Re: [Official!] Project Horizons Comment Crew Chat thread.

[Frost]

Congratulations, off to college or McDonalds you go.

Army, actually.

[StoneSlinger88]

Again, off to college you go. Don't expect to get above specialist without a degree, and they offer plenty of correspondence courses for promotion points and will pay for online classes while you're in or after you're out.

[Ironmonger]

It's amazing how having the situational memory of a goldfish can force one to get organized with speed like their ass was just set alight.

[O. Hinds]

Well, I'm now watching episode 2 of Girls und Panzer, and I'm finding it enjoyable... and rather insane. :)

[Valikdu]

So you're actually the one who did those ?

[Ironmonger]

I need some feedback on an idea, but I will say that it will probably make more sense to those familiar with my work and ideas.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the name of my story, and I'm not sure if it sounds good. I'm considering changing it to Fallout Equestria: For I Have Sinned.

Eh?

I'm not sure if anyone besides Frost and Harmony can give a valid opinion, but it seemed like a good idea to ask other people.

[Harmony Ltd.]

For what it's worth, it sounds like a better name than the old one.

[Frost]

I love how you only give negative feedback after the issue's been resolved

[Ironmonger]

I love how you only give negative feedback after the issue's been resolved

Least he's polite about it.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Who says that French people must be rude ?

[Ironmonger]

Belgium?

[Harmony Ltd.]

Do you know why there's always a pile of shit in front of doors in Belgium ?


Because on them it's written "Push hard".


/standard French "Belgian Joke"

[Ironmonger]

That's probably the funniest international jab I've ever heard.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Do you know why there's no lights on the side of French roads ?


Because French people all think they're brilliant.


/Belgian counter to the French's "Belgian Jokes"

[Ironmonger]

The tap water in Germany is probably heavily water-diluted beer.

[Valikdu]

Stereotypes, fuck yeah!

I've had too much vodka to answer in greater detail, so here's a picture.

[Harmony Ltd.]

The tap water in Germany is probably heavily water-diluted beer.

No, that's the reverse, you see ?

The beer in the US is heavily diluted tap-water.

[Ironmonger]

I mowed my lawn and didn't hit a single .22 rifle or even a 12 Gauge.

Either gun control is out of hand, or I'm not in America anymore.

[StoneSlinger88]

I remember when I first moved here... Used to play "find the spent shotgun shell" under the windows of the house.

[Harmony Ltd.]

It's at times like these I'm remembered we literally live a world apart.

[Valikdu]

You know what we once found while digging at the garden at my family's cottage? An artillery shell.

That wasn't very fun. First we all freaked out, then we got really annoyed while waiting for the disposal people to come get it.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Yeah...

In my city they've turned an old caserne / barracks ensemble into a new neighborhood of green / low consumption buildings. And I remember a few years ago while I was passing through the area, I saw a number of firemen trucks and other emergency vehicles.

Apparently, while they were digging the foundations where the buildings would be, they found an non-exploded ordnance, a few meters below street-level. Probably a WW2 relic, I don't know the specifics. All I saw was black shape in the mud.


An on the other side of the city, the big CEA research center is sitting on an old Artillery Range.

And as the place is constantly seeing the construction of new buildings and the destruction of old ones (currently comprising the decommissioning of a few old nuclear reactors...), the on-site disposal unit is called upon, like, once-a-week or something like that on average.

It's to a point where people working there are trained to know what to do when they encounter non-exploded ordnances.

[Harmony Ltd.]

All that is made easier to understand when you know that this was historically a garrison city near an hostile frontier up until and including World War 2.


Ah, European History...

Measured in cubic meters of blood and thousands of casualties.

Good riddance to that.

[Stringtheory]

All that is made easier to understand when you know that this was historically a garrison city near an hostile frontier.


Ah, European History...

Measured in cubic meters of blood and thousands of casualties.

Good riddance to that.

And yet the Euro is spiraling down under the weight of Greece and Spain...
Though I doubt Europe will see another land war for a long time.

[Harmony Ltd.]

The problem is not Greece or Spain in themselves.

The problem is that we've created a common currency linking together economies which are radically different, depriving of a fundamental tool to compete on the world stage ; and that the current top-dog in the European Union (Germany) is trying to impose a common fiscal framework to everyone which can only work for one economy : its own. Oh, and also that it's pushing for reforms of the labor market which basically consist in setting us back to the late 19th century in the name of "competitiveness"...

And THAT is fueling resentment on a continental scale we hadn't seen since the 30's, planting the seeds of distrust. And if nothing is done, soon hatred will bloom.


The fundamental problem here is that we've tried to implement a one-size-fits-all solution to a problem which is inherently multi-faceted.

Which is especially daunting considering our motto is "In Varietate Concordia" (United in Diversity).

[Frost]

So the moral here is to trust others less and be more isolationist, to some degree

[Stringtheory]

So the moral here is to trust others less and be more isolationist, to some degree

No the moral is to understand what works for other nations/people and not try to implement a one-size-fits-all solution like what Germany's trying to do now (why is it always Germany?)

[Harmony Ltd.]

(why is it always Germany?)

It's not that simple. The thing is that Germany is just "enforcing" the majority view of the European Elites throughout the continent, which is, roughly put, "liberal capitalism". An economic framework which call for (and this is the officially used expression) "free and unhindered competition" between all economic actors. Which for example forced the privatization of all the previously state-owned utility companies, putting these vital pieces of the economic body into the hands of private actors, in theory to push for lowered prices and an increased say for the end consumer (I'm still struggling to see how that can work, but heh, if they're saying it should work... no wait, it doesn't, the price of water and electricity hasn't stopped rising and the infrastructures are still getting older).

I think we can all easily see how this can quickly get out of hands when some regions have heavy advantages over others (like natural resources or river systems allowing to move quantity of goods cheaply). Or in the case of Greece, how a largely rural economy has a hard time competing with the industrial heartland of the European peninsula.

And when the inevitable consequence of this framework comes to bite us in the ass (ie : some regions get left behind and needs to get bailed out lest they'd sink further down in a dangerous depression), no one wants to lift a hand to fit the bill. Much less the richest (Germany again) who blame the crisis in those regions on their "fiscal policies being inadequate" and on their "labor laws being inefficient".


In practices there's some amounts of truth to that. But also in practice, this means jack shit when like in Spain half of the young adults and a quarter of the total work-aged population is jobless. People don't care that their economies are inefficient. What they care about is having a job and enough money in their pocket at the end of the month to be able to pay the rent, their food, the bills and everything else, with just enough left for maybe going to the theater or buying a book.

[Stringtheory]

*snip*

Thanks for the explanation, the american news does a terrible job of reporting this sort of thing

[O. Hinds]

*snip*

Thanks for the explanation, the american news does a terrible job of reporting this sort of thing

Likewise, thank you, Harmony Ltd..

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