To Pokimane, pt 36

I'm saying this to you, but the only real reason I have to talk about it is 'for science', and nothing you have done in the past two months suggests you care about 'science' (meaning explanations of problems). I am just trusting that you do, when you are not doing anything to indicate it.

I was really going to just link to the Global Corruption Barometer as an update to my previous post, if it showed data on corruption for China and Islamic countries. But the charts that show the breakdown of perceptions for each country are too hard to find; maybe I'm looking the wrong report and it's in the Corruption Perceptions Index. Two of the ones I have open, 2009 and 2013, don't even mention China, and neither those nor 2017 include Iran.

Maybe I should try harder, and actually check the Corruption Perceptions Index. But I'm lazy.

The 2013 report, p10, lists Jordan and Vietnam in the group, '30~40% paid bribes in the last year'. (Taiwan is also in this category, as a proxy for all of China.) In the 2017 report, p8, Jordan (where Yara's family is from) is in the 'less than 5% paid bribes' group, while Vietnam is in the '50~75%' group. I think everyone would prefer for their country to have a low bribery rate, but it seems probable that the 2017 data is wrong for Jordan, and that Jordan is more similar to nearby Arab countries, as Jordan is not a big outlier in terms of GDP or religion.

I am interrupting this analysis to say, because my swap space usage has been creeping up the past few minutes and is now 90% full despite plenty of unused memory, that I would like to watch Is Gen Z Really That Dumb?, but two seconds in it literally says "science news" and has a screenshot of an article. I don't think I can interpret it as "not a news video". So I'm closing it without watching it.

Interesting and slightly shocking, similar to how Costa Rica was at the top of the Happy Planet Index for four years in a row despite a really high robbery rate: the 2017 report, p4, Thailand is at the top of countries that say their government is doing well against corruption, with 72% saying this. 5th place out of 119 countries is only at 54%. And yet, in the same report, p8, 40~50% in Thailand had paid a bribe in the past 12 months.

This could be bad data, like with Jordan and Vietnam. The 2009 report, p10 (labeled 8), puts Thailand in the '7~12% paid a bribe' group.

Notable result in 2009 report, Singapore. Chinese culture, but they also speak English (which is why my previous post had a bunch of bookmarks from Yahoo Singapore, which was previously Yahoo Asia). 2009 report, p34 (labeled 32), paid a bribe (one report notes that females are less likely to have paid bribes, but says this is solely because they interact less with institutions; this question says "your or your household" and I assume this phrasing is used with all the reports):

Hong Kong 7%

Japan 1%

Singapore 6%

Southern Korea 2%

The next page, "HoW WoUld yoU ASSESS yoUR CURREnT GovERnmEnT’S ACTIonS In THE fIGHT AGAInST CoRRUPTIon?" (changing this to lowercase in a text editor, with Ctrl-L, would be easy but this is funnier)

Ineffective Neither Effective

Hong Kong 12% 0% 88%

Japan 68% 21% 11%

Singapore 4% 0% 96%

Southern Korea 81% 3% 16%

 

It also has Thailand, and this data seems completely inconsistent with Thailand ranking at the top in the 2017 survey: here, only 28% in Thailand say goverment is effective, while many countries have a higher percentage.

Japanese people not having an opinion shows up here, compared to southern Korea. Similarly to how they are less likely to have an opinion on the BBC/Globescan country ratings polls (like 2012 and 2014 editions).

Countries with low bribery rates having sharply divergent views of success of anti-corruption: officials can be paid small amounts by ordinary people, but they can also be paid large amounts by companies. So low bribery rates is not proof of lack of corruption.

This has all been "interesting things from skimming a few parts of several reports with contradictory data". Also, the 2009 report does have on p30 (labeled 28) the breakdown by sector, though it doesn't separate out police and military as Gallup does in the US. (A great deal of trust confidence in the military, and while 50% having confidence the police may not seem like a lot, it's behind only military and small business, and way ahead of confidence in "The criminal justice system".)

Still: corruption of "Public officials/Civil Servants", which includes the police, is rated the same or lower than the average corruption score in Hong Kong, Singapore, and southern Korea, but higher than the average in Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Morocco.

These are the cultural conditions for revolution over the price of bread or the price of energy, even if the revolution leads to worse conditions as with Libya.

Anyway, basically the reason I'm writing about this is Russia. I think Russia is a country with a fundamentally individualistic moral system, that tries to have group-based and rule-based morality. (Rule-based is when saying bad things about the Communist party was illegal, and punishable by death, and then the rules suddenly switched at some point.)

