I HATE THIS COUNTRY

I HATE THIS COUNTRY

I HATE THIS COUNTRY

GET ME OUT OF HERE

GET ME OUT OF HERE

GET ME OUT OF HERE

They have to be or have been a US citizen.

magnificent, no notes

Pretty much title. I've seen this talked about a lot but I only very vaguely know what all this means, could someone elaborate on what happened, why it happened and what the consequences of it are?

Step 1: Learn Spanish

Step 2: Become a medium

Step 3: Move to Argentina

Step 4: Have a seánce with Javier Milei

Step 5: Tell him his dogs think that in order to truly free the markets, the means of production must be nationalized

Step 6: Tell him to stop dating his sister

Step 7: Communism has won

Link

The thought of being remembered for something so bland and boring is weirdly scary to me. Maybe Felix was on to something when he talked about how settler-colonialism hollows out your soul and kills any culture, creativity or national identity you might've otherwise had.

Edit: 🔻 🔻 🔻 🔻 🔻 SETTLER DOWN 🔻 🔻 🔻 🔻 🔻

I don't know if asking for likes is against hexbear rules but it would be so freaking funny if the IDF refusing Swiftie post ratio'd the country of Israel itself, the reply is only 600 likes off.

https://twitter.com/arxxxxmand/status/1714991572612432346

Rare stan twitter W, also you can tell the real Swifties by them @'ing Tree Paine, Taylor's head of PR iirc

https://www.vice.com/en/article/gyazzj/meet-the-taylor-swift-stan-who-went-to-jail

Posting this partly because it's classic lore and partly because I was an actual stan twitter Swiftie at the time and not only that, I was friends with this girl and had met her irl when she went to prison.

She was an Israeli communist and while she was in prison, she'd write notes that her friend would post to twitter. I don't remember much of what she said about her time in prison but I do remember that she apparently got laid a lot while in there, so good for her.

Our friend group drifted apart over the years and I'm not in contact with her anymore. The story has gone viral a few times since then and I've seen a lot of upvoted comments say that it's fake and the girl was actually from Michigan or some shit?

I'm here to tell you that no, this girl was real, she was from Israel (I distinctly remember her having to quit a skype call because of a bomb alarm) and she really did go to prison for refusing to join the IDF. I remember her tweeting in hebrew on her main account and repeatedly posting pro-Palestine stuff. This story is 100% real and I can confirm it to you first-hand.

Also fun fact: "LegitTayUpdates" was a bit account. It was not a "real" update account that would post paparazzi shots with real things Taylor did today, it was mainly Swiftie shitposting. The content was not too dissimilar of c/taylorswift, honestly. Maybe that's why people thought the prison thing was fake? But no, that really did happen, she texted us about it ahead of time as well.

90% of her twitter is complaining about tankies and the uyghurs and the authoritarianism

someone in the comments says "im cuban and castro was not a real communist"

retweeted something about how can china eradicate poverty when people in hong kong live in tiny homes

I dunno, if the person with the most similar political development on Youtube was freaking Shoe0nhead, that would probably make me want to rethink my beliefs.

Like, there's non-tankie leftists online like hbomb, philosophytube, big joel, the chapos, contrapoints, hasanabi, but they talk about actual fucking left-wing ideals, the injustices in the present day and what could be done to fix them. They don't turn their entire online presence into "im one of the good lefties, not like these evil tankies, im one of the good and reasonable ones"

It's pretty obvious if you pay attention.

Cause she wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts

She’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers

Swift is mocking the ruling class and presenting herself as the average, relatable worker left behind.

And you’ve got a smile that could light up this whole town

I haven’t seen it in a while since she brought you down

You say you’re fine I know you better than that

Hey what you doing with a girl like that

She masterfully illustrates how much good the means of production could do for the world and how the very machinery itself is being over-exploited to the point of breaking down. Not only does she comment on how the people of the town are being deprived of the light, but that the light itself is being diminished by the bourgeoisie.

Can’t you see that I’m the one who understands you

Been here all along so why can’t you see

You belong with me

Standing by waiting at your back door

All this time how could you not know baby

You belong with me

You belong with me

You belong with me

Have you ever thought just maybe

You belong with me

You belong with me

Another well-placed jab at the owning class, Swift points out that the bourgeoisie usually doesn't even understand the things they own and are relying on the workers to actually operate machinery and produce value. Despite this, they are being left at the proverbial backdoor while the owners take front and center, hoarding wealth and media attention for things they didn't earn.

