I don’t feel strongly about Coldplay, but I think their style is “whatever Radiohead was doing two years ago, but watered down for the masses”.

Nothing wrong with that, but it does evoke a hipster vs. normie conflict.

The bottom line is that there is no profitable way to use this gas. You can capture it, pipe it out, then refine it, but you will lose money. You can burn it onsite to generate electricity, but your investment in generators and maintenance will never pay off.

The only way to get oil and gas companies to do the right thing is by government regulation.

Source: my father worked for a startup trying to develop this type of technology in the bakken oilfield. The startup had strong initial investment, but it failed after only a few years.

I think the hottest genre is still “survival/craft”, but there are so many similar looking games, you gotta stand out somehow. Two of the best ways to stand out are combining genres, and having an interesting artsyle.

I would start with the basics of Stardew Valley, people love farming, resources management, upgrading tools and buildings, wooing villagers. But what is lacking in Stardew? I think the battle system and world exploration.

Instead of stardew’s generic 2d Zelda-style battles, I would suggest a card battle system like Slay the Spire. At night players can delve into the card battling cave, looking for new cards, new seeds, farm equipment, etc, always trying to delve deeper for better loot. During the day they work the farm, earning money, crafting new cards and foods that can buff their card battles.

For world exploration, it would depend on your style choices and budget. If you stick with 2d pixel graphics I could see a Zelda style map filled with puzzles and unlocks. If you go bigger with a 3d engine I could see a sprawling Bethesda style map.

As for artsyle, you definitely want to avoid being a Stardew clone. Go a bit darker, both in color and theme, while still creating a game that is suitable for children.

Yes I agree.

If you use context instead of cherry picking a half-sentence then maybe you would understand that is part of the broader point I am trying to get across to a western, chauvinism-brained audience.

Since you are still completely missing the basics, let’s do a little history lesson then.

The bombing of Afghanistan started in retaliation to 9/11. After initial bombing of Al-Quaeda training camps and Taliban headquarters, we asked the Afghan government to hand over Bin Laden. They said “yes we will hand him over if you agree to stop bombing”. George W’s famous response was " we don’t negotiate with terrorists". The bombing continued, and Bin Laden fled to Pakistan to survive for years.

The propagandistic idea that we were there to nation build and create a liberal democracy only entered the picture a year into the brutal bombing campaign because the US populace was turning against the war.

Then, we propped up a classic puppet government that was always destined to fail when we left. Elements of a puppet government include:

• installing a leader from a minority faction
• allowing them to violently repress members of the majority faction
• brutal violence inflicted upon dissenters
• development of natural resources for the desires of the imposing nation, a lack of sustainable development for the local people
• creating a system with very little input from local leaders, and never giving them a reason to participate or have skin in the game

The Afghan army had many huge problems. There is a plethora of news stories from 2008-2021 showing how the army is poorly trained, unmotivated, and largely drug addicted. Military leaders have been saying the entire time that this army would not stand on its own.

The Afghan army did have one strong motivation though: money. It was a mercenary army. But when the US withdrew in 2021 we stole the majority of the funds from the Afghan Central Bank (over $7bln dollars was taken by the Biden administration). Not only did this immoral act of theft cripple the Afghan economy, it destroyed their ability to pay the mercenary army.

No one who was actually paying attention expected the unpaid mercenary army to defend the puppet government once we left. Maybe, if the money kept flowing, they could have held up for a few months, but the stolen Central Bank funds ensured that was impossible.

I’m not saying “we don’t care”. Many individual people did earnestly care, and tried their best. But the military and civilian systems created by the US were never built for the benefit of the Afghan people. Your positive spin on this war is naive and ahistorical.

So your thesis is that the 1950s war was inconsequential, and then you lay the entire blame on the Kim regime and their policies?

My dude, how do you think the Kim regime became a dictatorship?

Before the 1950s war, Kim was a weak puppet leader propped up by the Soviet Union. By the end of the war, the Kim regime had dictatorial power, which persists to this day.

I did not close my eyes when America turned it’s back on the thousands of Afghans who helped the American regime during the war. The people who helped America were left resourceless and with giant targets on their back. We betrayed them.