So, even if the US also has individual-based morality, the US is honest about it. People are crazy about their guns in the US, and a bit less crazy about 'freedom of speech' or in general freedom of behavior, which can result in people exercising their freedom to insult or abuse other people who are trying to use their freedom of speech.

So it apparently can result (perhaps surprisingly, given reported bribery rates) in lower rates of theft in Russia, but maybe the 'dishonesty' of trying to force a different type of morality on people who do not really believe in it leads to high bribery rates.

Like, the reason I noted Singapore is that Singapore pays its leaders well. Quick search says,

As of early 2026, the Prime Minister of Singapore receives an annual salary package of approximately S$2.2 million (approx. US$1.6–1.7 million), making them the highest-paid political leader in the world. This total package includes a 13th-month bonus, Annual Variable Component (AVC), and a significant National Bonus based on performance.

Structure: The salary is set at twice that of an entry-level Minister (MR4 grade), which is S$1.1 million, bringing the total to S$2.2 million. 

This is the highest in the world, for official salary. (Of course many leaders are much richer, or gain a lot of wealth through corruption.) This is supposed to reduce corruption, and 96% of people in Singapore think it works.

So: if police officers were paid much, they might not take bribes. If a culture says "we can't pay police officers a lot because they are supposed to be public servants" (compare the Servant of the People TV series, set in Ukraine which is basically like Russia other than the language), but the police officers interact with a lot of people who earn more in the private sector, it isn't surprising if the police take bribes.

Overall, especially with the "bribes from common people vs bribes from big corporations" component, corruption is a matter of priorities. And like many problems, it can have low visibility when people don't talk about it; if someone has a 30% chance to their knowledge of a problem with other people they know, awareness quickly dies out, compared to a 90% chance. I recently watched all of [92k views, 26 Feb 2026]If This Dam Fails, It Pollutes Half of Europe. - YouTube. The creator blames it on corruption, and Romanian people did prevent the gold mining project from happening. But mining is a business, which earns money, and maybe — at least in the past 40 years, and until the mine stops earning money from copper and the toxic tailings remain behind the dam — Romanian people have benefited from it. But awareness of it is really low. Even the Romanian Wikipedia article for it is really short.

So when Greta learned of the global warming problem, she thought, "how can people ignore this big problem?" Sweden is listed in the 2017 Global Corruption Barometer report as a country where less than 5% paid a bribe in the last 12 months, much lower than the average. One might decide, as people in Thailand might possibly think based on conflicting data, that having to pay a bribe is not a big problem, as other countries like the US just have fees like the new visa integrity fee. Rather, this corruption is an indicator of other problems: people accept the bribes, and don't view it as important to talk about or spend a lot of their time on, because of other problems. Maybe crime like robberies; maybe problems in their personal life, like not being able to find a relationship. Or maybe problems which people have chosen to create only recently, like protests and fighting against the police in Iran.

Compare this post from March 2012, in which I compared the energy of a bullet to sunlight. (See: earthquakes, and wildfires: conducting controlled burns to stop a big fire later on.) (I don't remember anything else I said in that post, but I'm pretending that this isn't the case)

To Pokimane, pt 35

Something about war with Iran. I saw some videos, clicked on one of them, and then remembered that I'm not watching any news videos. So I know there were some explosions and Iran's supreme leader is dead.

I remember around 10 years ago when he posted a message on Chirp Club, basically trying to reach younger Muslims around the world. It was something that made me think he might know of this idea.

For some reason, maybe the fact that he probably didn't mind being killed, just like Soleimani probably didn't mind being killed, I thought of how the German general in charge of the Stalingrad offensive didn't commit suicide, but various Japanese officers did. Like the one who refused to help with the attempt to stop the surrender, General Anami.

Soleimani's Wikipedia article says, "CIA chief Mike Pompeo said he sent Soleimani and other Iranian leaders a letter holding them responsible for any attacks on U.S. interests by forces under their control."

I wonder who should be considered responsible for the US bombing and killing ~100 Syrian troops by accident? The US considered the top Iranian leaders to be responsible for any attacks, so was the US president responsible for the deaths of these Syrian troops?

There are also the protests in Iran that preceded this military conflict. Maybe the US killed Iran's supreme leader because he ordered the police to kill protesters.

What would people think if the Black Lives Matter protests had killed 200 police in the US?

So, why do people in the US view the police as more important than people in Iran do? I wonder, is it the moral viewpoint? US: individual moral focus, so people expect other people to be selfish and criminal. The police prevent selfish and criminal behavior (that "and" is necessary because laws can sometimes be hard to understand, like selling onion futures being illegal in the US).

