Oi, I’m nowhere near that scrawny or effeminate.
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You do look fetching in an ascot, though.
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The bias is very well examined and I have spoken of it repeatedly. That you don’t like it or disagree with it is of little concern to me. It has grown from over a time period a great deal longer than your capsuleer career, being exposed to a continuous ream of utterly despicable attitudes, spin and provable dishonesty. The reason I get snide and insulting when you throw such pathetic defenses out for it is that I hold people to a higher standard than you apparently hold leaders. Of course a lot of leaders and politicians lie through their teeth, this does not in any shape, way or form justify it. It just means these are people to sneer at and hold in contempt, because they are so weak that they can’t lead without lying to their charges and the rest of New Eden. Deride and abandon such leaders, rather than latching lips around their privates, perhaps?
As an example of reasons I can’t trust you, this does nicely. I berated you for your choices, not for trying to mend fences. I did this, because it is the only way to truthfully tell you why those fences can’t be mended. Now you’re publicly trying to twist this into something else, conflating these two different things. Is this really honest?
Let it go, girl. You’ve chosen your standards, I’ve got my own, they are opposite charges and repel.
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To bring the conversation a bit more on topic, if the Minmatar are genuine in a desire for furthering relations with Caldari then some attention should be paid to the old adage about how the truth resists simplicity. There is no definitive answer to the question of: What is it to be Caldari? This is because broadly there are Eight different answers to that question. This because the State as a political system functions as the confederacy between eight corporate states which are considered sovereign in their own right.
Each Megacorporation has the power to print its own currency and set its own monetary policy with the central owning corporation for all intents and purposes acting as the central reserve bank in other governments; each Megacorporation has its own criminal code and judicial systems along with laws to enact; each Megacorporation has its own standing Army and Navy organized under a relevant security service; each Megacorporation has borders considered sovereign territory.
A Megacorporation is considered a nation in its own right and the central government and institutions such as the CEP and CBT are not separate or holding power over the corporate nations within the State, they are comprised of those corporate nations themselves. The corporations hold the majority of power to govern – not the State, because there is essentially no State without the corporations.
The resistance towards the attempt by the former Executor Tibus Heth to turn the State towards a more Unitary form of government is also intrinsically tied to the question of, what is it to be Caldari? Each and every Megacorporation has a different answer to that because the Megacorporation predates the formation of the State and each one has its own particular history, culture and internal politics that have formed over five centuries to create convergent and divergent worldviews in answer to that question.
A Megacorporation is not like elsewhere, where you go to work for a set amount of hours and then have a separate life – it is your entire life. It is the place where you were born, where your family and loved ones live, where you were educated and made your friends, where along with hundreds of billions of others you feel you belong according to a common and shared worldview of what it is to be Caldari. I was born in Kaalakiota, I give thanks and praise to Matias Sobaseki as my revered ancestor. In Wiyrkomi he might be respected, but not to the same extent, because their culture traditions are different and they likely give more credence to the ancestors of the Seituoda because for them what it is to be Caldari is to follow a similar path to the feudal systems of the post-Raata dynastic monarchies.
There’s always been underlying complexities and subtexts to life in the State; and right now it’s really only Pieter Tuulinen who seems to grasp them, or at least the complexities and subtexts of who I am having been born and raised within Kaalakiota. When I joke about Achurans for example, it’s not because I actually dislike Achurans as a people, it’s because they are strongly associated with SuVee and if there’s anything someone raised in Kaalakiota can enjoy as a guilty pleasure it’s taking a few jabs at SuVee’s expense.
People look at Tibus Heth, and they fall over themselves wondering how he could have risen to power. Well, he was born and raised within Kaalakiota and while he might have been demoted in the Home Guard for punching a Gallente diplomat in the face, I would say the issue was more that he broke company law, and not the fact that many within Kaalakiota would agree that Gallente have very punchable faces. Many within the power factions of Kaalakiota turned a blind eye to him for a long time because the man did accomplish one goal Kaalakiota has always coveted – leadership of the State along with the complete and total recapture of the Homeworld.
Even the trolling people accuse me of, well I’m not sure how they would expect much different. The majority of politicking is just trolling the other side, and politicking is favourite company past-time of Kaalakiota. Even just recently, Madam Oiritsuu closed the borders of the State to troll the entire Federation for a bit of posturing and power playing at Gallentean expense. Because this is what Kaalakiota does, what it has always done, and it didn’t become the largest Megacorporation in the State due to some preference for niceties, and it didn’t become one of the largest weapon manufacturers in the cluster without the intention to one day use them.
