Tootfinder

"Civilization 7": Take-Two hofft nach schwachem Launch auf Aufholjagd
"Civilization 7" wird auf Steam weniger gespielt als die Vorgänger – eine bittere Statistik für Publisher Take-Two. Der CEO zeigt sich dennoch optimistisch.

A proud achievement of my half-century IT career happened in 1996 consulting to the #UNDP toward the first published edition of the Humanity Development Library.
It seemed easy enough: "It can be fairly estimated that 1/3, or about 20 million pages of UN, and as much University and NGO material are very useful. Those 20 million pages useful UN publications probably contain about 50% of solutions for major World problems. This information must be released in digital format for non-profit redistribution in all countries."
also portable and accessible to all platforms, everywhere.
Happily, not only did the project live on, but thanks to @… our once-intractable problem of global delivery is now globally solved!
So, whether or not this is timely, I don't know, but should you need to suddenly rebuild some semblance of civilization from scratch…
Humanity Development Library 2.0 CD-ROM 1998 : #HumanityLibrariesProject : #InternetArchive
https://archive.org/details/humanity-development-library-2.0

Varje stort spelsläpp ser vi samma sak. Spelet släpps. Sedan sparkas utvecklare. Föreslår att spelutvecklare börjar se maskning som sin centrala kampform. Varje försenat spel är några fler månadslöner till arbetarna.
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/2k-

2K confirms layoffs at Civilization developer Firaxis
2K says the decision will "restructure and optimize" its teams within Firaxis. Sources say dozens could be impacted.

Picture the human body. Zoom in on a single cell. It lives for a while, then splits or dies, as part of a community of cells that make up a particular tissue. This community lives together for many many cell-lifetimes, each performing their own favorite function and reproducing as much as necessary to maintain their community, consuming the essential resources they need and contributing back what they can so that the whole body can live for decades. Each community of cells is interdependent on the whole body, but also stable and sustainable over long periods of time.
Now imagine a cancer cell. It has lost its ability to harmonize with the whole and prioritize balance, instead consuming and reproducing as quickly as it can. As neighboring tissues start to die from its excess, it metastasizes, always spreading to new territory to fuel its unbalanced appetite. The inevitable result is death of the whole body, although through birth, that body can create a new fresh branch of tissues that may continue their stable existence free of cancer. Alternatively, radiation or chemotherapy might be able to kill off the cancer, at great cost to the other tissues, but permitting long-term survival.
To the cancer cell, the idea of decades-long survival of a tissue community is unbelievable. When your natural state is unbounded consumption, growth, and competition, the idea of interdependent cooperation (with tissues all around the body you're not even touching, no less) seems impossible, and the idea that a tissue might survive in a stable form for decades is ludicrous.
"Perhaps if conditions were bleak enough to perfectly balance incessant unrestrained growth against the depredations of a hostile environment it might be possible? I guess the past must have been horribly brutal, so that despite each tissue trying to grow as much as possible they each barely survived? Yes, a stable and sustainable population is probably only possible under conditions of perfectly extreme hardship, and in our current era of unfettered growth, we should rejoice that we live in much easier times!"
You can probably already see where I'm going with this metaphor, but did you know that there are human communities, alive today, that have been living sustainably for *tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years*?
#anarchy #colonialism #civilization
P.S. if you're someone who likes to think about past populations and historical population growth, I cannot recommend the (short, free) game Opera Omnia by Stephen Lavelle enough: https://www.increpare.com/2009/02/opera-omnia/

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Justice:
🎵 Civilization
#Justice
https://coalpuff.bandcamp.com/track/justice-civilization-newjack-radd-remix
https://open.spotify.com/track/3cn4e9MRXiUmDqTioimYBp

📉 Why the Left Should Care About Population Decline
#population

Why the Left Should Care About Population Decline
Population decline is not just about human extinction. Before it ends, human civilization will grow increasingly unpleasant — and communal ideals associated with left-wing politics will become increasingly difficult to sustain.

