By David Futrelle
Sorry I’ve been AWOL for a couple of days; I’ve been taking care of some personal stuff (nothing dramatic, just very time-consuming). But there’s so much going on in the world I thought I’d put up an open thread.
Talk about Trump’s shittiness, the shutdown, the dueling Fyre Festival documentaries, the blizzard here in the US, or maybe those snot-nosed racist high school students harassing Native American elder Nathan Phillips, a veteran conducting a ceremony to honor the war dead in DC
On that last point, here are some videos; watch only if you are ready to be enraged. The students, from a Catholic high school, were in DC for the “March for Life,” evidently ran into Phillips by chance, and decided to harass him for being Native American, I guess.
On a somewhat lighter note, there was the whole Ben Shapiro/Baby Hitler thing. Here are several , er, enhanced versions of his remarks at the March for Life on the classic time-travel quandary — “would you kill Hitler when he was a baby?”
Despite Ben’s qualms about killing baby Hitler, he doesn’t actually give a shit about babies and other civilians from enemy countries killed in wars.
In other news:
Speaking of crappy food:
@Hexum7
Fucking hell, spell people’s names correctly. You didn’t have any problem getting it right when you quoted kupo.
@calmdown
All the sympathies 🙁 TBH I’ve gotten more numb with horror than anything else, but I understand; last week I was having ~6 panic attacks per day, at the worst.
It’s okay to shut out the nonessential information sometimes, especially for people who are targets. Sometimes that’s the only way we can stay effective, helpful, or just alive – and you can’t and aren’t obligated to fix the world on your own. I know the idea of self-care has been twisted by white society and corporate interests and whatnot, but giving yourself that space and safety in this maelstrom is a real, needful thing. Especially for those of us who have been trained from early on to look after everyone and everything around us.
Take care, stay safe, don’t let the bastards grind you down. 🙁
My understanding of “habit” as in “habitually do a thing” is that it’s something you do once in awhile. Not constantly, but enough to be a notable trend. Doesn’t mean it’s unconscious or unconsidered.
Your mileage may vary.
Cyborette? That was from Shakespere too? I thought it was from that Paul Newman movie about the prison system. I guess that’s the character you described?
I don’t remember anything about it than that line, though. I don’t even know what it refers to. that line always struck me as campy though
As I said, that people can change for the better. I mean, incrementally, but for the better. Think it’s possible for those kids, now that, as you say, their bad behavior and attitudes have been shoved directly into their line of sight.
There’s hope if they get out of the catholic school system, and i think many of them will be encouraged to.
Of course that has to be an intitial step. Will most? I don’t know, but maybe enough to make a slight difference in the world. And, no, that’s not me excusing or trying to diminish their horrendous behavior and disrespect. . It’s a future fantasy that could happen. I desperately want to believe that things are going forward in the right direction, especially in the nightmare time that is Trump.
As Michelle Obama said when asked about it, (paraphrasing) we can’t be disheartened if we take some steps backward, because we will take more steps forward once that cycle ends.
I’m disheartened but not surprised that the Supreme Court just upheld Trump’s ban on transgenders in the military, but they will have further hearings on it, as I understand it I am horrified at the thought that Ruth Bader Ginsburg could die before this reign of terror ends.
Can we lower the rhetorical temperature in here? Hexum, I understand that you felt you’d been misrepresented but the tongue thing was way over the line; I realize you’ve apologized, but you’ve also continued to pour out angry comments, including four in a row just above. I’d like you step back a bit and refrain from posting on this for a little while.
And I would appreciate it if everyone arguing with Hexum could step back a bit as well.
@David
Ack, will do. Sorry for losing my cool, y’all.
I shall tone down my rhetoric as well.
I was interested in those who had mentioned painting figures. I have no experience with the games mentioned, though — I had to look up Malifaux!
I don’t suppose by any chance anyone here does historical gaming (i.e. games on historical subjects, and/or using historical armies, belligerents, characters etc. but with the specific scenario fictionalized?)
When I was younger I really was interested in that but never could afford the larger numbers of figures that were necessary for that sort of gaming. (I gravitated to the other dimension of that kind of game, the classic paper maps with a hex grid and cardboard counters — and long complex rule-books). In graduate school I returned very briefly to painting figures, but 54 mm and mostly just as models for the aesthetic, although of course there are some great skirmish-level 20th-century rules out there for which one can use 54 mm scale. (Though it really has to be platoon-sized action or smaller with that scale, I think).
The first figure I painted when I returned to it in my late 20s in graduate school was a 54mm 1942-era Red Army soldier.