Apparently, a society with a stronger focus on rules-based morality, like Iran, finds it easier to believe in the inherent goodness of people, or at least certain classes of people like 'people below a certain age'. If most people are 'good', the police are less necessary, and therefore a strong police presence is more likely to be seen as oppressive, not protective.

Test: attitudes towards police in China. I think that generally, security forces are viewed positively in China, despite dislike of chengguan. 2025's 9th most watched Chinese drama, "In the Name of Justice". (The list video I linked before was basically copying directly from this video from a few months earlier, even using the exact same view counts; a different approach was taken to describe some series, but for this series it's just copied.)

Inherently good, or inherently bad? Society ends up better if people don't think anyone is inherently bad. Chinese shows portray people acting bad, partly to give other characters something to fight against, but often they show why a character acts bad.

The Double: the character who r***d someone and caused injuries to her that resulted in her dying was treated badly by the previous magistrate, who is the female lead's father. He was treated badly because he was lazy, incompetent, or corrupt, but still, grudges are not the same as "inherently evil" (like the character in the Japanese novel Battle Royale who is 'evil' because of a brain defect or something). The female lead stabs him in the leg, but intends to bring him to justice, not kill him.

Till the End of the Moon: the entire story, and the main character, illustrates this attitude of 'not beyond saving', but I was thinking of another character: the son of a sect leader. The character is punished by his father by being instructed to kneel for a day or something. This helps to understand his later actions, which cause trouble. (English subtitles on Viki are better than YouTube, regarding dialogue alluding to how being close to the emperor is like being close to a tiger.)

The Legend of Anle: the son of the marquis who cheats on the exams and later commits serious crimes was basically incredibly spoiled. He never learned consequences for his actions because his parents always cover up for his mistakes. Another character, who betrays an important figure in the story, acts badly because he is treated badly by his father, who is the king of a different kingdom.

To Pokimane, pt 33+1

Maybe ten years ago, I saw a post on the mouse overpopulation study. It described the results, including the males who just spent their effort on self-care, who in the study were called "the beautiful ones". The post author said, "we are the beautiful ones."

I think this is a little dangerous to think, because in real life a lot of males who end up not in a relationship are viewed as less attractive.

I was thinking, the demographics of people who aren't in relationships. This isn't a new way of thinking; there were articles about 'sheng nu' on ChinaSMACK that I read in 2011 or 2012, and I have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_nu bookmarked in a folder mysteriously named 'totes profesh | 11 Apr 2015' that has 74 items with no apparent theme.

The general idea that top males match with average females, but top females refuse to match with average males.

But I think the perspective of 'unmatched people can be seen in a positive light' is not wrong. Basically, the whole 'love makes you evil' meme which people avoid thinking about, but which exerts a hidden influence. I had some thoughts about this a couple weeks ago, about a Japanese song I can't remember; either the lyrics, or the attitudes evidenced by the large number of covers of the song. Maybe it was the contradiction and the conflict between the Japanese songs I mentioned, with like genders implicitly blaming each other's actions, without necessarily implying ill intent. Something made me think that it was evidence of people basically looking for someone who could trick them into thinking that the 'love makes you evil' meme was wrong. I.e., the answer to "why is it so complicated". When I watched the Little Apple music video again a week ago, the moment when the female is talking and the male asks "what are you talking about".

The important point is that this all suggests that at some level, there could be a motivation for some people of "this isn't really what I want, but I hope it could lead to something that's better for the world". People are often scared to act alone, but are more willing to do something that other people do. So the "anti-feminist, misogynistic" Men Going Their Own Way movement is not a bunch of males each going their own individual way, but a collective of males going a certain way together. And when a female is attacked on social media for getting an advanced educational degree instead of having children, she is defended by other females (and called beautiful).

And if people think that them being in a relationship would be worse for the world, it's harder to convince them to go to more effort to be in one than if they didn't think this.

Somewhat ancillary (yes I had to look this word up), but I think it's also the case that people mistake the economic effect of someone remaining single. Honestly I was thinking in the context of something like, "what kind of mass behavior would lead to more people donating money to the temple associated with the Hot Q Girls"? (Linked other videos before.) And it's true that an individual is more likely to donate if they have more money, but if they're busy working, they wouldn't know that the dance group exists.

A lot of people just think, "the government taxes single people and gives it to people with families, so more single people is always good". They don't think about the effect on rent and other costs (the kind of thing that Gevlon talked about in https://greedygoblinblog.wordpress.com/my-utopia-free-market-no-worksale-taxes-full-employment-low-gini/). Like, one can expect a family to have higher costs than a single person, but the single person makes just as much money from working. So income taxes affect them equally (or nearly so, with the US having a small reduction in taxes for people with children, for example). Raising taxes to pay for welfare therefore hurts people with families just as much as it hurts single people.

