thelastaxolotl

from Haus of Decline

Which of you nerds with lemmy.ml accounts are brave enough to crosspost this in the wider lemmyverse?

their favorite klandidate

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Disco Elysium is a 2019 role-playing video game developed and published by ZA/UM. Inspired by Infinity Engine-era games, particularly Planescape: Torment, the game was written and designed by a team led by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz and features an art style based on oil painting with music by the English band British Sea Power.

Disco Elysium takes place in the seaside district of a fictional city still recovering from a revolution that occurred decades prior to the game's start. Players take the role of an amnesiac detective who has been tasked with solving a murder mystery. During the investigation, he comes to recall events about his own past as well as current forces trying to affect the city. Disco Elysium was released for Windows in October 2019 and macOS in April 2020. An expanded version of the game featuring full voice acting and new content, subtitled The Final Cut, was released for consoles in 2021 alongside a free update for the PC versions.

Disco Elysium is a non-traditional role-playing game featuring very little combat. Instead, events are resolved through skill checks and dialogue trees via a system of 24 skills that represents different aspects of the protagonist, such as his perception and pain threshold. In addition, a system called the Thought Cabinet represents his other ideologies and personality traits, with players having the ability to freely support or suppress them. The game is based on a tabletop role-playing game setting that Kurvitz had previously created, later forming ZA/UM in 2016 to adapt it into a video game.

Disco Elysium has been cited as among the greatest video games ever made, with its narrative and art being praised. It won a number of awards from several publications, including Game of the Year. A television series adaptation was announced to be in development in 2020.

Gameplay

Disco Elysium is a role-playing video game that features an open world and dialogue-heavy gameplay mechanics. The game is presented in an isometric perspective in which the player character is controlled. The player takes the role of a detective, who suffers from alcohol and drug-induced amnesia, on a murder case. The player can move the detective about the current screen to interact with non-player characters (NPC) and highlighted objects or move onto other screens. Early in the game they gain a partner, Kim Kitsuragi, another detective who acts as the protagonist's voice of professionalism and who offers advice or support in certain dialogue options.

Setting

Disco Elysium takes place in the fantastic realist world of Elysium, developed by Kurvitz and his team in the years prior, which includes over six thousand years of history. The fiction has been constructed with attention to the theory of historical materialism, which posits that, even if the details were different, human history would play out in a similar way

The game takes place in the year '51 of the Current Century. Elysium is made of "isolas", masses of land and sea that are separated from each other by the Pale, an inscrutable, mist-like "connective tissue" in which the laws of reality break down. Prolonged exposure to the Pale can cause mental instability and eventually death, and traversing the Pale, which is typically done with aerostatics, is heavily regulated due to the danger

Events in the game take place in the impoverished district of Martinaise within the city of Revachol on the isola of Insulinde, the "New New World". Forty-nine years before the events of the game, a wave of communist revolutions swept multiple countries; the Suzerainty of Revachol, a monarchy that up to that point had been Elysium's pre-eminent superpower, was overthrown and replaced by a commune. Six years later, the Commune of Revachol was toppled by an invading alliance of moralist-capitalist nations called "the Coalition". Revachol was designated a Special Administrative Region and remains firmly under Coalition control decades later. One of the few governmental responsibilities that the Coalition concedes to the people of Revachol is policing, which is carried out by the Revachol Citizens Militia (RCM), a voluntary citizens' brigade turned semi-professional police force.

Development

Disco Elysium was developed by ZA/UM, a company founded in 2016 by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, who served as the game's lead writer and designer. Kurvitz since 2001 had been part of a band called Ultramelanhool, and in 2005, while in Tallinn, Estonia, with the group struggling for finances, conceived of a fictional world during a drunken evening while listening to Tiësto's "Adagio for Strings". Feeling they had a solid idea, the group created a collective of artists and musicians, which included oil painter Aleksander Rostov, to expand upon the work of that night and developed a tabletop RPG based on Dungeons & Dragons on this steampunk-like concept

Kender suggested to Kurvitz that instead of pursuing a novel, that he try capturing his world as a video game as to draw a larger interest. Kurvitz had no experience in video games before, but once he had seen artwork of the game's setting of Revachol as easily fitting into an isometric format, as well as Rostov's agreement that they might as well continue taking the risk of failing on a video game together, Kurvitz proceeded with the idea.

