loobkoob

Unfortunately for her, too. She might be successful, but she seems fucking miserable all the time.

I think the episodes kind of naturally fall into groups based on the story arcs, so if you’re watching multiple episodes at once, I’d recommend watching them in those groups if you can!

• 1-2-3
• 4-5-6
• 7
• 8-9-10
• 11-12

The police didn’t actually arrest him, and I think the headline is a little misleading. Falter had been walking directly against the protest (and not attempting to cross the road like he claimed). The police stopped him and offered to escort him to his destination via a route that avoided the march. Falter refused and tried to push through the police officers and cross the protest march. The officers prevented him and told him he was free to go in the opposite direction, or that they would escort him past the protest, but that if he tried to go the way he was they would have to arrest him. It was clear they didn’t want to arrest him, and the officer offered probably a dozen times over the course of the ~15-minute interaction to escort him via a different route.

I think the officer did a good job of de-escalating, personally, and was incredibly patient in the face of Falter’s obnoxious, disingenuous antagonism. It’s a shame that there’s a single soundbite that, when stripped of context, portrays the officer poorly, but I think it’s clear to anyone watching the full video that the officer had no anti-semitic intent and handled the situation well.

The officer mentioned in the full video that Falter had been walking directly against the protest and wasn’t just trying to cross the road like he claimed. Which, “openly Jewish” or not, is a good reason to stop him, I think - for his own safety and the safety of the people in the march. And coupled with the fact that he very visibly is Jewish, it makes his actions seem a lot like a counter-protest - something the police generally try to limit or contain regardless of the protest subject.

The police officer had the patience of a saint, honestly. He offered to escort Falter to the place he wanted to go via a different route - so as to avoid the protest - probably around a dozen times. It’s very clear Falter didn’t really have any intention of getting to his claimed destination.

There certainly was some actual “ethics in video game journalism” discussion early on that I felt was legitimate, but that got drowned out pretty quickly by the misogynists (which, from what I gather, was the entire point - it seems the misogynists started the whole thing and used the “ethics in game journalism” thing as a front to try to legitimise their agenda).

I think the discussion about the personal relationships game journalists have with developers in general was a reasonable one to have. It unfortunately ended up just laser focusing on Zoe Quinn supposedly trading sex for good reviews, which was untrue, sexist and resulted in nasty personal attacks. But I think it was worth at least examining the fact that game journalists and game developers often have close relationships and move in the same circles, and that game journalism can often be a stepping stone to game development. Those are absolutely things that could influence someone’s reviews or articles, consciously or subconsciously.

And another conversation worth having was the fact that gaming outlets like IGN were/are funded by adverts from gaming companies. It makes sense, of course - the Venn diagram of IGN’s (or other gaming outlets’) readers and gaming companies’ target audience is almost a perfect circle, which makes the ad space valuable to the gaming companies. And because it’s valuable to gaming companies, it’s better for the outlets to sell the ad space to them for more money than to sell it to generic advertising platforms. But it does mean it seems valid to ask whether the outlets giving bad reviews or writing critical articles might cause their advertisers to pull out, and therefore they might avoid being too critical.

Now I don’t think the games industry is corrupt or running on cronyism, personally. And I certainly don’t believe it’s all run by a shadowy cabal of woke libruls who are trying to force black people, women (and worse, gasp black women shudder) into games. But I do feel it was worth asking about the relationships between journalists, developers, publishers and review outlets - and honestly, those are the kinds of things that both game journalists and people who read game journalism should constantly be re-evaluating. It’s always good to be aware of potential biases and influences.

The fact that the whole thing almost immediately got twisted into misogyny, death threats and a general hate campaign was both disappointing and horrifying. And the fact that it led to the alt-right, and that you can trace a line from it to Brexit and to Donald Trump becoming US president, is even worse.

conducting industrial espionage against the vape store

That’s something we should’ve been doing all along! Now there’s a mist opportunity…

Not that your suggestion is necessarily bad in general, but I don’t really think it’s necessary when it comes to Factorio. I think it should be clear from playing the demo whether 100+ more hours of that seems worth the asking price for someone. It’s probably the most representative demo I’ve ever played; the full game is just the demo but more. There are no surprises down the line. There are no random pivots to other genres, or the game trying to stick its fingers in too many pies. There’s no narrative to screw up. There’s no “oh, they clearly just spent all their time polishing the first hour of the game and the rest of it is a technical mess”. It’s the same gameplay loop from the demo for another 50 hours until you “win”.

… and then another 50 hours after that when you decide to optimise things. And then another 100 hours when you decide to make a train-themed base. And then another 700 hours when you discover some of the mods that exist…

There’s no inflation in space, just explosive decompression!

People can be angry or upset about more than one thing at a time. And you’ve no idea whether the person you responded to has been outraged about the US’ strikes or not. Just because a society as a whole has a viewpoint that trends a certain way doesn’t mean you can assume each and every individual you talk to has that exact viewpoint.

