It’s outsourcing the socialism to us so that he can sell it as a “free market” solution.

Same. I had to triple check what sub this was.

Different dynamics. Buys require sellers, of which there are a fair amount (though few enough still that large purchases absolutely do shift the price significantly; we’ve seen multiple instances of Tether bringing the price up by 20% or more for the cost of billion newly minted USDT). Sells require buyers, which are in very short supply.

Cool, so it was nice having From Soft games while they were a thing. Guess they went out on a high note with Elden Ring at least.

If only scifi authors had ever thought to warn us that megacorps are bad.

With headlines like this, it’s always important to keep in mind that bitcoin is such a thinly traded (and largely artificial) market that actually trying to sell 8,000 Btc for real dollars/pounds would instantly and catastrophically crash the price.

Pretty good actually. But the odds of finding it are basically nil. A needle in a haystack would actually be easier.

Sure, but again the amount of actual player to player interaction involved in that is minimal. Like I said, I’m in a clan, and outside of obtaining my initial invite (which basically went “Clan plz” in chat followed by clicking accept) I’ve had literally zero social interaction with my current clan. Trading has been effectively automated by Warframe market. You copy and paste something into chat, and the rest of the interaction consists of a pro forma exchange of "ty"s. Also, you don’t actually need a clan to trade, because anyone you’re trading with will inevitably invite you to theirs, so they’re only really important when selling.

This is absolutely nothing like the way that raiding and guilds are core to World of Warcraft. Clans play an almost purely mechanical role in Warframe, they’re not remotely the same thing, and do not have remotely the same requirement of social interaction.

Sorry if I seem like I’m getting a little bent out of shape about this stuff. It frustrates me because Russian propaganda in this area has been far, far more successful than it has any right to be. It’s extremely easy to see through once you sit back and examine the basic mechanics of the situation, but I understand that that’s difficult to do when being faced with something as terrifying as the threat of a global conflict.

What about them? Suppose China sends 100,000 troops to Ukraine? How does that expand the conflict in any way?

This is the problem with people just buying this Russian line about America “escalating” the conflict. Increasing the scale or intensity of the conflict in Ukraine has zero bearing on its scope. China entering the war doesn’t force America, or any other NATO country, to suddenly become involved.

It doesn’t matter if China sends a million troops. Ten million. At the end of the day the conflict is still between Ukraine, Russia, and Russia’s co-beligerants. Even if Ukraine somehow ended up invading China, this still doesn’t directly involvre NATO in the war.

The only thing that can possibly involve NATO is either NATO choosing to get directly involved, or some opposing party directly attacking NATO. And none of those opposing parties have anything to gain by attacking NATO. So why would they?

Of course not. Because he’s like the least manly person ever by any normal definition. Which is exactly why he’s so fucking insecure about it.

This is also why his followers have to constantly reframe him as some sort of paragon of manliness (see Ben Garrison’s absolutely ludicrous hagiography, for example), because they know, intuitively, that he in no way measures up to their supposed ideals of what manliness is and that bothers them a lot.

Trump has this really weird attitude to the military. He decries war because it’s wasteful (and because this stance plays well to a US that is going through one of its regular isolationist phases), but he also seems have a deep seated insecurity about the military. Like, it’s really obvious that military personnel make him feel less manly, so he has to constantly flex on them by shitting on their traditions and attacking their leadership, but also by engaging in big flashy military actions like missile strikes and dropping “the biggest non-nuclear weapon in existence.”

He hates war but loves doing war stuff. He hates the military but loves proving that he’s better than them by any metric possible. The whole thing is fucked up in a really pathological way that makes me think the whole “private bone-spurs” thing really, really gets to him.

For any of this to lead to “world war” one of two things has to happen:

1. The US directly enters the war on the side of Ukraine - If this didn’t happen at any point in the last two years, it’s not suddenly going to happen now. And it’s not more likely to happen because the US “provokes” Russia, so it’s irrelevant anyway.

2. Russia directly attacks a NATO country - Why would Russia ever do this? They can’t even defeat a NATO aligned independent nation. How the fuck would they ever have a hope in hell of defeating all of NATO? In what possible way would they benefit from escalating the war?

Russia claiming that American “provocations” will lead to world war is meaningless because the reality is that for them to be “provoked” into starting a war they would have to be provoked into voluntarily deleting their entire country.

No matter how badly this hypothetical world war 3 goes for anyone else, even if - no, especially if - it becomes a total nuclear war, the one guarantee is that Russia loses. And they lose hard. Putin’s best case scenario here is great he Hitler’s himself in a bunker in a few years and that’s if he’s lucky.

So unless Putin and every single person in his orbit have joined a suicide cult and are already cooking up a big old bowl of spicy Kool-Aid, there is no reason whatsoever to take these claims seriously.

Russia has been claiming that they are functionally at war with all of NATO for the last two years. Did that result in all out nuclear war?

If not, why would this be any different?

See, government regulations are just red tape and inefficiency. It’s much better if you have to constantly risk death for the sake of more corporate profits.

“Our upper management made a bunch of terrible decisions, so we’re fixing this by firing the competent people who do all the actual work. Please buy our shares.”

You honestly think that every single person around Putin is ready to burn in nuclear fire for his sake?

A lot of the game is built around guilds and player to player interactions.

For a while that was true. But that entire design direction has basically been abandoned. Clans are more or less a vestigial organ at this point. Literally the only interaction I have ever had with a member of my clan was when I asked for an invite.

The core story content is single player only. The rest is multiplayer, but unlike Destiny there’s nothing that requires you to form your own group outside of the game, and all the gameplay is designed in such a way that you really don’t need to communicate. You can basically just turn on public matchmaking and get a bunch of humans who might as well be bots for all you’ll have to actually interact with them.

You can play all the content solo if you want to, but the difficulty might get a bit much, especially starting out (there are also certain game modes / mission types that really lean on having a full group).

If you’re a Destiny refugee, the most obvious answer is Warframe, which just keeps on getting better and better.

What benefit does Russia get from escalating to nuclear weapons?

Putin wants to be alive, and have a country to be in charge of. Ukrainian aggression forcing a peace that’s more favorable to them doesn’t cost him either of those things. Deploying nuclear weapons against NATO does.

It’s not about whether or not Putin is willing to use nuclear weapons in the abstract. It’s about whether he would actually derive any benefit from doing so.