Hermes Conrad. He’s got a level head and knows his way around a bureaucracy.

I made that exact mistake a couple weeks ago, and it was just like you say. Biggs doesn’t have nearly as many of those bitter ones, either.

No. It’s another form of government that has its own issues, but not all authoritarian regimes are fascist.

On the other hand, neo-feudalists are reactionaries because they want to return society to a mythical past where a heirarchy of elites rules over their subjects. Fascism, neo-feudalism, and conservatism are all subsets of reactionary ideology, but they are not the same thing.

They updated it in September:

Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members’ libraries, even if they are online playing another game. If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time. For a more detailed look at how Family Sharing works, see the FAQ below.

So… Bring my HEV suit and crowbar?

I feel like I could get flintknapping down pretty well.

This exactly.

They don’t see imposing a state of fundamentalist Christian supremacy as tyranny, because their ideology is one of Christian Nationalism (which in the US is inherently white nationalism).

They see the erosion of their relevance as the tyranny they’re supposed to stand up to despite it mostly being driven by cultural changes instead of government mandates. This means that the militias are meant to commit violence against civilians; they know the cops will side with them in a scrum. They’re more afraid of a lesbian with blue hair than a rogue sherrif depriving them of rights.

Not a big surprise that Peter Boghossian turned out to be a huge piece of shit.

Mercutio from Romeo & Juliet is an all-timer. Just a clown who nobody takes seriously, but is liked by everyone. Then while he’s being stupid playing with swords (but trying to patch up a blood feud at the same time) he gets killed, triggering a revenge murder that spirals into the deaths of the teens. Sorry for spoilers.

There has been a concerted push by reactionary media to demonize it.

The same thing happened with issues like the estate tax, lawsuits against corporations, police reform, etc.

What kind of music are you into and what do you play?

IMSLP has a ton of stuff.

Same, honestly. I’d kill for a remaster or a proper sequel.

Loved Freelancer! Did you try the Everspace games? They’re the closest to a spiritual successor that I’ve played.

What is your budget?

On The Art of Dice by the Roman emperor Claudius would be both trivial and fascinating, I’m sure.

The Steam controller is amazing for Elden Ring and similar games. It makes the camera so much easier to deal with.

Oh yeah, Amarillo is a big city for the NI-coC. Abilene, too.

The us-or-them situation is exactly what they’re aiming for: isolated people are easier to control. But yeah, I’m not sure if it’s an intentional strategy or just what happened to work out for their purposes.

Well, I grew up in what is known as the non-institutional church of Christ. There are different branches of the coC, ranging from the relatively liberal to the downright draconian.

What made this particular branch of the coC “non-institutional” is that they are independent of each other congregation, so the leadership of each group is separate from every other.

The way it actually shakes out is that every congregation gets super deep into the weeds about arcane interpretations of an ancient text about which they are unqualified to explain while making overconfident proclamations of certainty. Other congregations disagree with a fairly minor point in this reading, and they will become effectively dead to each other. Ultimately, the different churches (they would hate me calling them that) would form a loose confederation across the region with various groups they could live in uneasy peace with.

Within the congregation itself was a religion that taught that the world is a wicked place from which we should set ourselves apart. Evolution was a lie spread by the devil to make us doubt God’s power. Women were not allowed to speak or wear pants during the church service. We did not use instruments to make music during the service, as that was not mentioned in the Bible. Any disagreement with doctrine could get one removed from good standing, and we left two churches (forced out, really) based on the Elders’ strict views on baptism and musical instruments: my father would not agree that immersion was strictly necessary to save one’s soul, or that it was sinful to exceed the Bible’s authority and use instruments.

It is a bit of a weird duck as a cult, but they’re extremely controlling, patriarchal, and reactionary. They’re in most towns, but people usually think they’re an offshoot of the Baptists (of which certain types also dip into cult status in my opinion). I’d place them between the Baptists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses on a fundamentalist belief scale. I think the BITE model is a useful one (but not perfect) for defining cults:

• Behavioral control
• Information control
• Thought control
• Emotional control

The coC did all of these things: they wanted members to live apart from society where only those in the church were acceptable social peers, to limit exposure with “subversive” ideas and science, to make people so afraid of going to hell that you’ll blindly accept the teachings. You were expected to attend every service: Sunday morning & night and Wednesday night.

In short, they wanted to control people’s lives by love-bombing newcomers and then suffocating them until they fit into their assigned tiny little box.

And yes, we were in the end times. Even though nobody knows when Jesus will return. Wink.

I feel equal parts pity and exasperation that they’re ignoring critical crises like global climate change to focus on superstitious nonsense.

I grew up in a cult, so my whole life.