ping

Report a post. Somebody did that without logging in, presumably hoping that they would remain anonymous that way, unless I severely misread eclipse's post. But that apparently didn't work, and I'm speculating that it's because they made the report from the same IP that they normally log in with.

Banned because I remember the 22th of September. Those were the days, my friend...

To be honest, I was surprised to learn that one can even do that as a guest. But from the sound of it, the sneaky sneak didn't bother to use a VPN. No idea what the (perceived) naughtiness could've been, though, and I don't really care enough to go through the recent posts of this thread to find out.

He didn't quite manage 500 miles, but a young Johann Sebastian Bach walked (yes, walked) 465 kilometres from Arnstadt to Lübeck in order to hear the organist Dietrich Buxtehude play.

A small part in the French revolution was played by a Russian citizen (well, holder of a Russian passport) from Venezuela, who would later become the "Precursor" to the "Liberator" Simón Bolívar: Francisco de Miranda. Miranda was first member of the Spanish military, and through that part of the American independence war. Because he made a personal deal with an English/Jamaican trader, was accused of espionage and contraband trading. When his position became more dire, he deserted and went into exile, first in the United States, later in several European states, including Russia. There, Catherine the Great took a liking to him (most likely purely platonic, but you know how the rumour mill spins) and in order to help protect him from the Spanish inquisition, she granted him a Russian passport and instructed every Russian embassy in Europe to help Miranda, if needed. Miranda didn't stay in Russia, because he was already quite interested in seeking support for a possible Spanish American independence, and Russia wasn't in a position to provide. So Miranda left for England, where the Russian ambassador did help him escape the Spanish clutches by declaring him part of the Russian diplomatic corps. He later moved on to France, which was in full Revolutionary mode at this point, and at war with an Austian-Prussian alliance. Miranda fell in with the Girondan faction, and served under General Dumouriez. Unfortunately for him, Dumouriez first tried to blame military defeat on Miranda, and then turned traitor (and later denounciation or not, Miranda was still part of Dumouriez's inner circle), and the Girondan faction ended up being purged and ultimately guillotined by the Jacobins. Miranda himself was imprisoned, but miraculously not executed, until he was released in 1794. Apparently, he then took part in two monarchist plots, before returning to England, where he would start to plan how to liberate Venezuela from Spanish rule.

One last post about Haiti and the US: Every single baseball that was used in MLB play between 1977 and 1990 was produced in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

Another interesting tidbit about Haitian/US-American relations is that the US didn't recognise Haiti as an independent country until 58 years after its independence from France, and 37 years after France itself officially acknowledged it. The whole ordeal was honestly really frustrating and harmful for the new country. Initially, nobody recognised Haiti because they thought that the French would probably reclaim it any moment now, and they didn't want to step on their toes. Countries with a slaved-based economy also didn't want to give their own slave population any ideas by admitting that a state formed after a slave rebellion is, indeed, a legitimate state. Since the economy of the French colony, and then the early independent rulers, was based on the export of cash crops (sugar and coffee being the big ones, I believe), this was positively crippling for the country. To make matters worse, France only offered to recognise Haiti in exchange for reparations for property lost by French citizens in Saint-Domingue/Haiti (which, yes, included freed slaves). Jean-Pierre Boyer, ruler of Haiti at that time, accepted the deal, but this pushed Haiti into a debt spiral starting with a huge loan necessary to pay the first deposit for those reparations. Most western countries followed suit and recognised the Haitian government - but very pointedly, the US did not. It took a certain disruption of the political landscape to cause (or allow) Abe Lincolm to do so in 1862. history.state.gov, by the way, states that the US occupation of Haiti was promted by "intense political and economic disorder". Fuck off, it was promted by US bankers who were worried that Haiti wouldn't be able to pay its debt to them.

François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, one of the most infamous dictators, held a referendum in 1961, in which the Haitian population was to, ahem, "decide" if Duvalier's presidency would be prolongued until 1967, even though reelections were against the constitution. The result? 1'320'748 YES votes... and zero NO votes. The trick? Voters had to ask an election worker, a heavily armed election worker, for either the YES ballot or the NO ballot. The Kennedy administration in Washington was quite incensed about this, to the point where they ended economic assistance (although Duvalier misusing large parts of it probably was a big factor, too) and withdrew their ambassador from Haiti. There is a certain irony to this - Duvalier literally got the idea from the US forces who were occupying Haiti until less then 40 years earlier, who pulled basically the same stunt with US marines in place of Duvalier's thugs: The YES ballot for a US-enforced consititution is right there, but you have to ask the heavily armed man in front of you for permission to vote NO. However, Duvalier reconciled with the US after Kennedy was assassinated, in the way open to all fascist dictators during the cold war: By cracking down on (real and/or imaginary) communist movements in Haiti. Duvalier ruled the country until his death in 1971, with his 19 years old son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" as his successor. Earlier that year, "Papa Doc" had changed the Haitian constitution reducing the minimum age for a presidency from 40 to 20 years, evidently expecting to survive for another year or two, so "Baby Doc" had to be declared 21 years old by decree. Following in his father's footsteps, he was then elected with 2'391'916 votes to zero.

