Schattenmann
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Blog Comments posted by Schattenmann
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SOP before the no multi rule went into effect. Let's dance.
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It's a feedback loop.
Far too many AAs put their membership and gov on OWF radio silence then never came back. Then they complain that the OWF is an echo chamber. More people leave. Then they complain that the OWF is boring. More people leave, then they complain that the only people posting on the OWF are loudmouth idiots.
It's also timidity. It's also the ascerbic attitude toward new people. It's also secrecy.
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We need Sterling for president because vertical video.
This is what happens when Republicans have to catch the bus lol.Har har. This is what happens when Democrats choose where to live: http://www.wired.com/2013/08/how-segregated-is-your-city-this-eye-opening-map-shows-you
And this is what the Great Northern Father does when his brown neighbor tries to do something about it http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/12_chicago.html
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While we're being adventuresome, I would love the woosh noise back for CMs (especially during times of peak traffic
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I thought it was a run of the mill action movie, no better no worse. On par with Dark Knight, which was not particularly great anyway but whose biggest problem was the absolutely ridiculous British butler voice of Bane.
TWS had its own silly things, as movies must: the most advanced weapon system in the world needs to reach an altitude of 3000 feet before it can get a satellite signal? The ascent was supposed to build tension, but for me it was just 20 minutes of "oh really?" Good thing I don't need to get my car up to 3000' to get a GPS signal.
I was also frankly curious as to why they subtitled the film The Winter Soldier since, you know, Bucky is inconsequential to the plot; you could take him out of the movie and have the same movie. You could replace him with the French guy and have the same movie. More like Captain America: Andrew Pierce. But that's not catchy.
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You refer to a revolution multiple times but don't show one. Does the change "revolutionize" the way we control membership in an AA? Sure. Is it a capital-R Revolution? yawn.
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Eh, numbers have grown above 10,000 again; I think she has a good chance of lasting several more years.
Hm, what had we dropped to before rebounding?
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NPO gets thier wayKM: When developing Cyber Nations on a MMOG scale, it was important to make the game fair. Because of that, some sacrifices were made for gameplay purposes. For example, the 5 percent rule was added because of massive outcry from the[/size]
community that the game was too unrealistic with nuclear weapons so readily available and being used on a massive scale like we saw before the 5 percent rule was added.[/size]
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This is a good freshman attempt, but a poor piece overall. It's premises are false and its complaints are based in political biases.
The NPO-ODN feud/wars from Digiterra's first days; the colonization of Blue and NpO-NADC wars; the GATO-NPO wars; the contrived war against GPA; the UnJust War and others were fought over "you might be a threat in the future." They can be seen as having more meaning than more recent wars because more effort was put into the OWF/RP/politicking game, but they were at their core simply wars over eliminating threats before they became unmanageable.Up until [Equilibrium] the majority of wars had a meaning. Wars now are just dog-piles without any meaning apart from you might be a threat in the future so we're going to crush you now.
Throw those away, and you're still wrong. The PB-Polar War and the DH-NPO war were nothing but pre-emptive strikes, and DH explicitly stated that was the reason--2 years ago, which is eons.
You and your alliances supported both.
Alliances still operate this way, EQ is not a before/after point and DBDC is not new or novel. Graemlins, TOP, Umbrella, BN, and maybe a few others all predate DBDC by decades. Among this type of tier-exclusive model, DBDC is only novel in its lack of traditional structure, but there again AAs have experimented with structure for as long as there have been AAs. Illuminati, Vox, CoJ, GOONS1, NONE, Blackstone, NPO-NpO, etc. have all had novel structures, membership arrangements, etc.Up until equilibrium alliances fighting side by side usually had similar nation structure, a few big guys, a few really big guys and then standard alliance bottom tiers and mid tiers.
The only thing that changed with (taking your benchmark) Equilibrium was the political landscape that NG found itself hamstringed upon, what you refer to as "This type of behaviour angered our super upper tier who didn't hate certain alliances of note we were being linked towards hitting because they remember them as good raiding partners, this changed NG's point of view"
Your government and membership hop-skipped along with the flow while C&G, DH, and PB attacked allies-of-allies and chained in AAs, and activated defensive treaties in mutual aggression, and it was you and your allies who giggled "coalition warfare, duuuuhhhhhh lol" while attacking AAs in the opposing coalition willy-nilly without declarations of war.