It makes more sense to ask, "after taxes and welfare, do single people have more disposable income than people with families"? Their disposable income determines how willing they are to pay for high housing costs and other costs, like medical. And it's generally accepted that single people do, indeed, have more disposable income. So, even though they pay taxes, this is the argument for why single people should work less, even if they have no intention of using their freed-up time for anything that other people would care about, like attending matchmaking events.

I hope I said everything I had planned to say. I don't know how many people are aware of the mouse overpopulation study, and it seemed relevant to my previous post.

To Pokimane, pt 33

I like not having to think of titles. I don't like some numbers as much as other numbers, just like how I used to obsessive-compulsively pay attention to whether I stepped on sidewalk cracks or basically the ratio between steps and sidewalk intervals, and even a few days ago I accidentally brushed a flipflop against an ankle while walking and obsessive-compulsively deliberately brushed against the other ankle to provide a balanced sensation.

Symmetry. Also, my bottom teeth are slightly offset to one side from my top teeth.

(Test of too much information)

A bunch of videos. I only watched the first once, and half of the fourth one, about "Valentine's Singles Events":

WoW’s Success Set an Impossible Standard for MMOs - YouTube

WoW community hates how I play WoW - YouTube 

"I hope you get what you asked for and nothing you wanted" - YouTube

Men REFUSE To Attend Valentine's Singles Events - It Was 90% Women and Women Are FURIOUS - YouTube 

You care about too many things - YouTube

He's Done. Why This Man -& Many Men- Feel This Way & Why It's Time Women Truly Listen. #mgtow - YouTube 

Men Say “No” To Single Moms & Women Instantly LOSE IT | The Wall - YouTube 

Why Sharing Your Feelings Can Kill Your Relationship - YouTube 

Why Nobody Wants to Hear You Over Explain - YouTube 

Because you have talked about this topic before.

I included the WoW-related videos because the second one is about people disliking questing addons, based on the first minute or two of the transcript and the comments. He says that YouTube comments are very critical of this. Basically, I think people criticize the use of these because they want to help him — they wouldn't bother to spend the time commenting otherwise, just like there are millions of videos with no comments. (It's kind of crazy how low the comment ratio is for many videos, compared to the number of likes.)

And I think commenters on the other videos also want to help other people, in this case other viewers who are interested in the topic of the video. That makes their comments useful.

What I got from the comments of the fourth video, the one I've watched halfway, was a little different from what was actually in the video: the person who said that males expected most attendees to be males, and used that in their explanations for not going. People in the comments don't talk about this. There are comments like these:

Events like that were humiliating enough for me as a young man (when I was stupid enough to try them) but, as an old(er) guy? - not a chance on God's green earth.

 

As soon as a woman pegs you as a man looking for a woman, you're screwed anyways. It's like looking for a job when you don't already have one. It's assumed that you are undesirable. They think "why doesn't he know any women who want to date him already?" And if you get anywhere with her she will see you as a stepping stone guy who none of the other girls wanted.

I do think the unbalanced attendee gender ratio is a problem, if it's common. (Honestly the only knowledge I had about these events before was a few movies like Hitch (2005), which shows a matchmaking event with a balanced gender ratio.)

But it seems like for a lot of people, "being in a relationship" is just not attractive enough as an option, and so they don't even try. Note that this is different from the other reason people often use to explain why they're not in a relationship, that it's too expensive. People making a choice that makes them more happy is not as big of a problem as people choosing something that makes them less happy due to a lack of information. Ultimately, I would rate this problem, of the events being 90% females, as something that can be put off until humans are on a sustainable path regarding maintaining civilization.

(I am aware of the possible irony of linking videos about games, many of which have a mostly male playerbase, along with videos about males not being interested in forming relationships. At least I can say that I haven't played World of Warcraft or any other MMO in over 15 years.)

So, that's why I'm not treating this as a problem by trying to change it, just writing to you about it. I don't like to acknowledge gender differences as it can lead to conflict, but I think it is necessary to understand it. Like this comment:

Men going to a single event is like a cow taking itself to market.

Why do people only say this applies to the males? It would seem that it's because people think that females benefit from being in a relationship more than males benefit.

I can only make observations like this, based off of what other people say, since I have essentially zero experience myself.

Well, this comment made me think of the song you mentioned on stream, like 'stand by your man' or something:

A man needs to know his woman is loyal. I’m not talking about cheating. It’s the knowledge that she supports him. Has his back. Lose his trust, lose him forever.

