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I hate writing blog posts
Monday October 14, 2024they have a habit of making me cringe after a while
kind of like leaving cheese on the counter
after a year or so you regret all the decisions that led up to it
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Computer Science
,Philosophy
Democracy and Data
Tuesday October 8, 2024Over time I’ve heard a lot of pushback to the idea that you need to protect your personal information and privacy, “I don’t mind personalised ads”, “so what if they have it, they’re not going to do anything with it”, etc. To those people (and for my own entertainment and enjoyment) I present this (admittedly probably not unique) argument.
Imagine the government had access to everything about you. What you wrote, what you watched, what you said, what you questioned, what you believed, what you thought you understood, and more. Now, assuming you live in a half decent democracy, you probably have some control over what happens to this information, government can’t share it, can’t do much with it, can’t leak it, so on. Most people would say this isn’t great. They would call it authoritarian, totalitarian, distopian and other buzzwords for bad governments. Now imagine this scenario, but this information is held by a random person, all you know about them is their name, they have all the same information, but you have no control over them, they are not beholden to you through any means, they can do what they wish with the data. All that’s limiting them is a slap on the wrist from someone you picked out, whenever they do something wrong.
This is basically what is happening, right now.
While some would argue that this is a strawmaned version of the system in place, I maintain that you can still clearly see the inherent problem, authoritarian organisations having near complete control over the entire populations personal information. This is why people say don’t tell corporations your real birth date, don’t tell them your name, and why we get so worried when Facebook starts forcing people to put in their real name.
You wouldn’t get into a white van, don’t sign up for Facebook.
Thanks for reading.
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GeopoliticsHistory
,Philosophy
Why do US elections drag on for so long?
Sunday September 8, 2024Been thinking about the discrepancy between the United States campaign season vs most other western democracy’s. The us campaigns last for months and months, candidates spending literally billions on pushing themselves forward. This is in contrast to most of the rest of the world where “election season” really only lasts a few weeks. You going about your life and then it’s like “oh ok I guess there is an election in a few weeks”. The only indicator are maybe some signs around that advertise a candidate.
One potential reason for this could be the age of US elections. Over time they may have simply gotten longer because people realised that if you campaign for longer you’re more likely to get more votes. This makes sense because US democracy is arguably one of not the oldest surviving democracy in the world. On the other hand though, if that were the case then burgeoning democracy’s should have really short campaign times compared to established ones. But this doesn’t hold up either, with places like Spain and Latin American nations current democratic systems being younger than say, France or the UK and yet still having similar campaign lengths. No. I think the problem, if we call it that, is more subtle.
Part of the reason I believe that us election cycles last so much longer than others, is because of the timing of an election. The US is very unique in that presidential elections are held at predictable, consistent times, every 4 years, in November. This means that candidates can time everything out years in advance, planning to the minute when and where parts of the campaign will occur. In contrast, Australia for example, does have a maximum term length, but the prime minister can just call an election whenever they want, leading to unpredictability in the election timing. This means campaigns will hold out until they know when it will occur to begin, which usually only leaves them a few weeks. The reason they wait is because they don’t want to start to early or to late, to late and they give their opponents a leg up, and they don’t want to start early because of the other half of this coin.
In most major democracy’s across the globe, campaign spending is heavily regulated, every cent, dollar, pound or euro that is spent is recorded and monitored, candidates are required to stay within a certain limit, in order to prevent, well, a situation like what is the case in the US. Yet again, America is unique in that there are basically no limits on the amount of money candidates can spend, sure the people who run the election need to know what campaigns are spending their money on, but they don’t limit it. This is the reason I believe US elections are so bloated, drawn out and just take forever. Candidates can spend as much money as they want meaning they don’t have to conserve resources the way other candidates in other democracy’s do, they just gogogo from the moment they can with nothing to stop them.
