Golarion Best and Worst (according to me)

I've been poking around in the setting of Golarion again recently, the Pathfinder setting. I should point out that the only Golarion setting book that I own in physical form is the one that was published prior to the Pathfinder game, however, and it is written to coincide with the 3.5 version of the D&D rules. Or, as Green Ronin calls it with their copy-cat d20 logo, the 3rd Era. I'm sort of familiar with what has happened to the setting since then, however, including some major changes to a few areas. The Worldwound was closed, Tar-Baphon has reappeared and blown up Lastwall, etc. I'll admit; I'm not really a fan of making changes to settings like that, but then again, most of the lands that were changed were ones that I wasn't all that fond of anyway.

I still might do a Golarion Remixed similar to my Eberron Remixed activity. But don't hold your breath. I've got a lot of projects ongoing at any given time in my hobbies, and I don't give myself much in the way of deadlines or formal project management. Unlike Eberron, however, it'll be a bit more difficult to focus. Eberron, while world-sized in scope, didn't really do all that much with more than one continent, and the main setting book settled for simply making offhand references to continents like Sarlona, Argonnessen, or even Xendrik, for that matter. Khorvaire was far and away the focus.

Golarion is quite a bit bigger in scope. While you can blow off some regions as "supplemental" like Tien Xia or Arcadia, or the Crown of the World, etc. there are still two main continents to cover, and each is broken up into at least as many constituent regions as Khorvaire, but mostly more. Many more, in the case of Avistan. Also, in Khorvaire, while you have different constituent regions with a different tone and flavor, they're all meant to work together a little better. Golarion is designed so that each constituent region is almost a mini-setting in its own right, and almost works better if you set an entire game within that region, so you can focus on the tone and feel that it brings. Certainly most of their adventure paths have done so. I don't think either Eberron nor Golarion's approach is a better idea, they simply serve different purposes. Eberron has loads of fast-travel options, and because political intrigue is a major element of the setting, being able to travel across the continent and do stuff in various areas is a defining feature. Golarion is meant to be a setting that has a place for all kinds of different games, stories and tones, depending on the group and adventure path that you're doing, so being broken up into numerous mini-settings works best for how they intended to use it and for it to be used.

Anyway, not all of the constituent elements are created equal. Some got little attention over the years. Some deserved little attention. Some were just weird or esoteric ideas. Some are more playable than others. And some just attract a broader base while some focus on narrow interests that relatively few gamers will have. Some make ideological/political statements of sorts (usually among my least favorite). I'm going to take, for Avistan (and then maybe I'll do it also for Garund if the post doesn't balloon out too big) my three favorite and three least favorite constituent elements and briefly discuss why they work for me or why they don't. Fair warning; I'm among the most opinionated guys on the internet, and I'm only talking about what I like and don't like. You may well disagree with my assessment. Frankly, I don't think I really care. Make your own blog post if you have a different take.

AVISTAN

Top Three Regions

Varisia: Varisia is probably the best developed of all of the regions in Golarion with loads of setting books that focus on portions of it, and by far the most adventure paths set here. It's got a kind of classic D&D frontier region vibe to it that works quite well too; no big states, but rather a handful of minor city-states exerting varying degrees of control over small settlements and wilderness. It's also got a lot of the classic frontier small-town Medieval life, threatened (potentially) by savages or other dangers. Varisia just has more classic adventuring opportunity than any other region. I also like the potential for intrigue and skullduggery between factions loyal to the two major city-states, Magnimar and Korvosa, and the potential that brings. Riddleport is a bit of an nice outlier, offering a more condensed frontier vibe with pirates and relative lawlessness. Kaer Maga, on the other hand, is a stupid idea that was then executed even more poorly, making an already dumb concept even worse. It's best ignored entirely, if you can swing it.

Ustalav: Little wonder that the only region that I've "adapted" so far—for my CULT OF UNDEATH project—was Ustalav. The vibe and tone of this element is meant to be very classic, Transylvanian Gothic horror. Although more limited than Varisia because of its strong tone, that very strong tone is what makes it a potential favorite among fans of implementing that tone. Surprisingly, it seems to have maintained its integrity as a setting element even after the rise of Tar-Baphon (again) from the grave in recent setting developments. Probably because it's one of the better and more popular elements in the setting, I would guess.

Absalom: Absalom is the quintessential urban setting for a D&D game; glittering and fanciful on the surface, but just underneath, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Absalom also has a strong tone; an urban tone, which tends to gravitate towards political infighting, intrigue, skullduggery, and crime. But it's also got its moments of glory, if you will, and some of the most iconic elements of the setting are located here, like the Pathfinder Society headquarters, etc. Sadly, as soon as you get out of the city (and often while still in it) you get lambasted with quirky (and not in a good way) D&Disms, like odd dungeons lurking right off the beaten path, and stuff like that. But that stuff is usually left as offhand references that can easily be ignored.

Bottom Three Regions

Druma: Like most of my least-favorite regions, Druma is dominated by a cultural high concept that poisons its usefulness. The cultural high concept—that everyone is obsessed with trade and greed—is so strong, that it begs the question of what any normal person would ever do or see in the nation in the first place, and why they would ever be there, including the PCs themselves. It also makes dealing with anyone from Druma a particularly tedious one-note bore.

Razmiran: Also ruined by a high concept too narrow to be of much use, Razmiran is obsessed with a cult to a guy who is pretending to be a god but isn't. It seems like some anti-religious SJW nutjob came up with this idea, and tried to push it into being, when it just isn't organic enough to be self-sustaining. Not only that, if true, it's insulting to normal people everywhere. You do want to give individual regions something that sets them apart and makes them feel different than other regions, but if that is just an obsessive cult-like ideology of everybody which defines literally everything about the region and screws it up, that's not very useful for gaming, or very fun. 

Numeria: This one is a little different; it's a primitive, barbaric land that has a crashed spaceship in the middle of it. It's a strange concept, and I know why they did it (because Eric Mona was a big fan of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, basically) but it's too narrow and esoteric a concept to be appealing to most, I think. Me included; I don't like weird space opera elements in my sword & sorcery very much. 

Three Regions That Could be Great or Terrible

Lastwall: For the most part, these regions never really had much development; no full adventure paths were set there, and they didn't, therefore, really materialize. They have the potential to be good, or to flop hard, depending on what the development with them would end up looking like. Laswall (and Mendev) probably just had too narrow of a concept to actually be worth spending time there. They were almost placeholder high concepts. It's to little surprise that Lastwall was blown up and turned into the Gravelands, or whatever they're calling it, and as the Worldwound was closed, Mendev also ceased to have a reason to exist and just kind of dispersed. 

Andoran: Given that Andoran is kind of supposed to be an America-like setting in terms of ideology, it has the potential to be pretty cool. However, from what little I've seen of it, the writers don't actually understand what America is and were way too heavy-handed with the liberal SJW nonsense, and like SJWs everywhere, they turned all of the inhabitants into Karen-cultists who run around telling everyone else what to do and trying to make everyone else govern themselves the way that they do. I'd suggest that this was on its way towards quickly becoming one of the worst three, but they just never got around to actually making it so. And it could, in fact, be salvaged pretty easily because they didn't do enough with it to spike it too badly to be redeemable.

Galt: Another nation that's probably too focused on too narrow of a concept to really be very useful, Galt is the French Revolution, except that inexplicably it has lasted for literally generations now. Ironically and laughably, the SJWs who now run Paizo are lacking enough self-awareness to recognize that the horrors of the French Revolution are the inevitable result of their ideology, which is basically the same as that of the Revolutionary French. But I honestly just have no idea what to do with Galt. If it were a more recent revolution that was still playing out, that'd be one thing, but after fifty years; c'mon—its not sustainable that mass mob murder would go on that long without running out of steam... not to mention people to murder. 

GARUND

Top Three Regions

Osirion: Much of Garund is saddled with political commentary on colonialism, which is the latest fad of the haters of Western Civilization. My own viewpoint on "colonization" by Western civilization is similar to that in The Life of Brian routine: "All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" Brought peace." "Peace? Shut up!" That said, the vibe isn't as strong with Osirion, because it's deliberately trying to be Ancient Egypt brought up to date. There's also a strong Raiders of the Lost Ark theme to it too. 

Katapesh: Katapesh has that same kind of lawless "wretched hive" feel of Riddleport or Absalom, with both city and wilderness, but with a strong Orientalism vibe to make it more exotic, rather than more familiar pirates and brigands of Medieval Europe. I don't know that it's truly unique, but it's still pretty cool and one of my favorite elements of Garund.