Everything you cite as having changed at EQ was being done years before EQ, everything you cite as causing disillusionment within NG was being done by NG and its allies.
The disillusionment came at EQ not because the practices were new with EQ, but because for the first time NG's ill-advised, immature friends-based foreign policy put NG in a position every AA with such a FP faces: War is political no matter how much "friendship" you've pumped into your foreign policy. And like the immature sort of people who follow such a policy, your super-duper nations and other disillusioned members did what immature people do: You just left. "Nations left because they did not want to smash into friends to suit someone else's ego trip of running a coalition."
And what have they learned? Nothing. Because DBDC continues to make its decisions and decide its political position based on the half-baked idea of "friends." It works right now because its friends happen to be politically lumped in generally one place, but within a few months, its friends will be dispersed again because politics is ever-changing, and those disillusioned and naive nations will once again face the same crisis.
The rhetorical questions you pose in the second half of your essay are based on your false premises and they're interesting for thought, but that's about it (for me, anyway). They have more to do with mechanics and that is not my territory, but those whose it is have responded adequately to the problems inherent in large numbers of alliances adopting a single-tier-based membership strategy.
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only sheep concern themselves with the vagueries of "PR"
And shepherds!
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. . . expirations, fees, etc on gift cards are illegal.
If you mean those pseudo debit cards that illegal immigrants use as bank accounts and ignorant grandmas only buy at Christmas, yeah, those aren't "gift cards." I got one of those 2 yrs ago, activated to use and spent it quick, and according to the terms by now I must owe them $96+ in monthly "no activity" fees but they've never been in touch.
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Believe it, baby, believe it. http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=23768
Oh, darn, the images are gone. An entire micro bloc was bulldozed in part over faked logs that read just like that.
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Who wants to live forever?
Who dares to love forever?
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I think you are completely wrong. They can absolutely be both. And my judgement of Polar pretty well exhibits that. With specific regards to Umb, it 100% is a WHAT do I like. I do not like allies of allies who refuse to make an effort at a working relationship. It goes to destabilizing power spheres.
And yet you encourage TIO to attack allies of allies. You think TOP are pigdogs for playing the political game (finally!) while you think Valhalla is on the right track.
It's just a mess of who do I like or dislike, now how do I wrap what they're doing around my personal feelings.
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It seems like you call Umb "filth" and NG "polarizing", but you seem to be describing them similarly. People that don't love NG probably think they're filth, and those that love Umb probably feel similarly about them as you feel about NG.
That's what makes these "judgements" golden. They're a "who do I like" elementary school list, not "what do I like" critical value judgements.
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NPO made a dumb move last war, I don't think there is any denying that. Although to use that as reason to align with those we were fighting and thought NPO let off too easy with peace terms is ridiculous. Which seems to be what many former EQ alliances are doing.
The new NPO overly lenient towards defeated opponents? Better align with all those alliances we were just fighting to help them teach NPO a lesson on why being lenient with the losers is bad.
Again, I have not heard any person or AA planning an attack on NPO to begin with, rather, NG began floating a war on Polaris very soon after EQ, and NSO along with them. Polaris quickly moved to counter this and there were plenty of AA' s either with an axe to grind with NG and/or NSO or feeling insecure (for example CoJ was aware what someone in EQ told the enemy that we were the wrench in the handshake plan, and NPO had told SF and XX that they were on their own postwar) to hitch their wagon to Polaris.
Any "punishment" of NPO is a result of their over reach and resulting position as a satellite of C&G. In Branimir's terms, they played the game of kings, but they overplayed it and lost everything, which is why I chose the musical theme that I did. Ai was ruined and IRON cancelled on NPO, so DR was lost to NPO. C&G never made good on their assurances to NPO to cancel on DH constituents. Thus relegated, NPO is simply a victim of circumstance, or a nice bonus. We're not punishing NPO for being lenient, which is absurd in- and of itself because almost everyon in EQ wanted no terms (like NPO), just a longer war (unlike NPO).
As for aligning with ex-DH elements, TOP is on a deliberate new path, but the leaks torpedoed their efforts at an independent movement; on the flipside, it would be stupid for Polaris to ignore the pickup. TOP's treaties are their own business in the interim. Cronyism is clearly at play there, but for the time being that's just how the planet works. If problems arise later by those AAs feeling emboldened, I would expect and advocate a reevaluation of treaties with them.
