Yeah, I think I grabbed it for 10$ or something.

The Witcher 1 was honestly pretty mid, I agree with your criticisms. It coasted on an open world, a 3-style fighting system, and the appeal of being a Fantasy Detective™.

The Witcher 3 was genuinely great though, definite recommend.

A few artists noted here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUnr1yJawok&t=1s

Lock and Load was one of my favorite shows growing up

Istanbul is a long way from where ISIS operated. It still exists.

By the 19th century, the Turks were consistently calling it Istanbul, though ‘Constantinople’ was still in use outside of the Ottoman Empire.

Unfortunately, a quick search didn’t turn up much more information than their names.

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/world-war-2-senior-sergeants-v-mityoshina-and-n-zalko-news-photo/170986173

Exactly! Terrible time to go thirsty!

The US and France are about 80% responsible for Haiti’s modern situation; not to say they’d have necessarily been a developed country but they wouldn’t be this bad.

I guess this is really where we come into conflict. I’m in agreement with everything else, but this ends up as “The broken fingers and the .50 cal through my heart are about 80% responsible for my death.”

The US is a piece of the puzzle, but not really a fundamental one. The situation’s not like Cuba.

In any case, we are certainly in agreement that Haiti was dealt a bad hand from the start, and the entire ‘system’ of colonial international relations in the 19th century bore its full weight against them, with France in particular being vindictive towards its former colony; and the entire post-WW1 system being ‘designed’ (for lack of a better word; I dislike the implication that larger-scope intentions were involved in its creation instead of an ad hoc mess) to privilege importers of raw resources, rather than exporters. And that US exploitation didn’t help Haiti’s situation in the least. A vulture picking at a man not-yet-dead.

Yeah, Haiti was swimming against the current from the start. There are a large number of other factors, most of them bad. And most of them related to its origins as a slave plantation and its unsteady road to independence.

My primary point is just that Haiti minus US involvement would be unlikely to fundamentally look much different than Haiti plus US involvement. We (the US) are responsible for a good deal of suffering in Haiti’s history, but the underlying problems are much more integral.

The debt was imposed some 30 years after the Haitian Revolution, if memory serves. Taking on the (punitive and ridiculous) debt was the condition for France recognizing Haiti’s independence, though it had been de facto independent for a generation.

/s when the point is what’s important

no /s when the joke is what’s important

Nice. Today I learned a new term.

That would be much more compelling, except for the fact that Haiti was poor and unstable even before France imposed the debt, and that subsequent regimes, including US-friendly and US-hostile, did nothing to improve the situation. Haiti’s issues are far more fundamental than “The US reduced and redirected investment in the Haitian economy while extracting debts owed to US investors back in the 1910s-1940s”.

Obviously, this is ignoring the moral issue of the occupation of Haiti (which is, of course, an atrocity), as the discussion is currently centered around responsibility for modern Haitian poverty and instability.

My point was not that Haiti’s situation is the exclusive fault of the United States, but rather that the US does at least have some responsibility for how it has turned out.

Some responsibility is undeniable, but I think saying Haiti’s poverty is ‘largely though not entirely a result of the actions of the US’ is vastly overstating the role of the US in this particular scenario. I don’t think “The US refuses to intervene to buoy the junk debts acquired by US banks in the 1910s-40s” fundamentally changes the trajectory of Haiti’s history.

So yes, America has been the main cause of geopolitical conflict in the modern era.

Lord.

We generally regard increasing chaos on the international scene as undesirable in a post-Cold War world.

I’d like some niche communities to be more active, and realistically speaking that’s only going to happen with a bigger userbase.

Removed. I don’t disagree with the general hostility, but even ‘jokingly’ advocating violence is iffy ground. Please keep that in mind.

Words have trouble expressing how incorrect this is. An excess death rate of 1% of the total population is fucking massive and incredibly disruptive, even if it was just “1% of the population chose to voluntarily go to the local suicide booth after extensive therapy and saying goodbye to their families” rather than “1% of the population has been murdered under the rubble of their own homes by an occupying power”