I fully support her message that the means of production do absolutely belong with the working class.

As we all know, Taylor Swift released her first, self-titled album at the age of 16 on October 24th in 2006.

The album is distinctly more country-flavored than her later music and attentive listeners will notice a very real and totally authentic rural accent which mysteriously disappeared as early as her 2nd album, Fearless.

The debut album didn't have any massive hits, it was before her breakthrough, but its most popular songs are definitely Our Song (which has the most 2000s video ever made, she looks like an actual barbie doll) and the charmingly corny Teardrops On My Guitar. While with her later albums, I usually like about 90% of songs (except Reputation but we don't talk about that), the debut album is 50/50 for me. If you want my personal hipster "I-liked-Taylor-Swift-before-she-was-cool" songs, it's definitely Picture To Burn and probably I'm Only Me When I'm With You.

Taylor Swift has never been an outstanding vocalist, and this was especially true when 15/16-year-old Taylor recorded the debut album. Her voice is kinda thin and you can hear her struggling to hit higher notes, but it makes it all the more endearing. The album doesn't have nearly the same mainstream appeal that her later albums had, but it was all the more authentic and the roots of what made her so popular, her ability to put her feelings on paper and make her audience relate to her, are already there.

To love Taylor Swift, the album, you kinda already have to love Taylor Swift, the singer. I hope she does remake it, she's sung a bunch of the songs from it as bonus songs on the current eras tour so it's not like she's trying to sweep it under the rug.

Fun Fact 1: There exists an original version of Picture To Burn where instead of "So go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy, that's fine, you won't mind if I say..." she sings "that's fine, I'll tell mine you're gay." If you read the comments, you'll find a lot of gay Swifties asking her to bring that version back.

Fun Fact 2: Drew, the guy who she wrote Teardrops On My Guitar about, went on to be arrested for child abuse a couple years later. Dodged a bullet there, Taytay!

In my subjective opinion, Stellaris' biggest issue is the lack of resource scarcity. The infinite abundance of resources means that there isn't much to fight over for most of the game, it means individual colonies will matter less and less as the game goes on and it often leads to games stagnating until a crisis shows up.

Wars are fought over resources, over material gains, and in Stellaris it rarely feels like that. I rarely feel compelled to go to war with another empire because between megastructures, ecumenopoli, habitats and ring worlds, i can generate infinite resources regardless of how many planets and systems I control. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if Stellaris had victory conditions outside of military victory, if you could win through diplomacy, science, faith or whatever like in Civilization, but with how the crises are designed, it's very apparent that you're supposed to win through combat. But wars don't feel "organically incentivized" to me a lot of the time, if that makes sense. I don't feel like I have much to gain from going to war, I just do it because that's the only way to make the game end.

I think the game would be more exciting, dynamic and strategic if colonies and system resource deposits had a limited amount of minerals, food and energy you could extract from them before their output greatly decreases.

That way, there would be a much bigger incentive to fight over colonies, especially in the lategame. Because when you have 20 colonies in the lategame, one more or less doesn't matter all that much, but when only 3 of these colonies are still running at full capacity, suddenly that one untapped planet becomes much, much more valuable. It would cause conflict much more organically, as eventually the exploitable galaxy gets smaller and smaller until there is only one last empire standing. While the crises are cool (and I don't think they should be removed), I think they are a very clunky way to force conflict, and it would be much nicer if the endgame was instead determined by the friends and enemies we made along the way rather than an outside entity randomly entering the playing field so you have to actually fight someone.

This is, again, subjective, as I'm sure a lot of people specifically enjoy Stellaris for its chill, relaxing pace that allows you to watch youtube on your second monitor while effectively playing stardew valley in space. I enjoy that aspect of it too sometimes, but still, it eventually always falls short for me. Wonder what you folks think about this.

Edit: I realize that this would be way too fundamental of a change to ever realistically make for the devs or a modder, as you would have to basically re-design and re-balance everything from scratch. This is purely theoretical.