By carelessly pasting YouTube comments without using Shift, I caused this post to have this at the end in the code and I can't get rid of it:

<font class="yt-core-attributed-string yt-core-attributed-string--white-space-pre-wrap" data-keep-original-tag="false" data-original-attrs="{&quot;role&quot;:&quot;text&quot;}" dir="auto"></font>

Unnecessary text! Bad!

Summary: there is a problem and I am trying to do nothing about it. Does this make me a bad person?

I would like to say things about the first video, the only one I watched, but for unexplained reasons I am still trying to say nothing to anyone else (with moderate success) and I don't think you care, and so I will just forget whatever I wanted to say. Raging cow boss.

To Pokimane, pt 32

So there I was, trying to watch a simple video about how Huns are Huns, even on Black Forest, where they have a reputation for being a weaker civilization. In a private browsing window where the only other video I had watched was the end of another Rage Forest game. And what did YouTube decide I wanted to watch, and recommend to me? This.

Yesterday I had this thought,

similarity of YouTube algorithm optimization to planned obsolescence or whatever, products made at low quality so they need to be replaced. A video that changes your life, no need to watch more videos: channel dies.

Like with the company that made rice cookers that were too good so they went out of business.

The episode from Person of Interest, and the dialogue, made me think about that line from Dark Lord of Derkholm (p76):

"It's no fun to have to think of yourself as a murderer. . . . A bit like being mad, except that you're sane, I've always thought. So what stopped you?" He was shocked to hear himself sounding truly regretful as he asked this question.

I'm not completely blameless. If someone says, "killing people is always wrong and murderers are bad", I point to the example of An Jung-geun (안중근) who killed Japanese politician Itou Hirobumi.

About this video, which I did not watch, naturally: people are told when they are young that killing people is wrong. The US is 69% Christian (notwithstanding a video that, naturally, I didn't watch, with the title "What's the Difference Between Christians & Protestants?"), with other religions being only 4%, so it's fair to say that basically everyone in the US has heard of the ten commandments. One of which is popularly translated as, "Thou shalt not kill."

It seems like there are lot of people who think that this commandment is a lie for children.

Along with the comments of that video, many of which praise people who killed others 'for a cause', I also found Assassination of Empress Myeongseong while looking for the name of the Korean person I mentioned above. "The defendants were acquitted of all charges, despite the court acknowledging that the defendants had conspired to commit murder." And the Ten Commandments article links in its lead to the Galician peasant uprising of 1846, in which "peasants killed about 1,000 nobles" but otherwise is so non-notable that I'm not even bothering to understand its relevance to religion. I think The Centurion's Empire by Sean McMullen had a good depiction of violence against nobles at a particular moment in history; a dramaticized account that, by describing the manner of death of fictional persons in more detail than we can know of any real person who died so long ago, makes those people more than a statistic.

Coincidentally, the "lie for children" article mentions Terry Pratchett. I never read The Science of Discworld because it wasn't available at my library. Another thing I thought of on this topic was the ending of Pratchett's novel, Night Watch.

But I don't want to say exactly why I thought of it, because of spoilers. Also, the start of the book was very unrealistic: flowers remind the main character what day it was, and he says that he always forgets every year, but the flowers would have been there the previous day as well. The audience doesn't experience that previous day. But it happened. (And I'm sure that there were many elements of the book that I didn't appreciate, because I never read Les Misérables.)

Wikipedia says about not killing that "Eliezer Segal observes that the Septuagint uses the term harag, and that Augustine of Hippo recognized that this did not extend to wars or capital punishment." I'm pretty sure that, with all the wars described in what's known in Christianity as the Old Testament, that whoever recorded this commandment did not think it was a ban on wars. But I do think that they did not mean, "it's bad to kill someone unless they're racist".

To summarize, a lot of people think that there are hidden rules for behavior, that even justify killing other people. What exactly these hidden rules are is not known, because they are hidden. And people justify attitudes that rely on these hidden rules, instead of thinking that this is insane and they should fix the problems that result in hidden rules for morality. (I already linked the scene from Gegon's Clash of the Ovski that used a relevant song, I won't link it again.)

Also, just as an example of a character who killed other people: the discussion at the end of A Dream Within a Dream, Ep06.

To Pokimane, pt 31

It seems likely that Greta will post something on Instagram before Autumn's birthday. Acting on the dubious assumption that it won't cause harm if information is revealed: it seems I am procrastinating by waiting until Greta posts something on Instagram, before I watch Pey's videos and check your Twitch and YouTube accounts for what I assume will be the final time.

Topic: Hera vs 7 DOTA Players Showmatch at 18gmt

I have watched the first two hours. The way that Hera uses "unc" to refer to older males, just like your friend used it to refer to himself upon reaching 30 years of age. I think this is an example of a good prejudice. People don't like to be seen as old, and the use of "unc" forces people to acknowledge their age and strive to have a life where they will not be embarrassed to be called "unc" when it happens.