Here's my latest Human Meme podcast episode! Don't let the worms eat your brain!
https://humanmeme.com/three-hidden-discoveries-forests-control-weather-consciousness-stutters-and-worms-built-civilization

"mass producing devices combining multiple types of nanotechnology each of which individually strains against what is even possible in our universe at all, providing access to them to the general public as a boring and everpresent commodity, then having the general public store porn on them" is peak technological civilization ht…

Heinz Ketchup partners with Smoothie King in what's probably some harbinger of irreversible decline of human civilization - National Zero
https://nationalzero.com/2025/08/07/heinz-ketchup-partners-with-smoothie-king-in-whats-probably-some-harbinger-of-irreversible-decline-of-human-civilization/

As a survivor of the type of stochastic terrorism that people like Charlie Kirk carry out, and also a survivor of gun violence, I've had a bit to think about.
I still understand the anger, the frustration, that leads someone to snap. I'll always have compassion, if also paired with some frustration, for the person who shot me and her husband. That makes sense to me. I refused to testify because it never made sense to punish a tool who acted out of ignorance.
What doesn't make as much sense to me are the upper class grifters, the stochastic terrorists, who turn a profit of off setting people like that up to kill. I always wanted to see people like that, people who were clearly profiting off of bringing evil into the world, held accountable.
But the way I always want to see them held accountable, is by being forced to live in a world where everyone is free. Charlie Kirk got out easy, and that is a bit sad. He should have had to suffer through our victory. He should have had to watch the fall of Western Civilization, the collapse of all the things he held dear, all the things he tried to uphold. I wish that he had lived long enough to understand the suffering he inflicted on the world. He should have lived long enough to have to do real work, to have to figure out how to feed himself, house himself, in a world that has no market for the hate that he brings.
As much as I had rather that he starved, I would never shed a tear for the opening of a new public urinal.
Rest in piss. Charlie Kirk.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2852902/free-right-now-civilization-vi-with-all-expansions-and-dlc-packs.html
In case you're wondering if you should actually play it, here's a review

Free right now! Civilization VI with all expansions and DLC packs
Epic Games is giving away Civilization VI plus all expansions and DLC packs right now! Make sure you snag it while you can.

Who were the people that called Doggerland home?
#AskAnArchaeologistDay
https://discoverwildscience.com/the-lo

The Lost Land of Doggerland: The Sunken Prehistoric Civilization Beneath the North Sea - discoverwildscience
Read and uncover Doggerland, a sunken prehistoric land beneath the North Sea, once home to ancient civilizations.

From Earthbound to Stars: Analyzing Humanity's Path to a Type II Civilization
Jonathan H. Jiang, Prithwis Das
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03249 https://…

From Earthbound to Stars: Analyzing Humanity's Path to a Type II Civilization
Humanity is at a critical juncture, marked by rapid technological advances and the pursuit of higher civilization stages on the Kardashev scale. This study explores humanity's potential progression toward Type I and Type II civilizations, defined by planetary and stellar-scale energy utilization. Building on Kardashev's framework, we propose refinements that integrate energy consumption, information processing, construction mass, and population dynamics. Using machine learning, we analyze globa…

Un peut de ciilization cet aprem
#civ #civvII

Another way of reading that story:
Even if you are fighting a doomed asymmetric battle, if you can get your tormentors obsessed with beating you, you can make them harm themselves badly as they "win."
https://infosec.exchange/@JessTheUnstill/114972393515946976

From the abandoned Nazi fortress in Los Angeles, to today’s Hollywood executives, to the history of the United States and all of Western Civilization, my new article:
https://stuff.davidaugust.com/tinpot-in-tinseltown/

Tinpot in Tinseltown
from the abandoned Nazi fortress in Los Angeles, to today’s Hollywood executives, to the history of the United States and all of Western Civilization When I heard a rumor there was an abandoned Nazi bunker in Los Angeles, I had to find out more. I looked into it, and

The decline of civilization continues.
Sperm racing is all the rage among the tech bros.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/30/sperm-racing-is-all-the-rage-among-the-tech-bros-why-am-i-not-surpr…

Redshifted civilizations, galactic empires, and the Fermi paradox
Chris Reiss, Justin C. Feng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00377 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.0…

Redshifted civilizations, galactic empires, and the Fermi paradox
Given the vast distances between stars in the Milky way and the long timescales required for interstellar travel, we consider how a civilization might overcome the constraints arising from finite lifespans and the speed of light without invoking exotic or novel physics. We consider several scenarios in which a civilization can migrate to a time-dilated frame within the scope of classical general relativity and without incurring a biologically intolerable level of acceleration. Remarkably, the p…