Sargava: Sargava is meant to be seen as the bad-guy Colonials, imposing themselves on the poor innocent natives, but it comes across more as a beacon of light in a vast cloud of savagery and darkness all around them (see the Life of Brian reference just above, too). The Serpent's Skull adventure path gives some more info on this area, on top of the slim book that came out some years ago, and although pruning of the ideological ax-grinding elements still needs to be done, it does show how Sargava could be a great place, actually, and a base camp into an exotic wilderness area.

Bottom Three Regions

Rahadoum: Yet another cultural high concept that sees this nation in the grips of a cult; in this case, an anti-cult; religion of any kind of outlawed, and everyone is a rebel who refuses to worship even gods that they acknowledge exist. Non serviam. While what little information there is on this land is presented as somewhat positive, this is outright Satanic in nature, even more so than Cheliax, if less on-the-nose in some ways, and I have no interest in it.

Jalmeray: Not only does this location offer little opportunity for adventure, but I personally just have little interest in a place who's only schtick is "it's fantasy/mythical India! Sorta." It almost deliberately has little to no ties to the rest of the setting, and there's no reason to go there except site-seeing, which isn't all that interesting when it's just verbal description anyway.

Shackles: The Shackles is a region that I had great hopes for, but because their interpretation of it was a patchwork of completely unconnected and in fact disparate concepts all thrown in willy-nilly, its one that ultimately greatly disappointed me. None of the ideas were necessarily bad, although most were very derivative, but they should have focused on a few of them instead of the spray and pray approach of throwing everything and hoping gamers would at least find something to like.

Three Regions That Could be Great or Terrible

Sodden Lands: There could have been something really interesting going on here, but they just didn't get around to doing anything other than referring in offhand fashion to various weird exotic alien lizard and amphibian races. I still think that a storm-lashed jungle has some great potential, but it seems to have been mostly ignored, and what little has been done with it has been thus far uninspired.

Mwangi Expanse: The Mwangi Expanse actually does have a fair bit of development, but the ideas in it are pretty hit and miss. Some of them are fantastic, exotic, and fascinating. Some of them are banal, or ax-grindy with anti-Western Civilization hatred and insults. It can be great if you focus on the good elements and completely ignore or excise the bad elements. 

The South: This is just an extremely high level overview, with little to no development yet. There's some ideas that look reasonably good, I guess. It's hard to say, because there's not much to go on. 

In general, even doing this small quick-n-dirty survey, has convinced me that if I do a Golarion Remixed similar to my Eberron Remixed, it will require that I cut a bunch of areas. I may not literally cut them, just merge some of the areas that I don't like in to neighboring areas, and downplay the strange high concept one-notes that are too strong to be useable. A cult of anti-religious Satanists is fine, but a whole nation defined by that cult? No. Rahadoum therefore becomes some hinterlands to Osirion, and a place where such a cult lingers either underground or in the wilderness. 

And so on and so forth.

There's also more that needs to be developed. This wasn't entirely untrue for Eberron; I'm in particular thinking of Valenar and Q'Barra as undeveloped places, but there are more of them here. Maybe that's OK; maybe such places should be left deliberately blank or high level to be filled in as needed and not before. Schrödinger's setting elements, if you will. You want to know what's there? Go there and find out. 

Anyway, the point is that a Golarion Remixed project seems like it might have to be a bit bigger than an Eberron Remixed project. Especially if I do something like I did for Eberron Remixed, and adapt it out of the D&D races into the Dark Fantasy X races. Curiously, although Eberron is a D&D setting and technically Golarion is not (technically), the reality is that Golarion is much more D&Dish than Eberron. One of the main reasons I remixed Eberron in the first place is that I felt like its concept was being held back by its attachment to the D&D system and the D&D paradigm. Golarion, on the other hand, is way too steeped in it to make the Remix anything other than an odd interpretation.

Doesn't mean it won't be fun to do, but I'd really rather finish by 5x5s before delving too deeply in to it anyway.

The Gray Lady

Nobody who's serious takes the New York Times seriously anymore, and haven't for a long time, but Vox Day pointed out this tweet that they posted just today.

What in the world is wrong with the person who believes this kind of nonsense? I like to say that public figures, writers, authors, newsmen, etc. say a lot more about themselves than they do the world when the insert their editorial opinions into things. If so, this person is one that you better stay very far away from. If it's a man, he's a self-hating beta with perverse obsessions lurking just under the surface. If its a woman, she's a resentful, bitter, spiteful liar who hates and slanders men generally. 

Thanksgiving

I like a lot of what the Z-man says. He's not perfect and I disagree with him sometimes, but I don't require that people I read or follow or quote or otherwise consider an ally be perfectly aligned with me in every single way. That's the way of the Leftist, not of normal, healthy people. Sadly, their paradigm is eating at our society like a terminal cancer, but I still believe in the happy ability to rub shoulders and make friendships with people that I disagree with: as long as their disagreement isn't motivated by racial hatred of me and mine (which is now common in America) or malicious intent of destruction or catastrophic change towards my nation and my culture (which is also common in America). In that respect, the Z-man is a pretty good ally, who says a lot of things that most Americans need to come to terms with, most of whom have not yet, and he says it in a way that is sufficiently eloquent to be convincing and conversational and casual.

But this may well be his best post yet.

I'll quote much of it, with only one embedded editorial comment:

Thanksgiving is arguably the greatest American creation, despite being the one thing we have not tried to export. Around the world there are American outposts selling degeneracy of various sorts, along with the supposed ideals of the American empire, but you will never get a sales pitch on Thanksgiving. It speaks to the nature of the current ruling elite that gratitude is not something they think about when trying to change the minds of people abroad.

Regardless, the long holiday that is upon us is special. It is a long weekend of doing little more than giving thanks for what we have as individuals. We do not give thanks to our overlords for anything. We do not give thanks for our stuff. We do not even give thanks for the great fortune of being an American. It is much simpler and more honest that all of that. It is a day to be happy that you are alive, you have friends and family and you are able to enjoy those things.

What makes the holiday better than most is that it is at least a four day weekend and is slowly becoming a weeklong affair. Within living memory most people had to work Friday if they wanted to get paid for Thursday, but that is long gone. Most employers give their people Thursday and Friday off, except retailers, of course. Many offices now close up early on Wednesday. All week offices are light on staff as people use their personal time to extend the holiday.

The funny thing about Thanksgiving is it does not celebrate any of the things that have come to define America. There is no soulless gift giving. Christmas has been turned into an orgy of material self-indulgence. It is reasonable to say that what goes on in this country around Christmas is grotesque. Our other holidays are civic affairs designed to celebrate the government or warmongering. Usually, they are on a Monday so we get a long weekend, but they have no meaning.

Thanksgiving is unique in that it is about you as a person taking time to think about the good things in your life. The big traditional meal with friends and family focuses the mind on those human relationships. Even in these easy times, life is hard, so taking time to count your blessings is a gift you give yourself. Being grateful is one of those odd things that just makes you feel good. Having a long holiday to eat traditional foods and be grateful is an amazing thing we have created.

It is the gratitude part of it that gets to the heart of the current crisis. All around us are people doing nothing but showing their ingratitude. America is filling up with ingrates who do nothing but complain. One can possibly understand the ingratitude of black people [ed. That's an overly charitable interpretation. I disagree. Black people in America have been phenomenally pampered the last few generations, but with some exceptions, they have no appreciation or gratitude for it, instead imaging themselves the victims of imaginary oppression.], but the endless complaining from new arrivals is maddening. Even worse is seeing useless weirdos freeriding on society complain that the rest of us are not thanking them for being parasites.

Joe Sobran put it best. “The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn’t conscious of it. And, superiority excites envy.” That is the heart of the matter and probably why we invented Thanksgiving. It is our nature to build and create, which is why we are naturally grateful for what we have. A people who built a great civilization out of nothing have a lot to be thankful for, so having a long holiday to take our time and be grateful makes a lot of sense.

Even now, with all that is going on, we have plenty of reasons to take the next few days to count our blessings. The Good Lord in his wisdom has provided us with enemies who possess none of the qualities we respect. They may have inherited power, but they lack the ability to wield it responsibly. Like men on death row, our betters walk around with an expiry date on them. It is a long struggle, but we know that in the end we will prevail and for that we must be thankful.

Of course, we also have the community of dissidents that is slowly forming up to provide fellowship and support as we struggle though this age. Those of you who were at AmRen last week certainly know what I mean. You come back from such things humbled and grateful, because you have been reminded of how fortunate you are to be alive in this time. To be blessed with a life of struggle, to have a reason to be better each day, is the greatest gift of all.