US elections aren’t longer because the US candidates are smarter than the rest of the world, they are longer, because they can be.
tried something a bit different here, in my head it sorta plays out like a mystery crime thing, not sure it comes across as that tho, anyway I hope you found this interesting and/or laughed because I got something wrong, either way. Bye
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Sunday July 21, 2024
I made a video! If you could go watch it that would be amazing, I’m really proud :) youtu.be/zOq2DtjB9…
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GeopoliticsHistory
,Games
Hearts Of Iron 4
Thursday July 18, 2024So my latest hobby for the past week or so has been a grand strategy world war 2 game, hearts of iron 4 (or hoi4 if you don’t have much time). I actually bought the game ages ago cause a friend of mine had it and it looked interesting, but because it’s such a complicated mess of systems and I was overwhelmed I really only sat down and learnt how to play recently. And boy howdy have I learnt how to play (pretty poorly but we will get to that).
(For a bit of background in the game you pick a country and you start playing as that country, waging wars, building industry, changing the government and so on. It starts you off in 1939, and because I generally have the ‘historical focuses’ option ticked, other countries will follow what they did in real life at that time) The tutorial for the game is what I started off with. It makes you pick Italy because they start off at war with Ethiopia so it gives you a chance to learn the ropes and such. Long story short, it took me 3 restarts and many desperate last stands before I finally got a hang of the combat and managed to defeat and conquer of all Abyssinia. Wasn’t a great start but I had a good grasp of the game by that point. Anyway, in my infinite wisdom (and presumably the high that came from actually winning a war) my next goal was war with Germany. This ended as you might have expected, I was overrun in a matter of months and a civil war started.
After that stunning performance I decided to take it a bit more slowly and tried focusing a bit more on the conquering land through the games focus trees, diplomacy and decisions mechanics. This led to me to guaranteeing Austrias independence (I think I was a bit salty about the last run) to try and contain German expansion, this once again, went basically the way you would expect, Germany tried to take over, I tried to stop them, I failed. But by this point I had actually learnt a bit about combat and was doing reasonably well in defending my territory (the Germans were still advancing mind you, just slower than they otherwise would have). It probably also helped that I had managed to secure the annexation of Albania and was puppeting Yugoslavia. Either way, that run ended the same way as the last, civil war, giving up, starting over.
After my failed attempts at running Italy I decided to try my hand at the night USSR! With a stunning industrial base and a virtually unlimited supply of troops the soviets are apparently a really good beginner country to play. In my run I tried to follow the advice of people online, I built up my factories and developed my industry ahead of the upcoming conflicts. My mistake was trying to do to many things at once, I was trying to conquer the Baltic countries, go to war with Finland, and preemptively invade Germany, all at the same time. In the end, I got bogged down in Finland for longer than I needed to, foolishly denying a peace offer, thinking I could afford to take the rest of the country, and then when Germany invaded, I had no real plan as to how to counter it and eventually just gave up. Either way, not an amazing run but I learnt never to say no to a peace offer.
Now we get to my current run, Australia! Immediately after starting I realised that Australia didn’t have much in the way of infrastructure and factories, meaning it would be harder for me to wage war and such. I am doing my best to rectify this by just building as much as I can, developing until I can create a decent base to work on. In the meantime I started steering towards communism! Joining the Comintern and turning New Zealand into my puppet. This eventually led to a civil war, which, because of how large and empty the place is, is a real peace of cake, just kinda walk in and claim back the land. The problem arose when New Zealand joined the opposit side, dragging out the war. I ended up attempting an invasion of the southern island but I haven’t done naval invasions in the game before and ended up losing all my divisions lol.
And that’s pretty much where I’m at rn, I’m having a blast learning how to play and all I can hope is that it doesn’t fill my mind with alternate history that I will mix up with the real stuff :p
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GeopoliticsHistory
First US presidential debate
Saturday June 29, 2024US presidential debate just happened… and uhhhh, apparently Biden has a cold, no one can understand what he is saying, and the felon is winning…
all I can say is that the Democrats must be freaking the fuck out.