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It has always struck me how similar a Megacorporation is to a Matari Tribe. There are obvious differences, however the parallels are there.
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Since someone’s going to be expecting me to comment:
This is actually mostly spot on, though I’d want a second opinion from Pieter as to KK’s corporate culture. The Caldari State can be described as a corporate feudal state, a little like the Empire if the Great Houses were all corporations, ruled, sort of, by a corporate council (that doesn’t have all that much power, by itself, to push the corporations around).
It’s a little less schismatic than that might suggest, though-- there’s a lot of overlap between corporate cultures, particularly within a faction, and Caldari tend to stop bickering and pull together when there’s an outsider in the room.
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There are similarities, and there are differences. If you think of a Matari Tribe, you are thinking about deep bonds of trust, emotional investment in the well-being of fellow tribesman, community spirit and the like.
However, this is only true WITHIN the Tribe, and even WITHIN the Tribe, this will remain true only for as long as an individual tribesman follows the way of the tribe and demonstrates that they are, indeed, one of us. If for any reason whatsoever any member of the Tribe starts showing signs of deviating from the Tribal norm and being ‘not one of us’, such as not following the Tribal laws and tradition, refusing to take part in the betterment of the Tribe, antisocial behaviour, having the bad Voluval, they will be distanced, starting from the usual shunning to outright exile.
Also, unlike the Caldari megas, our ways tend to be less formal. Favours are traded back and forth. There’s more inclination to cooperate rather than compete amongst ourselves. Then there are all these obligations brought upon by blood ties, that sort of thing. Contracts are more for dealing with outsiders, rather than with blood and kin. Even things like punishing crimes can be occasionally less formal. Depending on the nature of the crime, we may put the defendant up to court, or we will just form a gathering with a chief present, sentence him right then and there, make him cough out the reparations or just punish him, then carry on our way.
Of course, it’s more complex than that, since the Tribes are themselves broken down into individual clans and families. Relations are closer between family members, slightly less close between clansmen, and somewhat more distant between the clans. As such what may be usually be treated as favour inside the family can very well be treated more formally between families inside a clan, with the need of a witness and all that, and get to ‘consult the book and bother the Chief’ level when it’s done between the clans within a Tribe. Once you get to inter-Tribe, that’s when you really, really get into the protocols and the books.
If there is one thing that a Tribesman can always count on, it’s that for as long as he is one with the Tribe, the Tribe will back him up, especially against outsiders. A fellow Tribesman will side with you during an inter-Tribe dispute than that member of that other Tribe (you know, blood ties obligations and all), and will keep backing you for as long as they are certain that you didn’t do anything that is against the Tribe’s way.
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Kaalakiota took a big hit to it’s prestige towards the end of the Heth period - close to bankruptcy, with the Executor’s personal authority in tatters and the other Megacorporations in something akin to revolt.
Chairwoman Oiritsuu has pretty much reversed that position - although I daresay that perhaps KK’s financial situation is a little more fragile than she lets on - in the years since she retook the helm. To say that KK is proud of it’s current position and power is an understatement - and that pride, and the exercise of that power, is pretty much definitive of the Corporation as a whole, right now.
Aria’s summary of Caldari politics is fairly close - Me and my corporation against the rest of my bloc, My bloc and I against the other blocs and The State and I against the foreigners. That said, competition within the blocs can be fierce as well - Wiyrkomi and KK often compete for the same ricebowl, after all. When brothers fight it can get nasty.
That said, there are definite cultural overlaps - each Mega is not completely different - the Patriots, Practicals and Liberals tend to be unified within their blocs by their attitude towards trade outside the State. They are all, at least, fellow travellers.
Some Caldari find it hard to cooperate with citizens from outside their company or bloc - I’ve always been blessed with an easy-going nature, I guess. My current position is as a Caldari born within the Practical bloc, working for a Liberal corporation and with my citizenship inside the Patriot bloc.
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As you suggest, there are definite similarities as well as differences.
That said, the competition that exists within the work division, within the department and team, is a lot less contentious than you seem to think. Heiian demands that Caldari sacrifice for the collective good - and to be seen as self-aggrandising can lead to ostracism from wider society. There is a degree of social lubrication without which life within the State can be difficult and painful.
In both our societies, many of the most powerful contracts are the unwritten ones.