(Yeah. I know. Surprise, surprise for someone with the nym Pavlov’s House!!). Long ago I had dreams of making a diorama of the *actual* “Pavlov’s House” from Stalingrad, but alas. I also had dreams of painting 54mm figures and making 1/32 scale models of equipment I worked with and used in the U.S. Army during the early 1990s. (It’s funny because a lot of the books I most love written on military modeling are actually written by people who themselves served in the Cold War era armed forces.)
This twist on painting miniature models may not be the one that appeals to many here, but painting figures in general is awesome.
I always used acrylics, which worked OK enough I guess on metal figures primed with white or gray auto primer. Someday I want to paint figures with artists’ oils like I had read about as a kid.
What kind of paint do you all use?
@Pavlov’s House
I have a bit of Bolt Action, 20mm scale, WWII, company-ish sized forces plus support; a decent amount of Flames of War, 15mm company WWII; Team Yankee, same scale and rules but fictionalized mid-80s WWIII; and Infinity, 28mm sci-fi anime cyberpunk.
Acrylics, mostly. Army Painter has the ones I like best, used to use Games Workshop, but their new pots dry out so quickly
You want a hex grid, cardboard counters, and long complex rulebooks? Check out Attack Vector: Tactical. Starship dueling game, using the hardest science possible without invalidating the idea of manned spacecraft shooting each other. Newtonian physics, 3d movement, seeking weapons, and lots of cleverly hidden trig functions.
@Bakunin
Team Yankee! Wow, yes, I have heard of that but never played. The subject fascinates me so much. And frightens me too, in a way, a bit closer to home than most wargames already do. I served at the very tail end of the Cold War, really when the threat for all practical purposes dissipated enough to be gone — but was still in that last generation of infantrymen who whose advanced individual training (or, technically, “OSUT”, one state unit training) was geared towards fighting the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe. At the time in my early twenties all I thought about was the squad level training they taught us, one fire team lays down suppressive fire, the squad leader has the other one move to flank, and so on — decades later when I was much further from it I went back and read about actual Soviet operational plans to imagine just what exactly what we were trying to do would look like a the higher level. When the Poles in the late 1990s released the documents of the “Seven Days to the Rhine” plan….wow.
But the upshot of all this is, scary though it would be in the back of my mind, it would be interesting to wargame it out using miniatures. I have a few operational-level cardboard and paper games, but the tactical stuff like using the Team Yankee rules would be interesting to say the least.
And thanks for the recommendation of Attack Vector — got to tell you though, I certainly still have all my old 80s and 90s “monster games” on WWII historical subjects. I still have all the Games Designers Workshop “Europa” series. You want to talk about complex (but really fun!) board wargames, wow, that’s them.
Thank you for the post!
@Cyborgette
You’re right, and I think that for me it’s best if I avoid social media for a few days. 🙂
Thanks very much for the support!
@calmdown
I hope that you feel solace soon!
I’m just hoping that all these people falling over themselves to play CSI just to prove the Covington kids are the real victims can use some of that investigative energy the next time Police murder a black child.
@Pavlov’s House
One day, me and my friend are going to play thru his copy of Struggle of Nations. Napoleonic hex and chit wargame, with hidden unit strength, limited command and control, just more rules than honestly needed.
@Bakunin
That’s *awesome* — my teaching has made me think more about Napoleonic-era wargames much more than I did when I was a kid.
With my undergraduate officer-candidates last academic term I did a wargame to explore the strategic-level and operational-level choices each side would have faced in a ca. 1805 Napoleonic invasion of Britain (speaking of the 1940 Operation SeaLion discussion lots of pages of comments back on this very thread!)
It was really a map exercise, but I made up little units and had real basic rules, combat strengths and movement ratings, a rudimentary combat results table. It was an in-class exercise so rather than try to explain rules etc. I just referreed it myself and did it Kriegspiel style. It worked great though and the students loved it, and we all learned a lot.
OK, off to bed for me now! Great discussion!
@Pavlov’s House,
The original forms of modern wargames come from the Napoleonic era and there remains an incredible number of games in historical lines. Bolt Action is nice enough, though I prefer to stay away from World War Two and the like.
Bolt Action is part of a family of games, though, going back to pre-roman eras up to world war two, depending on your preferences. Black Powder for the Napoleonics, Pike & Shotte for 1500-1700’s, Hail Caesar has rules that span from the Bronze Age to the fall of the Byzantines. All very similar, with a rather unique twist for a lot of wargames – it models the “fog of war”, the fact that commanders don’t have a perfect view of what’s going on out there, and sometimes the troops don’t follow the orders you want them to. All in a very clever and not very difficult set of rules.