I didn’t manage to catch the actual debate but from a cursory reading of some news articles (most very sympathetic to the democrats, just trying to be transparent about my own biases lol) it didn’t go well for Biden, kept mumbling, staring off into the distance, rasping and letting the felon walk all over him. Not exactly an ideal combination.
if you wonder why me, an Australian, am commenting on US polotics, I will direct you to the map below:
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Tuesday June 18, 2024
most relegions really are just super successful marketing campaigns
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GeopoliticsHistory
Are we seeing the start of a new Cold War?
Friday June 14, 2024Been thinking about the Cold War recently and how we are seeing the same things that occurred between the us and the ussr happen between the us and china nowadays. I was on the fence about weather to classify the geopolitics of the us and china as a ‘Cold War’ because of the lack of apparent proxy conflicts, something that characterised the original Cold War greatly. Then I realised, Russia-Ukraine is partly a proxy conflict. The us obviously supports Ukraine and, and this was the part I forgot, china is basically Russia’s economic lifeline atm and I wouldn’t be surprised if Chinese weapons were being used by Russia right now. In this sense the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a proxy conflict (not necessarily characterised by military aid, but economic aid to continue fighting as well) between the United States and China. Another characteristic of the Cold War was economic completion, which is very much starting to crop up (us bans on certain exports to China) and technological competition, for example a nuclear buildup in the 20th century, and a military base buildup in the 21st. In many ways, current events and actions by both China and the United States point towards a new Cold War, and I would argue that it is very much underway.
P.S: sorry if this is paced kinda weirdly, im tired and cant be bothered to edit this so here is your raw geopolitical commentary
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GeopoliticsHistory
,Philosophy
The horseshoe political spectrum.
Wednesday May 8, 2024Something interesting I’ve been mulling over recently is the idea that instead of a linear left-right political spectrum, its more like a horsesoe. As you get closer to one end you actually get closer to the other and at the very end there is almost nothing differentiating you from the other side other than that small gap. You can see where this line of thinking makes sense when you look at extreme right wing facist governments (eg. Hitler, Mussolini) compared to extreme communist governments (Stalin, North Korea). Despite them being on complete opposite sides of the traditional spectrum, they more or less look the same to an outsider, authoritarian dictator, impoverished citizens, state propaganda and war-mongering. But put onto the horseshoe diogram it makes a whole lot more sense, the horseshoe model accounts for the extreme left/right much more neatly than the common one does.
The idea is by no means perfect but its a good way of highlighting problems with the binary left/right thinking that so much of our media abides by.
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Wednesday May 8, 2024
its a system designed to make you think that it cannot be changed
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Games
,Computer Science
,Today I learned
Flappy Bird and learning something new
Thursday April 18, 2024So a few days ago in class we have finally started learning some basic python, nothing much, just variable types and functions. Anyway I’m talking about this because in that class I began goofing off and started to tinker with making a simple game in pygame while everyone else was making a calculator. I eventually ended on flappy bird because it fit well into the skills that I had with pygame at that point. Didn’t get far in that short class but after school I came back and actually kept working on it because it was a lot of fun.
I found it fun to work on something outside a traditional game engine. I’ve tried before but never really got far but idk, it was different this time. I ended up enjoying working on it so much that I kept working on it, polishing and making interesting things like looping backgrounds, showing text, messing with sprites and collisions.
All of this to say that working outside a game engine and learning something new was really refreshing (who knew…) and I hope I can do more of this kinda thing from now on, just doing something different and fun.
