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an Amis chant ("Weeding and Paddyfield Song No. 1") sung by folk music duo Difang and Igay Duana opens the song and is repeated throughout. Hailing from Taiwan, these Amis musicians were in a cultural exchange program in Paris in 1988 when their performance of the song was recorded by the Maison des Cultures du Monde and later distributed on CD.

This song popped into my head earlier and took me a while to look up. Throwback song for many of us Millennials.

Israel’s parliament on Monday passed a law approving the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis, a measure that has been harshly condemned by the international community and rights groups as discriminatory and inhumane.

The passage of the bill marked the culmination of a yearslong drive by the far-right to escalate punishment for Palestinians convicted of nationalistic offenses against Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to the Knesset to vote for the bill in person.

The law makes the death penalty — by hanging — the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings.

...

Experts say the legislation has two key elements that will effectively limit the death penalty to Palestinians.

First, the bill makes the death penalty a default punishment for nationalistic killings in military courts, which try only West Bank Palestinians and not Israeli citizens. It says that only in special circumstances can military judges change the sentence to life imprisonment.

It gives Israeli civilian courts a greater degree of leniency in sentencing, with judges having the option to choose between the death penalty and life imprisonment.

The second element is how the bill defines the offense punishable by death: killing that rejects the existence of the state of Israel.

“It will apply in Israeli courts, but only to terrorist activities that are motivated by the wish to undermine the existence of Israel. That means Jews will not be indicted under this law,” Cohen said.

In case it is not clear, Nationalistic killing of Palestinians is not covered by this law at all, only Nationalistic killing of Israelis.

Literally creating a legal rule in which murdering an Israeli is worse, even if done with the same exact motivation, than murdering a Palestinian.

Parents who owe a significant amount of child support soon could lose their ability to travel internationally as the Trump administration expands and steps up enforcement of a 30-year-old law that allows the federal government to revoke American passports until payments are made, three U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

Horses, a first-person narrative horror game, was banned from the Epic Games Store just hours before it was set to launch on December 2nd. Then, a day after launch, the Humble store (temporarily) banned it as well. The decision shocked the developers at Santa Ragione, makers of the critically respected Saturnalia, as these storefronts were the homes they’d found for their game two years before it was preemptively banned from Steam.

Valve and Epic say Horses violates their sexual content policies. Humble hasn’t yet said why it banned the game.

The campaign against ‘woke’ is no ordinary culture war skirmish – it is a project to restore the violence of slavery and white rule.

This is what the anti-woke state is — the plantation: white supremacist America under the occupation of more open white supremacists. There is no daylight between the campaign to end wokeness and the desire to see Black populations suffer, however much anti-wokeness is presented as the reasonable middle ground between the extremism of both sides — the Ku Klux Klan on one side and the bodies they hung from trees on the other.

The anti-woke in power immediately set about resurrecting their shrines to the sex traffickers of Black children and merchants of Black flesh. They immediately set out to curtail Black liberties and reverse performative efforts to reduce police shootings — however insincere. Being woke has always meant being attuned to anti-Blackness and resisting the society of white rule — which is why it is hated the world over. The colonist leaders who have shaken hands in agreement that anti-wokeness is the new paradigm, from the conservative former grand wizard to the progressive governor, have all meant the same thing: to see resistance ridiculed and dismantled.

The people who decry wokeness are no different from the people who decried Emancipation. What, indeed, was the abolition of slavery to a Confederate, other than woke government overreach? What was the integration of restaurants and schools to the segregationist other than woke corporations and DEI gone mad? What the 19th-century Redeemers sought, what the millions-strong 20th-century Ku Klux Klan sought, and what the 21st-century MAGA movement seeks is the restoration of the whipping post.

Really moving piece on the road that MAGA is leading us down.

Saw this posted over on HackerNews, and loved it. I'm big on self-hosting, and this is an incredibly exciting idea to me.

The Promised LAN is a closed, membership only network of friends that operate a 24/7 always-on LAN party, running since 2021. The vast majority of documentation is maintained on the LAN, but this website serves to give interested folks, prospective members or friends an idea of what the Promised LAN is, and how it works.

Their manifesto is also worth reading. My personal favorite part:

We do not wish to, nor will we, rebuild the internet. We do not wish to, nor will we, scale this. We will never be friends with enough people, as hard as we may try. Participation hinges on us all having fun. As a result, membership will never be open, and we will never have enough connected LANs to deal with the technical and social problems that start to happen with scale. This is a feature, not a bug.