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It figures that it is my AA and its involvement in this war that really bothers you in misinterpreting what I have said (I have repeatedly acknowledged the parts that have merit),
Oh, please, Humphrey. In every response you've made, you implied that I had an agenda, then you turn around and get puffy when I point out you're not exactly objective. Give me a break.
given my views are actually very similar to others like Roadie, who you are happy to agree with. Indeed, I have used similar arguments to defend Polar in embassy discussions with third parties, back when it was being targeted.
roadie hasn't made any implications about my motives, he hasn't actually replied directly to me, whether or not he's at war makes no difference bc TPF is as allied to NPO as NATO, and roadie's replies haven't diminished NPO's centrality to the issues that rocked EQ (he hasn't addressed the issue at all).
You keep saying we agree, then make point, and I reply. That's all. We've both said it now: We both know the problems, we each put the manifestation of them in a different location.
What is your aim, Shatt? Seriously, what do you want? Just cut to the core-- own up.
If it's unclear, I do apologize to you and the rest of the readers, I thought it was rather clear.
This is a discussion that has not been had in public heretofore, but it is central to the war at hand. You and I were there, so it's old hat for you, but there happen to currently be hundreds of rulers at war with no idea of this aspect of current events. I'm a news man, Branimir.
devil incarnate.
propaganda jihad.
further demonize us, like we just genocide the CN,
However, as much you wanna perhaps try to demonize us overly so, try to shun us, force us to cover ourselves with ash
Tell how we killed baby seals, and covered oceans in oil. Go ahead.
Grow up.
So we end up isolated like after "karma"? You want to shun us?
Actually, I think that NPO has a lot to give the world, that's why I spent more time working with NPO than I ever did against.
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It is obvious what is going on here, Shatt.
Brehon didnt lead the coalition the way you would have liked him, wanted him, and tried to influence him. Parties that were far, far more aggrieved by Brehons moves carry less venom and dare I say it "butthurt", then you and your cult of Shatt which were micro players with no big stakes except for your enormous ego.
The alliance in which you currently reside, by that note, is a far more aggrieved party then you. Brehon indeed went ape !@#$ on them for their DoW on NG, which was wrong. And yet, Dajoboo, guy far more insulted by NPOs antics in the last war, managed to accept our apology for Brehons behavior and even further, didnt launched a war against NPO for Brehons leadership in the last war (which he could, lets be honest there), but rather other grievances with other alliances. Quite frankly, NPO and NpO had one of the most constructive and honest talks about our part in the history of our relations prior to this war, then at any other time previous I dare say.
And yet, here you stand on yet another propaganda jihad against NPO. Even when hordes are at our door, and the "jig is up". Shooting at the dead horse, at this point. The only way to explain this all is, you wanted to move and shake things and failed due to Brehon. Brehon ignored you. YOU! The travesty. This isn't about anyone else, but just you. So you pin on us every single !@#$@#$ thing you could possibly. Next we know, we will be to blame for global warming.
Like I said, Branimir, you're welcome to sweep the ugly aside by tricking yourself into believing that this is about my ego, but I'm gonna have to tell you, it's a mistake that bigger guys than you have made:
<Brehon[NPO]> So you are telling me now you speak for SF/XX/AM/ML/GO/IRON ?
<Brehon[NPO]> I never said everyone was happy
<Brehon[NPO]> I have never said that.
<Brehon[NPO]> You are working hard to try to put words in my mouth and point out my failures (which I indeed have) and act as if you are some great voice.
<Brehon[NPO]> Spare me the owf poppycock
<SchattenAFK> Oh, here we are, blow me off with the OWF thing.
<Brehon[NPO]> And answer the simple question: What is it you feel I owe you.
<Brehon[NPO]> If I were blowing you off, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
<SchattenAFK> This is how I speak, I haven't ever spoken differently
<SchattenAFK> In private, and in public
<Brehon[NPO]> But if you have issue with me, then you take YOUR issues with me because you are not the voice of the others, tho you have directly insinuated it here. And if were so in touch and in charge and connected with those alliances, why didn't they say "Schatt is handling it"
<Brehon[NPO]> No you love your pulpit on the OWF, your boards and anywhere there is an extra eye to see it.