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Wednesday April 17, 2024
isreal bash iran. iran bash isreal. isreal: :0
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Saturday March 30, 2024
texas has a costline… idk thats just something ive never really though about before
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Today I learned
The Coriolis Effect
Tuesday March 26, 2024Was absent mindedly staring at a globe of mine and I randomly started thinking about the earths spin. From the perspective of the northern hemisphere, the earth spins counterclockwise, but from the perspective of the southern hemisphere, the earth spins clockwise. It got me thinking about tornados and cyclones so I did some digging and found out about the Coriolis Effect (which I had heard of before but never knew what it did). The Coriolis Effect basically describes how moving objects not attatched to the earths surface curve over large distances (amazing article about it on national geographic). Anyway this means that the air traveling from the high pressure areas of a cyclone (outskirts) to the low pressure area (the eye) curves due to the Coriolis Effect! This is why tornados and cyclones spin!
Anyway I just got caught up in a small rabbit hole and thought I’d share it 👍🏼
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GeopoliticsHistory
,Today I learned
idfk nobel prize money stuff
Tuesday March 12, 2024okokokok. so. nobel prizes. alfred nobel (dude who left his fortune to start the prize stuff) left them roughly 31 million SEK (c. US$186 million, €150 million in 2008) and because the organization responsible for managing the money of the nobel prizes is basically an investment firm they have grown that ~US$186 million… INTO $560 MILLION THEY’VE MADE MONEY
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NEVER WRITE ON AN IPAD.txt
Saturday February 17, 2024I WRITE A REALLY FUCKING LONG BLOG POST THAT TAKES ME AGES TO EDIT AND JUST AS IM ABOUT TO PUT THE LINK TO THE VIDEO IM TALKING ABOUT THE FUCKING PAGE RELOADA AND BECAUSE MICRO.BLOG DOESENT SAVE DRAFTS IT ALL GETS LOST FOR FUCKS SAKE I WAS REALLY PROUD OF THAT.
I WAS GONNA TALK ABOUT THIS VIDEO BUT FUCKING FINE I WONT: youtu.be/iDTOD94YR…
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Friday February 16, 2024
i hate reading my own writing how do i delete old blog posts forever aaaauuuuuggggghhhhhhhhhhhtthuehnshunwuunrhniwkismimd
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Climate Change
,Movies
,Today I learned
The Lorax and Plausible Deniability
Friday February 16, 2024(Most of the analysis from this post comes from this amazing video here: Link I’m not trying to claim that I made all of these connections I merly thought they were interesting and worth writing about to improve by writing skills)
Something interesting I’ve been learning about lately is a scrapped/initial song for the lorax called ‘biggering’. First of all its an amazing song that doesent get the credit it deserves but second, it being a pre-cursor to the phenomenon of a song ‘how bad can I be’ means a lot more than meets the eye. Something that me (and the YouTuber I saw talking about this) have always wondered about is how movies like the lorax, apparently so pro environment and anti capitalism/corpratism, ever get produced by massive corporations that profit off of these things. The answer is actually pretty straight forward and is corporations oldest trick in the book, plausible deniability. They didn’t know that their safety systems were terrible, they feel awful for the people that died and promise it will never happen again but it wasent their fault. Sound familiar? This is the tried and true method for big companies that profit off of ecological damage, human suffering and the general destruction of everything that apposes them.
The song ‘how bad can I be’ is the embodiment of this idea, the once-ler did’nt mean to cut down all the trees, it was a one time thing, he came from nothing and only because of the pressure of his family was he forced to destroy the planet. Not once does the once-ler look at the destruction he can caused, as it is happening. Sure he looks at it afterwards with a devistated and grief stricken face to show how sorry he is, but not once does the movie give the once-ler agency. Not once is the once-ler responsible or aware of the damge he is causing. This is in stark contrast to say, the antagonist of the movie, the overly comical, red herring of a villan, O’Hare. This guy is so over the top its hillarious. And thats by design, O’Hare is what the movie “tries to warn you about” he’s the guy to look out for! But you will never find a person so obviously devilish and geedy as O’Hare. This movie tried to teach children that people like O’Hare are ones to look out for, knowing full well that they will never find that person, whilst portraying big CEO’s like the once-ler as chill goofy guys who didn’t mean to fuck up the earth, they have PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. This is how movies like the lorax get green-lit, as much as they spout anti-corporation talk, they portray companies in such a way to give them the goofy everyman role, the one to NOT watch out for. And this is why, ultimatly, ‘Biggering’ was cut. If you listen to it after reading this (or watching the video, it does a much better job at explaining this) you will immediately undersrand why big executives would want this song cut, ASAP. (second to being a banger) It actually gives the once-ler agency for his actions, he explicitly knows what he is doing and wants more. It goes into detail about his desire for growth, talking about his greed and pride, how ‘biggering, keeps triggering, more biggering’ It is also obviously where most of ‘how bad can I be’ gets its lyrics.
