deflect and refuse to engage honestly with anything that questions it. Consuming the ideology, of course, comes as naturally as breathing but in the context of fiction such things can be examined and engaged with from a more comfortable perspective. You are examining a fictional world where you can at least pretend to be a neutral observer free from the ideological convictions of that world. By putting up sci fi themed wallpaper we are able to ever so slightly distance ourselves from the reality that the fictional ideology presented is simply a mirror of our own and explore various contradictions without truly confronting our own ideological convictions. I think the degree to which fiction is “grounded” is simply a tool to help the audience distance themselves from their ideology a tiny bit more but the most important thing is that it’s all still fiction where discussion and examination of ideology can exist without disrupting the viewer’s own personal beliefs.

Idk I’m just spouting bullshit in the badposting comm, I’m still like a little baby when it comes to understanding ideology

But if all media is a reproduction of ideology it’s still the same no? Something more “grounded” is still built upon innumerable fictional meta narratives that we convince ourselves to believe every day. Something more fanciful and “out there” is still built upon the exact same things and merely adds some superficial differences like putting up a different color of wallpaper. Not to be all about it but I think those are all just different aesthetic presentations of the same thing that require an equal suspension of disbelief