. . .
<SchattenAFK> ...what you owe everyone is that the next time you pull together a coalition you put the rulebook by the door rather than keeping it in your back pocket til you decide you're ready.
<Brehon[NPO]> So, you speak for the coalition and not yourself.
<SchattenAFK> You know very well that I am not alone in that sentiment.
<Brehon[NPO]> I have no problem talking with anyone that has those
issues, but I do have issue with you ducking the conversation and not
speaking only for you. You know the only one you really have true say
over.
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<SchattenAFK> You want so badly for it to just be me. It's not.
<Brehon[NPO]> No, I know its not just you
<Brehon[NPO]> The difference is, you are the only one try to act as if you are the great voice.
<Brehon[NPO]> As if they can't speak for themselves.
<Brehon[NPO]> This is not Vox and you are not Vox, let it go.
<SchattenAFK> Go $%&@ yourself, Emperor
<SchattenAFK> You keep referring to the goal as justification, but IRON and Ai weren't even on the same page with you.
<Brehon[NPO]> I didn't ignore IRON
<Brehon[NPO]> and I will ask them quite directly about the sentiments you are voicing for them and see if they agree. In my talks with them since the war, I have asked, I have directly asked. But I will bring this concern yet again to them.
<Brehon[NPO]> So at this point you are telling me two of my M level treaty partners, once which I am chained to, were blowing smoke up my ass?
<Brehon[NPO]> one rather, not once
<SchattenAFK> Yours or mine.
<Brehon[NPO]> Its simple, I will ask them.
^April 16
As of May 19th, 2013, NPO was informed of the cancellation of "The Revelation Accords".
This isn't Schattenmann's ego takes a pen for a walk.
NPO in its DoW on TOP openly accepted responsibility for our mistakes. You do not often see, alliances in their DoWs saying they are in the wrong and are going to get $%&@ed and that its on them. This need that you have, to constantly highlight our failure which we are aware, is just your hurt ego talking. Our leadership $%&@ed up, we are in a !@#$@#$ hole, and so let the sky fall.
You point to NPO taking responsibility, yet you are royally pissed that I'm talking about it. I think maybe you just need more time to let responsibility sink in.
And you. You just rant away, as part of your ego therapy. Its simple, now that the person you hate so much isn't even here to respond. Shooting a fish in a barrel. Have at it, but do not think for a second that people do not understand the underlaying motive here.
Brehon's existence or not hasn't got anything to do with my timing, but if you're worried about him being unable to defend himself, let's see what he had to say about my issues, which he replied to. Get ready, though, because if you think I've got an ego, hold onto your butt:
Yes, you did beg Ai and NPO to take charge. Both Ai and NPO opted to give the coalition room. Was this a mistake? Absolutely. So much so at one point I was ready to walk away because you all acted like children with a dream list of show !@#$%* you could be to DH. This had so much fire, in so many directions it caused a friend of mine [QueenHailee] to leave because everyone was acting like children. I realized based on that we had to have someone to take charge, so I did.I did not "on my own" as you claim start talks with DH. I spoke NE, IRON was, and remains persona non grata to this situation or activity since week 2 of the war. NE came up with the terms/counter terms and I delivered them. Don't get it twisted that me acting as the voice and having to corral the issue suddenly means I was doing it for my person.
So ending the war before it hit its completion make my decision dumb. Okay. So now we run into the issue of who's version of dumb do we use? Who gets to make that call. I guess it gets down to the guy that stepped up, considering that guy knew the original reasons for war and what the goals of that war were/are. So much so that same guy posted a very lengthy post explaining the why. The fact that you disagree with my report and view on the issues simply makes my decision dumb because it didn't fit YOUR agenda. Forget that it fit the agenda of Ai, NPO, IRON (by proxy) and the original declaring alliances. I have the authority to make that call. I was asked to use that authority. Like I told you, you just dont like WHEN I used that authority.
Don't give a me a line, or anyone else about people agendas not being met. That coalition was not for Polar agenda's, Legion agenda's, Fark Agendas, Sparta agenda's or COJ agendas. It was for Ai agenda's. Let us not forget they were the aggrieved party.
So in the end, you are simply pissed becuase other personal agenda's that crept in and through the coalition I set aside. I did. I would do it again when they put Ai, NPO and the whole purpose of the war at risk.