I'm also off of work for the holiday, and have filled up my weekend plans with family events, and stuff like that. I don't know that I'll post anything on the blog after today. Most likely not. Happy Thanksgiving to all, y'all! Never forget to be grateful to God for your many blessings. Even in times of tribulation, you have likely been very blessed. In fact, often in times of tribulation we see our blessings even more clearly.

"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the white men ever done for us?"

-- Women and people from every Third World craphole country in the world. 

 

Disney

I don't really like the anti-woke YouTube ecosystem all that much. I watch a lot of videos from guys like Overlord, Ryan Kinel, The Quartering, Nerdrotic, Adam Post, etc. But mostly, I feel like these guys are all on the exact same page; they agree with each other on everything—suspiciously lockstep—and tend to make sure that people on the internet who disagree with wokeness don't wander too far off of the plantation. At all cost, even losing the gay mafia and feminism to Florida, etc. is OK as long as nobody challenges the hoaxes of racism and especially anti-semitism. That's the real goal; keep people enslaved to those two cons.

Anyway, in spite of that, they do say a lot of good stuff sometimes, which is why I still watch a lot of their videos.

This one is pretty good.

SWTOR Update

Been a while since I've done an SWTOR update. Probably overdue. 

Not for the first time, I've been wondering if I really want to keep recording. It's a bit tedious to remember to set up OBS, and it's way tedious to go through each video after I've recorded it and edit it. So, I've found that when not playing Seasons with my OG characters like Johhn, or messing around with group flashpoints, a new endeavor for me (again, with OG characters like Mat Thew and Johhn) that I'm playing the third odd group; characters that I was originally planning on recording, but then stopped and didn't, but kept them on board so I could play through with them in a more relaxed leisurely pace. Curiously, they're now advancing much faster than my actual "official" recordable younger characters. I force myself to keep at the recording, but I also find myself avoiding those characters sometimes and playing with the others instead. Sigh.

Hutran Thanatos, my Mirialan Operative, for instance, just finished Act II. He's done with Hoth, then I went back and did Boarding Action and the Foundry flashpoints, which I'd forgotten to do before Hoth, where they actually fit (that's OK; I really just did them for the XP anyway) and did the Act Epilogue on Quesh. There's a second small part of the epilogue on Dromund Kaas, and I could choose to go back for the Hoth Bonus Series before going to Belsavis—in fact, I think that I will so I can continue to rock my big winter coat for a bit longer—but still. He's pretty far along. He's also level 76, which is almost max. Granted, I've been doing all of the faction stories and even all of the exploration missions and most of the Heroics—assuming I can find the quest givers (I'm not doing Heroics out of the mission box; that's boring). He'll very shortly; maybe even today or tomorrow, pass the dubious milestone of passing Phillippion, my OG Commando who's still at level 78 because I stopped doing faction missions with him near the end of his run and never actually got him all the way to max level. Assuming I get to level 80 before getting to the Directive 7 flashpoint, I'll surely skip it. I've done that flashpoint a lot of times, it's a total side-quest that has no bearing on the storyline otherwise, and if I don't need the XP, there's no reason to play it again. I do, however, want to keep going with the faction stories. I honestly am not sure how well I remember the faction stories for the late planets, because I ended up skipping them with more characters than not.

Anyway, I updated the levels on all of the characters on the SWTOR page part of the blog, if you're curious. I'm not sure why you would be, though. This post, more than most, is just for me. 

I'm also finding something else odd... I'm running out of money. Credits, in game, I mean. Used to be that Johhn could make some Advanced V-9 Seismic grenades and sell them at 100,000 or so a pop. When I made several score every few days, my money ran up nicely; I was routinely sitting at several hundred million.

Granted, I still have well over 100 million. But the last two weeks or so, my grenades haven't sold. I looked at the market and saw that the the "discount" prices were gone; everything for sale was at a higher rate. Making the assumption that I could raise my own prices and still sell because I was the lowest on the market, I did. Didn't sell. Found that some of the usual suspect crafters had come in and undercut me on pricing. When my auction lots expired, I listed them at a lower price, but still above my standard rate. 

I had a lot of stock; more than normal this time, so I was trying to sell over a 100 of these in lots of ten. I sold one or two lots, and the rest expired. I listed them again at the normal price... and they still didn't sell. I don't know what's going on now. I'm not going to go under my normal cost that I've successfully sold at for a couple of months now, but man... things are moving slowly. I wonder if the upcoming announced changes to Pvp will change the market for Advanced V-9 Seismic Grenades and I won't be able to count on selling them anymore? Not sure. If so, I'll have to stumble around until I find something else that sells. My attempts and selling armormech stuff wasn't super successful; stock moves slow and for less money than you'd want. The grenades were a good deal. But maybe the window to make big money on the grenades is closing on me. If so, I'll have start being careful with money. I spend it pretty freely, confident that I can make it up again quickly, but this last two weeks or so of not making it up again have me wondering.

Other than that, I'm thinking of making some more "Vitnir" style outfit videos, given that he's not doing them anymore. I'll forego the cheesy narration and probably just go straight to "slideshow" like presentation. I found that my own character modeling techniques in video didn't look super wonderful, and so why not just take screenshots and have them cycle through at about 15-20 seconds each or something? Each outfit has 8-10 screenshots at various locations, so you get to see what it looks like, both in action and posed, although these images are less about showing the detail of the outfit sometimes and more about just looking like as cool a shot as I can get with this system. Dramatic lighting sometimes makes the actual outfit hard to see in detail, but it also makes it look cool. 

Of course, there's a weird glitch where after a few screenshots, it stops taking them and I have to restart the program, so it's a little bit tedious and time consuming to get these screenshots. Sigh. But hey, it's yet again something else to do with the system, right?

SWTOR Girlfriends

I've got a bunch of SWTOR characters that I'm running through. These are all newer than my seven remaining "OGs" from my first playthroughs. I've kept most of those because they are maxed out on the crafting skills and even have many alternate schematics, which I'd lose if I ditched them. That said, I don't just use them for crafting; I still use them for events, for seasons, for group flashpoints, and most of them are slowly but surely grinding through post-end credits material, of which there's a lot. Some of it was present almost from the get-go like Section X, the Black Hole, Ilum, etc. So they're still pretty active. Given the fact that I have 24 total characters, therefore 17 of them are "younger" than the OGs and need more attention, the OGs are probably too active, to be honest with you.

I'd actually like to talk about a very specific aspect of the characters today, which as the subject line gives away, are the "girlfriend" characters among the companions. With one exception, I play male characters—both because I am a guy myself, and because I think male action heroes is much more iconic and makes much more sense than the modern and bizarre and off-putting action-grrl stereotype that our modern, delusion-based, wishful thinking ideology has about men vs women. They're simply different both physically and psychologically, and I have to look askance and wonder what the heck is wrong with people who don't admit that those differences are, in fact, pretty darn obvious. So, yeah—for almost all of my characters—and I'm making one exception with a Sith Sorceress—my characters are men, and therefore will be scoping out the companion roster for potential girlfriends. 

In this post, I'm going to talk about the potential girlfriends for each character class, and what customizations are available (and in some cases desperately needed), and what I'm specifically planning on doing with each of my characters. None of my younger characters are really at a point where I've gone too far in to this particular aspect, even those that are pretty far along (and that's saying something; Hutran Thanatos is Level 69 already, and just landed on Hoth nearly at the end of Act II (of III.)

Jedi Knight Story: The Jedi Knight story really only has one romanceable character, Kira Carsen whom you meet way back on Tython, and pick up officially as a companion on Coruscant. She's your second addition to the roster, and you get her really early. She's also one of the best girlfriends in the game, to be honest with you, so I don't feel bad about romancing her. 

With Mark, my OG Jedi Knight, I didn't slap a customization on her until after the story was over and I'd already gone through all of the customizations anyway. She looks pretty good without a customization; in fact, I'd argue that it's possible that her customizations don't improve on her original look at all. Taul Kajak, my Mirialan Jedi that I'm no longer recording is also not using a customization, and Elemer Kell, my Zabrak Jedi that I am still recording, is using customization 8, which has the orange Sith eyes (kind of a spoiler alert. Then again, you can only pick it up on Ilum. That said, there's nothing to prevent you from flying your ship to Ilum as soon as you have a ship and buying it, which is what I did.)

Other possibilities that I could have considered are the blonde #4 and the braid at #10. In fact, I've used that one for a while with Mark, and while I tend to really like the braid customizations on my girlfriends a lot, the over-the-top facial scarring associated with that customization was too much for me after a while. That said, I do have it unlocked in my collections, so I could potentially pick it up again. I doubt that I'll play more than these two Jedi Knights again in the foreseeable future, however, so I probably won't get around to it. Maybe I'll go reapply it to Mark's Kira since he's done with the story part of cut scenes with her anyway.

