Hegar

100% death tax on all assets over $1m excluding a single house. That my final offer.

There’s no justification for a birth lottery that awards democracy-warping levels of wealth to whoever had the evilest parents.

That’s just completely not true though.

Across time, space and cultures, to be ruled is to be ruled by villains.

That much power fucks with your head, even if a well adjusted person manages to make it to that position, they won’t stay well adjusted for long.

Neuroscience supports this. Giving someone power causes changes in your brain that makes your brain less capable of empathy, closer to the brain of someone born with psychopathy.

https://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain

https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/how-power-erodes-empathy-and-steps-we-can-take-rebuild-it

https://hbr.org/2015/04/becoming-powerful-makes-you-less-empathetic

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201909/power-blocks-empathy

https://www.livescience.com/1128-mere-thought-money-people-selfish.html

https://blog.ted.com/6-studies-of-money-and-the-mind/

In parliamentry systems you can dissolve parliament, requiring an election. It’s usually a way to bypass deadlock. Imagine if, when republicans are fucking around with the debt ceiling and pissing off the country, you could threaten to call a snap election and let them answer to voters then and there.

So if this passes it would basically force a national referendum on netanyahu’s leadership.

If gantz is pushing this, probably he thinks he can win. That could mean netanyahu’s many financial and political crimes being looked into again. Maybe.

It could mean more of a focus on getting hostages back, but it might not lead to much change in gaza:

Gantz’ centrism is not equivalent to Western centrism: Natenyahu’s Likud party and other Israeli nationalists have “gone so right-wing that the center in Israel has changed,” a Middle East Institute think tank fellow told Al Jazeera. Previously serving as Commander-in-Chief of the Israeli Defense Forces, Gantz has overseen two military offensives in Gaza and labeled several Palestinian NGOs terrorist organizations, indicating it is “unlikely” he would improve the conditions for Palestinians living in Gaza

When the genocide is this obvious, and the ongoing consequences for the democrats and democracy this serious, it really makes me wonder what’s the political calculus behind it.

Is AIPAC really that big of a threat? Is netanyahu that important to our imperial interests in the middle east? Why choose full on putinesque post-truth politics over this?

I’ve never had much faith in the democrats, but I honestly just don’t understand what’s driving such terrible decision making.

In case anyone missed the reference, this is based on a work found painted on the walls of Fransisco Goya’s dining room after he died. You’ll often hear it called “Saturn Devouring His Son”, but the work was never titled or displayed publicly. There’s really no good reason to believe that the devourer is Chronos/Saturn, that the devouree is even a child, or that either body is male.

I personally like to think of it as Untitled (Dining Room).

As long as india is part of the quad and helping to contain china, modi can kill as many muslims and sikhs as he wants without US interference. And he knows it.

Quick check of the post history shows nothing but vitriol and unrealistically black and white thinking. Classic signs of depression.

I hope things get better for you, but in the meantime you’re an easy block.

Dear god in heaven - I’m pretty sure that applying percentages to a d20 violates the geneva convention.

Thanks for the horror story! What a cautionary take in how to destroy an otherwise serviceable core mechanic.

Could you elaborate a little on the design issues?

From Wikipedia it looks like you roll 3d20 looking for at least two successes, where the TN is a character attribute.

I find success counting mechanics are much lower cognitive load at the table than adding up mechanics, plus there’s a sensible limit to the number of dice and players will always have the target number written on their character sheet.

Plus that gives you a fairly clear 4 levels of success which is always easy to interpret as crit/pass/fail/crit fail.

I personally don’t like using D20s but that core mechanic seems fairly smooth and elegant to me. Where does the physics degree part come in? Too many overly complex subsystems? Weird character creation?

Some of the earliest musical instruments we have are made from human bones believed to be a way to honor family members.