Fact: We could not continue they way we were.
Fact: The ending didn't empower Umbrella, people just weren't able to "grind them to dust" because 450k + tech is so easy to replace so is the 20+ members they lost.
Fact: DH doesn't have the power. The fact SF/XX/Aftermath have a worry there, is THEIR political problem and exists completely outside the coalition.
Fact: War goals were met.
Fact: Our slot coverage was dropping every single week.
Fact: For every bit of damage being done to Umbrella and everyone else, Ai was taking equal damage
So, if w eare going to dance this dance, lets put it all on the table and not pick and choose the parts we want to expose. We leave that to the likes of DoomHouse. If that is the way you want me to handle it, let me know, I will pick juicy parts that completely skew the issues at hand.
had to make hte tough decision. I did and don't right give a !@#$ if its not liked. I know I did what was right for the cause and reason of the coalition.
Why are you so obsessed with NPO?
"How can get away from the subject at hand, oh! Talk about Schattenmann!"
It is one thing to lay criticism on the NPO for our genuine foreign policy mistakes. It is quite another to act as if we are some kind of reps-imposing, alliance-disbanding, viceroy-installing hegemon out to destroy everyone.
Maybe you're reading someone else's blog and then replying to mine. If you want to talk about what I've actually written in this blog, I'll be here.
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/summon UnspeakableEvil
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You know you say it as a joke, and that is NPO's entire problem, half of you don't get it, the other half doesn't care. In point of fact, I went right from the being the face of NPO's crumbling hold on the world with weekly global embarrassments of Pacifica to NPO's first and most dedicated advocate post-Karma not due to anything Pacifica could do for me (nothing) or would do for me (nothing) but because I am a man of priniciple and everything I stood for in opposition to Pacifica for 9 months of Vox required of me that once NPO changed I give it the dedication I did.
I believe we are missing the biggest sin of the NPO here, and its about time somebody mentioned this atrocity.
Brehon hurt Shats feelings. That can not stand.
And I did it happily, not as a matter of dread dogmatic drudgery, but as a would-be friend, setting myself and my fledgling alliance and its promise against the path of everyone who had anything to do with me. Justitia's Cult did not expect dick in return except to be received as we were, a partner and advocate with interests aligned to Pacifica's. But you are exactly right, my fleshless friend, Brehon instead rebuked not simply me, but Justitia's Cult, and Sparta, and AI, and IRON, and Polaris, and, and, and, and
Do you know, Branimir, that when the alliances of Equilibrium said flatly to NPO to stop dragging us to peace before the job was done, your donkey-mouthed Emperor told us that he didn't give a damn and the consequences of the war we were fighting for him were our own problem and didn't mean squat?
Do you know that when Brehon went ape on me in our embassy over the very facts I have outlined here, he denied all of it as OWF propagandizing. Do you know that one month exactly before IRON cancelled on your conniving asses Brehon told me IRON loved him and was completely on board with NPO and to shut my Vox Populi mouth talking on behalf of other people?
So, yuck it up, Branimir, you're either one of the ignorant ones I mentioned, or one of the careless ones, but either way you're reaping the consequences of NPO's inattentiveness to people's feelings. Like every other Schattenmaniac, you can try to make the conversation about me, but reality speaks to full breadth of the problem far louder than my reply or your deflections.
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All I stated was that those dynamics meant the coalition was "less effective than it otherwise might have been". It seems you are not even disputing that, and all you have done is provided your (clearly self-serving) perspective on points I broadly conceded in the post you quoted, which was not intended as an in-depth critique.
If your initial understanding of the use of your quote was that I was responding specifically to you, then you misunderstood.
I find it ironic that NPOs opponents in this war are divided between
those that wish to eliminate NPO as a rival partly due to its role in
starting the war (the TOP sphere) and those that blame NPO for the way
the war ended (the Polar sphere). The latter view has merit, but I
didn't feel there were many alliances which came through with enhanced
reputations based on those dynamics (IRON is one notable exception which
comes to mind), and in a position to apportion blame without accepting
some themselves.