Jedi Consular Story: I have started, although done very little with so far, a new Jedi Consular. Kind of as a joke, I named him Gandalf Grayhame (although I had to put some umlauts on the first a to get the name to take) and made him look like an old man, as close to the iconic image of Gandalf as you can get. He's only got one girlfriend option, Nadia Grell. Not only do you not even deal with her until very late in your story—having instead to run around with Lizardo the walking Anthropology Class as a companion for much of the first half of the game—but she's neither very attractive or likeable. I've not really given a lot of thought to customization for her, really, but I'll probably pick something just to be a little different. Maybe give her not-white hair, although then he'll look like a creepy old man with a younger than appropriate girlfriend. Although—all things considered, that's kind of funny too.

Sith Warrior Story: Let's stick with the force users for now. The Sith Warrior has a couple of romance alternatives, but none of them are great, to be honest. The "default" seems to be Vette, the sassy twi'lek girl who starts out as your slave. Phovos Maledict is going to romance her, just because I didn't last time. She's actually fairly cute and likable, but she's a weird alien who has two fat tentacles instead of hair, so I don't find her all that attractive.

The other option is your human Jedi Jaesa Wilsaam. Mathew, my OG Sith Warrior romance her light-side, but that isn't really a romance—at least not until Onslaught, deep in the expansions, where she finally admits that she's been in love with you for a long time. While that's a satisfying way to do it in some ways, it's also a lot of delayed gratification. Probably way too much, to be honest with you. I suspect it may have been added in in the expansions because of player complaints about the lack of real romance option with her lightside during your normal story.

Of course, you can also romance dark side Jaesa, which is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. This option is kind of popular because its funny in a psychotic and toxic kind of way. I'll probably eventually do it, but I'm not terribly excited about it, to be honest with you.

While I'm on record as not really loving blue, green or red hairless alien girls or finding them all that attractive, I do think a few of the customizations are marginally better than the standard. Mathew's Vette has the lighter blue #3 and Phovos' Vette has the green #9. Jaesa's got different customizations and appearance depending on which side of the Force you push her in to: light or dark. She's actually not terribly unattractive as a default if you don't mind dark-looking Spaniard or Sicilian girls. I also briefly used the red-head and freckled #3 on Mathew's before settling on the blond #4. I will point out that blonde #4 Jaesa looks almost exactly like the default Elara Dorn, however. I don't like any of her dark side customizations all that much; she looks really good as default dark side, in my opinion.

Sith Inquisitor Story: I didn't keep my old Sith Inquisitor (and I don't even remember what I named him anymore either), but this poor class only has one romance option and it's like Vette only even worse. Not only is she an even more weird-looking alien girl, but she lacks Vette's charming personality. In any case, it's a moot point. I'm playing my current Sith Sorceress as, as the word sorceress implies, a woman, so she won't have a girlfriend option in the story. I think there's only one boyfriend option, but I'll see when I get there. I'm not thrilled by it either way.

Smuggler Story: Moving in to the tech classes, I've got a lot more options. The smuggler has one-off flings on almost every main story planet, but his real romance options boil down to Risha and Akaavi. Both have problems; Risha is an NPC on your ship, but not your companion for the entire first act, and doesn't actually join your crew officially as a companion until Alderaan, halfway through. This means, of course, that you can't customize her. She's also got a dark Sicilian who spends all of her time in a tanning salon or at the beach look to her which isn't terrible, but she's also got a lot of even prettier options. Luke used the very attractive platinum blonde long braid option #9, although I also have some others that I'm playing around with now that I'm all done with the romance arc anyway. #1 is a pale skin but very dark hair option; quite attractive, although she looks a lot like Sergeant Jaxo from the Trooper story. #3 is blonde but kind of generic and forgettable. #6 is about as dark as the default, but with prettier auburn hair in side buns not terribly unlike Princess Leia, and #8 is pale skin but also some kind of side bun action. And as I said, #9 is the best one. But because I've already used it, and because I have three smugglers in play, I wan to get some variety. Anstal Tane is the furthest along and the soonest to pick up Risha as customizable. I think I'll likely go #1 with him. Haul Romund is a platinum blond dude himself, so I'll probably re-use #9 with him. They'll look good together in the cut scenes where they're kissing and stuff. And Gael Heckett, my cyborg sunglasses at night guy will take either #6 or #8.

Akaavi Spar is also an option for the smuggler to romance. Frankly, though, I have no idea why. She's bigger than the default body type 2 smuggler, she's completely unfeminine, and not very likeable. She's also a bald weird alien with horns on her head, like she's a Crying Game cross-dresser Darth Maul pretending to be a gun-toting girl and fooling absolutely nobody.  I will never consider romancing her. Plus, you get her even later; almost the latest companion you get as part of the smuggler story, so even if she were attractive, your romance arc would, by necessity, be too short.

Agent Story: The agent story has two romanceable options, and there's a major problem with both. The default that they expect you to do, I think, is Kaliyo, who you pick up on Hutta and who is your first companion. She's literally the worst potential girlfriend in the game. Not only is she completely psycho and unlikeable, but she's a weird gray-skinned bald alien chick. I've never romanced her and never will. Although so far I've only had two characters who've had the opportunity to spurn her; John my OG sniper and Hutran Thanatos my Operative. Vash Galaide and Saxon Hettar will both have the opportunity to tell her to go space herself soon, though. As far as customizations go, there aren't any that improve on her look, so I go for humiliating her even further; sticking the rakghoul infected zombie-looking customization on her sorry butt and then dressing her in something ridiculous to make her even uglier. And I almost never run missions with her if I can help it anyway. Luckily, I've got a lot of alternate companions that I've picked up from various sources, so even at the very beginning of the game I can run with HK-51, or Darth Hexid, or Nico Occar, or Shae Viszla, or PH4-L4NX or Fen Zeil, etc. As I've said many times before, the rest of the official agent's cast of companions isn't great either; you can run stuff with creepy bug-man Vector, although he's a creepy bug man. Doctor Lokin as an older and creepier Bruce Banner is an option.

But you finally get someone likable when you pick up Raina Temple on Hoth, very late in the game. Although the voice actress is a blonde Aussie, for some reason her default character is a strange flat-faced black girl with boy hair. I usually customize her as quickly as I can. #2 and #3 aren't terrible, although nothing special. #4 makes her look like Elara Dorn. #7 makes her look like Jaesa Wilsaam. Both are fine, but the fact that they look almost exactly like one of the other girlfriends from one of the other characters is a bit strange, in my opinion. #9 is really the only one that I think is really all that great. John has used #9 since he first got her. I've got three more characters to go through, however; I doubt I'll use it on all four versions of Raina. I don't yet know what I'll do for that, although Hutran Thanatos is close to picking up his Raina, so I'll need to decide soon. I'll probably give him a #2. One of the other two, who are both pretty far away from picking her up anyway, will do #3 and #9 respectively.

Trooper Story: Elara Dorn is the only girlfriend option for the trooper, and while she is deliberately kind of irritating (in a way that isn't obnoxious; it's actually kind of cute. I'm surprised the writers were able to pull it off, frankly.) She is also pretty attractive in her default look. There are a few other customizations that have something to recommend them, though, although only one of them is a rival to the default look in terms of attractiveness, and that's the one you can get at the Nightlife event. 

Phillipion used the default Elara. I've got two up and coming troopers, although I'm only recording one of them now after screwing up the audio on the entirety of Ord Mantell with one. That said, my playthrough is nearly as important to me as my recording. One of them will use customization #10, and I'm trying to decide still what the other will do. One of the other customizations just for variety, or back to the default because I actually like it? #3 isn't bad. #5 isn't terrible, but it looks off because its a white girl with obvious black facial structure. I even kind of like the odd sunglasses at night cyborg eyes #9, even though not seeing the eyes is usually a turnoff. 

But #10 is the most attractive, followed by the default as a close second. Mirabeau Tane and Codon Veile are both at almost the exact same place in the story, about to go to Taris where you pick up Elara, so I'll need to decide which one I'll play first, and that one will probably get #10. I'm kind of leaning towards #9 for the second one just for the heck of it. Maybe I should do #9 with Mirabeau because he's a cyborg too (although he has normal human eyes, just some tech grafts around his eye socket on one side.)

Bounty Hunter Story: Finally we get to the bounty hunter and Mako, one of the cuter girlfriends in the game and one of the better romance side stories with a companion. I've had a lot of bounty hunters, although one of them was literally created by accident and one of them I almost deleted before deciding what the heck; I'll play it as a non-recording option. So, my use of them is a little over-stated. That said, Mako has some good looks. Her default is actually quite nice, and both Graggory and Galation used it all through their original playthrough (although both now are playing around with different looks, now that the cut scenes are over anyway.)