Notably, someone who acknowledges their age will probably put more focus on having children. Muslims have higher fertility than the average; both Hera (who was fasting during these games, due to Ramadan) and your friend are Muslim, and I'm guessing the use of "unc" is common for English-speaking Muslims as I have not heard other streamers use the term. I think its use might be both a cause, and an effect, of higher fertility: an effect because if everyone has large families, then many people will have uncles.

Despite the use of "uncle" and "aunt" also being somewhat common in Korea and China to refer to unrelated older people, I think it's a little different. People still usually don't like to be reminded of their age, as seen with prank videos where younger females are called auntie or younger males are called uncle. Currently, China and southern Korea have much lower fertility rates (1.0 and 0.72) than countries like Saudi Arabia (2.28), Iran (1.5), Morocco (2.23), or Lebanon (2.24, population 65% Muslim). So people have more actual uncles and aunts, and therefore more people with actual nephews or nieces. An actual nephew or niece cannot cause offense by calling their aunt or uncle by that title, so it's more acceptable on the Internet or in conversation to refer to a male as "unc" based solely on his age. There is a higher probability that a niece or nephew of that male already does this, compared to China or Korea.

About the actual game and gameplay. I feel like when I linked a gameplay video (featuring Gabi) a few days ago, and you posted an unrelated TikTok video, it indicated a lack of interest in the game. So why do people play games at all? Etc.

"A game should be fun for the first hour that you play it." Why would people ever disagree with this statement? (Edit: "because a new player is bad and should be unhappy about being bad at the game".) After Hera made a video a few days ago about a "new overpowered strategy that has no counter", I looked up one of his opponents who quit about four minutes into the game (~140 seconds of real time, since game runs at 1.7x). That player and basically everyone they played against had thousands of games played, at about 1800 rating. (I also saw that the website shows campaign progress for players, and the few players I checked had done almost none of the campaigns despite thousands of multiplayer games, so it would be interesting to investigate more about this. And I found one player who had quit about five games in a row a minute in, apparently in order to lose rating and be matched against easier opponents.)

Someone with thousands of games played is obviously not really in the learning phase. They can name every standard technology, building, and unit in the game. There is, in other words, a high probability that they have forgotten what it was like to learn to play, and they might not have any interest in changes which are designed to help people to have fun "during the first hour that they play the game, after installing it".

Before this showmatch, there were some jokes that Hera might be playing against some people who had literally just installed the game. One of the original players decided not to play, and he might have been in that category of "literally hasn't played at all", but it seemed that, to Hera's surprise given that most of his opponents hadn't been practicing in the preceding weeks, they were all well past the initial stage of learning game mechanics and units.

So, spoilers, although a poll in chat had a minority of people saying that Hera would win the first game, he lost and it wasn't close.

Relevance to my suggestions:

Free-for-all placement matches, where it doesn't matter as much whether you're spending a lot of time reading descriptions or tooltips, would make the first hour of play more fun.

Just controlling a few units would be a lot more interesting to someone who is participating in a match like this and playing AoE2 for the very first time (and for new viewers), compared to controlling an empire. Like, it could be 1v3 for the number of empires, but the larger team could have an extra four players who each only control a few units. Or the game could allow for even more players, like up to 12, if they share player numbers. So 11 players sharing three empires, or one empire with three players and two with four players. The starting number of units and town centers would be more similar than in a 1v7, but the larger team would still have an advantage in the number of people pressing buttons.

Then, basically, instead of the new player being stuck in Feudal age making 10 spearmen against a flood of 40 fully-upgraded paladins, they could control units that are equally as strong as what their opponent is making, just a few of them at a time. Since I recently watched The Fellowship of the Ring, I just think of that. Something that's so old that it was from before YouTube, so it was made as a gif animated image:

Lord of the Rings in World of Warcraft. An animated GIF.

There was that post from Roger Ebert, "Video games can never be art." The original had thousands of comments when I also commented on it in 2011; these comments might be visible on the Internet Archive. I can't remember what my comment said anymore, but the whole view of 'art' being 'the <appropriate verb> of new goals'. If you look at AoE2, you might think that the goal is just to win. But what if you are limited to controlling specific units, with no easy way to switch to other units? Then you can easily end up acquiring the goal, "keep these units alive", which can conflict with the goal of winning the game. Like, one of my suggestions is that you wouldn't be able to execute the units. Executing units that are about to be converted by an enemy monk is common, so not being able to do this is a disadvantage (while also being a way to prevent easily switching the units that one controls).