Time for another "review". This one's hard. While the book was quite interesting, it required me to be quite open-minded. Still, I think it's worth mentioning:
Robert Wright — Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
The book basically focused on a thesis that both biological evolution and cultural evolution are a thing, they are directional and this directionality can be explained together using game theory — as eventually leading to more non-zero sum games.
It consists of three chapters. The first one is is focused on the history of civilization. It features many examples from different parts of the world, which makes it quite interesting. The author argues that the culture inevitably is evolving as information processing techniques improve — from writing to the Internet.
The second chapter is focused on biological evolution. Now, the argument is that it's not quite random, but actually directed towards greater complexity — eventually leading to the development of highly intelligent species, and a civilization.
The third chapter is quite speculative and metaphysical, and I'm just going to skip it.
The book is full of optimism. Capitalism creates freedom — because people are more productive when they're working for their own gain, so the free market eliminates slavery. Globalisation creates networks of interdependence that make wars uneconomic. Increased contacts between different cultures makes people more tolerant. And eventually, the humanity may be able to unite facing a common "external" enemy — the climate change.
What can I say? The examples are quite interesting, the whole theory seems self-consistent. Still, I repeatedly looked at the publication date (it's 1999), and wondered if author would write the same thing today (yes, I know I can search for his current opinions).
#books #bookstodon @…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MorningShow
Justice:
🎵 Civilization
#Justice
https://coalpuff.bandcamp.com/track/justice-civilization-newjack-radd-remix
https://open.spotify.com/track/3cn4e9MRXiUmDqTioimYBp

I'm currently reading the second book of the DAEMON (German: Darknet, English: Freedom), a techno thriller from Daniel Suarez.
Pretty cool I think.
But what's even cooler: I just checked his homepage ( https://daniel-suarez.com/daemon10thsynopsis.html ) and saw a Ma…

The horror of the mass starvation in Gaza and Sudan right now is beyond words. It’s hard to even know what to say about it.
These two famines have in common that they are the result of scorched-earth military campaigns targeting specific ethnic groups. All famines are human-made in this modern world, but these famines are •intentional•.
Who are we, we humans with our so-called civilization, if we still after all these years of trying cannot stop genocides in progress?

Through the Expert's Eyes: Exploring Asynchronous Expert Perspectives and Gaze Visualizations in XR
Clara Sayffaerth, Annika K\"ohler, Julian Rasch, Albrecht Schmidt, Florian M\"uller
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00944

Through the Expert's Eyes: Exploring Asynchronous Expert Perspectives and Gaze Visualizations in XR
Transferring knowledge across generations is fundamental to human civilization, yet the challenge of passing on complex practical skills persists. Methods without a physically present instructor, such as videos, often fail to explain complex manual tasks, where spatial and social factors are critical. Technologies such as eXtended Reality and Artificial Intelligence hold the potential to retain expert knowledge and facilitate the creation of tailored, contextualized, and asynchronous explanatio…

welcome to the antique civilization shop. worlds driven to simplicity by the sheer amount of terrifying unknowns in their lives, still lingering and molding us today, each going for $99.99

All this is to say, fuck Jordan Peterson.
https://write.as/hexmhell/western-civilization-of-theseus

Further signs of the fall of civilization:
Melania Trump launches AI contest for schoolchildren in grades K-12;
National contest aims to encourage kids to work together to address community issues with artificial intelligence
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202…

ArchGPT: Understanding the World's Architectures with Large Multimodal Models
Yuze Wang, Luo Yang, Junyi Wang, Yue Qi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20858 https://

ArchGPT: Understanding the World's Architectures with Large Multimodal Models
Architecture embodies aesthetic, cultural, and historical values, standing as a tangible testament to human civilization. Researchers have long leveraged virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and augmented reality (AR) to enable immersive exploration and interpretation of architecture, enhancing accessibility, public understanding, and creative workflows around architecture in education, heritage preservation, and professional design practice. However, existing VR/MR/AR systems are often de…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #NickGrimshaw
Justice:
🎵 Civilization
#Justice
https://coalpuff.bandcamp.com/track/justice-civilization-newjack-radd-remix
https://open.spotify.com/track/3cn4e9MRXiUmDqTioimYBp

📉 Here's what I think about Curtis Yarvin
#politics

new beanytuesday politicians dont hit like og bloodfeast but ill take it

#resist #censorship #Disney #NBC