The only problem is that because Mako is with you from the very beginning, unless you take one of her original offering customizations, you have to wait until you've done two planets with her before you can go buy a customization. (I wish they sold all of them on the fleet. Scratch that; I wish you could apply them when you start the game so that even before she's your companion you can get the customization on the character that you want.) So, besides my two OG bounty hunters, what else am I doing with Makos?

Vant Galaide flew to Balmorra as soon as he could and picked up the dirty blonde customization #6. Wulf Hengist is still sitting on the original Mako, but he literally just got his star ship and is heading to Balmorra, so I'm considering picking up freckled redhead #5 for him. Or maybe I'll just leave her as is. Not sure yet. It's not his turn in the rotation for a little while, but I'll decide before I get to it. Embric Stane isn't recording, but he's got the darker redhead #3 option that they offer you on Hutta. I like this one a lot too, and I might use it on one of my recorded guys too... which I guess would just be Beorn Hengist. I'm also considering the nightlife customization. Although the hair color obviously isn't natural, it's still cute, and it's a unique hairstyle that you can't otherwise get on very many companions. 

If I had the collector's edition, I'd consider the cyborg eyes #7. The cyborg eyes #8 is weird because of the hairstyle (and the cyborg sunglasses, which are very narrow and strange) but I think it's fun to use it on Graggory's Mako after the story just for the heckuvit. I don't really care for black girl customizations, but it's worth noting that two of the three black Mako's have cyborg sunglasses too. All four of the cyborg sunglasses looks are different. #9 are the John Lennons, and #4 is full-on robot eyes.

She's gonna blow

I used to read more Fred Reed. I don't even know where he posts these days. Is fredoneverything.com still around? I dunno. I mostly used to read him at the Unz Review, and I know he's not there anymore. This post was cross-posted or reposted on the Ilana Mercer blog.

Annotated by me. Fred's pretty sharp and has many cogent things to say. But he's also got some mile-wide blind spots, enabled/facilitated by his identity complications. I.e., I believe, reading between the lines, that he lives or has lived in Mexico, with a Mexican wife and probably either Mexican step-children or half-Mexican children. So any discussion of demographics and an ethnic component to our problems, he refuses to see. Except for black people, which for some reason he has a keen eye for. But Jews, Indians, or Hispanics—don't expect him to recognize that their "ethnic behavior" has any component in what's going wrong with America. He'll recognize the problems and then go out of his way to not recognize who's responsible for them or why.

Anyway, without further ado:

FRED REED: She’s Gonna blow: It’s Weimar, But Where Is Our Adolf?

As the sentient have presumably noticed, the United States is in crisis, the country’s problems are profound, intrinsic, without solution, and worsening. When a population reaches the point of despair, even desperation, when it sees a darkening future for itself and its children, people yearn for a strong man who will forcibly put things right. Yet it is unlikely that helicopters of Marines from Quantico will descend on the White House and announce the dictatorship of some general. Military officers are too well paid and comfortable to worry about the country. It is hard to imagine an American Mussolini. Trump is a caricature and no one else comes to mind. Yet “unrest” –less euphemistically, “chaos” on the order of Mr. Floyd’s massive riots, is possible. We have seen it. We can see it again.

Consider America today. By comparison with Japan, China, Korea, it is a barbarity, a dumpster, an asylum, an abattoir, an astonishment. San Francisco loses conventions because of needles and excrement on the sidewalks. Almost weekly we see multiple shootings in stores, high schools and, now, grade schools. Murders of whites by blacks run at thirty a month, the news being suppressed. In cities across the country crime is out of control, the tax bases moving out, bail abolished so criminals are freed in hours. Stores leave to escape undiscouraged shoplifting and robbery. Seven hundred homicides a year in Chicago, 300 in Baltimore, and at least twice as many shot but survive, similar numbers in a dozen cities. For practical purposes, law does not exist in these ungovernable enclaves. Sexual curiosities, once called perversions, flourish with American embassies hoisting flags in support of transsexualism. Mobs topple historical statues. Many tens of thousands live on sidewalks and a hundred thousand a year die of opioid overdoses. The country drops math requirements and English grammar in schools, AP courses, and SATs as racist. The economy declines, jobs have left for other climes, medical care is beyond most people’s means, government is corrupt and incompetent, and wars are unending. There is actual hatred between racial, political, and regional groups. Ominously, gun sales are up.

How is this going to end well? How did we get here?

America has never been a nation in the correct sense of the word, a people sharing values, language, a culture. Rather it has been, and is, a collection of peoples having little and common and, often disliking each other. West Virginia has nothing in common with Massachusetts which has nothing in common with the Deep South which has nothing in common with coastal California which has nothing in common with Cavalier Virginia which has nothing in common with Latinos who have nothing in common with blacks.

No, that's not true. America absolutely was a nation in the correct sense of the word when it declared independence, and for a long time thereafter. The Founding Fathers clearly recognized it, as does census data from the 1700 and 1800s. Regional difference exist within nations. In fact, the American regional differences are largely, as explained clearly by David Hackett Fischer in Albion's Seed, the SAME regional difference that already existed in England transposed to America. Is he suggesting that the English aren't a nation? Or the Germans—if he thinks that there's dissimilar homogeneity in Germany, he's smoking something. French wasn't even the majority language of France until 100 years ago, just the biggest plurality language, and Occitan was nearly as big. Regional differences exist within nations, without negating their state of nationhood.

He is correct, however, in noting, offhand though it may be, that Latinos and blacks are not part of the American nation. They're just people living IN America, but rejecting its culture and heritage, because it's not theirs, natch. 

Until perhaps the early Sixties, the regions got along with each other reasonably well because there was little communication between them. Roads were poor, the internet was not even on the horizon. Radio stations and newspapers were local, reflecting the surrounding culture and taste. The central government was remote and had little influence locally. Each region lived as it wished.

Providing a degree of commonalty was that the country was overwhelmingly white, European, Anglophone and, at least nominally, Christian. It was socially conservative, largely consisting of small towns.

He doesn't seem to notice that he's contradicting his own statement above here, really. But he's right this time. Until the invasion of hordes of foreigners, America had a single culture. Even during the Civil War, and in its immediate aftermath, former combatants on both sides recognized their common culture, heritage and co-nationality.

The resulting culture was unsophisticated but civilized. In the suburbs of Washington (I was there) you really could leave your bike anywhere and it would be there when you came back. In summer children really could play great sprawling multiblock games of hide-and-seek after dark and no one worried. In high school in rural Virginia (I was there too) the boys had guns for hunting deer and shooting varmints in the bean fields and you could leave your .410 in the back seat of your jalopy in the school’s parking lot. Nobody thought of shooting anyone. It wasn’t in the culture. If a thing isn’t in the culture, it doesn’t happen. You don’t need policemen. The boys didn’t use bad language around the girls or vice versa and nobody even thought of disrespect to teachers. There were class clowns (I may know somewhat of this), but no real misbehavior. It wasn’t in white, technically Christian, semi-rural culture.

Then many things happened. In no particular order:

The reach of the federal government grew and grew. Washington, which had been a distant city concerning itself with foreign policy and the economy, could now impose its values on remote society. It did.

Washington discovered the “separation of church and state,” which had lain unnoticed in the Constitution since 1789. In regions of deep religiousness, it became illegal to recite the Lord’s prayer, to have creches on the town square at Christmas, or two sing carols on the public streets. It had nothing to do with meticulous adherence to the Constitution, but everything to do with the discovery by angry minorities that they could impose on majorities. In short, like many movements to come, it was a revenge operation. It has become a de facto program of de-Christianization, weakening a source of social cohesion and leading to anger.

He says "Washington" here, but doesn't point out that this didn't happen until a number rentier of Jews were put on the Supreme Court and immediately started interpreting American law to be out of harmony with American culture. It wasn't, of course. Although Yankees do this to some extent too, and many of them jumped on the bandwagon with the Jews, it was really a very Jewish thing to do to ignore the spirit of the law and attempt to lawyer your way into interpreting the law to mean the exact opposite of what it says. In fact, the Talmud is very much a document that attempts to do that with the commandments. That's not an American point of view or an American approach to structuring society. But because Americans weren't really interested in rentier roles, we kind of inadvertently let foreigners with hostile intentions to our culture creep into positions where they could impose their anti-American "morality" on the rest of us.

But again, Reed is incapable of seeing the effects of cultural differences between Jews, Hispanics and Americans, so he'll never recognize that. He'll just say that it was "Washington." And to be fair to him, as I said, the descendants of the New England Puritans were more than happy to go along with it and boost the signal; they've also got a penchant for telling everyone else what to do and being an entire race of Karens.