So it can allow people, both players and viewers, to think about the game in a different way. Basically, roleplaying the units they control, which starts with thinking about what someone in a certain situation would do, and 'staying alive' is a goal that almost everyone who is still alive has.

From a competitive standpoint, focusing on a few units also allows players to see possibilities that they currently do not see. Simplified, a lot of this is "use walls to prevent units from being killed by other units".

But why care about Age of Empires II specifically, whether it's controlling an entire empire or just a few units? Well, I'm just saying, again, that games that focus on guns are boring. (AoE2 has some units with guns, but most of the time during gameplay they aren't available, and the player has zero influence on whether a gun that is fired hits its target, no aiming.) When I watched ExtraEmily play Valorant during the streamer tournament, there was a moment when she started laughing incredibly hard, to the point that she could no longer play, when she saw that Esfand had been given the same instructions that she had — to stay in one place and shoot anyone who came near. Despite that she was completely new to the game and would probably never play it again after the tournament, she found someone who was apparently just as new, and just as bad at the game.

Some games are mainly decorative. To players who like these games, a main attraction is probably that you can't lose. To players who dislike them, not being able to lose is probably a negative point. In "Why economists are wrong", I intended to write about how "confidence in one's actions is essential for spiritual and psychological health, requires both freedom of choice and a way to measure progress." A game in which one cannot lose does not provide any feedback about how well one can solve problems, or whether one's ability to do so has deteriorated.

Hera's gameplay errors:

Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

The Art of War, I.26. Villagers attacking military units: a villager kills a militia in 14 hits, or 28 sec. Militia costs 70 resources, which takes ~210 villager-seconds to gather. If seven players each devote seven villager to gathering the resources for militia, they will each train one militia every 30 sec (training time is 21 sec). If those militia stand passively without attacking, then Hera could kill those seven militia using seven villagers in 28 sec.

It is, in other words, barely effective to attack passive militia when 1v7. The math is similar or even worse with other units. The game featured Roman men-at-arms, who if they had armor upgrade, were taking just 2 damage per arrow from archers, so they would die in 46 sec. (And also obviously worse if each militia kills 0.3 or even 0.1 villagers.)

Basically, despite all the 1v3 and 1v4 games that Hera has played, he was still doing things that 'win' in 1v1 games, but not in 1v7 games. He needed to avoid taking damage until he had better units, or more units.

It wasn't just that his opponents played well, because he remarked after the fight on the woodline where he lost two villagers to militia that he had made the right decision to fight there. He made an incorrect strategic choice — to not wall when he saw early pressure — and did not realize it, due to his lack of calculations.

(For the record, I guessed that Hera would win the first game)

To Pokimane, pt 30

Based on your latest TikTok video, I am no longer checking your accounts. I will still check your Twitch and YouTube accounts one more time, because it's possible that some activity there would change what a reasonable person would think, but I think that either you don't read this (I actually don't think this is likely, but I've been wrong before), or you're fine with a reasonable person thinking you don't read it.

I don't think there's anything that I try to make a reasonable person of average intelligence think, that isn't true. For example: on the post about the first petition, when I said that problems are due to our assumptions and prejudices. My oldest brother apparently thought that I was saying that prejudices and assumptions are bad. There were some comments or discussions that I don't really remember, but I think he thought I wanted to deny that people with different skin colors in the US get different test scores. I remember looking up whether the 'racial' gap in test scores was smaller in the UK than in the US, to support my belief that environmental factors (both physical, and social like the "controversial" Pygmalion effect) play a significant role in the gap observed in the US.

It wasn't until the car ride in which I left the Seattle area that I think my brother understood my views. We travelled with a younger cousin, who mentioned a play in which a person from a cultural minority is — perhaps unfairly — accused of a crime and either lynched or executed, and my lack of unreserved criticism of prejudices led to my brother remarking that I had a like complex or nuanced view.

For example: the question of whether females would prefer to encounter a bear, or a human male stranger, in the woods. Is it misandry, or in general a prejudice which deserves criticism, if a female says she would prefer to encounter the bear?

The fact is that people make decisions based on limited information. A recent video:

[71m views, 2.3m likes, 8.1k com, 18 Feb 2026]GIRL Got STRANDED On The Bridge… - YouTube 

A male might have been more reluctant to help the female stranger, and she might have been more reluctant to accept help from a male. Scene from a TV series I know nothing about, other than knowing this scene:

Black-ish Little Girl in Elevator Scene

Of course, it's these same prejudices that sometimes cause people to fall victim to scams, when someone who seems trustworthy turns out to be dishonest. (Like in the Black Mirror episode, Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, or the drama Ryuusei no Kizuna, or many of the surprises in the drama Liar Game, or in Squid Game.)

