TugOfWarCrimes
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
-Gandalf the Grey / J R R Tolkein
Only you can really answer that question, but here’s my take at least.
When we are young, the world feels magical and mysterious. We are convinced that there’s dragons living in the mountains, and kraken in the oceans. We are so sure that we spotted a fairy in the garden or a mermaid at the pool And then there’s the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause who leave an obvious trace. But as we get older, that magic seems to fade. We instead see the world for the boring corporate reality that it is. And yet there’s still a part of us that hopes. Hopes that Bigfoot is walking around out there somewhere. Hope that Nessy really is swimming around in some undiscovered cave network beneath Scotland. Hope that the fuzzy photo of a smudge really is an Alian spacecraft come to make our world feel magical again.
As the great Sir Terry Pratchet once wrote
“All right," said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
By my understanding, it was more of a grey area. It seemed like the system was technically allowed according to the wording of the rule but clearly against the spirit of the rule. Prior to Miami, the FIA made it clear that they would interpret things like this as a breach of the rules, effectively allowing teams to remove them without punishment before they were caught.
Short version that doesn’t require technical knowledge is Red Bull Racing (RBR) were using a system on their brakes that wasn’t allowed but it was suspected that teams were using anyway. The rules were publicly clarified before the Miami GP. Ever since then Max Verstappen and Red Bull in general have started to lose pace compared to other teams, breaking Max’s long run of victories. The tweet is suggesting that Max’s break issues that caused him to DNF in the Australian GP were due to a fault in this system and the loss of pace is due to it’s removal.
Edit to correct detail that I mis-remembered. Max did not DNF in Miami, in fact he finished 2nd. It was Australia that he retired from.
I once worked with a guy who did the opposite of this. He just randomly mentioned that he had a twin brother one day, which no-one believed given how long we had all known him. But he persisted by casually talking about him in regular conversation. Nothing overly noticeable, just enough to plant the idea in people’s mind that he did indeed have a twin brother. Around the same time he started growing his beard out and really made it his personality for several months to be the guy with a beard. It all came together one day, he finished his shift around lunch time and left like usual with his glorious beard. Unbeknownst all but a select few of us, he hadn’t actually left. He left the store and drove his car around the corner to the other car park then used the sink in a nearby public toilet to completely shave his beard off and changed his clothes. Then he just walked in through the front door, introduced himself as the name he had been using for his fake twin brother and asked if his brother was there. He always had a reputation as a joker, but I don’t think any of us truly believed anything he said after that. Not that he cared. It still cracked him up years later when folks were telling the tale to the newbies.
I’ve been thinking the same thing. While I like the idea that publishers are responsible for maintaining the needed infrastructure, I can only see that resulting in even more predatory pricing to cover the costs and unreasonable pressure on smaller publishers leading them to fold and leave behind the greedy ones
I’m quite proud of the system I have for the Orcs of my world. Essentially they live in tribes with a clear leader who sets all the rules and expected behaviours for their tribe known as traditions. Tribe members follow the traditions without question most of the time. But there is a cultural expectation that if any tribe member feels a tradition is wrong or no longer necessary, they must call this out and be ready to stand by their ideas. The leader must provide the tribe member time and opportunity to gain followers to their traditions and then gift them resources to start their own tribe. In this way the tribes with the best traditions tend to grow and the tribes with poor traditions either die out or are absorbed by larger tribes.
I like the idea that a new player coming to my games will be able to make assumptions about orc culture based on preconceptions made from other depictions of orcs over the years, and it would be fairly accurate for my world on a surface level, but there’s so much more to it.