I mean, at least for me, the question is “Who?”

In more ways than one. It’s quite evident to me now that a candidate needs to be charismatic, not just have some good ideas, to motivate voters to take their side. But “leftism” and “leftist” are still pretty vague labels. Just personally, some of the left-wing figures in the US today would earn my vote and some would not. More broadly, and I think there’d be a big difference between voters-at-large’s willingness to accept Bernie-esque proposals and some of the more out-there stuff I’ve seen.

While the kits may use standardized plumbing connector, they are not all guaranteed to use the same standard sizes.

It’s not a great classical literature, for sure. The characters are almost entirely flat and forgettable, and even the handful that do grow (the young Soviet commander, the US destroyer captain) barely do so. Their experiences never almost never inform their later actions.

But among the techno-thriller/war-simulator genre, I found it more compelling than several more recent attempts (Ghost Fleet, Nuclear War: A Scenario, etc). Many of those seem to go out of their way to bend the plot to produce the author’s intended point, and while RSR wasn’t exactly innocent in that regard, I found it far less guilty than others - largely because Clancy was holding to the known or theorized-near-future capabilities.

Where I actually find it fascinating is how, in retrospect, we can see the biases of the era influencing how Clancy makes certain predictions:

• The Soviets place immense importance on taking Iceland to permit a “second Battle of the Atlantic” against US carrier groups. In retrospect, we know the Soviet Navy had no interest in this and intended to act as a cordon around northern Europe; specifically the Soviet SSBN bastions.

• While Clancy did loosely predict the nature, role, and value of Stealth aircraft, the design and air-to-air role he describes them in is actually too advanced for the 1980s setting. Essentially, Clancy bought the rumors, which were wrong.

• Land attack helicopters with ATGMs play relatively little role in the ground fighting. This was because the current generation (namely the AH-64) had just been introduced; their full capabilities and impact were not yet publicly available.

These mistakes, although understandable, provide an interesting insight into what the American defense establishment was thinking about in the early 80s.

Grand Admiral Thrawn - but only the EU version.

Really a fascinating character in so many respects. One of the more complex and difficult to decipher ones. Was he really a genius out for the good of the galaxy? Or a social status-climber willing to latch on to any cause he could while serving his own ends? Were his more questionable deeds really done regretfully “for the greater good”, or was that just an excuse?

See, this one I like, because it’s one of those “man, I know the writers didn’t mean it that way, but it makes sense… and it’s horrifying!” theories.

The Falcon is so good, because for decades it has essentially had the crippled, half-dead “ghost” of a droid locked inside its computer systems, unable to fully die yet clearly devoid of her true consciousness.

Char Aznable’s wild shift in character between the end of Zeta and the beginning of Char’s Counterattack can be directly pinned on Kamille Bidan’s mental crippling at the end of Zeta and Haman Karm’s actions in ZZ.

Char, who always had a rather strong protective streak, more or less pinned his hopes on Kamille as a key to the future. Instead he directly experienced the Newtype backlash of Kamille being mentally crippled, and subequently could no longer sense him. This convinced him that humanity was doomed to eternal conflict, unless it was forced to advance.

Still unable to get over his protective streak, Char then manages to extricate Mineva Lao Zabi, the last remaining Zabi and perhaps the only one who he doesn’t actually seem to harbor any hatred towards, to Earth. But Haman just creates a double, which she uses to drag Neo Zeon into yet another war for personal power. This convinces Char he cannot trust the future to anyone else, even after protecting the ones he cares about.

Thus, we reach CCA with a Char who is fixedly convinced of both the need for forced human advancement, and that he alone must be that leader.

Tossup between:

• Seeing a sporty little car neatly stacked on top of a full-size sedan at the local shopping mall. Owner had floored it, jumped the curb, and somehow managed to climb atop the sedan. It was remarkable just how little damage there was on the Sedan, relatively speaking.
• Seeing a truck on the highway shoulder, which had somehow managed to roll itself on its side facing the wrong direction. Like, 180 degrees around into traffic and on its side. Somehow it didn’t look like other vehicles had been involved.

I think this would be more meaningful if things cash flow and hirelings had any reasonable purpose in 5e. But the reality is most players will have a pretty stable cashflow by level 5, and most campaigns simply don’t have a meaningful role for Hirelings to play.