The point is, I wasn't trying to make people think that prejudices were bad. I said that people's assumptions and prejudices caused problems; it wasn't my intention, or my fault, if people did not realize they had prejudices about prejudices.

Anyway, I was just going to say some things about giving stuff away. Suppose you had a normal job, but also streamed and made videos, and the amount of money you made from videos was less than the value of the gifts that you gave away to people.

The video from your birthday party last year was very popular. I didn't and couldn't look at the comments, but I assume they were very positive. I assume your friends appreciated the gifts and that people on TikTok thought they were great gifts and it was a nice thing for you to do.

In your previous TikTok video, you were giving away a purse, to someone in the comments. Who comments on TikTok videos? People with lots of time, who might be poor, but almost certainly have a smartphone. They also know English, which in many poor countries is a big help, due to jobs that require it.

There was a comment on the 'Luxury Beliefs' video that I forgot to include in the previous post:

"Luxury" is right. I work with unemployed people, people with psychological and addiction issues, et c. None of them are interested in DEI; they're too busy trying to survive. Equally, the DEI activists at the local university never come to get their hands dirty helping us.

From Why economists are wrong, which I probably linked to you before, I pointed out that "charities are not in the business of giving people jobs". In other words, you are helping people who do not really need help. You are giving happiness to people who already have a lot of happiness. Perhaps you think that this is all that you can do, as you are not Samsung with $200 billion in revenue per year (it claims $200 million per year in corporate social responsibility spending, like charity).

It's hard for me to criticize people's goals (as opposed to pointing out mistakes in achieving a goal, like in gameplay). Ok, that quote:

>Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

The original proverb is "Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, teach him to fish and he can eat for the rest of his life."

Disappointly, not everyone finds Pratchett to be funny. My oldest brother is one of these. Why is this funny? The ocean is running out of fish. "gaza fish scarcity":

In January, Israel declared Gaza's waters a “no-go zone”, banning fishing, swimming, and any access to the sea. The result has been devastating: Gaza has lost 94 percent of its catch, cutting off one of its last remaining sources of food.
Nov 6, 2025
For Gaza's fishermen, the sea is their last lifeline after Israel's war
www.aljazeera.com › News › Israel-Palestine conflict

(Not actually what I was thinking of, which was a comment by a fisherman from Gaza saying that boats had to go further and further out to find fish.)

They know how to fish, and yet they are hungry. The original saying is wrong! If they were just given fish, they would not be hungry.

Quotes often get corrupted. If you forget that the original saying was about fish, and substitute in "fire", how does the second part go? If someone knows how to make fire, they'll be warm for the rest of their life? That only makes sense if they stay close to fires, and you can't stay close to a fire while you're out gathering wood for more fires. If you're going to modify a saying you can't remember in order to complete it, it makes sense to use words that make what you say true.

I've no idea what the original context of this quote is, who said it and whether it had a significant meaning in that context. But the fact is, people do not go out of their way to care about how long the lives are of strangers across the world, especially male strangers. I was reading the comments on a video (that I didn't watch) about the performance of the M1 Abrams tank in the Ukraine conflict, and while people argued about that point, no one disputed that thousands of tanks have been destroyed there, with thousands of dead crewmembers.

People dying is sad. Is people knowing, but not really caring, that people are dying sad? Is it bad to think that it's a little funny that people would not care about someone dying (as with the quote from Pratchett's Jingo)? Things are not supposed to be funny if they are too important; is it important that people don't care about the Ukraine conflict? Do YOU care about it?

I don't think you're worse than other people, but I don't think that you choosing to use some of your money to buy gifts for other people, or getting people to meet up in order to be happy, makes you better than other people either.

A few posts back, I mentioned the person (maybe female) whom I know as Sam Sam. I remember that this person said, maybe in the context of Christmas, that they didn't really put much importance on the giving of gifts, or do much of it themselves.

Ellum said, maybe in the screenshots of his conversations with Cara, that he was very grateful for the gifts she gave him and the money she spent on him. There was a quote I thought about earlier in this post, something about unwanted gifts not resulting in gratitude. I know I used it to comment on the 'gift' of me linking to this idea, in 2011 or 2012. I think that everyone you give gifts to is appreciative, partly because of the self-selection like commenting on TikTok videos. But some people would just be ungrateful, and moreover would not care if their lack of gratitude stops someone from giving a gift, because they don't want gifts.

In the drama The Prisoner of Beauty: the wedding gifts, including the ferret. In Hogfather: the old male who doesn't want the food from the king. In Hana Yori Dango: the female lead's reaction to being given clothing and jewelry worth $1 million.