People like to read a lot into Eirika and Ephraim's interactions. Most likely helped by "little sister who is uncomfortably obsessed with her big brother" being a recurring trope in the series. (very mild spoilers for chapter 16) In any case, I think that people get way too excited over small gestures of affection between the wonder twins.

But is it still a Fire Emblem game without the incest?

To keep my habit of Binding Blade apologetics, I went with Seize, although I did give a second vote to Defeat Boss. I think these offer both map maker and player the greatest flexibility in how they plan their strategy. You can have the player be chased by overpowered enemies (e.g. the bridge map in FE3/12), you can offer rewards for moving towards the throne quickly (e.g. Raven and Lucius's recruitment map in BlaBla with a thief appearing at the north end of the map quite early), or you can have optional rewards that require the player to go out of their way and/or fight dangerous enemies to reach. And on a given map, a player can decide if they fight through the enemies head-on, or if they want to avoid certain enemies or reinforcement zones (Murdock's map in BinBla and Limstella's map in BlaBla are great examples of this). I will admit that Jahn's map overdoes this thing, though, but that's just not a very good map to begin with. Personally, I think that Rout is overall the weakest objective. It takes away some of that flexibility, since the player has to eventually engage and kill every enemy on the map. Plus, there's that annoyance when Healing AI takes over. The pegasi on Erik's map in BlaBla are an awful example of this, and while I think I've played less than half of Gaiden, enemies planting themselves on the recover tiles is juuuust grrrreat.

Oh, I'm just saying that it's an easy choice, not that I've made one. Those two things are very much fundamentally different, so it's easy to say "I like this one more", or "I think I'm currently in the mood for that one", even if there's no "correct" choice to make here. Different people will enjoy different things at different times and there's something very irritating about somebody saying that "no, what I like is actually better!!". I do advise everybody to brush their teeth after eating cookies, though.

YOU ARE TEARRING ME APART, KAGA

...you know what, I don't disagree with the sentence. It is an easy choice.

Now do Henning and Gel

Probably the longest footnote in history - I'd be rather surprised if it wasn't - was written by the English clergyman John Hodgson in the 19th century. It's about 170 pages long (I've seen 165 and 173). Hodgson was writing a history of Northumberland and, while doing field research on some long-ass stone wall, discovered a very severe mistake in long established history. It was common knowledge that this long-ass wall was built by Emperor Septimius Severus. Roman historians didn't care all that much about some wall, so they just assumed that Severus, who was campaigning in Britain a fair bit, was the builder (well, the guy ordering other guys to build it, which is practically the same, right?). This assumption had never been challenged and eventually made its way into official British history. Until Hodgson decided to actually take a look, finding evidence that the wall turns out to be 100 years older than everybody thought. But because he was writing a History of Northumberland, and not of the Romans in Britain, he decided to put his findings into the footnote to end all footnotes.

Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité! (Follow-up to this old post) Bit of an odd progression of the revolution - it spawned in SIdon, Lebanon, from there spread across Anatolia and Egypt, made a jump to London and Borneo and eventually the Lowlands and western Italy. At the end of the game (which is to say, after I spread the revolution to 10 additional countries as the achievement demands), France has gone through the storm on the Bastile (Sept 1731), Robespierre's Terreur, a royal head getting chopped off (May 1732) First Consul Bonaparte (Dez 1732), and finally his self-proclaimation as Emperor Napoléon... but the revolution never "officially" spread to Paris. The closest to the French heartland it got is Picardy. One has to feel a little bad for Empress Jeanne die Savoia, first female ruler of France (apart from a short queen regency somewhere in the 16th century), who only ruled for five-ish years before the revolution arrived. But that is the price to pay for a small jpeg now being coloured in my Steam account. As these things go in EU4, the last 80 years weren't too interesting. Once the Ottomans were beaten, there was no threat left - the Mughals (the dark green blob in central Asia) were the closest, with about one third of my troop count (and I believe 40% of my force limit), but I never had a real reason to antagonise them. So basically, those 80 years were spent painting the map a nice shade of blue. Now, where to play on the newest patch.....

"We just think that states should be allowed to have their own legislature!", they said. Fucking ghouls.

I'm surprised. Your shit takes ought to have come from somewhere.

Needs a cold shower.

(Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett: Good Omens) I'm not surprised that you're ""visualising"" imaginary acts of heresy. I, for one, just bake cookies. And no, I don't do kitchen work in the nude.

Wraith, you are not you when you're hungry. Have a cookie.

Banned because Wraith is probably gathering firewood as we speak type.