I did not close my eyes when the flimsy and deeply flawed education system America propped up instantly failed the moment we left.

The abandonment of Afghan allies and the destruction of girl’s education in Afghanistan are just two more data points showing the deep failures of the American model of foreign intervention.

We did not spend truckloads of money trying to get a functioning system in place. A lasting functioning system was never the goal. I urge you to read into our military’s functions and objectives in Afghanistan, because you are deeply misinformed. Anyone who suggests our goals were “democracy and human rights” is obviously infected with US propaganda.

You have obviously misunderstood me.

I was comparing the United States actions in the Korean War(1950s) to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. The mass civilian bombing campaigns, complete destruction of civilian infrastructure, manmade famine, widespread preventable disease, and imposed economic isolation are very similar between the two cases.

I am not comparing current-day North Korea to current-day Gaza, and I agree with you that would not be a good analogy.

Kinda shocking to me how anyone can present such a whitewashed take on the Afghanistan War in 2025. It didn’t go to shit when we left, it was shit from the beginning.

We shortsightedly allied with brutal local warlords, and the failure at local politics blew up in our faces. We bombed 100s of villages, losing the hearts and minds of the people. We sent innocent people to be tortured in Pakistani black sites, creating a fanatical resistance willing to martyr themselves. We forcefully changed the main agricultural output from wheat to opium poppy, leading to widespread drug abuse and addiction. I could go on and on…

I’m not sure if there is a military intervention model that works, but American-style military intervention with mass civilian deaths and warcrimes from beginning to end is a proven failure.

I think the answer is simple: end the sanctions.

McDonalds and Starbucks can take down the Kim regime much more effectively than B-2 bombers and Hellfire missiles.

America already tried to save the North Koreans once. It was called the “Korean War”.

We bombed them back to the stone age, then permanently isolated them from most of the world. Despite having good reasons for the start of the war, America treated NK like Israel currently treats Gaza.

Even if North Koreans tried to forget that America bombed every hospital, every water purification plant, all the electricity production, etc; the Kim regime’s propaganda will make sure they never forget.

If we actually wanted to help those people, the first step would be removal of economic sanctions. There is no clean way to remove dictatorship, but the “Arab Spring” model is much more effective and humane than the “Afghanistan War” model.

Under lots of pressure, Bono recently released his most forceful statement on the subject

“Hamas, release the hostages. Stop the war. Israel, be released from Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right fundamentalists that twist your sacred texts"

This statement perpetuates two Israeli propaganda lies: 1) Hamas is able to end the war by releasing hostages, and 2) The genocidal project is the sole responsibility of Netanyahu and Likud, and not the greater Jewish supremacist movement that has controlled Israel since it’s inception.

And to be clear, this is Bono’s best statement on the subject. You can Google his earlier statements to find more genocide denial and Hasbara propaganda.

He doesn’t have to be an activist for every issue, but it is a giant stain on his legacy of activism when he runs cover for an ongoing Holocaust.

Most activists are motivated by humanist ideals, but the issue of Gaza makes it obvious that Bono is not an ethical humanist, so his activism must be motivated by other desires.

“Great activist” Bono has been mostly silent on the ongoing genocide in Gaza for the past 20 months.

The “great activist” has been releasing tepid statements running cover for genocidal Israel as he continues his strong financial ties with the country doing ethnic cleansing in broad daylight.

Anti-science, misogyny, etc may be bad independently of religion, but they aren’t independent of religion. Religion is a source of these problems.

You can imagine a hypothetical religion that is simply a “social club” or whatever, but here in the real world religion comes with baggage.

Religion is why my cousin’s children have never seen a doctor in their life. Religion is why my gay friend in high school tried to kill himself. Religious indoctrination has led to lifelong shame and trauma in many of my friends.

And this was just from a “moderate” sect of Christianity- the millions living under fundamentalist religion have it even worse.

What you said is all true, but you are ignoring the negative aspects of religion.

Religious influence, both on their followers and on government, is anti-science, misogynistic, and anti-LGBT.

Religions are funded like pyramid schemes, with the most desperate and vulnerable as their victims.

Religious indoctrination is child abuse.