So like, I could see this being a thing in Waterdeep Dragon Heist, which encourages you to acquire a home base and then take a side in a gang war. One building, 4-5 rooms acting as a bastion for each player? I guess. But it’s essentially making mechanics for something a lot of DMs did already, and a lot of other campaigns simply don’t have a good basis for this.

I’m also kind of underwhelmed by the attacks mechanic. “A random special facility is shut down for your next bastion turn”? So like, I can’t ever actually lose anything I put into the bastion, it just stays there even if I have literally no defenses, the attackers overrun the place, and squat in it for 7 days?

Right? It has such a distinctive look.

Soooooo, about that indictment…

I’m afraid you’re not likely to get many actual answers on Lemmy. The politics here can be wildly, wildly skewed, and it doesn’t generally create a conducive environment to calm, rational discussions. (In fairness, I’m not sure if any other site really does support truly balanced political discussion either.) I admire your attempt, however.

Another issue (which some others have already commented on) is what constitutes a “compromise”. For instance, if I have four issues which left and right-wing movements are at odds over, is it “compromise” if for each of the two I decide to go with a strongly left- or right-wing position? Or is it only compromise if for all positions we take a moderate position which cleaves to neither bloc’s position?

Anyhow, let me at least try to answer. Though I lean more left, I still find myself out of line with both major parties on some issues. For example: In the interests of addressing climate change and achieving stronger energy reliability and independence, I favor a drive to increase, not remove, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power facilities in the country.

I did not know that is where it came from, but that’s neat (if a touch depressing). Thank you for that info. Fascinating how languages shift.

Part of it is that the question is phrased to make you react that way. By using “pundits” as opposed to “commentators” or “analysts”, it primes you to think about someone at Fox (or, these days, Youtube) pounding on a table while screaming about immigrants, as opposed to a respected individual evenhandedly explaining the complexities of a nuanced issue.

Agree with the others - in a world where every person can freely share their direct opinion, it is more critical than ever to have individuals whose role it is to research, contextualize, and present the issue in a constructive and clear fashion.

The problem of media capture by various groups is an issue, certainly, but that means it’s something we have to be wary of and build boundaries against - because the key role they serve is still in place. Throwing out the entire system because of that issue is like deciding that we no longer need doctors because the for-profit medical system is broken.

We should be careful to avoid creating communities that are echo chambers.

I’m afraid that ship is already sailed, foundered, and is well on the way to the bottom in a lot of communities.

When it comes to spicy topics, many communities on Lemmy feel incredibly close-minded and hostile to opposing views.

Man, I tried to get into this. Spent months running through the tutorials. I just couldn’t grasp how they design flow of creating a complex shape from scratch. It just didn’t “make sense”.

I’ve found parametric modeling programs like Solidworks far, far more intuitive to use - it’s easier for me to grasp “okay, this thing is a combination of added shapes, extrusions, negative spaces, revolved outlines, etc” than what Blender wants you to do. Unfortunately, most parametric programs really don’t offer good skinning/texturing and only mediocre rendering options.

Not sure exactly what you consider ‘expensive’, but there are ways to get a student edition Solidworks account for $100/year. I consider that a pretty reasonable price.

Personally, I find it infinitely more usable than Blender, but that may just be my personal biases in play. Your mileage may vary.

I’m frankly rather concerned about the idea of crowdsourcing or voting on “reliability”, because - let’s be honest here - Lemmy’s population can have highly skewed perspectives on what constitutes “accurate”, “unbiased”, or “reliable” reporting of events. I’m concerned that opening this to influence by users’ preconceived notions would result in a reinforced echo chamber, where only sources which already agree with their perspectives are listed as “accurate”. It’d effectively turning this into a bias bot rather than a bias fact checking bot.

Aggregating from a number of rigorous, widely-accepted, and outside sources would seem to be a more suitable solution, although I can’t comment on how much programming it would take to produce an aggregate result. Perhaps just briefly listing results from a number of fact checkers?

We are investigating in sort of “Community organized Bias / Fact check” but this commes with their own issues

To say the least. That actually sounds mildly terrifying; it either opens you up to individuals’ biases being presented as the community’s views, or would makes the decision subject to whoever organizes a “louder” group to dominate the decision making. Both are rather alarming for a community like this.