Kotor 2 had the far superior story compared to Kotor 1.

This is obviously subjective, but I highly disagree. They are both very different with very different themes, but the story of the first one is a classic that brought us Revan, who probably has the coolest story of any Star Wars character. The second is very different from any other Star Wars media and great in own right, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first.

Maybe it’s also about expectations: Kotor 1 feels a lot like a Star Wars but with (IMO) superior story and lore to the movies; whereas Kotor 2 barely felt like Star Wars at times, which can dampen enjoyment if you are expecting something that feels like Star Wars.

Sean Lock had a similar thought.

He suggested calling it “Nazi Island”, but as one commenter mentioned “Isle Hitler” is probably a better name.

The British example goes straight against what you are saying, because at the time of both world wars, and especially the first, the British had plenty of war experience. And not just the British, but every empire at the time had plenty of war experience, but the war did not go at all like most were expecting it to. For a modern example of that with the US, just look at the war in Vietnam and in Iraq.

But more importantly than all of this, you are working under the assumption that the US is being led by extremely qualified people, and that every soldier would fall in line; however not only has the current US government been firing extremely qualified top officials because of “DEI”, but I doubt everyone in the military would happily invade a NATO member - with whom they’ve been allied and trained side by side for years - without even blinking an eye. Military experience does nothing to prevent a civil war, because one thing has nothing to do with the other. The military is made up of people too, who like I said before are a lot more connected with the rest of the world than they used to be.

Finally, even if it’s true that the US would somehow be immune to a civil war, that would still not mean the majority of countries would not fall into a civil war. To give just one example, Germany has a very big nazi far-right party that has been directly supported by Musk and Vance; if Germany went to war with the US, those people might take up arms against their own country.

But many countries have been running simulations for the scenarios since before electricity.

Right, I was gonna make that point, but it seems you made it for me. Because despite doing that, most wars in recent history, especially the world wars, did not go at all as predicted. Both world wars played out very different from previous wars and from what was to be expected. A standout example is British strategy for both world wars: in the first they made shitty trenches because they didn’t realize they’d be used so much; in the second they made much better and more comfortable trenches because they had learned from the first war, and they turned out to be mostly useless because the trenches used were no longer static.

Spain even had a civil war as a prelude to the second world war, then during WW2 you even had Vichy France and the French Resistance fighting each other, and recently we had the Syrian civil war. Right now, it seems the USA might be on the brink of civil war as well. Not sure what makes you so sure WW3 wouldn’t devolve into several civil wars when people are so much more connected with people from other countries nowadays.

Europe’s, who look down on rampant American capitalism and Trump?

Unfortunately, there are still plenty of fascist Europeans. Anecdotally, my mom recently told me her friend likes Trump, and that same person votes for our own far-right party whose leader has essentially been trying to emulate Trump.

One of my biggest fears that I think not enough people have though about, is that - due to how much more connect the world is with the internet - WW3 would devolve into a bunch of civil wars. WW2 was extremely different from WW1 and already had its far share of in fighting in some countries, this time it could be worse and happen in basically every country involved.

Those guys are haters.

Do you not know what tankies are? Do you not know what nazis are? Are they just “haters” to you? I hope you’re a teenager, because no fucking adult should be saying this shit.

You’re the one calling for hate and insulting me my guy.

I’m the one calling for hate? Again, I’m assuming you don’t know what nazis and tankies are; and as for insulting you, you literally just told me I’m “no better than” nazis and tankies after I made a pretty civil reply to you - not to mention well before I showed up to this post you were the one telling a tankie “Wtf are you saying, bot?”

Did you forget that? Are you perhaps a bot?

Once again, go fuck yourself. I’m not gonna waste more time with you.

What do you mean by two comments deep? That was my first reply to you, if that’s what you mean. And I wasn’t telling you to hate anyone, I was adding some perspective to a conversation; my comment literally starts with “fair enough”, meaning “I’m fine with your stance”.

How are you better? Lmao

Than tankies and nazis? The people I’m calling out? Tankies and nazis? You’re asking how am I better than them for calling them out and saying “if you use their platforms you are being complicit”? I’m not better than those guys? Yeah, ok champ, go fuck yourself.

Russia is a capitalist gangster state guilty of all the things they claim hate

I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them were just pretending.

Fair enough, but keep in mind that .ml users are like people who chose to own and drive Teslas. They weren’t born that way, they made that decision. No one made them. And in the case of .ml they are known for having a very large number of tankies, including mods and admins, and it’s easier to change instance than to change your car.

It could also be compared to Twitter users: if you don’t agree with the nazis/tankies, why are you still on there? There are alternatives.

we’re pinched for energy and dependent on the US for it unless we diversify our imports (russia) or produce our own (nuclear)

From what I heard, the EU is replacing Russian energy dependency with imports from the US and Norway, and I’m sure there would be other options if we cut off the US as well. Also, plenty of European countries have nuclear plants, and some are building more (UK, for one at least) as well as increasing renewable production.

