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This is so much more reason that these tankies deserve tbh. I appreciate you taking the time to put it into words.

These people should actually try talking to foreigners, students and immigrants. The picture Ukrainian refugees and Taiwanese students paint is a lot less forgiving than the completely unsubstantiated, pseudo-intellectuslist “but that’s CIA propaganda” arguments these authoritarian “leftists” like to throw around. I’m sure such first-hand accounts would be as readily dismissed, mind you, because the goal is clearly not to have an honest discussion to begin with.

What conclusion are you proposing that I came to? My only statement was that denying Western media in favor of Eastern media is not “leftist.” Everything else you and Dessalines have attempted to drag into this discussion is creating either a false dichotomy or a strawman, in some cases both. The options are not “either you listen to PoC or you listen to Western Media,” because not all Western Media nor people of colour agree on every position. Whatever imaginary propaganda you are creating about the State suggesting that China is torturing minorities this minute is not something I have experienced, nor referenced. We have not presented the arguments that you are trying to deconstruct.

You are boxing with shadows, throwing fists with invisible monsters in the dark. I’m not sure if it’s our of poor reading comprehension, poor critical thinking skills, or intentional dishonesty, but there’s clearly a bias here that is useless to engage with.

No one said I do.

So instead, we should trust… The other ogliarchic and blatantly fascist empires?

Call me crazy, but I don’t think unapologetic fascism is “leftist.”

Either that or engaging with such incredible lies is a waste of time. But hey, they said something you don’t like, so “red lib.”

I’m not talking about weed, though. It’s been traditionally over policed but that doesn’t mean we should stop policing all drugs. There’s hardly any sense in saying that severely addictive drugs with visible negative effects on the human body should be sold for recreational use for profit. The majority of opiods are a good example of this.

But more to the point, giving moral purchase to profit justifies the abuse of the consumer. I can’t say for certain whether the TikTok ban is government overreach, as I’m not knowledgeable enough on the topic to speak with any authority, but “it makes money, so it’s fine” really shouldn’t be the end of the conversation.

A platform should be allowed to function if it can. If it’s horribly made, or supremely unprofitable it’ll find its own way out.

I mean, this doesn’t allow for any form of ethical analysis, though. Should every drug be legalized? How about gambling?

I’m not saying I am for the TikTok ban persay, but if the only conditionals for whether a product or service should exist are “is it ‘well made’ and does it make money,” we are setting ourselves up to achieve a corporate dystopia rather quickly.

They government should consider what parts of TikTok make it not okay, and target those forms and functions with well reasoned laws. Unfortunately, as you said, I suspect they’ll target things that are good and users like, while pretending that the issue is entirely about one small portion of the complete law. Ie, stress that the issue is one of security, and then write a law saying that all social media in the US must be willing to submit it’s data to the American government. (To be clear, I have no idea what the actual law they wrote is, but this is the kind of shit I expect them to get up to )

It’s still in the “ChatGPT, tell me about X” format, with headers, bullet points and all.

Hi-Fi Rush.

I was so distraught when the studio was closed despite selling extremely well and working on a sequel. I am beyond excited now that the studio has been picked up by Zenimax Krafton. There’s no confirmation, but you don’t go from planning a sequel to a breakout hit, to being closed down, to being picked up by another parent company just to scrap said sequel.

EDIT: Fixed the company buy-up. Forgot the order of things.

The things I care about have been getting stripped away every game, and they’re selling more copies than ever. I suspect the next mainline game will be the first time since the Gold/Silver remakes that I actively choose to not buy a mainline Pokemon game.

Legends, on the other hand…

I don’t always find time to proofread when I am sitting on the toilet, trying to finish my thought and get back to my life. Nor do I concern myself with my old posts enough to go backwards over them later.

When I see them, I fix them, but the time and energy necessary to correctly proofread my posts just… Isn’t worth it. We misspeak in real life all the time. We correct ourselves when we can and move on when we can’t. It just isn’t a big deal.

By design, the bots have to be where the people are. If the only people left on Twitter are already indoctrinated, it doesn’t help their cause to be over there. That place will spread disinformation all on its own.

And originally created by a university design team with a female design lead, at that.

Even as Portal 2 adds male characters, one is greedy and responsible for all the conflict in the franchise, acting as something of a caricature for masculine stereotypes, and the other’s only defining trait is that he’s an easily corrupted idiot.

Portal is perhaps the best example of, and should be held up as the golden standard of, feminism in gaming.

I think it has less to do with gender politics and more to do with delivery, though.

The writing was just better. They make Joel to be a complicated, sympathetic character, and create a situation in which, even as Joel/the player murders relative innocents, you know he is doing a bad thing from a complicated and genuine love. Then, they take that character and reduce all his love to “he did a bad” and shoot him, make you chase his killer for half a game, and try to make you sympathize with his killer after the fact? And it’s all tied together through this tired, “cycle of violence” trope that another major post-apolcolyptic zombie survival media has already bastardized and beaten to death.

The “fans” who defend Joel as the hero are insane, on that point I can’t agree more. But I think the dislike of Abby and the love of Joel is deeper than “guy good, girl bad.” I’ve seen far fewer complaints (though not zero complaints) about playing the notably more “woke” surrogate lesbian daughter than about playing as Abby.

As an aside, I’ve been thinking recently about how the game would feel if you spend the first half of the game as Abby, chasing her father’s killer, only to have the rug pull later that the killer is Joel. Then, you spend the second half playing as Ellie, dealing with the consequences, while the player is trying to reconcile what just happened. Though it prob would have been harder to sell a game that doesn’t open with Eillie and Joel.

No. They’re whining about Witcher 4 using Ciri as a protagonist because they think she was made ugly.

Attractive women designed solely to be the object of male affection are allowed to be protagonists. When a woman stands on their own as a unique complex individual, they take issue.

Try this argument again when a grade school bully has the power and privilege of a health care CEO who makes ~10 Million USD a year off of the suffering of millions.

Hey, let’s not discredit the amazing work that Brian Thompson accomplished as CEO! Before his joining UnitedHealthCare in 2022, their denial rate was 8%. Then, only one short year later, he managed to successfully drive that denial rate up to almost 28%! As the UnitedHealthCare conglomerate served some 122 million Americans that year, you can easily discern that Brian Thompson was directly responsible for ensuring that ~24 million Americans had their claims denied. Imagine how much less UHC would have made for their investors if they had to pay an addition 24 million American’s health care claims!

So before giving all the credit to the board members and share holders, let’s take a moment to understand exactly how hard Brian Thompson worked to ensure some ~24 million Americans went without doctor-approved medical support that they previously were entitled to.

All this data is publically available on Wikipedia, by the way.

Thinking this was fun for anyone involved is an insane take.

Denying and delaying health care is wrong. And while I think that murder shouldn’t be a desired solution to the problem as it is also wrong, at this point we have to accept that we’ve reached systematic self-defense.

Something needs to change, and there are currently no motivating factors encouraging those with the power to make change. I don’t want the answer to be violence, but, genuinely, what other options do we have at this point? The courts, the Democratic process, the police and the economy all work together to protect the massive wealth of the few, and we live in a world run by that wealth. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but more than that, I don’t want anyone to be hurt. When the few in power choose to hurt the many without, tolerance for the gaps in power, wealth, and quality of life give way.