Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 (which make up Volume 1) is repeatedly mentioned to be special and fundamental to the rest of the book series.

Well maybe if you started on book 1 chapter 1, you’d know how to read these books.

Why didn’t you start with the fundamentals book Volume 1?

You just jumped directly into complex combinatorics and then complained that the material was too difficult.

Oh I get it.

They’re all cousins. /Trolololol

Remember Sailor Moon Dub anyone?

1. Anti-federalism – Deep rooted distrust of the Federal Government has been around since the dawn of the USA, though its often been part of the minority party.

2. Know Nothing / Native American Party – 1850s era movement. Protectionist, isolationist, nativist. Originally they popped up as anti-Irish and anti-Catholic, but overall the concept is that immigrants suck. The modern concept is: “I know nothing”, about the movement. The overall idea is that even in the 1800s, it was bad to look like a racist bigot, so you’d keep your support for these causes secret. Everyone in the party knows that “the Know Nothings are larger than everyone expects”, but no one really knows how big the movement is. And that’s the point.

3. America First – 1930s saw the rise of Fascism vs Communism in Europe with the dawn of the Spanish civil war. The “America First” movement focused on isolationism and even pro-German / Nazi slant mixed with religious fervor. This was pushed by tech-gurus of the time: Charles Lindberg (airplane entrepreneur, first Trans-atlantic flight, etc. etc.), and the Christian Front. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden).

4. NAFTA – 1990s free-trade by Bill Clinton opened up Mexico and Canada as incredible trading partners. However, local industry / local steel lost out as companies started to shop in Mexico for material. As Bill Clinton was a huge pusher of NAFTA, the anti-NAFTA political group consolidated under Republicans. This is likely where the bulk of blue-collar workers is coming from, especially because Trump started adding Tariffs / anti-globalism concepts back to the forefront of American Politics.

I’ve begun to pay for Kagi.com

I wouldn’t say that it “blows my mind” or anything, but simply that it seems to work as expected (which is more than what I can say for Google). There’s also a “Fediverse” button on Kagi.com, so it can search lemmy.world (and more??).

Mobile games just make more money now than console games. It only makes sense to aim for casual gamers on the Apple Arcade or Android Play store.

It’s a problem in that it somewhat alienates the hardcore console players. But the console market is shrinking. That’s true for all fanbases, not just PuyoPuyo.

The only stuff that gets money in the console market are super mega AAA games that reach millions, like FFVII remake. But these mega-games cost so much that there’s no risk or creativity anymore. (I like PuyoPuyo Tetris’s style, it was a risk and a bit different. We need game makers to take risks like that)

That’s a lot of ranting.

I get it. PuyoPuyo main story is necessary for casuals to get introduced to the game. Chaining 10+ long while harassing is a skill that took me a literal decade to reach, and there are far stronger players than me at the game.

But PuyoPuyo Tetris was that big casual story driven game that truly did bring a lot of players into the scene. Myself included. So yeah, I wouldn’t be a serious PuyoPuyo without that.

PuyoPuyo Champions/eSports is pretty good for competitive players. We got Fever and Tsu mode, the main modes that people care about.

There are also more casual mobile games like that Apple Arcade one brought up. The real issue is that modern video games make money from Apple and Android stores, not really the consoles anymore.

It gets worse.

Real life USB-chips from Silicon Labs (a reasonably popular chip maker) use this “Bee” pun for all of their marketing. BusyBee, Sleepy Bee, Universal Bee, so many chips named after Bees…

Controllers wear out with every click. Buttons and sticks, they all have a limited number of cycles. Like 100,000 cycles, but if you play a lot of video games, that adds up over the years.

Super Smash Bro Melee players regularly replace Gamecube controllers for this reason.

Recent changes in tax laws and reporting, and how IT workers get taxed.

In particular, whether or not information technology counts as R&D expenses or as CapEx, which has tax implications.