This is a call for you to do the same. Build your own LAN. Connect it with friends’ homes. Remember what is missing from your life, and fill it in. Use software you know how to operate and get it running. Build slowly. Build your community. Do it with joy. Remember how we got here. Rebuild a community space that doesn’t need to be mediated by faceless corporations and ad revenue. Build something sustainable that brings you joy. Rebuild something you use daily.

Bring back what we’re missing.

Israel launched a major attack on Iran, drawing their long-running shadow war into the open conflict in a way that could spiral into a wider, more dangerous regional war.

The strikes early Friday set off explosions in the capital of Tehran as Israel said it was targeting Iranian nuclear and military facilities. Iranian state media reported that the leader of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and two top nuclear scientists had been killed.

Older article (2012), but still very relevant and valid.

In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety disorder and other psychiatric illnesses, and I am struck by (1) how many of those diagnosed are essentially anti-authoritarians, and (2) how those professionals who have diagnosed them are not.

Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians.

Psychologist Russell Barkley, one of mainstream mental health’s leading authorities on ADHD, says that those afflicted with ADHD have deficits in what he calls “rule-governed behavior,” as they are less responsive to rules of established authorities and less sensitive to positive or negative consequences. ODD young people, according to mainstream mental health authorities, also have these so-called deficits in rule-governed behavior, and so it is extremely common for young people to have a “dual diagnosis” of AHDH and ODD.

Do we really want to diagnose and medicate everyone with “deficits in rule-governed behavior”?

Hi everyone, here's my list of Medium-sized, "Rise of the RTS" list:

• Top-5 Space Games
• Honorable Mentions
• Space-adjacent Games

I've added the last category because there are a lot of games that are in space-centric settings, but which do not directly deal with outer space itself (i.e. games on alien planets, in which the 'alien' part is very important, but you never really deal with space itself as part of the game). I won't give detailed descriptions, but I will put links to them all.

Top-5 Medium-Sized Space Games

5. Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion (SoaSE 2 is coming soon!)

A space RTS, where you command fleets of ships against rival... *ahem* Empires. If you like RTSes, but in a shorter, simpler, faster format, Sins is a great series to consider, especially since the sub-genre of Space RTSes has been pretty dead for a long while in mainstream, AAA games. Rebellion was a standalone 'expansion' to SoaSE, which from what I gather most people just now recommend to get in lieu of getting the original + expansions.

I would probably swap this out with Imperium Galactica 2 (see below), but I think it's age may make it too inaccessible for many players.

4. Space Engineers

On the dead-opposite end from an RTS, comes a first-person, multiplayer game about being the people who actually build all those ships you're commanding in other games. Space Engineers is really unique in that you are basically playing Minecraft, but building spaceships. You can start on a planet, find a frozen lake, start mining and refining nearby iron, nickel, etc, and before (too) long launch your first horribly ugly spaceship, maybe even into space!

There are tons and tons of mods, including mods that add NPC factions and new weapon and block types, and lots of very engineering-focused content to let you do complex pseudo-automations. If you're like me, you'll always play on the sandbox solar system start, manage to get off the Earthlike planet, make a base on one of the asteroids nearby, and promptly die to NPC pirates. But it's fun!

3. Homeworld (1999)

The One and Only Homeworld, one of the most famous space games of all time. This was the pinnacle of mission-based RTS in 1999, and still holds up well today (at least in the space genre). Amazingly, a year later we also got Ground Control and Earth 2150, so truly the turn of the millennium was a special time for RTSes.

This is a game that really showed a love of the beauty and awe of space. Though it couldn't always convey it perfectly, it always tried. This is not a base-builder RTS (a la StarCraft, C&C, etc), which can turn a lot of people off, but if you really just love bite-sized, tactical, crunchy combat, with the added verticality of 3D space, Homeworld set the gold standard for years.

2. Kerbal Space Program

So much ink has been spilled about KSP, it's hard to know what to write that isn't common knowledge, but in case you've never heard of it or looked into it, Kerbal Space Program is a physics-based rocket-building and space exploration game, where you operate a space organization analogous to NASA, on the planet Kerbin. It has a plethora of systems to engage with, like conducting research and performing experiments under specific conditions to unlock new tech, doing contract missions for money, trying for difficult achievements, or even just trying to actually reach the distant and unusual planets and moons. You can literally play it for years and never successfully land a ship on many of the planets or moons, much less get home afterwards. It also has a sandbox mode if you're not interested in the money and tech management, and just want to build and test rockets.