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Every one of them does. Including yours. Including you, oh-role-model-for-the-capsuleer-groupies, oh-owner-of-the-divine-butt. You liked to say that you joined Coreli to get their pharma research, that you were there in service of your people. Well, you got it. Now you’re still there for… ?
You’re still there because you like it. You like being a mercenary who doesn’t have to worry about whether the cause she’s fighting for is at all just or not. And that’s the only reason you ever went out there. But you needed the canard. You needed the lie to tell yourself, so you could feel righteous about it. Because while you claim to hold humanity to a higher standard, what you really do is you hold people to impossible standards. Everyone here’s seen it. You set a bar you know will be failed so that you can reassure yourself ‘see? they’re all just monsters, they’re all madmen and violent bastards, slavers and psychopaths’. You look at Pieter, whose only violent history has been as a partisan or mercenary, and lament him having children because you automatically decide the children of capsuleers will be monsters, too. And you sneer at anyone in nullsec who says they’re interested in ‘empire building’ and declare that, too, to be a lie. Not just futile, not foolish, but a lie.
It’s sad, really, how much you need us all to be monsters… how much you need us to not be able to honestly even aspire to be more than ‘psychopaths in pods’… because if we can even want to be more… then you have to start asking yourself why you don’t. And you wrap it all up in self-righteousness and insist you’re the one who’s aggrieved and everyone else is being dishonest.
By the way?
Opposite charges attract. Like charges repel. You’re Sebiestor, I’d expect you’d at least know basic electromagnetic principles.
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Continued access? If you think I can just copy-paste the entirety of their bio-engineering data, I’m not entirely sure you know exactly how vast it is.
Of course I like it. I get to sharpen myself against a large variety of enemies, some at the very height of capsuleer warfare in terms of strategy and tactics, while indulging my destructive urges against targets that have absolutely no moral or ethical issues attached. It’s pretty near a perfect situation to be in, while the primary Imperial target is protected by CONCORD. This has never even been in question.
Citation Needed, but feel free to believe this is the case. It’s not like I am expecting people to believe differently, and I knew that when I took this step. My reputation is hardly pristine and those who actually know me know better. Apparently you never did.
Take a little hyperbole for what it is, will you? Besides, it’s not exactly a controversial stance to take. Children of abusers tend to turn into abusers. Children of addicts tend to become addicts. A child born and raised by capsuleers, who are quite demonstrably some of the scariest people in New Eden? Well, I would be surprised if they didn’t turn out have a certain… family resemblance.
And I believe it is. If you disagree, that’s your prerogative, but I have seen nothing but lies come from such sources, so you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t fall for the rhetoric. Especially when no such “Empire” has ever lasted for more than a blink of an eye before having been razed to the ground from within or without.
I have no need for anyone to be a monster. I just find it disgusting when monsters pretend to be otherwise. There are certain lines that can’t be uncrossed. There are crimes that don’t wash away. There are actions taken that can not, no matter what aspirations or potentials, be undone. Aspire and become better, sure. This is a good thing. Try to pretend that the path was not one of blood and destruction, and every step afterwards becomes worthless and a lie. A band-aid hiding a tumor, rather than an excising of it. A pathetic, fearful hiding from the pain of consequence and self-insight, rather than facing that truth and accepting it.
That is the only path to real change or improvement. Of course, that’s not the easy path, so I guess it should be condemned and derided with the usual rotational flair.
You couldn’t make me ‘aggrieved’ if you tried, Arrendis. You came close to getting that kind of reach, but that is long gone. Why you insist on public airing of this crap all the time, I will never know, but know that it’s getting downright sad. It’s a rather big cluster. I’m sure you can find the approval you want somewhere, and you can dismiss my disapproval as unreasonable if it makes you feel better.
Correct of course. I conflated a saying and a certain physics phenomenon in my hurry. Except we all know that’s crap, magnets are just bloody magic.
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We can transfer complete data on thousands of minds a hundred light years in an instant. You say you need more than a year to transfer data for analysis elsewhere, and insist you’re bring brutally honest in all things?
Really, I think that about covers the rest of it, too.
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Again, you don’t seem to understand what we’re talking about here. This is continuously changing data, in absolutely staggering amounts, on the very edge of bio-engineering research and you think it’d be even remotely useful to just try and copy what is dispersed across multiple regions worth of facilities and fiddle with it blind?
And of course, you completely disregard the rest of the post which answers the other reasons to be where I am, because that’d be too difficult to find a response to, hmm?