Microsoft just fired like 1100 employees from the Blizzard/Activision section. Google just laid off a few weeks ago. Amazon just laid off a bunch of Twitch workers a few weeks ago.

We’re still in the middle of a FAANG downturn. Its even worse than last year. Honestly, getting an IT job in these conditions will be hell. But if that’s your skillset, there’s not much to do but continue to send out resumes, maybe send your resume to a resume workshop / people willing to improve it with you.

I’ll agree with the exercise comments too. Its important from a psychological perspective. It may not feel like you’re doing much, but… you need it in all cases. When you’re feeling down like this, you can often forget to work on the basics (aka: eating healthy, working out, hygiene, and other health).

IT is in a relative downturn right now. It’s hard to get a job when most companies are firing their IT teams.

At this point, the name of the game is to keep sending resumes, so that when the general economics swing back, you’d be first in line for a job. But this isn’t the time to be blaming someone’s resume writing / interviewing skills.

EDIT: If there’s something to be done about the resume, then the real way to help with that is to read the guy’s resume and talk them through it through private email. Again, these are things not meant for public discussion on a public Lemmy. In theory, I could see that you have a point that maybe the dude’s resume needs some work. But “working on a resume” isn’t something that we can realistically do unless we start swapping emails / finding a discussion through more private channels.

You haven’t lost it all, and I know some people who are in worse positions than you. Maybe it’s bad to compare though because when you compare yourself to… Well other or your past self, it’s not really a good thing or a path to positivity.

I recognize that the broad economy for IT has degenerated in the past year, and as a fellow technology professional it worries me too about this situation. I don’t think people would consider ‘just’ 6 months outside of work in a tech downturn to be too much of a black mark on the resume. I’ve certainly have seen worse.

Support, both financial government support, and family support, are needed in these situations to help you out. In my example for people I know, living in with family/friends is a big $$$ saver and can provide the runway you need to fly again. EDIT: In this case, the family environment for this individual was toxic, so his healing didn’t really help until we (his friends) took him into a spare bedroom / etc. etc. Even a loving family could be toxic and unhelpful to growth.

When you combine this toxic family + PTSD (two tours to Iraq 2003 war), this healing period realistically takes years. But as I said before, I dont think you are in that bad of a situation so I’d think you’d get better faster than my friend did. But even after multiple years, he leans on me and my family for a degree of support.

I don’t think internet help is very good or useful. But hopefully you can find someone in your social group who can offer you the support you need right now. Dont feel ashamed, we all need a pickup every now and then. Don’t try to do everything yourself. If no one in your social group can offer long-term support and help, that’s another unlucky turn and I’d compare you to one of my uncles who lived through his 30s / 40s in a similar boat as yours but had to pull himself out of it by himself (or at least, grandma wasn’t very supportive and was probably counterproductive to his healing). There’s just too many unknowns to fully understand your situation over the internet, so I really doubt my ability to help you over the internet.

So disappointing Glover hasn’t actually been Prowler yet

Ummmm… spoilers but… Glover has been Prowler. (Not your Prowler though).

No. In the world of business, there’s an acknowledgement that its sometimes best for a project to NOT get done, rather than being the bagholder (ie: the one stuck doing the hard unappreciated work that no one else wants to do).

Its a common occurrence. “This would be great if someone did X job”, but it doesn’t mean YOU should do it, especially if you are working for a team or other group. If I am the team-lead of 100 programmers, its my job to make sure that we have 100 (or more) jobs available so that everyone remains employed. Getting us stuck doing difficult, long, unappreciated work is the fastest way that we all get fired.

Its better to do things 'the hard way", that’s selfishly (for us 100 people) beneficial, rather than doing things to the benefit of greater society. And programming is actually full of this situation.

Now yes, this leads to the whole world depending upon the heroic efforts of 2x open source developers who have been nearly unpaid for the past two decades to develop OpenSSL or whatever, but… that’s how it works sometimes. When you’re a team lead in charge of keeping a group of 100 (or 1000) healthy and full of work to do, you can’t just be doing things “for the benefit of overall society”, people are literally relying upon you to be cutthroat on behalf of them and get benefits to your own team.