It has mods out the wazoo, including many which help the less mathematically-inclined of us, such as MechJeb (basically a highly-configurable auto-pilot system). It won't save you from yourself, but it will often save you from the vagaries of the physics engine.

All fear the Kraken!

1. Distant Worlds: Universe

You may commence the head-scratching or the mouth-foaming!

Distant Worlds: Universe is a sandbox RTS / 4X game where you simply usher a space-faring civilization through whatever comes.

Where it stands apart, and what makes it completely different and unique from basically any other game I can think of, is that you can granularly elect for any parts of your empire's control to be automated.

You can literally have the game play itself, if you so desire.

Or you can just control the fleets. Or just the research. Or maybe you only choose the government policies, roleplaying congress, with no actual control over how those policies play out. Or maybe you just play it like a normal 4X RTS, but getting rid of the micromanagement of planets. Or maybe you have the AI ask you permission for certain choices, and treat it as basically a smart advisor.

It's a really special and unique game, and it also has so many mods and so much content that you can change it up, or do total conversions. Wanna just turn it into Star Wars, or Stargate, or Babylon5, or Warhammer 40k, or Eve Offline, or Battlestar Galactica, or Macross, or (obviously) Star Trek? You can!

Honorable Mentions

Galactic Civilizations 2,3,4

A long-running series from Stardock, a classic name in TBS (turn-based strategy) games. I personally love 2 and 3, but I have heard very positive things about 4 as well. It is more... cartoonish? and lighthearted than many other 4X games, but that doesn't mean they're less difficult; it's very tactical, and has a good blend of straight empire-control-jockeying and random events to spice things up. In many ways I'd call it a predecessor to Stellaris.

Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain

The oldest game that will appear on any of these lists, Pax Imperia is an RTS from 1997, that still holds up strong today. You can create a custom species to play as, or choose from some presets. You can customize ships extensively, and there is a massive research tree. The combat is engaging and tactical, and it really feels like FLEETS fighting, not just little individual ships all skirmishing in the same place. Plus, it has one of the COOLEST opening cinematics for a video game. THIS THING SLAPS.

Descent: Freespace

The classic Descent series from Volition (RIP) moved out of asteroids, and into space wars! This is a mission-based space combat game, in which you played as humans fighting against a new and deadly alien species invading both you and the other hostile alien species humans were already at war with (the Vasudans). It really does a great job of making you feel... helpless in space. You're not really some badass, you're a single pilot in a great big war, and you're struggling to hold on and pull through alive.

Also, has a really great cinematic intro.

Imperium Galactica 2: Alliances

This is probably the game I actually come back to the most on this list of Medium-sized games. It is a really great RTS / 4X, with 3 main factions with campaigns, and a bunch of minor factions you can play in skirmish scenarios with.

It's got everything:

• Ship customization
• Planet-side city planning (and invasions! You actually get to land tanks on enemy planets and assault their structures, and they your's).
• Spying, and counter-intelligence, and framing other empires, and stealing tech, and assassinating leaders, and hiring different species of aliens as spies to be more effective for certain missions, or against their own factions, or even forcing spies you capture to be double-agents! Holy hell!
• An alien race that (contrary to the literal name of the game) cannot conduct diplomacy at all, and just wants to murder everyone, and has superweapons!

Obligatory cool-but-short intro movie. "DIE! DIE! AHAHAHAHA!"

Take On Mars

As the final Honorable Mention, we have a complete swerve from the rest of the list. Take On Mars is a Mars exploration sim from Bohemia Interactive. Literally playing as essentially NASA, you build rovers, land them, and carry out science missions. Like, "land here, drive the rover to this rock formation, take sample, launch sample-return vehicle/ transmit spectrometer data", etc. I think it also has missions where you build a base for people, but I never bother with those. It's a true sim, so it's slow, and methodical, and you can drive a rover for 30 minutes only to get frustrated and drive too fast and hit a rock and fuck up your rover's wheels and have to start all over... though you get to keep your job, unlike IRL.

If you enjoy relaxing simulation games, this one is really nice.

Space-Adjacent Mentions, Medium-Sized:

• Dead Space (1 and 2)
• Spore
• Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries
• Red Faction: Guerrilla (avoid the "Re-Marstered" edition, from what I've heard)
• The Ascent (this game is so fucking cool!)
• Planetbase
• Surviving Mars