So #NationStates has zombies for Halloween. A lot of my people are zombies. More are dead. I think they'll just....be...fine...

Regardless, have a zombie piping plover!

Every now and then I think about playing #nationstates again, which is a the silly browser based game where you run a country and every decision you make turns extreme and things go comically wrong.

The best part of it is really the roleplaying - because there's not a way for countries to fight with each other, people playing the game just decided to do forum based RPs where they play as characters from their countries, fight wars, and write elaborate guides to their imaginary countries.

"In the game, players make choices which are inspired by the novel and which affect the economy, society, and culture of their countries. #NationStates launched alongside the book and remains active as of 2025" forum.nationstates.net/viewforum.ph...

NationStates • View forum - Se...

"where most nations in the Americas and #Oceania are dominated by powerful corporations and corporate libertarianism coalitions, and where #GovernmentPower is extremely limited." "To help promote the novel, Barry created a browser game titled #JenniferGovernment: #NationStates"

The fictional #NationStates online web forum was a great place to debate, less heated since it's in an ever expanding fictional world. The game was created to promote: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennife... " #JenniferGovernment is a 2003 dystopian novel by #MaxBarry, set in an alternate reality"

The #Othering of difference is a staple of #NationStates and exists to keep the majority population in line behind the #RulingClass. Targets change with circumstance but the purpose is the same -- #DivideAndRule. Here is Disney using common #antisemitic tropes & slurs of the day.

A mysterious Chinese AI pentesting tool has appeared online, with over 10,000 downloads so far | TechRadar https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/a-mysterious-chinese-ai-pentesting-tool-has-appeared-online-with-over-10-000-downloads-so-far #Cybersecurity #AI #AIPoweredExploits #RedTeam #ThreatActors #NationStates #Kali #DeepSeek

"The legal form of the sovereign nation-state and the concepts of contract and private property, as well as their many permutations, have spread across the world during centuries of European imperial dominance. They are neither weak nor manipulable at will. On the contrary, they form a ubiquitous and immensely powerful aspect of the way we are all ruled.

This legal infrastructure remains invulnerable to the standard critique of international law. It consists of many different kinds of law—international and domestic, private and public, formal and informal—that collaborate to reproduce the banal reality of an unjust world outside the spectacle of war and sovereign conflict. Consolidated in the context of state-building, commercial expansion and the ideologies of civilization, modernization and development, they do not form a logical system, nor are they the expression of a single plan. Yet since the 1980s, these laws have operated as largely taken-for-granted aspects of ‘global governance’, enabling powerful actors to make claims about legal rights, powers and privileges to which others have been expected to yield. Globalization has been an intensely legalistic affair. From the organization of government to the most technical rules of consumer protection, from claims of jurisdiction made by states against each other to the rights of identity, contract and property invoked by individuals and corporations, our social lives are framed and pervaded by law. Far from being an infinitely flexible façade, law governs the way we imagine our social relations, and thus defines the character of those relations. Nothing of importance can be accomplished without making claims about legal right, power and privilege."

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii154/articles/the-laws-that-rule-us

#InternationalLaw #Capitalism #Law #PoliticalEconomy #NationStates #Globalization

So Eastern Bik Sourgicedka in #NationStates has a new flag and factbook!

Factbook at - https://www.nationstates.net/nation=eastern_bik_sourgicedka/detail=factbook/id=2695942

I think my Dear Leader might be lying about this... #NationStates

This is one of the piping plovers from "Twenty Piping Plovers in a Trench Coat" fame of #NationStates

They won't say names, they refuse them. They are a collective. This one is usually the one in the right hand of the trench coat though.

This fleet, which works to provide #space-based #internet service to the ground, dwarfs those of all other private #companies & #NationStates put together. And almost every week, #Musk adds to it, flinging dozens more #satellites into the sky.

Andersen recently asked the space historian Jonathan McDowell, who keeps an online registry of #Earth’s satellites, if any one person had ever achieved such #dominance over the orbital realm, & so quickly. “This is unique,”he said.

#tech #power #monopoly

We now have proportional representation in #NationStates because of someone who wants 'piping plover wrestling' which, I remind beings, are citizens and can vote and were always allowed to wrestle if they wanted.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/government-hackers-are-leading-the-use-of-attributed-zero-days-google-says/
#cybersecurity #0days #exploits #nationstates #Google

Cyber warfare has nation states using AI and sparking fears of worldwide conflict
“We definitely have seen an uptick in capabilities that can only be explained by using AI tech
https://www.itbrew.com/stories/2025/04/22/cyber-warfare-has-nation-states-using-ai-and-sparking-fears-of-worldwide-conflict
#cybersecurity #AI #agenticAI #nationstates #IT #OT #globalthreat

Here's a thought I had: Technically we live in #anarchism, in the sense that in most countries you can leave if you don't like how they are organized. Only there are no places without #NationStates for you to go to.

AI now has personhood in my #NationStates nation. So do the piping plovers still.

It might be androids with AI in them.

I think there's piping plover shaped androids.

My #NationStates nation is going to get weird, since my piping plovers are citizens, but a lot of the issues are going to treat them just as my nation animal, aren't they.

...that horn-billed piping plover is also a citizen, James Claus, maybe the family should be teaching their kids not to fucking stare?? #NationStates

I used to play a lot of Persistent Browser Games. They are now considered a bit old hat and past their heyday, but there's still plenty of them around according to https://pbbg.com/.

Some of them have been going for a couple of decades, mostly with a dwindling but still active player base. I still dabble in the zombie apocalypse game #UrbanDead.

Others that I have left behind include...
#Battrick #NationStates #eRepublik #Travian #Die2Nite #Popmundo #DolphinSim #BlackoutRugby

I might do individual retrospectives of them, but normal reasons for quitting include...
- Excessive time spent number crunching
- Plateauing of in-game progression
- Pay to win
- Toxic player base
- Repetitive game play
- Site closing down

#browsergames