The game was announced as an upcoming 2017 game under the title No Truce With the Furies, taken from the poem "Reflections" by R.S. Thomas and published in Thomas' No Truce with the Furies in 1995

Kurvitz established the ZA/UM team to create the game, using the name "za um", a reference to the Zaum constructed language created by Russian avant-garde poets in the early 1900s. Its name can be read in Russian as a shortcut for "vzyatsya za um" idiom, which is similar to the English idea of bootstrapping. The use of all-capitals and the slash symbol is to present the team as "something that definitely exists and weighs eight tonnes".

Work on the game started around 2016, with the local team living in a squat in a former gallery in Tallinn. They were able to secure venture capital into the game during that first year which allowed Kurvitz to seek out the English band Sea Power for their music for the game's soundtrack. While in Birmingham to speak to the band, Kurvitz realised England was a better location for the main development team as there were more local resources for both development and for voice-overs.

As originally planned, the game was to focus on action in a single city location to make the 2017 release. However, as ZA/UM had indicated to investors that this was to be a game that spanned a larger world, they found the need to spread beyond that single location, forcing them to delay the game's release, along with the name change to Disco Elysium. This title plays on a few double meanings related to the word "disco"; in one sense, it refers to ideas that briefly gain the spotlight before burning out similar to the fad of disco music, and reflected in the protagonist's clothing style, while in a more literal sense, "disco" is Latin for "I learn", thus reflecting on the protagonist's overcoming his amnesia to learn about the world of Elysium. Kurvitz had always anticipated the No Truce title to be more of a working title and wanted to reserve it for when they had bundled Disco Elysium with a second planned game

Design, voices, and influences

The game's art, drawn mostly in a painterly style, was led by Aleksander Rostov, while the game's soundtrack was written by the English band British Sea Power. The original release also had voice-acting by Dasha Nekrasova of the cultural commentary podcast Red Scare and four of the hosts from the political satire podcast Chapo Trap House; these would later be replaced in The Final Cut.

ZA/UM cited several works that influenced the writing and style of Disco Elysium. One major influence is the 1999 video game Planescape: Torment, which, like Disco Elysium, features an amnesiac player character, heavily emphasises dialogue, and is rendered isometrically. The television show The Wire was also used as an influence for the game's working class setting, while Émile Zola's writings shared stories on the misery of human life that narrative writer Helen Hindpere said she felt resonated within the game. Other works that influenced Disco Elysium included the video game Kentucky Route Zero; television shows True Detective and The Shield; the literary works of Dashiell Hammett, China Miéville, and the Strugatsky brothers; and artists Rembrandt, Ilya Repin, Jenny Saville, Alex Kanevsky, and Wassily Kandinsky. The creators have also said that their work owes a lot to the Estonian urbanist poet Arvi Siig. Kurvitz said while accepting the Estonian President's Young Cultural Figure annual award for 2020 "Without his modernism, Elysium – the world the game is placed in – would not be half of what it is." He also said Siig's vision of an international, radical and humanist Estonian culture lives on in Disco Elysium.

Kurvitz said that an aim was to have a full, complex depth of choices and outcomes, limited by the practicalities of game development. Knowing they could not realistically cover all possible choices, Kurvitz and his team instead focused more on what he called "microreactivity", small acts and decisions the player may make such as an embarrassing comment, and how that may propagate throughout events. The dialogue of the player's various skills helped then to provide critique and internalisation of how these small decisions had larger effects on the game world, so that the player would become more aware of such choices in the future. An additional factor in writing was the recognition that there was no real solution to the game; while the player may resolve some portions of the story, the primary case is nearly unworkable, similar to the rest of Revachol. They created the companion Kim as a no-nonsense character to help keep the player on track of resolving some part of the game and recognising that there were some story threads they simply could not fix or resolve.