Whats even harder to fix is the brain-drain with most academics leaving for US

From what I’ve been hearing, academia in the US is kinda fucked - probably even more now with Republicans Nazis in charge - so I’d need a source for that. In fact, starting a few months to a year ago, YouTube keeps recommending me videos of (American) people talking about why they left academia.

maybe going to genocide

Are you implying that Biden wasn’t already committing genocide when he was in power? And are you saying Kamala didn’t have the same stance on Israel?

lmao I appreciate the honesty. After a quick search, I found this for you.

1. This is literally the government restricting his free speech.

2. Why do people always defend censorship as long as it is done by corporations owned by billionaires? We’re not talking about someone’s home, or even some small family owned corner shop. It’s the fucking NFL, and they are in a stadium with thousands of sports fans all screaming and chanting. And knowing sports fans, some of them probably saying vile shit as well towards the other team and their fans, which we’re fine with, but when they censor someone’s political opinion: “don’t you know it’s private property?”

I think the point is not “this is all TikTok’s fault”, the point is things like TikTok makes it a lot easier to spread misinformation. People have shorter attention spans nowadays, and they prefer to spend their time consuming short form content such as the kind found on TikTok. The problem with this is that it takes a lot more effort to correct wrong information and educate people than it takes to spread misinformation. For example, it’s much easier to clip something a politician says out of context and to make a 5 or 10 second clip for people to watch, than to convince people to watch a 5 minute interview or read an article for context.

And even though I don’t use TikTok, I still kind of insert my self in here; I don’t have the mental fortitude or patience to read every single article I come across, so I often read diagonally, check the summary, or (more rarely) just stick with the title.

The world loves those enforcing rules, because they have to be strong for that, and the world loves those breaking rules, because if today they are making a challenge, tomorrow they might become even stronger. Humans follow strength. So a new challenger of existing order is loved, a yesterday’s challenger who is still not a triumphant is hated.

In my experience, a good microcosm example of that is sports; specifically MMA. Just have to pay attention to how quickly the narrative and majority opinion changes based on who has most recently won their fights. You also often see subconscious racism (or at least I like to think it’s subconscious) affect people’s opinions of fighters.

I was thinking about this the other day, and came to some conclusions. This is a copy-paste of a comment I made in another thread:

I don’t know much about the history of anti-Semitism in Europe (so anyone feel free to correct me or add more info), but what I’ve been thinking is that the cause/origin of anti-Semitism is no different from the anti-immigrant panic from today. They both come down to people from a “foreign” or at least different culture coming into a society and getting jobs or opening business. It just so happens that now those foreign people are more diverse, whereas before (centuries ago in Europe) they were mostly Jewish.

This tells me we have learned nothing from our past except for the most surface level details. We learned that anti-Semitism is bad and beat people over the head with it, but we never properly addressed the roots of it, and so now the same thing is repeating but for different groups of people. It’s the same sort of thing as when it is said that “people nowadays are more open minded”, when the reality is simply that they were taught to be okay (or not) with certain things; but the bigoted though process has not really gone away.

All that is more reason to try to gain military independence from the USA, not really a good justification to let them hang out in our territory while threatening our allies.

And no matter how mighty their military might be, having military presence in our territory is still a massive advantage. I mean, look how Vietnam and Afghanistan went for them despite their might; they are not an unstoppable force. Why make it easier for them in the ever increasing chance of a war?

China is a possibility because (AFAIK) they don’t have any territorial ambitions in Europe, but Russia is definitely off the table. I don’t think any significant number of Europeans would be OK allying with Russia. In fact, I think it’s more likely that if a war breaks out that Russia and the USA will be on the same side.

At this point, wouldn’t it be safer for NATO to be working to kick the USA out? There are plenty (I don’t know exact numbers) of military bases in Europe that contain US soldiers. Not only does that seem like an insane security risk at this point, but it delays any help coming the way of Canada and Greenland if the US invades.

I realize some people might be scared of escalation, but Trump is already escalating and I don’t think shoving our head in the sand and hope he is bluffing is a smart move.

I don’t know much about the history of anti-Semitism in Europe (so anyone feel free to correct me or add more info), but what I’ve been thinking is that the cause/origin of anti-Semitism is no different from the anti-immigrant panic from today. They both come down to people from a “foreign” or at least different culture coming into a society and getting jobs or opening business. It just so happens that now those foreign people are more diverse, whereas before (centuries ago in Europe) they were mostly Jewish.

This tells me we have learned nothing from our past except for the most surface level details. We learned that anti-Semitism is bad and beat people over the head with it, but we never properly addressed the roots of it, and so now the same thing is repeating but for different groups of people. It’s the same sort of thing as when it is said that “people nowadays are more open minded”, when the reality is simply that they were taught to be okay (or not) with certain things; but the bigoted though process has not really gone away.