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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • Colony is a bit of a misnomer. Zionist settlers did what they did largely independently, facilitated first by Ottoman bureaucracy, and then British. The British attempted to assuage both sides over the course of their retreat from the region during the interwar & WWII period, but failed and ended up angering both. They imprisoned and executed Zionist fighters during their mandate in the region; Irgun bombed Britain’s mandatory headquarters in the King David Hotel in 1946. The Zionists were left behind not as a European colony, but as an independent nation that wholeheartedly believes in Israel as its homeland. Indeed, Zionists were supplied with weapons by the Soviets during the 1948 war; it was only later that Israel was embraced as a Western ally. Apartheid is more accurate, but still not perfect, because the Dutch didn’t have a 3000 year old holy site in South Africa. This is far deeper and more intractable than any typical colonial conflict, dystopian in many ways for many years now.


  • You cannot just make it Smart iTraffic 3D without removing the major challenge from the game. Fixing some bugs and not having traffic that dumb like in the 1st game would be appreciated though.

    AFAIK the way it worked in the first game, the pathfinding was a simple A* algorithm that used only the length & speed limit of each link in the network to determine the shortest path. The way this video makes it sound, travel time will be the most significant factor, which means traffic will make a difference in the pathfinding. Then they’re also introducing factors related to the individual cim’s need for parking, comfort, and risk-taking. It should be a lot more realistic and just as challenging, without the ridiculous situations where traffic would come to a complete standstill because everyone is taking the same route even though there are hundreds of alternative side streets to take.

    As someone who’s done some advanced coursework in traffic engineering, I’m pumped.



  • He claims environmental regulations are going to decimate (he must have just learned the word because he used it about 10 times) Michigan’s auto industry, but Rivian manufactures in Michigan, among other places, and all the big US auto makers have electric vehicles.

    He says Michigan doesn’t make electric vehicles, but China does. So instead of encouraging development of products that will keep our auto industry globally competitive, he wants to eliminate regulations so auto makers can lazily continue making ICE vehicles and stagnate technologically. Real big brain stuff.





  • My mom was way into his music. I think it was a lot more interesting in the 70s before the whole folk-pop singer-songwriter thing had been done to death.

    Still…

    I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain

    I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end

    I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

    But I always thought I’d see you again

    Lyrics don’t do it for everyone, but I think they’re one of the main draws of his music.







  • Hah! It didn’t even occur to me that someone would not have listened to Zeppelin before. They’re so foundational in classic rock. Incidentally, a lot of people accused Zeppelin of ripping off earlier blues and blues rock acts when they first blew up. To me, all art is just people riffing on what came before, and you’re bound to encounter artists across space and time that have very similar aesthetics to each other. No one owns an aesthetic.


  • Oh I definitely hear a ton of Rush in them too, as well as more diverse 60s/70s influences, and even some 90s alt (Mountain of the Sun in particular). It’s basically just Highway Tune and Safari Song that have gotten them branded as a Zeppelin ripoff - understandably in the case of those two songs. The singer is definitely heavily influenced by Robert Plant (although as you say his voice has more of a Geddy Lee timbre to it or something) and the guitarist by Jimmy Page for sure.



  • I’m one of those game tourists who hardly ever finishes anything. I don’t have enough time to game so I’ll just drop a game if I’m not really into. Cyberpunk was one of the few games I’ve finished in recent years.

    I guess I never really thought of it that way, but I’m in the same boat. I even have trouble finishing games I really enjoy, like Outer Worlds. Cruised straight through Cyberpunk though. The quickhack + sniper gameplay was endlessly satisfying for me.