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It appears another "gigaleak" has gone down, involving Nintendo. According to sources online, it appears that Game Freak has been hacked, resulting in internal data from the company being leaked to the public. Those involved in the hacking community or those within general Pokemon related groups are claiming that while they will not be discussing or dissecting the specifics within the leak, it initially is being claimed that there is a total of 1TB of data.

This allegedly includes the source code for Pokemon Platinum, source codes for Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver, beta builds of Pokemon Black and White 2, beta builds of Pokemon X and Y, and potential internal codenames for upcoming Pokemon projects. Within it are mentions of an online Pokemon game, a collaborative project between Game Freak and Studio ILCA, the potential code name of the Nintendo Switch 2 being "Ounce", and a project named Gaia, which may be the next generation of Pokemon titles.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3466560

by Sofia Moutinho

• Mycorrhizal fungi live in symbiosis with plants, providing them with nutrients necessary to thrive and potentially playing a key part in preserving threatened species.
• Although research into mycorrhizae has so far been sparse in Latin America, efforts are gaining momentum, with experts studying how the fungi could help save the Colombian black oak, an endangered, endemic species.
• In Huila, Colombia, local communities are successfully working with researchers on a black oak restoration project using seeds “inoculated” with fungi.

“All this forest above us, and we are here looking down,” says Corrales, a fungi ecologist and expedition leader at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), a nonprofit research organization mapping fungi worldwide. For the last two years, the group has been searching in Colombia’s black oak forests for mycorrhizae, a type of fungi that establishes a unique symbiosis with plants that’s fundamental to keeping forests alive.

Most plants worldwide are associated with these fungi. Mycorrhizae grow around roots, forming vast networks of thin, cotton-like filaments that extend into the lower soil levels and reach the litter fall. Through this system, the fungi can break down organic matter, such as dry leaves, and even mine minerals in rocks and deliver water and essential nutrients directly to plants’ roots. In return, the roots provide the fungi with sugars, essential for their survival.

Full Article

No matter to what degree China opens up to the outside world and admits foreign capital, its relative magnitude will be small and it can't affect our system of socialist public ownership of the means of production.

Deng Xiaoping

"The principle of upholding the socialist path. The principle of upholding the people's democratic dictatorship. The principle of upholding the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) The principle of upholding Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism–Leninism"

• 4 Cardinal Principles formulate by Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping, Han nationality (Hakka), was born Deng Xixian in 1904 in Guang'an county, Sichuan province. He went to France in 1920, where he worked, studied, discovered Marxism-Leninism, and joined the CPC in 1924. Deng spent part of 1926 studying at the Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, before returning to China in 1927.

Deng then joined the Red Army during the first civil war against the Guomindang. During the Long March in 1934, he served as General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee. In the late 1930s and 1940s, Deng continued his political work in the Red Army during the War of Resistance against Japan and the second civil war against the Guomindang.

Deng was named to several important posts in the new People's Republic after 1949. In 1957, Deng became CPC General Secretary and ran the country's daily affairs with then President Liu Shaoqi. Amid growing disenchantment with Mao's Great Leap Forward, Deng and Liu gained influence within the CPC when, in the early 1960s, they directed successful economic reforms.

When Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Deng was purged and sent to work in the countryside. Premier Zhou Enlai was able to convince Mao to bring Deng Xiaoping back into politics in 1974 as First Deputy Premier, in practice running daily affairs. But after Zhou's death in January 1976, Maoists purged Deng once again.