I find it ironic (and cute) that a decades-old ally of NPO [thinks he] has anything at all to say about self-serving perspectives. You are entitled to sense your irony, but it is grounded in your subjective relationship to NPO, where others would find no contradiction at all in accepting our parts in the arguments while knowing it was NPO who opened the rift. Why were Polaris/Sparta at odds with Pacifica in the first place? Because Pacifica required that they sell out their allies while the allies of NPO's allies got sweet deals from the Emperor. As I say and you demonstrate with your continual glossings-over, though, you just don't seem to place any importance on NPO's egomaniacal demands and double-crosses.
If TOP's actual reasoning is that NPO is a rivall, that's news to me, and I would have to tell TOP that such a view is patently silly given that everyone knows NPO positioned itself not as King !@#$ but as king of a !@#$heap, and Farrin hasn't got the skill set to do anything about it.
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I do not deny nor have I ignored that there were divergent interests, or varying levels of commitment. You and I basically diverge in our sourcing of the serious internal turmoil and the degree to which NPO bears responsiblity.
No one (that I saw) was sniffing around to get out of the war, much less end it altogether, at the point in time that Brehon opened the peace process alone, on March 12th, against even the wishes of AI and IRON despite his later assertion that the acquiescence of both was his mandate to end the war.
Only after NPO made it look like peace was at hand, those few AAs who were tepid in their commitment became itchy for peace. And only After NPO started telling people what we were or were not allowed to discuss for terms did people begin chafing at NPO's sudden tyranny.
You will recall that I begged NPO not to be so stupid as to abdicate coalition leadership, but once they did, that was the MO of the coalition. NPO's reversal created the strife that wrecked the dogged determination of necessity between coalition members.
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Like I said, Dream, it looks like GATO was just out of the smoke-filled back rooms loop. That you weren't included doesn't undermine anything I've said. They didn't tell you that I was spying on GATO, either, did they? But I was.
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Are there any moralists left?
in Arentak's Blog
A blog by arentak in General
Posted
Good to see you, Arentak.
Here's mine, from this discussion
"In the same period, C&G- and DH-aligned talking heads began OWF campaigns to decry the Moralism boogey man, claiming that those who focused on the more ethical edge of Karma were stifling and even killing Digiterra. Azaghul and Londo Mollari posted the two most notable essays/diatribes. The biggest problem is that Moralism is not a real philosophy, it is whatever idea, action, or protest that DH and Pandora's Box needed to lampoon that week, and any given AA or person that one might mock by calling them a moralist will have done things that a moralist would never do--NpO, for example, stomped its fair share of innocent victims, or Schattenmann spent a year spying for Goon Order of Neutral Shoving.
So, one would naturally think that an essay against moralism is an argument for a return to things like EZI, real politick stompings, war on neutrals, etc, but since such an essay argues against something that doesn't exist (there is no such thing as moralism outside of its use as a pejorative) then these arguments are, rather, arguments for inter-alliance violence without limits."
Are there any moralists left? Yes. Every time someone takes a principled stand, they're called a moralist.
Some people/alliances also embrace the term, Dajobo will tell anyone that he's happy to be a moralist Emperor of a moralist alliance. What he means is that Polaris has principles about certain things, along the lines that Hal went down: raiding, peace terms, spying, etc.
Steve Buscemi and Revolutionary Reb are also correct about lots of so-called moralists; I mean here in the middle of this latest fiasco you have Wicked Joe, central to the OOC attacks on Van Hoo and Kait, tut-tuting Rotavele and congratulating Sparta on kicking her.
Moralism has been blamed for the malaise that Planet Bob is in--the stifling yoke of morality, the faulty narrative goes, has killed dynamism in war and politics as everyone hides from the OWF moral mob. But as others have touched on, what we have is disinterest and self-interest. Coalitions no longer organize around the touchstone AA or Big Man, instead they organize around fronts and everyone kvetches about how they're "not fighting for [this principle] or [that alliance]"--So, no big surrenders or serious terms, just a bunch of half-assed selfish AAs doing as little as possible and handing out white peace to get the war over with rather than true victory to settle matters. Hand-in-hand is disinterest, alliances can't even be bothered to give a rip about their own grievances anymore.
The answer is the organization of alliances around their own clearly-defined principles whose foreign policies start with the principles, leading to ideologically-strong clusters of compatible alliances. Wars mean something, are fought to their real conclusion, are smaller but more important, and more frequent since every one doesn't involve the whole world.