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Cake day: March 22nd, 2024

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  • Which is kind of funny to me because compared to games like CK2 that focus on a specific part of history Civ’s application of a single set of unified mechanics to the whole of human history ends up creating a kind of state realism that is not without political implications of its own. Like, Civilization is a series in which the entirety of human history is described in terms of a competition with explicit winners and losers between entities with strictly defined borders and policies enforced within them, i.e. nation-states. It’s not a very big leap into nationalism and it’s arguably a testament to the durability and strength of democratic and egalitarian cultural norms that the series has evolved the way it has instead of becoming something more actively right-wing.




  • I’ve just been staring off into space for the last half-hour trying to process this. This is legitimately a nightmare scenario. The ML and automation systems here are being used in conjunction with human policy decisions to turn a military intelligence function into an accountability sink. This is how you square the circle and turn a self-defense force into an agent of ethnic cleansing without needing to change the low-level organization to effect that goal. Everybody gets to maintain plausible deniability just enough that they can answer any uncomfortable questions and justify their actions to themselves, and by the time anyone starts to really question or investigate those justifications the job is largely done. I don’t know that I could construct a clearer example of how this technology can be used to the worst possible effect.