The federal government began to dictate what could be taught in local schools. Teachers were forbidden to mention Creationism because a judge in Philadelphia, who appeared to have the scientific grasp of a potato chip, said this transgressed the doctrine of separation. The decision had little practical relevance as there was no likelihood that hearing of Genesis would turn students away from the study of biochemistry. It was, however, an early manifestation of class snobbery against what was seen as primitive Christianity that would later coalesce into hostility toward the Deplorables.

Remote anonymous committees in New York wrote highly ideological textbooks imposed on distant states which did not share those ideologies. The effectiveness of this relied on the principle that outraged parents in Arkansas would have no idea how to oppose distant bureaucracies of whose existence they were unaware and whose phone numbers they could not find. American government is democratic while not allowing the people to exercise power. It is a brilliant system, until it explodes.

Again; notice the geography? Yankees and Jews imposed their values on the rest of the country. Because it burns them up inside that people don't recognize their need to tell everyone else what to do and how to think. It's kind of intrinsic to their natures, to some degree, and it's almost exceptional and extraordinary to meet one who doesn't lean into those tendencies. Some people also call this a feminine vs. masculine approach. There's something to that too. The feminine mind looks for consensus, and if it doesn't exist, tries to force it, because it is deeply uncomfortable with differences of opinion.

Compulsory racial integration, as distinct from desegregation, was an untarnished disaster. Few wanted it, and few want it. The people who imposed it did not, and do not, send their children to black schools. The races transparently do not want to live together. If blacks move into white neighborhoods, “white flight” occurs and if whites move into black neighborhoods, blacks furiously complain of gentrification.

When two cultures have utterly different views of acceptable language, dress, behavior, study, and curricula, mixing them does not work. In the schools, academic standards fell. Discipline became a problem. Across America, cities burned because of conflict between black populations and white police. Eurowhite culture, it turned out, was incompatible with Negro culture. The potential for yet greater disaster seems great, and no one has a solution. There probably isn’t a solution.

It's funny how his vision between white and black is so clear, but he won't apply this same logic to the difference between Anglo-Saxon and Jew, or American and Mexican/Latino. Obviously, the exact same logic applies between any two differing population groups, no matter who they are. It is true that blacks are extraordinarily difficult to live with and beside compared to any other population group due to their well-documented r-selection, impulsivity, lack of self-control and higher tendency towards criminality and violence than any other population. But that's why they should have always stayed in Africa where their only neighbors were each other, and they could practice the culture that worked for them without being meddled with by anyone else, or without themselves meddling in the culture of anyone else. 

So, I guess because of the order of magnitude problem of the difference between black and white culture, he can only see it for one population group or something? Not sure the cause of the blind spot here. Probably, again, his own complicated identity situation makes it harder for him to see what he doesn't want to see. Neal Maxwell used to talk about "wintry doctrines" of the Gospel, and Heartiste used to talk about the difference between pretty lies and ugly truths. In spite of the vast difference in spiritual capital between a literal Apostle of God and an unrepentant and defiant sinner, they were both intelligent, and they were both right. Sometimes the truth is hard to see because it isn't as "nice" as we wish it was, or because it threatens something about our own personal sense of identity, so we reject it in spite of its obvious truth. And the truth is that it isn't just people in the individual sense that are different, peoples in the generic, plural sense, are also different. They're not interchangeable widgets. That's really a pretty insulting and dehumanizing point of view, if you think about it, but it's also at the core of the virtue-signaling delusional wishful thinking that is the foundation of our Current Year ideology, on both sides of the political aisle. If anything, "conservatives" buy into this even harder than Leftists, actually. How many of them brag about "not seeing color" when in fact, color is more highly correlated to behavior than all of the things that (I guess) they think that they do see.

This doesn't mean, of course, that we should just assume that all black people are violent criminals. That would be insane and obviously wrong. But it does mean that we shouldn't think that we can simply "absorb" tens of millions of Third Worlders and expect our culture or our economy either one to withstand that intact.

The Constitution, which once brought political stability, withered, being ignored or interpreted into unrecognizability by judges or made irrelevant by changes in technology and society. Freedom of speech, which meant that I could say that the President was a fool and should be removed from office, became freedom of expression, meaning that porn sites, accessible to children of nine years, could upload videos of a German Shepherd copulating with a beautiful blonde tied down to a bed. Some doubted that the writers of the Constitution had this in mind when providing the Bill of Rights, but none could gainsay the Supreme Court or the federal power.

Again; he should look a little more carefully at which justices were the ones responsible for these precedents. Few of them have good old Anglo-Saxon names. I'm just sayin'.

The behemoths of the electronic media imposed political censorship. Being private enterprises, they could not be disciplined. They became more and more an arm of the central government, which became more and more the property of the Northeastern coastal elites. Entities with names like Google, Twitter, and Facebook cleansed themselves of content thought inappropriate, websites delisted, credit card accounts closed. People disappeared by the electronic media were almost as disappeared as those disappeared in Latin America, though less bloodily. The intention and effect are the same.

That's not true. Private enterprises can of course be disciplined. They just haven't been, because 1) if the government didn't actually help establish them in the first place which there's strong circumstantial evidence that they did, then 2) they certainly saw the advantage of an unofficial arm of the same managerial movement that could do things that was illegal for the government to do, and vice versa. Like with fascism and fascist-like political movements 100 years ago, the partnership of government and "private" enterprise to reach the exact same ideological goals is a one-two punch that's difficult to get away from. Because nobody is vested in taking them on that is in a position to effectively do so.

An unexpected effect of censorship was that those doing the censoring also censored themselves. The media, talking to each other, reading each other, having no contact with or interest in the silenced and deplorable, had no idea of the anger out there. This brought us Floyd and Trump as deep wells of undetected anger exploded. The media are doing it again.

Floyd and Trump are completely unrelated movements, and Floyd, by which I mean the BLM domestic terrorism and riots, were largely sponsored and encouraged by the Establishment as punishment on the American people for attempting to assert their interests by electing Donald Trump in the first place. For him to lump them together as two symptoms with the same root cause is shockingly obtuse. Even the actual BLM organizers weren't overly concerned about the death of George Floyd (from drug overdose, just to be clear. That was also extremely well documented, in spite of the nonsense kangaroo court trial.) They were "trained Marxists" in their own words, and they simply took advantage of the death of George Floyd as a trigger to jump in to action.

The current regime in Washington appears deliberately and intensely divisive. Biden has attacked the South, supporting renaming of military bases in deliberate affront. A thorough racist, he frequently denounces whites. He denounces Trump and his supporters, nearly half of America. He has ostentatiously chosen black women as justice of the Supreme Court, member of Federal Reserve, Vice President, and White House spokeswoman. While these may or may not be competent, he announced them as diversity hires. He is poised to assault owners of guns, sure to provoke fury, has involved America in another war, and wants a federal Ministry of Truth to prohibit ideas he doesn’t like. Profoundly partisan, he makes no attempt to calm things or promote tranquility.

The universality of the internet made difficult or impossible the maintenance of distinct values or mores. It became impossible for the cultivated to inculcate in their children manners, good English, and appreciation of learning when the electronics bathed them in not only the traditionally low culture of America but also the anticivilization of the ghetto. America undergoes both enforced peasantrification and homogenization. Anger grows.

You could also just call that the effect of toxic narcissism and resentment of the weirdos against normalcy and be just as accurate, of course. It probably hasn't escaped most peoples' notice that the champions of Leftist Lunacy are usually the unattractive, the socially unsuccessful, and those who've "taken the ticket" by taking rentier roles that they aren't even remotely qualified for. It's no wonder that they are effectively making war on normalcy as it used to exist in America. And as the saying goes, "Physiognomy is real." If you see some soy-faced pseudo-man or grumpy Karen blue-haired land-whale, you probably don't need to ask them what their politics are.

Congress and the Constitution largely ceased to function, leaving Presidents to rule by executive order, this not being entirely distinguishable from dictatorship. This included the making of war, which became both common and beyond public influence. The legislature no longer governed but was the storefront for special interests of immense power. There remained no body interested in the wellbeing of the country. This led to offshoring of jobs, poverty in Appalachia, the Rust Belt and rural Deep South, the impoverishing influx of cheap Mexican labor, Donald Trump, and intense regional hatred. Here we are.