Those are all from Warlord Games, which encourages you to just pick up the book and play with wooden blocks to see if you like it. Though, obviously, they’d like it if you bought some miniatures, too. The models are ~28mm (heroic scale) and are plastic. Easy to assemble and they look good, though you might consider them a smidge pricey. The rules are cheap though and historic minis are easy to find. So, if you have the spare money, pick up a book! Available on PDF, and frankly you can just sign up to Roll20.com to get yourself a map and miniatures if you really wanted to tinker about with it.
Personally, I love 10 mm for historical games, though. The larger miniatures look great individually, but you can only ever have a couple dozen on a table at once. No, you want little itty bitty models. They don’t look like much individually, but all together?
Yeah, it can look pretty cool.
@Pavlov’s House
I use acrylics, mostly Games Workshop, Army Painter, and Vallejo. They’re all of pretty good quality, though the pots used by Games Workshop require careful cleaning to prevent the paint from drying out. Army Painter and Vallejo use much more convenient dropper bottles.
I painted models with enamels as a kid, but after working with acrylics I’m never going back.
I picked up an airbrush about a year ago, but so far I use it mostly for priming and basecoating, as I lack the skill for the graduated highlighting that some people use them for.
On the subject of the games themselves, I’ve never been much into historical games – in part because I find fantasy and science fiction very appealing to paint, but also because I find the idea of turning real conflicts into a game rather disquieting.
Of the games that I play, my two favorites are Malifaux (described above) and Guild Ball, a sort of “Medieval Murder Soccer” game that has a lot of similarities to Malifaux.
@Bakunin
Now all I can think about is that background scene from Mass Effect 2
See the current push by far too many gay people to violate the rights of children and their mothers – aka the adoption and surrogacy industries – just like straight people have been doing for decades by increasing the demand for babies (which ultimately leads to more laws to violate the rights of mothers and their children such as pre-birth matching, hopeful adopters in hospitals, and no revocation periods) and fighting to get on adoptees fake – rights violating – birth certificates instead of standing with adopted people to stop fraudulently altering birth certificates and sealing records.
On the games topic, my husband loves Warhammer miniatures. If we had the money, I know he’d do a lot more of that kind of thing, but we haven’t really been able to afford for him to do it in years. Of course, if he’d quit buying Magic cards (however cheap -he’s gotten a lot of people’s discards for insanely low prices) he might be able to afford a few miniatures. lol
Vallejo makes the best paints.
Well, I think media coverage last days has pretty much vindicated that the Dusty video was not way out and the first reports were put out too hastily. There´s been lots of different videos published now that show the whole scenario.
* What everyone except themselves seem to agree on is the BI were monumental assholes. First they taunt the native american marchers, next they taunt some black dude that doesn´t seem to belong to any group, finally they start to call the catholic students dirty crackers and incest babies.
* First point opinions diverge is was the situation in the last 5 mins or so before Phillips march in threating or not. Given some student throws away his clothes, they do a “war dance”, someone is beating a stick to the ground, etc, and they were 10-20 times as many as the BI guys, yeah, I can see why someone would judge there was a risk of violence.
* Second point of divergence is basically what were the intentions of the Covington kids. Do they surround (they do gradually do that) Phillips to intimidate or just out of curiosity? Do they chant and dance as a form of mockery or just to join in, thinking the native american activists were helping them chant down the BI? I can definitely see reasons to choose the first interpretation, but it´s not obvious the second one is wrong, the answer need not be the same for everyone in the group, and if your news story depends on how to interprete the facial expressions of some teenagers, you should probably think twice before running it.
* There is also a little shown recording covering the end, with Phillips calling everyone “relatives” repeated times, the kids calming down and mostly falling silent, and a school representative finally (where were they?) showing up and telling the students to back away from the scene.
There are definitely context clues about what kind of intentions the teenagers possess beyond their facial expressions (like, perhaps, something just a few inches higher?), and pretending that there aren’t is pretty disingenuous.
@Pavlov’s House,
Recently I was going through some old papers of mine, and rediscovered an old origami packet that explained how to do Napoleonic figures from basic foods, written back when Usenet was the big discussion forum (1990-ish) by (I think) Wayne Ko. IF I’m interpreting the numbers given correctly, the finished figures should be 12mm high.
If you – or anyone else here – wants to see it, I can try and scan it in and put it up on my blog.
@Tovius
In fact, the writer for AV:T is Ken Burnside.
Hapnadsmen,
What media coverage do you speak of? Because it’s worth noting that much of it is based on CNN’s reporting. You want to guess what network Scott Jennings, owner of the PR firm that drafted Nick Sandman’s statement works as commentator for?
Perhaps you should watch the other photos of videos of the students harassing women or dressing in blackface before you want to make that claim.
Fuck you and anyone else who is still carrying water for these little bigots. Rich white boys are not the ones who need your concern. Save it for people who are actually marginalized.