Arrendis, it’s getting pathetic at this point. I had a very small amount of sympathy for your hurt when it looked like you had the capacity to learn from it. When it turns out you run from that too, taking shelter in mewling and denial, I don’t even have that anymore. It never gets less depressing to have choices confirmed as the correct one, time and time again.
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Yup. That’s totally what I said. And the rest of your post was totally about why you’re out there. 
I’m still the one with ‘goal posts on warp drives’ and ‘constantly shifting the argument’, right?
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It answered why I’m out here, yes? Did you even read it?
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Writes post with 144 about why she’s where she is, and 375 words on spurious claims about everything from me to small children, accuses people of denying events they’ve never denied and which are matters of public record.
Claims ‘the rest of the post […] answers the other reasons to be where I am’.
Calls this honesty.
Did you?
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Oh gosh, there’s more. Yes, there’s the answer you were asking for, and there’s answers to other things you levied at me. What a cruel and unusual thing to do, responding to multiple things you put in your post. This is clearly dishonest.
You’re reaching, girl. A lot.
The really sad thing is that you were a lot better than this. If this is all you have to offer, I’ll let you ramble whatever final words you wish to get in and let these public boards go unmolested by this apparent urge for exhibitionism.
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Mizhara, cousin dear. Have you considered not announcing to everyone, including members of Coreli, of your intent by posting in a publically-accessible message board because that will only make them buff up the security of their servers? Second, have you considered checking on the security of said servers to determine how you may break in and bug the servers to intercept their data streams so that you can get that data anywhere you damn well please? Third, have you considered identifying the techs in charge of maintaining the servers and understand its security architecture best and figure out if they can be bought?
Once you have access to said servers and bugged/backdoored the heck out of them, you can sift the data whenever you damn well please and see if you can find what you are looking for. Then the rest is keeping that bug/backdoor hidden for as long as needed until you get what you want.
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I told them during the hiring interview I was there to basically pillage every bit of data that wasn’t nailed down, and then take a crowbar to those. The response was “Yeah but can and will you fly shooty ships?”. The answer was yes. Access to what Coreli and Corelum Syndicate has access to is now part of my position in the corporation. There’s no security breaches, no attempts to steal or otherwise trick these people. I joined with clear intent and as good mercenaries they honor their contracts.
As long as I fulfill my end of the bargain, which is basically undocking in the right fleets and killing sufficient numbers of contract targets - I highly doubt that anyone within my people’s borders will ever grow to become a worthwhile contract target, but if they do I can revoke my support at will - I will continue to have this access.
This is basically the definition of win-win. I get to keep the combat capability sharp, learning from both MC and enemies which rank up with the very best in capsuleer combat, and they’re all good and valid targets. Goons, Providence and its attempted Keepstar, lowsec royalty, against and alongside Co2 and so on. And I’m paid in bio-engineering data access, which should the Matari loyalists ever get a decent operation running, can be used in a project that’s been gnawing at me for over half a decade now. Insorum Component Research, which while entirely possibly or even likely will prove less than an unmitigated success still might provide a breakthrough in utterly eliminating the efficacy of vitoxin cluster wide.
It might in the end prove entirely useless, but the chance however slight is there. And it will have been done without a single act of theft, betrayal or even dishonest dealing.
… although if Joshua’s grumbling is any guide, he probably wasn’t foreseeing quite such a toll on the corporation capital fuel hangar when that clause was entered into the contract.
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See? This is where you’d be telling me I was putting those ‘goalposts on warp drives’. Of course, I never said you responding to the rest of my points was dishonest. I said you claiming the rest of your post was about why you were out there wasn’t the truth. Because it wasn’t. It was about a bunch of other things. But please, do keep on with the smugly superior act, since you’re the one who calls ‘technically correct’ answers like the ones you’re hiding behind now ‘pathetic’, and calls it dishonest to focus on one particular perspective on events while ignoring detractors.
You know, just exactly what you’re doing now. But of course, you’ll pass all this off as me being desperate, and grasping at straws, just like you’ve been doing while not actually answering the core assertion, and instead just focusing on your continued attempts to tear me down. ‘It’s getting downright sad’, ‘it’s getting pathetic’, ‘you were a lot better than this’. Always attacking the messenger, and not able to admit any fault. Just like when you jump on Aria, or Aldrith, or dump on Pieter and then hide behind ‘it was hyperbole… oh but I really did totally mean it’.
So sure. G’head. Scurry along now. Lots of hired thuggery to do, I’m sure.
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