Ah, he finally gets around, indirectly, to talking about the invasion of entitled, demanding, ungrateful and unappreciative Third World hordes from Latin America, and India, and to a lesser degree from the Middle East and East Asia. For quite a long time, America could support immigration from almost anywhere, because 1) it came in small enough numbers that it never threatened the economic or cultural well-being of America overall, and 2) there was a lot of social pressure for immigrants to conform to American norms of behavior, or don't come. Both of those have been destroyed in the last few decades, so now we're only a step away from open civilizational warfare over who's vision of America will prevail; that of the Americans themselves, or that of the squatters who have crashed the American party and now demand that the host accept them as members of the household rather than uninvited and unwelcome guests who have—notwithstanding—been pretty well-treated, especially before they became emboldened to become super obnoxious.

This can’t last. The hatreds are intense, the guns everywhere, anger growing at crime, something akin to economic desperation appearing. Washington will leave nowhere alone, will not address national problems, will always give priority to its military, its wars and its empire over domestic needs. The hostility that fueled the Floyd riots, the burning cities, the looting and vengeful vandalism, are still there. She’s going to blow. Watch.

He's right. I think the one of the first real breaking of the dam moments will be when white America finally shrugs off its guilt complex over the hoax of racism and sexism and says that it doesn't care anymore; women and minorities need to shut up and stop being so disruptive, or ship out. But I could be wrong. There are plenty of potential schwerpunkts out there.

Punting just a bit, I admit

This post, as the title says, is me punting just a bit. I don't have anything too important to talk about, but I want to move these image files out of the folder I'm keeping them in, so I'll post them.

"My" old D&D version is B/X, but I admit to a certain strong nostalgic attachment to the Larry Elmore covers of the BECMI line. Here they are in low resolution. Most of them can be bought as reasonably priced prints from Larry Elmore's online storefront, the exception being the Companion cover. Which, sadly, is probably my favorite of the bunch. That can be bought as a giclee high quality print, but it's no longer reasonably priced if you just want some framed posters to throw up in one of your rooms as decoration.

In the correct BECMI order... although I also have to admit that the I set has no nostalgic (or other) resonance with me at all. I just don't care about that paradigm or that art all that much. So, BECM—?

If I were decorating a game room, I'd replace that weird superhero image with one of Elmore's more "traditional" pieces that I have more connection to. I also think that this would fit well in the series, just based on subject matter, although I know that it's an old Dragonlance module cover, so quite a different product.

On a totally different topic, one of the very welcome changes SWTOR made was to take a step back from trying to be WoW, and instead being an Old Republic game that happened, this time, to have some online grouping capability. The reality is that the majority of the playerbase was more interested in the solo story play than "dungeon raiding". As part of this change, there were a number of the old group content "flashpoints" that had a solo mode added to them; they did this by reducing enemy health by (I imagine) a certain percentage, and then giving you a fairly effective "extra" companion in the form of a tank robot fighter. 

Unfortunately, they only did this for about half of the "classic" flashpoints; primarily ones that had some story implication and that you were really expected to play. However, as you play through the original story mode, you get a lot of flashpoint prompts that you can't really do unless you enter a groupfinder queue. 

Then there's just a few from the very first expansion that are still on the same paradigm as the original flashpoints; these aren't really soloable either. But after that, ALL Flashpoints had a solo mode, because the paradigm had change. 

By my count there are 33 flashpoints (although a few are faction specific) and of them, 11 still have no story mode. It would have been relatively easy and should have been a priority to offer a solo mode for all of them, and I still think BioWare should allocate a small amount of resources to create such an option while the game still has some life in it left. Here's my list of flashpoints in order and where you'd pick them up, both those you can play solo already and those that you should be able to. I highlighted the ones that need a solo version in red.

The Esseles (Republic) and The Black Talon (Empire) After doing your first starter planet, you travel by shuttle to the fleet, pick up a few things, and then move on to another shuttle that will take you to the capital plant; Coruscant and Dromund Kaas respectively. While you can skip these flashpoints and take a non-event shuttle, you probably need the XP, so I almost always do with my new characters. Sometimes I even run them through it a few times, because each time gives low level PCs ~3 levels worth of XP, if you have the XP bonus turned on. This was already seen as an "essential" Flashpoint, so there's a solo mode available. It's the two that I've played (by far) the most.

Hammer Station Both Republic and Empire have (with slightly altered cutscenes) access to Hammer Station right freakin' there on the capital planet, and it's clear that it's meant to be played either while on the planet, or at least before you leave it. It isn't a particularly story-heavy flashpoint (I've done it with a group a few times) but then again, neither are the heroics on the capital planet, or most of the exploration missions. It's a bigger side-quest than most of those, but it isn't really that much bigger than, for instance, the Imperial "Friends of Old" Heroic mission.

Athiss The Republic and Empire go to different planets to start their Act I following the introduction; Taris for Republic and Balmorra for Empire. There's not a flashpoint associated with these planets until you hit them later in the story (in reverse order; Taris for Empire and Balmorra for Republic) so you go instead to Nar Shaddaa. As part of that planet, you get the Athiss Flashpoint. Athis is a cool planet that's a little bit like a slightly more forested Korriban; or maybe a Korriban merged with a Tython, or something. Slap a red filter on it and give it the red sky and red lighting, and it'd be a great stand-in for Dathomir too. Like Hammer Station, it's just a side quest, and it's basically the same regardless of faction.

Mandalorian Raiders After Nar Shaddaa, which both factions do at the same point, they both go to Tatooine, where there's another non-story mode flashpoint, Mandalorian Raiders. This is another side mission, so you don't miss too much by not playing it. As an aside, there used to be a weapon drop from this flashpoint that I would really have loved to get my hands on, but it's no longer available. Sigh. Why in the world would BioWare take assets that are already in the game and make them unavailable? There should be some way to still get that stuff. 

Cademimu is the last flashpoint for Act I and is doable on Alderaan, the next planet after Tatooine. It's another "strike team goes and deals with a side quest 'emergency'" style story, but that's OK. After... four in a row, however, the formula is getting a little stale. I like the landscape of Cademimu; a reddish Corsuscant, or more industrial Nar Shaddaa. It's not original, but it's pretty cool. However, the "Governor Chornarov" who in spite of his Russian-esque name is portrayed as a bizarre Yankee caricature of Robert E. Lee—which I admit I personally find a bit offensive—is a strange antagonist. Although he's also portrayed as a coward that you never actually meet; the real problem is a bunch of asylum-granted war criminal milita from the Ord Mantell separatists, which is actually kind of an interesting callback to the smuggler and trooper story start.

Taral V→Maelstrom Prison (Republic) and Boarding Party→The Foundry (Empire) These four flashpoints; and you'll play two of them back to back, but they differ substantially between factions, are the next ones that actually have a significant story element to them, and both revolve around discovering that Revan is still alive, having been kept in some kind of stasis prison for 300 or so years, but now he's free (or you're supposed to free him, depending.) The landscapes are interesting; Taral V looks like a small section of Dromund Kaas that wasn't used previously, the Foundry has a kind of Rakata structures on Belsavis look to it, and the other two are just inside spaceships, and have either a Republic or Imperial ship/fleet look to them, as appropriate. They're both already playable, and you'd probably be pretty confused during the Shadow of Revan expansion if you didn't. You take these up on the first planet for Act II, which is different depending on your faction; Balmorra for Republic and Taris (nighttime) for the Empire.

Colicoid War Games is a flashpoint that you do after Hoth, the last planet of Act II. The very short planet Quesh doesn't have a Flashpoint associated with it. The story involved is a little bit different, although a little hoaky. It's totally optional from a story point of view, but we should still be able to play it solo. So are all kinds of other missions. The order on the flowchart is a little weird here. They suggest that after finishing Hoth, you'd go back to Alderaan and do the Bonus Series, and then go back to the fleet to pick this up. A little unusual.

Red Reaper is notorious as a flashpoint that hardcore people, usually with a stealth class, would solo. Stealthing a mission like this isn't too hard; I've stealthed the Heroic 4 on Section X many times, but actually having to fight the boss by yourself is challenging. But this one was famous for having some sick loot and being relatively easy to stealth/solo compared to the rest, so it used to be spammed a lot. I'd like to see it with a proper solo mode. It's meant to be played between Voss and the Voss Bonus Series.

Directive 7 is yet another weird side quest, where you're on a carbon copy of Balmorra fighting an army of renegade droids. For whatever reason, it got a solo mode, though. Probably because there was a lot more dialogue and cut scenes that most flashpoints, but not at all because it's central to the story, because it very clearly is not. It's a late game addition, though—according to the flowchart, it's meant to be played after Corellia, which technically makes it after the main story is over. The level requirement means that it's concurrent, I suppose, with Corellia, though.

