skulblaka

It's like some unholy combination of Plague Inc and Effing Worms, I love it. But of course I would, "villain protagonist" is my favorite steam tag. I would play and probably enjoy this game.

I don't think there's a mechanism in place for transfer of money to the government like that beyond, say, buying bonds or something, which the government is required to repay. They aren't really set up to take large donations of that nature, taxes are already intended to handle that. And an individual isn't going to be able to legally build a highway, or a school district of their own accord without governmental assistance.

And I think it's good that this is the case. It prevents America from devolving into a hundred nations led by individual warlords, we would very easily slip into something resembling Japan's Sengoku period.

In the real world, sure.

In the context of Dune, it is a question of whether you can maintain your logic in the face of pain or danger, or whether you will be ruled by your instincts when push comes to shove. And that question is a vitally important one when taken in the context of choosing a new leader or ensuring that someone (in this case Paul Atriedes) is able to handle the pressures of their given task. An animal will be ruled by its instincts while a human can overcome them by force of will. If you are not a human then you are an animal. Animals can still be treated with respect, but they are unfit for leadership roles because a frightened animal driven by fight-or-flight response is unpredictable and dangerous. A cornered king can be reasoned with, but a cornered animal will gnaw its own leg off to escape a trap.

Gotta keep the blood out of your legs and up in the brain, it's just science

It was always more about the triumph of the mind over the body. When the body is screaming to run away, the mind retains control. That is what makes someone Human.

The Service Weapon was awesome. It's got an intense sort of gravity around it. Hell, the first interaction with it is fighting a battle of wills in order to not shoot yourself in the head with it. The gun itself doesn't look all that impressive but I do think it's neat enough, and if you look at it from the perspective of the Service Weapon being a character in the story of Control, it's really, really cool.

Pretty sure Abraham Lincoln said that

You're still getting scammed it's just less immediately obvious

No need, we live in an era of drone warfare. Human soldiers aren't even in the top 50% of most effective combat units anymore. Armed security is all good and well but a machinegun emplacement isn't going to do a whole lot about 500 incoming quadcopters carrying thermite payloads. You don't even need to destroy the whole bunker, just the entrance, then roll up a couple of Caterpillars and put them under a 12 foot dirt hill. And if the drones don't cut it, say the compound has EM shielding of some sort that causes them to stop functioning (a feature that many modern actual militaries don't even have), a private plane shoveling a couple hundred pounds of explosives out of its cargo storage from cruising altitude would probably be a suitable replacement.

No compound of any sort is infinitely defensible from superior numbers. Zuck/Musk/Bezos/Etc may be rich but their reach is not limitless. Just like how civilians aren't going to want to rush down a mercenary emplacement, pretty soon all the available mercenary forces are going to be thinking twice about signing on to defend a compound where disposable drones like to drop random pipe bombs from the sky every other day.

In an end of the world scenario, where safety exists only inside the bunkers, the bunkers will fall, and swiftly. In a scenario where safety does exist outside the bunkers but everything generally sucks, and the Rich inside the bunkers are still able to be seen or have news posted about them, the bunkers will fall eventually. In a scenario where the Rich disappear into the bunkers and are never heard from again, fuck 'em, mission accomplished, we don't even need to raid the tombs.

Oh there was hard work involved. His daddy's emerald mine money worked very hard to get him where he is. And the slaves in those mines worked very hard to build daddy's money.

I fail to see any problem with this.

kicks French Revolution under the rug

They are unfortunately NOT done strictly due to the sheer existence of the Republican party. The MAGA crowd was the greatest Gift Dems have received in decades.