Following Mao's death later in 1976, Deng was able to outmaneuver Mao's anointed successor, Hua Guofeng, and consolidate his control of the CPC in the late 1970s. Hua was replaced by Zhao Ziyang as premier in 1980, and by Hu Yaobang as CPC chief in 1981. After 1987 Deng's only official posts were as chairman of the PRC and CPC Central Military Commissions.

Even while consolidating his political power, Deng initiated a "reform and opening" policy that sparked an industrial revolution in China. Deng decentralized economic decision making, embraced the "socialist market economy," and sought the "Four Modernizations" of agriculture, industry, science and technology, and the military. These reforms were a reversal of the Maoist policy of economic self-reliance, but they accelerated the modernization process through "opening" to foreign trade and investment. Special Economic Zones were established where foreign investment and market liberalization were encouraged.

Deng developed the principle that in foreign affairs, China should keep a low-profile and bide its time. He continued to seek an independent position between the United States and the Soviet Union. On 1 January 1979, the United States recognized the People's Republic of China, leaving the (Taiwan) Republic of China's nationalist government to one side, and business contacts between China and the West began to grow.

From 1980 onwards, Deng led the expansion of the economy, and in political terms took over negotiations with the United Kingdom to return Hong Kong, meeting personally with then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The result of these negotiations was the Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed on 19 December 1984, which formally outlined the United Kingdom's return of the whole Hong Kong colony to China by 1997.

In 1989, Deng ordered the crackdown on the Beijing Spring protestors, precipitating the Tiananmen Square crisis of June 4, 1989. To reassert his economic agenda, in the spring of 1992, Deng made a tour of southern China, visiting Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and spending the New Year in Shanghai, using his travels as a method of reasserting his economic policy after his retirement from office. Deng's health deteriorated drastically since 1994

Deng Xiaoping died on February 19, 1997.

• Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

Megathreads and spaces to hang out:

• 📀 Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
• 🔥 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
• ⚔ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread
• ✨ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread
• 👊 Share your gains and goals with your comrades in the New Weekly Improvement thread

reminders:

• 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
• 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
• 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
• 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
• 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

• 🌈 LGBTQ+ Resource Post
• 🍉 Resources for Palestine
• 🐌☕ Zapatista Coffee

Theory:

• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
• ❤️Anarchism and Other Essays

linko

sadly most of the USA "left" belives in this

Lets fucking gooo, unlimited genocide on Europe

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Article

Here are excerpts for you nerd that dont like to click links

Europe faces a triple threat

1. to its security, mainly from Russia, which is systematically using “aggression in all known domains of conflict.” If 🇷🇺wins in 🇺🇦, “who can pretend that it will stop there?” Moldova, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and any neighbour could be vulnerable

Lol yea ok they are going to attack NATO just cuz

Macron stands by his refusal to rule out sending ground forces to help Ukraine. “If the Russians were to break through the front lines, if there were a Ukrainian request - which is not the case today - we would legitimately have to ask ourselves this question.”

They did so well in the sahel they would totally beat russia lol

Macron wants to start a discussion at the EPC summit in 🇬🇧in July about a new European “security framework”. It needs to look at threats, capabilities and production, and focus on geography not institutions. He'll also raise the question of extending France’s nuclear deterrent

There is “no question of brushing NATO aside”, Macron said. But Europe, in line with his longstanding project, has to “get ready to protect ourselves”. This is a hedge against future US disengagement and a way “to lighten the American burden”. Europe is “not reduced to the EU”

The eu cope army will just eat up all the treats and wont defeat anything

Threat 2) is to Europe’s ability to guarantee its future prosperity, from the twin shock of accelerating technology and China. Macron worries that Europe will fall behind fatally if it doesn’t today make the right massive investments, esp in clean tech and disruptive innovation

Oh noo being forced to use huawei what a terrible fate lol

Also the 3rd thing is nationalism but we all know they wont do shit about it

second panel edited by @[email protected]

long live the JDPON

to the Union of Automated Soviet Republics

seized from here

Seized from here