zifnab25

Should be worth recalling that the original intent of NATO was to prevent German industrial machines from combining with Russian extractive industry. Now its sort of a moot point, since China has replaced Germany and the US as the industrial workhorse of the world. Perhaps if the Sino-Soviet split had ended sooner (or had never occurred in the first place), the USSR would still be standing and the Americans would have been the ones to collapse in the late 80s.

The idea of a "platformer" game doesn't really exist anymore, outside the niche pixel side-scrollers on Steam. A lot of the old "action/adventure" hybrids like Metroid and Mario and Zelda have been replaced by over-the-shoulder open world games and shooters. Hell, Metroid probably would have been shooters at inception, if the tech had been up to speed. Games like Contra tried to be on certain levels. Meanwhile, Zelda and Mario have really come into their own after M64 and Ocarina thanks to the open world style of play.

The modern idea of "adventure" is more intended to describe an exploration game with RPG elements, rather than a story-driven platform hopper. I think that's probably truer to the intent of the original game concept that "adventure" games were intended to describe.

Liberals are upset that Russia continues to exist as a single unified state, and not a balkanized conglomeration that can be more easily manipulated and controlled.

Bluesky is even worse

Does Bluesky even support ads? I honestly don't know where they get their revenue.

In the context of the Pizza Hut layoffs, the California franchises and its customers will rely on third-party delivery apps like Uber Eats, GrubHub and DoorDash for deliveries.

Same product. Same wage rules. Very likely its the same staff, as plenty of these folks hustle between employers as freelance delivery workers. But now PizzaHut accountants get to pretend they don't know how much a pizza delivery is going to cost month-to-month.

On the flip side, consider how far the rest of the world advanced after Europe imploded itself in the 20th century. Perhaps we'd all be better off if the EU imploded again and the US followed thereafter.

The joke of the entire EU project. Two dozen countries all yelling at each other any time someone in one of them tries to make things nicer.

The Brits complaining about this is extra funny, given how they gutted HS2 just last month.

Prosecuting a fascist for violation of Flag Law, because some chud tried to tear this down and destroy it, would be funny as hell.

Bradly Whitford whispers this in his sleep

he wasn't yet caught at lying, just omission and selective emphasis,

I don't know about straight up lying, but at any point in which the historical record was slightly murky - most notably, in the early chapters, when there is some confusion as to whether Kim Sung Il or Stalin is calling the shots - Lankov consistently reaches for conclusions that belittle the Koreans and question their capacity for anything but cruelty.

Also, Lankov currently works in South Korean university, so it additionally distorts the picture.

The pitch I got was "He's a former Soviet, so he's not coming at Korea with a Western bias".

But Ayn Rand was also a former Soviet.

So much of the '90s/'00s was this promise of gradual economic reform and transition to a newer, greener, more bountiful post-scarcity future. And... it just never arrived.

We refused to quit our addiction to fossil fuels, and even financed these enormous propaganda smears aimed at anyone who would so much as suggest that wind or solar or hydro or geothermal or nuclear were viable alternatives to burning rocks and dinosaur jizz. We refused to urbanize in a material way, instead clinging to wider highways connecting increasingly remote suburbs with unapproachable housing costs. We refused to digitize, clinging to office commutes, and junk mail overflowing mailboxes and tons, and tons of plastic disposable trash piling up in landfills long after any of this added economic value.

All the promises of the 70s/80s Sci-Fi and subsequent Tech Guy Messiahs failed to emerge. Meanwhile, the real modernization has been bigger and bigger scams. Hyperloops that never get built. Cryptocurrencies that go bankrupt at an escalating clip. Digital Phantasms intended to fill the holes in our lives created by poverty and alienation. Landlords and airlines and schools and employers cartelizing to more efficiently raise our rents and lower our wages. Existence as an increasingly overpriced a la carte service that never seems able to deliver.

We are the generation that got grifted. Decade after decade of false promises and rug pulls and vaporware. Who could live through all that and not feel a bit of doom in their bones?

The happiest day of my life was the day the Berlin Wall fell

Maybe does not send a great signal about the state of Germany after the wall fell.

A glorious catharsis and much anticipated reunification followed by 40 years of... what? Rising poverty? Racial acrimony? Stagnant science and technology? An endless parade of scandals? The rebirth of a German Fascist movement?

But hey, at least we aren't living under the brutal dictatorship of Erich Honecker, amirite?