iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Seems like a very unpleasant "red queen" trap for most of the world, given that even rather minor powers have a rather high theoretical escalation ceiling. Is there some way out?

2261

The thing is, if you can teach German students only one period in History, 1917-1939 is probably one of the better ones. I liked that he went in depth, too. But that's not the purpose of 10th grade history in school! The syllabus is covering the entire era 1880-1990!

020

The rest of WW1 and WW2 was at most glancingly covered. The cold war, which was on the Syllabus, got nearly ignored. Outside of Germany, only the early Soviet Union was covered with any amount of depth.

120

Which means that, weirdly, both world wars were included only cursory - namely, why did the end of WW1 cause the Weimar Republic, and why did Hitler decide to invade Poland (notably, in this context, Poland was mentioned twice as often as the Soviet Union and 5x more than UK and FR together)

120

We got a quite good (if still surface level) understanding of the myriad of factors contributing to its rise and fall, as well as to quite some details of the early Nazi regime. However, before 1917 and after 1939, as well as past the borders of Germany the content...tapered off, rapidly.

120

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

And there's a further twist to it - if a professor decides to go into more depth on something, other content may suffer massively. I had a case of that in my German school - our history teacher always digressed towards the Weimar Republic, which left us in an awkward position:

220

The whole story is exacerbated by Smith and Schmitt being represented by the same character.

1120

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Which is actually f*ing stupid. Like, even just financially, most of the people involved here are easily in the top 35%or so of taxpayers, and had to get a coveted work permit before even beginning to apply for citizenship.

020

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

German here, agreed. Have several acquaintances - hard working, smart people - who managed to become citizens through a variety of means, and jumping through a bazillion of hoops. Yet still, in the eyes of many an "ethnic" German they "don't count".

131

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I mean, its basically the "slightly different type of communist" dynamic, though in a more cordial way.

061

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Does the blood have to be specifically hemoglobine-based? Do anemic people have less soul? Does blood pressure affect the amount of soul one has? If I donate blood, do I dobate soul?

280

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Maybe there is something like a soul, but how does one define it? Does a gorilla have one? A hamster? A crocidile, a salmon, a lobster, a tapeworm, a paramecium? If a paramecium has a soul, why shouldn't a computer?

390

Yamamoto said that, yeah. However, after Pearl Harbor he for whatever reason didn't really conduct the sea war that way.

010

Stalin should be a world-class mafia player, who is not informed of the fact that no one is a traitor.

0391

The Hitler player should be someone who only ever played ego shooters and has a deep understanding of exactly one tactic: Rush B.

1241

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

That's genius. One should do a multiplayer game where all majors are run like that. The UK and US would be relatively easy, mostly struggling to reign in semi-rogue airforces/Mc Arthurs and haggling over budget. As for Germany and the Soviet Union...

1230

Okay, but how comes it the category encompassed both mole-catchers and millers?

000

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Like, most of the archetypal "barbarian" people were just very successful traders-and-raiders.

030

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The fun thing is that apparently the wife of the original false dimitry (what a weird combination of words) recognized at least the second and i think 3 as well as her survived husband (the original FD was cremated and shot out of a cannon). Allegedly, they y didn't look alike at all.

1300

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

As a European, that's infuriating. Everyone is so used to the security umbrella, that military spending is *impolite*. Yes, Russia won't attack tomorrow - probably. The US guarantees - today. But are we going to bet the farm on it? And weirdly, the less 'western' parties are even more 'pacifist'

060

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Though I think Kujau comes off slightly too good in it

000

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The problem is that the movie in child-adequate form can be told in 10 sentences or so.

130

The Serious GM @seriousgm.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It would be also full of car dealers, gas station owners and other "petit bourgeoisie" types, wouldn't it? I think the gini curves for left, right and center aren't that different, are they?

171

I'm going to cite this to my boss when we next discuss a tax case and i point out problems in the initial thesis.

000

A few which technically mostly fulfill the points land in Right-Wing propaganda territory (arguably, say, Sicario, which however strains points 2 and 3 to the point of breakage)

000

Its either good organization which gets at least partially subverted or outplayed by malicious opponents (failure in point 1), or secretly - sometimes even openly- nefarious (failure in point 2), or its a set of maverick cops/soldiers (failure in point 3)

100

I actually struggle to remember a recent movie (except movies based on actual history) where a state institution in itself was depicted as all of (1) competent, (2) benevolent and (3) following protocols.

100