The Battle of Ilum→The False Emperor These two are essential to the epilogue story on Ilum after your class story is actually over. Ilum doesn't have a class story at all, although there are Republic and Empire specific faction stories, a fair bit of exploration, and a big recurring event area. After this are the last hurrahs for grouping content. I could add some of the Operations in here too, including several that are linked together to make for an interesting side story, but that'll be for another post.

Kuat Drive Yards is a weird one. It was released late, right in this section, but it can be picked up and played earlier, and dialogue makes it possible to interpret its place in the story in various places. As part of making this one solo, they should anchor it at a particular point in the storyline too.

Kaon Under Siege→The Lost Island These two linked flashpoints are not soloable, but should be, and they deal with a rakghoul kind of thing. (I wonder if back in the day they were released to coincide with the first rakghoul recurring event?) In any case, they're both pretty cool; Kaon Under Siege in particular is a dark, moody piece with a good zombie apocalypse vibe going through it. 

Czerka Corporate Labs→Czerka Core Meltdown are two more linked flashpoints that are on the small daily area planet CZ-198. These are the last released flashpoints to not have a solo mode. All of the remainder are part of expansions, so I won't talk about where they fit, other than to place them in order. In fact, I doubt I'll offer much commentary on them at all, other than that flashpoints—by this point—had become integral to the way the story was progressed. All of these flashpoints are necessary to actually proceed with the story, but they're less open ended than just running around and picking up story missions, as you did before. Many of them are on planets that you otherwise won't see at all. This is true for a lot of prior flashpoints, like Cademimu or Athiss, but because they're part of the story, it's a little bit too bad; you'd like to actually see some of these planets a bit more.

The Shadow of Revan expansion had four linked flashpoints as it's "prelude" before you went and did the new planet Rishi (with faction only, not class story missions.) The prelude flashpoints are a bit unusual in that they differ somewhat by faction, and the order is reversed on the first two, which are also not really the same (defending vs raiding Tython and Korriban respectively). Then there's some callbacks to Knights of the Old Republic with a flashpoint on Manaan and the Unknown World, i.e., Rakata Prime.

Assault on Tython→Korriban Incursion→Depths of Manaan→Legacy of the Rakata

Blood Hunt is a flashpoint on Rishi where you go fight a bunch of Mandalorians, and then after you kill a bunch of them and beat up their leader, who's now the middle-aged Karen from the early Deceived cinematic trailer, then they join you as friends and allies. Quite honestly, the EU version of Mandalorians is pretty stupid. The Clone Wars did them right, but then Filoni did everything he could in the next series; Rebels and The Mandalorian, to restore the stupid EU incarnation of them back to the canon. 

The Battle of Rishi is near the end of the Shadow of Revan expansion, and certainly the end of the Rishi section. You still go do the daily area on Yavin IV, and then fight Revan himself as a big bad boss, but that's content that's not flashpoint-like.

Crisis on Umbara is a cool location and a fun flashpoint, with a traitor/mole in your organization coming out with a side story that runs for a little while. 

Traitor Among the Chiss is the same traitor, but now he's got the backing of a rogue Chiss element. Another interesting planet that you can't see otherwise.

The Nathema Conspiracy is another interesting planet, and an important part of the Valkorian/Empire story.

Objective Meridian has you going back to a newly interpreted Corellia (different time of day too) and dealing with yet another Imperial incursion. It's part of Onslaught, though, not the original Corellia stuff, or even the Black Hole epilogue on Corellia. 

Spirit of Vengeance is a Mandalorian themed flashpoint that ends on a cliffhanger. Upcoming game update 7.2 promises to finish the story started in this flashpoint, which is a big raid on a rival Mandalorian clan's fleet, or ship or whatever. 

Secrets of the Enclave is another callback flashpoint. BioWare had already added Dantooine as a daily area and recurring event planet, although its kind of small and if there isn't the pirates event going on, there's not a lot to do there (when it is going on, for whatever reason I get a lot of lag on this planet. I guess I get a lot of lag on Ilum when the Gree event is going on too.) But for this flashpoint, however, you leave that area behind and explore the ruins of the Jedi Enclave that was a major part of the Knights of the Old Republic story. It is kind of a shame that BioWare is reduced to callbacks to KOTOR and "hey, remember this stuff, when you used to like us? Well, we've brought it back for you in the hopes that you'll like us again." Then again, Star Wars is doing that more broadly, so... eh. 

Ruins of Nul is on a new planet, and is a pretty cool looking one, actually. It's got this dark Sithy kind of vibe to it, it looks cold and there's a light dusting of windblown snow, and weird reddish plants, as well as a solar eclipse that lasts the entirety of the flashpoint. However, the flashpoint itself isn't that interesting; its got grindy trash mobs and sub-bosses that are basically giant puzzles. I consider this one a pretty but disappointing one, but about where BioWare is these days. 

Archaeolinguistic discussion

I tried to make this  post in the comments section of the Eurogenes blog, but it was too long and the system rejected it.  Even though the person I'm responding to will never see it here, I thought  "what the heck" and I'll post it anyway.

@Andrzejewski "I would love to know what language Tripolye spoke and its linguistic affiliation- is it related to Etruscan, LBK or whatever it was that Ötzi spoke."

Wouldn't we all love to know that! Get to work on interpreting that Vinca script!

Here's a few things we do know: the only languages that we have full agreement on that have ancestry that probably predates the Indo-Europeanization of Europe are Etruscan and Basque. There are other southeastern languages that MAY be related to some of these that we know existed, although we know almost nothing else about them other than that: Aegean/Pelasgian, Minoan, and Hattic. There are some other languages of dubious provenance from ancient Iberia, Italy and Anatolia/Aegean like Tartessian or North and South Picene, etc. Almost nothing is known about any of these, even if they are Indo-European or not. The best "theories" still don't manage to rise above the level of handwavey speculative hypotheses, such as the "Tyrsenian family" or the "Vasconic family" and there is little agreement among linguists about the basis for any of them.

Basque does seem to at least have been geographically consistent as far back as we can trace it, but we can't trace it much further back than to just prior to the Roman conquest of Gaul, many millennia after it was presumably already in place.  It is probably related to or even descended from the geographically larger Aquitanian language, but even that supposition is pretty handwavey. Etruscan "claims" by Roman historians to have come from the north, and may be related to other Alpine languages  like Rhaetic. The Etruscans themselves present a genetic profile that is pretty close to what we'd expect from early Italic-speaking Indo-Europeans, who also presumably came from north of the Alps or at least the Po valley from the Bronze Age, and the exact same material cultures have been proposed for the ancestors of the Italics as for the ancestors of the Etruscans. How a steppe-appearing population that looks on paper like a good candidate for the spread of early Italic languages came to speak a non-Indo-European language is a total mystery. While it seems possible that Etruscan is descended from a language similar to what Otzi's people may have spoken, that's simply based on geographical dead reckoning, and is abductive reasoning that may well have no basis in reality.

I wish for more information on it too, but the reality is that we have no idea what language(s) the EEF population spoke, nor do we have any idea what the WHG language(s) may have looked like, although it seems possible that Etruscan and/or Basque is descended from one such lingering linguistic stock. Quite probably, the linguistic picture was more complex than we expect; if we paint brush in broad strokes, that makes it easier for us to theorize, but in the areas where we actually have SOME information from neighboring early historians among the Greeks, Hittites, Egyptians or Romans, such as the paleo-Balkan linguistic situation, the Bronze Age and early Iron Age Anatolian, Italic and Iberian situation, we see the precise opposite; a patchwork of languages who's relationship to each other is confusing and uncertain at best.  We can probably deduce that that same situation was common across most of Europe, and that the "settling in" of Indo-European languages was a much longer and more involved process that involved multiple waves of differing "grades" of I-E development before Europe was well and truly Indo-Europeanized. By the time we have, for instance, records of the expansion of Celtic in the Iron Age across much of Central Europe, we can presume that it superimposed itself over a number of completely unrelated and anonymous previous Indo-European languages that existed in the area already, as well as who knows how many lingering stumps of pre-Indo-European that was fading away to be lost forever to the mists of time.

One of the best proposals I've seen, although it is precisely the type of broad-stroke paint job that I am making the case against, is Peter Schrijver's broader Anatolian theory where he makes a vague case that Hurrian, Hattic, Minoan, possibly at least some of the modern Caucasian languagess, and even Sumerian all have an ancient genetic link, and that that language family is most likely the starting point for EEF languages. That leaves Basque a little out in the cold, but again based on geographical dead reckoning, I like the idea—speculative though it clearly is—that it might be a lingering descendant of the old El Miron genetic cluster's original language, transmitted through WHG to more modern populations, and against all odds surviving as a hinterlands language isolate in the mountains for millennia. But I wouldn't bet money on that idea, as catchy as it sounds.