Mnemnosyne

Yeah, that one really had some 'one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong' vibes.

I once thought that myself, but then it occurred to me to look at history. I could not find a single instance in the US or in several other countries that I considered to have a comparable electoral system of this actually happening. No third party has ever grown to become a real contender as far as I could find, at least not without a considerably different electoral system enabling it.

Given that the chances are close enough to zero for me to consider them such, it's clear that wasn't a viable route. Instead, every time major changes to policy have happened it's because of sufficient internal change within an existing major party, or in the couple cases where a major party has actually changed, it has been through internal division and collapse.

History thus tells us that if we want to enact that sort of change, we should get into whichever party is already closest to our position, and push hard from within, and bring as many like minded people with us to do so. It will be a difficult fight against entrenched interests that oppose such change, but far more successes have been had that way than through competing minor parties.

Mostly if you had ever posted something that was useful to people, it hurts other people now trying to find that information on the internet somewhere. It is unlikely Reddit actually deleted the data, they just made it inaccessible. Storage for posts is cheap. There's no reason for them to not keep literally everything ever, especially since they've known for well over a decade that the data itself is useful.

Odd comparison, and internally inconsistent. They criticize KOTOR for having only one decision that affects the overall story, but fail to consider that SWG had zero decisions that affect the overall story.

It is true that as a multiplayer game there are theoretically more opportunities for roleplay in SWG, and if they'd focused on that it would make more sense and be more consistent.

The combination of competence, the necessary skills, intelligence, and most importantly, the willingness to sacrifice oneself to effect change is...rare. It's also uncertain whether results would be positive.

Consider what is needed to pull off 'focused' violence - that is to say, assassination of key targets. You need to be sufficiently skilled to manage at least one successful strike. You cannot communicate with people to do this - it's far too easy to get caught in the modern day. You need supplies and equipment, and sure, guns are somewhat easy to get in the US, but they aren't the only thing you need. You need access and information, some of which is public, but some of which can be hard to get, and can draw attention by being sought (keep in mind algorithms are pattern matching to find this stuff).

Then consider the potential outcome of these actions. As mentioned before, organizing is impractical since it would mean getting caught before doing anything with much higher probability. Regardless of your skills, the chance of getting caught approaches 100%. You may be able to take out two or three key senators, or if you're very good and very lucky, a few supreme court justices, before being caught. At this point you will either be imprisoned, or you commit suicide to avoid this fate.

And what's the result? Violence of this sort to effect change is hard to pull off, but even harder to predict the outcome of. If you've succeeded in all plausible goals, you might manage to change the makeup of the supreme court - that's probably the best possible outcome you can hope for with this sort of violence, but right now on the gay front, the supreme court shockingly has yet to do anything too bad, so you may not want to provoke that shit. But there are a lot of possible bad outcomes. And as someone smart enough to pull this off, you're smart enough to see that. It could lead to increasingly strict rules, to retaliation against the group you're trying to help - it could even be the catalyst to strengthen your opponents position enough to make things worse elsewhere.

The idea of someone killing a bunch of the key bad guys is great, but it has so many impracticalities, and worst of all, such an uncertain and potentially worse outcome that it's probably just a bad idea overall, even as much as I too sometimes wish someone would just kill some of these motherfuckers already.

Yeah, that's an excellent example. Those protests posed a credible threat to that specific business - indeed, to some degree they even already carried out some of the threat, just to show it was credible - which made changes to what they had the power to affect - their own actions.

I think the best way to put it is that protests can be effective only when they present a credible threat of some sort against the people who have the power to make changes to whatever the protest is about. That threat may be direct violence, it may be electoral change, or it may be something else, but a credible threat of some sort is absolutely required.

Protesting against Israel, therefore, is of little use in most situations. The protesters pose no credible threat to Israel, so their decisions aren't going to change. And the protesters generally are not representing much of a credible threat against their own governments either, so their own governments are also not moved to change.

Schlock Mercenary. Amazing webcomic, by one of only like 2 webcomic authors that I'm familiar with that have the simple capability of putting out a comic on time (although this no longer applies as the story is finished) and is a fantastic story from beginning to end.

Yet, none of the friends I've ever recommended it to have been willing to read it

Their purpose is to serve as a visible (but not too visible) threat to force people to sell their lives in exchange for the money needed to avoid that fate.

Sad thing is that a lot of these sovcit type people are actually willing to stand up against crazy odds, be put in jail, and all sorts of things to stand up for what they see as right.

If only they were standing up for something real, they would be valued and brave members of the cause. It's just a shame they shackled themselves to this insanity.

Wish is a 9th level spell. Archwizards with 10th and 11th level spells (we'll leave out the one overachiever who cast a 12th level spell) find it quaint.

Lorewise, wish is only more powerful than meteor swarm, or Mordenkainen's disjunction, or prismatic sphere, or other 9th level spells because it has a high cost - if we go back before 3rd edition, that cost was aging 5 years. In 3rd and 3.5 it was experience points. In 5th, it's a smattering of minor problems and a 33% chance of losing the ability to cast the spell again. But essentially the concept is always that it takes something of your life or soul or physical fortutide to allow the spell to exceed ordinary 9th level spells.

This means it is ultimately a powerful but limited spell, both in the rules and in lore.

It's not really anything other than someone's death. It's more 'these wishes are safe and will work out how you want'. Anything beyond those, the DM is encouraged to respond appropriately. In 5th edition, there is actually very little that is listed as safe to wish for. In 3.5 the list was short but highly useful. In 2nd though, there were NO explicitly safe wishes. Anything could backfire.

If you wish for a reasonable outcome that's not on the safe list, you should get it without too much trouble, but if you wish something that's grossly unfair, then you get what's coming to you when it backfires.