Either way the song also portrays the once-ler in a very different and darker tone than most of the rest of the movie (even when he is in dark environments he still has a funny voice to undercut the darker setting). Its an amazing rock/metal song (give me a break I know jack shit about music genres, it feels like those ones alright) and thats probably one of the reasons it was cut, they didn’t want to portray the once-ler as anything other than a goofy, happy, loveable guy who made some mistakes, or in other words having, say it with me, PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY. The movie tries so hard to keep up this image that some amazing songs that both sound good and would have enhanced the overall plot of the movie, were probably cut because they portrayed the once-ler in a slightly negative tone. What ‘biggering’ eventually morphed into (how bad can I be) spits further in the face of any anti-corprate messages by being SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO BE CATCHY. I bet there are so many people out there that nad never watched the lorax, heard how bad can I be, and then watched the lorax because of it. They took what could have been the strongest element of the movie and mangled into a corporate product, a cruel twist of fate (wow that sounds cliche but you get my point)
I haven’t read the book but I would bet that the original does a better job of representing and warning against corporations greed than this movie ever could.
All this is to say that despite the editorial decisions that seem to portray the once-ler in a very specific and suspicious light, the lorax on the whole suffers as both a movie and as a genuine, anti-corporate film.
The lorax is still a pretty good movie don’t get me wrong and no one should ever feel bad for enjoying it. I just think It’s important that people know through what lense the thing they are watching is being presented to them.
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GeopoliticsHistory
,Today I learned
Australian vs U.S gun laws
Thursday February 15, 2024Something interesting I learnt today: A major difference between gun regulation in Australia compared to the U.S is that in Australia it is stated in law and in the U.S it is written into the constitution. Australia’s gun laws (as they are today) originated from the National Firearms Agreement (1996), after the Port Arthur Massacre.
This means that in Australia gun regulations are much easier to change and tweak over time as all it requires is a law to pass rather than an amendment to our constitution. This however IS the case in the U.S, where the constitution explicitly states that all Americans have a ‘Right to bear arms’. Since a full amendment is a much bigger deal politically than a simple change to a law (which happens all the time) it is a lot harder for the U.S to change its gun laws than it is for Australia.
This is one of the reasons the U.S, to this day, still has ridiculously loose laws around guns and firearms. It would be a massive deal for them to change this, much more than it should be.
I am actively researching WHY it is a bigger deal which leads me to actually try to figure out how Australia’s and the U.S government actually damn works but I’m going to save that for another post, probably later this week.
Anyway bye.
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Games
,Computer Science
,Today I learned
Hole in one… Year!
Monday February 5, 2024Today I continued my now habbit of switching projects daily by finishing what I wanted to do with the mining game (infinite world and saving/loading) before I was reminded of a game me and a friend made a while ago for a game jam that we wanted to keep working on. Long story short today I added multiplayer to this: Hole in one… Year!.
We are also working on adding cosmetics that show up both in single and multiplayer (Bread, the friend I’m working with has made some amazing cosmetic items that I can’t wait to implement into the game). Because of our plans for the game we havent yet released the multiplayer (and all the other tweaks we have made since the game jam) onto itch. We are waiting to finish cosmetics + some other things before we do that. We havent even let most of our other friends know we are working on it again (shows them for not reading my blog).
