From the campaigns I’ve DMed, I’ve gone for a bit of an in-between. My primary focus is to have a fun, shared narrative. I’ll always let players do stupid things that get them into grave danger. But at most, I’ll usually only ever kill a few of the PCs.

If they act carefully, they can avoid getting into that situation all together. If they act stupid, they may have some deaths on their hands, but never a TPK. I don’t want that kind of narrative dead end.

The other thing, is that I will never put the players in such a situation in which there isn’t a way out of it. Usually this comes down to abusing the rule of cool a bit. Maybe they use a well aimed shatter to collapse a cave and separate themselves from their enemies. Maybe they jump down the cliff into the river below. Maybe the enemies have taken such a beating themselves that they find they aren’t willing to fight to the death.

The title of that video is wildly misleading click bait. We should just switch to approval voting and be done with it.

but rather “perfect representation in a democracy” is mathematically impossible (but can still be much much better than FPTP).

It’s not even that. The more accurate title would be “Ranked voting types cannot mathematically meet all of the requirements of democracy this one guy made”

The whole video I wanted to yell out “so switch to approval voting”.

You don’t seem to care about much of anything.

You don’t need to personally attack me.

If progressing and improving systems isn’t enough for you because it isn’t immediately paradise for everyone and Utopia for all

That wasn’t my point. The point is, you can’t point to the soviet gulags and say it wasn’t authoritarian, not without evidence.

Where are you getting the idea that large percentages of people were locked up without trial? Don’t you have to provide evidence for your claims as well?

You’ve made the implicit claim that those held in the gulags were held there with good, justified reasons. And then when you were asked to provide a source for it you gave me articles about the various places nazis went to after the war. Do you have evidence or not?

“Authoritarianism” as admitted by yourself is a buzzword descriptor for every state

No, it’s a scale. Most societies/countries are on it, but not all. Additionally, it is not an inherent part of a society/country. No part of that is vibes based. Subjective, partially, but that’s the nature of unquantifiable definitions whether you like it or not.

A state that controls people’s speech is more authoritarian than one that does not. A state that controls people’s movement is more authoritarian than one that does not. There are a million different ways that a state can be unquantifiably authoritarian, but it is still comparable, discussions on it can still be based on facts, and so on. No vibes are needed.

You don’t care how countries compare to their peers or their previous conditions

You can stop with the personal attacks.

What makes you think I don’t do that as well?

You seemed to have missed the "It’s probably a far better use of everybody’s time " part.

just that they were progressive compared to their peers,

But this is just a whataboutism. I don’t care how progressive they were. What matter is them being authoritarians.

Is Wikipedia too Communist of a source?

No, of course not. However I don’t see your white graph anywhere on that article.

Primary source of what, exactly?

The makeup of people held in the gulags. The reasons why they’re there, whether they had trials, whether they were de facto considered innocent/guilty, etc. While interesting, neither of the links you use explain it. How many of those ‘criminals’ where put there for something non-violent?

You said all countries are authoritarian, why stick specifically to being upset at the USSR if they were less authoritarian than their contemporaries?

Here’s the thing, even in comparison to it’s contemporaries I don’t think the USSR was less authoritarian. On the basis of prisoner populations, even the US as grossly authoritarian as it has been had a lower prison population (obviously only up until Regan).

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2016/12/29/bjs2016/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#/media/File:USSR_custodial_population_in_1934-53.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States#/media/File:US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg

Wouldn’t a reduction in authoritarianism be a good thing?

Authoritarianism is still authoritarianism. Here’s the thing, if you want to argue for socialism/communism, I’m all for it. But for the most part it is probably a terrible strategy to defend the USSR, and other countries that are portrayed as authoritarian dictatorships, because there is a great deal of truth to those portrayals from what it seems. You’re just gonna scare off anybody even slightly closed minded.

It’s probably a far better use of everybody’s time to show that capitalism is a failure, that it’s impossible to be paid the value you make under capitalism, that capitalism is just dictatorship in the workplace, etc. Those are the seeds you plant to get people to break out of their support for capitalism. Those are the ones that grow.

I was not giving the USSR a “free pass.” I was putting it into context. For its time, it was progressive.

Force labor is still forced labor even if it is better than what the past was.

It’s well known among Soviet Historians that famine occured during WWII and Prisoners were forced to take the brunt of the impact, rather than the average citizen or soldier.

The graph you have attached to this statement doesn’t have a source listed. And sorry, but I’m no historian, so I would like something better than “it is well known”.

There were numerous Nazi Collaborators, Tsarists, and Bourgeois elements that attempted to destabilize the State. What would satisfy you as evidence, just examples, or what?

Ideally a primary source would be preferred.

Then, genuine question, do you believe that making progressive, positive reductions in mortality rates is an authoritarian thing to do?

This question at it’s core is a whataboutism and therefore invalid. Being a progressive authoritarian still means you’re an authoritarian.

Referring to the part of the conversation about the cause of starvation in gulags being the result of the nazis invading Ukraine, your second graph definitely helps support it, with the caveat being correlation does not imply causation.

Prisons in the US are also often forced labor camps.

This is a whataboutism. The USSR doesn’t get a free pass just because the U.S. is shitty too.

The bulk of this comes from WWII, when the Nazis invaded Ukraine, the USSR’s breadbasket. Famine increased and prisoners were not prioritized, leading to many dying.

Do you have a source? And given that you say “the bulk” and not all, what accounts for the remainder?

Fascists and Capitalists were indeed also sent to prison, yes.

Again, do you have a source?

By your logic, every state that has ever existed is authoritarian.

To varying degrees, pretty much yes.

So are you saying it isn’t propaganda? Because the west depicts the gulags as forced labor camps, not just prisons. They are depicted as places where people starved to death through neglect, who were summarily executed upon failure to work, threatened with starvation. They are depicted as places where millions of people where held and died. They are also depicted as places where not just criminals were sent, but political prisoners as well.

I’m not saying the west has perfectly depicted it. The west is absolutely rife with propaganda. But there being even a kernel of truth to this is downright horrifying, and cause to call out the USSR as being authoritarian.

In what way were the gulags of the USSR propaganda?

If communism worked, there would nation using it.

There would also be married bachelors.

I especially love that it had to be split out to differentiate the latin american regime changes. They may as well just place a big H1 heading stating “THE U.S. IS EVIL”

Are you going somewhere with that? Or is this straight up a whataboutism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America

Yeah, the actual calculation still needs to be done right, but having it as an ‘automated’ process will help reduce this sort of bullshit:

Minimum wage should have been tied automatically to inflation rates. Even if it gets increased, 30 years from now we’ll be in the exact same boat.

Sure, it’s not perfect, but there is still probably use cases there. For me personally, I prefer using roll20 to store my character sheets for D&D, and my peace of shit 15 year old laptop just isn’t cutting it anymore. I don’t think this is a $150 use case, but if the price of this tablet were to come down I’d have second thoughts.

A nicer version of Steven King’s langoliers.

Seconded. Just give me sci-fi, that’s all I want.

Trump and his cultists are gearing up to call the upcoming election rigged, similar to how they called the previous election rigged.

Another option if you have a laptop and desktop is to test the waters slowly with the laptop, and keep your desktop as is. It’s what I did for a long while to get used to things on Linux.

If there is a critical problem with my Linux instalation on my laptop, it’s OK because all the real stuff I care about is still on the desktop. So I’m free to wipe the laptop at a moments notice. It’s the easiest way to learn in my experience.