Now what you’re supposed to do, is make a clear and convincing case to your superiors: the people in control of departments of 1000 or 10,000 people. You point out that “Hey, we’re fighting 100 vs 100 down here. But if you give us the money in XYZ ways, then we can better cooperate as a group”, then its now the responsibility of your boss to make sure that the job gets done.

If whatever you’re doing is to the benefit of multiple companies (ex: OpenGL is to the benefit of AMD/Intel/NVidia), you are supposed to split and create a new non-profit organization with split-control (different board members from AMD, Intel, and NVidia all sitting on the board) that develops the standard that benefits all three. Then, you get that organization to hire / develop the OpenGL or Vulkan work that everyone benefits from.

But if you’re say, an AMD developer… its a bad idea to just develop OpenGL by yourself (and let Intel / NVidia profit off of AMD’s hard work). There’s give and take here, and your competitors are also cutthroat. The Khronos Group exists purely as a political device to help these companies work together more closely, and that’s the only way that long-term sustainability between rival groups can really work together.

14th century

16th century and it makes a big difference.

16th century means you are fighting guns on the battlefield, though halberds were still used cause the guns were very slow.

But a bullet will pass through you if you were unarmored. If you had armor, the armor catches the bullet and then stabs you, so now you can’t even remove the armor anymore. So it’s worse… The bullet AND armor is embedded inside you.

but how do you explain the exposed leg, that’s terrible protection.

I dunno. Go ask the Landsknechts

I think we look back at history and realize these mercenaries had increasingly audacious costumes to stick out, possibly to better make a name of themselves. But… its historical. That’s literally how Landsknechts dressed.

Given the mercenary / audacious ways of fighting, it is quite possible Landsknechts used crazy weapons like Zweihanders to increase their odds of being remembered on the battlefield. They were grossly more skilled than everyone else on the battlefield, so it wasn’t about optimizing fighting anymore, but instead optimizing the chance you’re remembered by the local kings so that you’d get hired in the next fight.

But I’m not a specialist of this era. You’d probably have to ask someone who studied specific guilds / mercenaries back then for more precise details.

Not to mention that giant sword being held like that

Dude, that’s literally a historical Landsknecht pose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landsknecht

Zweihanders were heavy, people rested them on the shoulder a lot of the time. How else were you supposed to use these things?

EDIT: Note, this Zweihander here is STILL shorter than a typical Pike. So even with a weapon of this size, you’re fighting with less range than the typical 1500s opponent. Bigger == better was a thing at this time.

Zweihanders were only popular for a few dozen years, but their absurd size made them a historical curiosity. Real soldiers (“Double Soldiers”, because they were paid double a regular soldier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelsöldner) used them. You needed a sword that big to deal with the increasingly large pikes and halberds of the 1500s, though gunpower was beginning to really take off at this time.

If you’ve got any HEMA friends, I do recommend grabbing a Zweihander from them and feeling it. Its surprisingly nimble, not too heavy. But the bulky size makes it difficult to rest. Its a very fast weapon due to its size and surprisingly light swingweight. I’d say that poleaxes (like Glaives) or other “axe” shapes on the end of a stick felt heavier to me., though they probably weigh about the same. A sword just naturally swings faster due to less weight on the end (though a poleaxe will have more power / armor penetration capabilities).

I did a google and it sounds like this artist is “vanishlily”, and made the drawing a few months ago.

https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/89235711

I’m not seeing this comic in that artist’s profile. Its possible that this comic / meme came after this artist’s drawings of “Landsknecht girl”.

Yeah, this is someone who has studied Medieval Armor. I can’t say I’m an expert on this but I’m getting vibes of real armor from these drawings, its pretty cool… albeit in anime-style and some exaggerations for artistic effect, but I can kinda-sorta place some of these armor drawings within a time period.

Like I can instantly recognize this as a Knight Templar.