Anyway I’m actually really proud of myself for finishing an update like this in a single day to such a high standard and I can’t wait to impress the 1 person (my Dad) that reads my blog when it releases.
Or I loose interest in the project again and it never ends up seeing the light of day but on this side of the internet we try to stay positive so lets hope that never happens 👍
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Games
,Computer Science
,Today I learned
Procedural Generation Mayhem
Sunday February 4, 2024So ages and ages ago I had a really early build of a kind of terraria/minecraft inspired 2d side scrolling procedural generation simulator. It was mostly built of of copied code and I had no idea how the procedural generation part of it worked but I was really proud of it and even managed to get a working chunk streaming and save and load system. So today I thought I would open it and just fuck around adding stuff that I felt like, but on opening it, it was so unstable that it wouldn’t actually run for me so I ended up saying ‘fuck it’ and making a new branch of the repo to re-write it and hopefully get some experience making an actual procedural game myself.
I knew the basics of Perlin noise and heighmaps and all that jazz but I decided now was to time to see if I had what it takes to make it myself from scratch and so far I think I’ve done pretty well.
I kept a bunch of the player code (no reason re-making that when I already have a perfectly fine bean running around) and sprites but all of the terrain, chunking, and block systems are now gone. As of writing I have gotten a basic setup for chunks (so in future I can work on infinite terrain) and some VERY basic Perlin noise based procedural generation. I’ve got a lot of numbers I can fuck around with and I’ve made something that looks promising (See image below).
If you are interested in the code I’ve gotten so far its on the GitHub Repository here: Mining Game Re-Write
The values I am using for the generation can also be seen in the attached images
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Mid to late 19th century
Friday January 26, 2024Been really interested in German unification and mid to late 19th century politics in general. It’s really cool seeing how diplomatic geniuses like Otto Von Bismark navigated diplomacy and politics to get what they wanted. German unification is basically the story of clever Prussian leadership provoking European powers into attacking and then, when they win a crushing victory, using that momentum to get more states to join them. It’s amazing in a way, how it all fits together. It’s also interesting how events up until then evolved. For instance the Crimean war ended with Russia, furious at Austria, breaking ties with them. This meant that when Austria went to war with Prussia, Austria didn’t have Russian support, which probably contributed to their failures and eventual defeat.
Anyway I just find the WW1 buildup is so intricate and interesting I could spend hours learning about it (and I do)
Thanks for reading
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Wednesday January 24, 2024
Oh and because I didn’t talk about it before I also made another thing in minecraft…, Battleship!
You can watch my short showcase here: Battleship With Only Command Blocks - SHOWCASE
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Among us in Minecraft
Wednesday January 24, 2024Just finished/am at the point where’re im taking a break from a project. I have been making among us in minecraft for the past few weeks. It’s a full recreation of ‘the skeld’ and I’m really proud of it. Once I can be sure there are no major gameplay breaking bugs I’ll release it to the public. I know no-one will really hear about it but I will still always be proud of it.
A problem I’m having at the moment is that I can only really playtest with my friends and they obviously don’t want to do that for too long to often so I’m having trouble replicating any issues we find in the one or two play sessions we have had. I think the only way to fix that would be for (if I can get them to do another session) me to run replay mod and get them to write a bit of a bug report, or even if they record while playing. Anything that could help me recreate it.
It also been hard because even if I had multiple minecraft accounts to test with (I don’t) it’s always better to test with real people. Just because real people actually do things that you wouldn’t have thought of.
Anyway this is just me talking about software development lol. If you’re interested I’m going to make both the world and the server setup available on GitHub. I’ll also get a version out that doesn’t require any mods (the current one uses a single mod for changing players skins in the game) so that will be cool.
Anyway, thanks for reading
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Wednesday January 24, 2024
oversimplified uploaded lets goooo