By all means, criticise society as a whole - it’s a very valid thing to be critical of. But making assumptions about individuals - and being rude to / critical of them based on those assumptions - isn’t the way to win anyone over.

Even if Starmer and the Labour party were pretty much the same except they kept the mask on, that would still be a step in the right direction. Normalising the racism, bigotry, corruption and general inhumaneness that fuels the Tory party is absolutely something we should try to avoid.

However, I don’t think Labour is like this. I don’t think they’re perfect, but I think they’re much, much better. They’re not going to fix everything overnight, but I do think them getting into power would be an important first stepping stone in moving the country and politics towards being a better place in in 10-15 years. They may not be your ideal party but, if you’re pragmatic and have any kind of long-term vision, you’ll likely vote for them (or the Liib Dems, depending on which constituency you’re in) to make sure the Tories are eliminated.

The Overton window is far too far to the right at the moment and Labour getting into power is important for helping to gradually shift it leftwards. People simply aren’t going to vote in a “radical” socialist in the current political or economic climate; they want someone they can see as a safe pair of hands who can work on stabilising things somewhat. Right now, that’s Starmer - the boring man who’s politically central (by current standards) with a fairly clean record and an air of competence. When, in most constituencies, the options are Labour and Tory, you working to put everyone off Labour is just going to benefit the Tories.

Stop letting perfect be the enemy of good.

That and “Suella de Ville”. And she’s fully deserving of either title. I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but where other politicians I dislike feel like they’re either doing the wrong things for the right reasons, or they’re selfish, corrupt or incompetent, Braverman feels like she gets off on the cruelty and is a genuinely evil person.

I think calling her the “second coming of Maggie” really undersells Braverman’s cruelty and capacity for evil. I think Thatcher really fucked up this country, and we’re still feeling the effects of some of her policies to this day. But Thatcher did genuinely think she was doing things for the right reasons - that she was making tough but necessary decisions.

Braverman seems to get off on the cruelty. A lot of her policies and ideas seem cruel for the sake of cruelty. There are plenty of politicians I’ve disagreed with and disliked, but they’ve all tended to feel like it’s either because they were doing what I’d consider to be the wrong things for the right reasons (ie, they thought it would help, different approaches to what I’d want but with positive outcomes in mind, etc) or they’ve just been selfish, corrupt or idiotic. Braverman is a whole different thing entirely. The purpose of her policies is often the cruelty, with no tangible benefits that even she can list. She’s a genuinely evil person.

You’re right. My CEO deserves 118x my pay because I only work 8 hours a day, while they work 944 hours a day…

Yes, a CEO will likely have the most individual impact on a company, but that doesn’t mean what they’re doing is necessarily harder work than what someone on the shop floor is doing. They have more individual impact because they’re CEO; they’re not CEO because of their individual impact. Take that person from the shop floor and put them in the CEO position and they’ll then be the one with the most individual impact instead.

It’s a different set of skills, sure. But one of those skills is definitely “being good at persuading people who make the actual product / provide the actual service to work for far, far less money than the CEO who simply co-ordinates it all”.

The factory must grow!

From what I gather, he backed down because all his top men’s families were being threatened. Prigozhin’s family was kept safe, of course, but I don’t think they expected Russia to threaten the families of those further down the ladder.

Don’t apologise for digging it up, it’s a really good comment! Barbie being an accessory to other people’s growth is a brilliant way of framing it that I hadn’t considered - I love that!

I also like framing it that, at the beginning of the film, everyone’s identity is somewhat defined by Barbie (as a concept - not the character):

• Barbie is obvious - she is just living the “dream” Barbie life and doesn’t know anything outside of that. She struggles when she starts to gain humanity because she feels inferior to the other, more accomplished Barbies (doctor Barbie, president Barbie, astronaut Barbie, etc);
• Ken - his entire life revolves around being “and Ken”; He exists to be Barbie’s mild love interest, and is basically irrelevant when Barbie’s not around;
• The mother is basically clinging onto childhood optimism and better times by playing with Barbie. She’s using Barbie as an escape, but she’s also warping the concept of Barbie with her depression;
• The daughter is wholly and actively rejecting Barbie (and her and her friends are also references to Bratz - the “anti-Barbie”), to the point where she’s overly cynical, tough, bitter, and not empathetic enough.

By the end of the film, I think everyone ends up empowering and being empowered by the ideals of Barbie (the concept) while also rejecting the relationship they had with the concept at the start of the film:

• Barbie learns to be human. She gains empathy. She sees the value in women having roles like doctor, president, astronaut, etc, but realises it shouldn’t be an expectation for every woman and that she’s not inferior for not having one of those jobs;
• Ken starts his journey of discovering his own identity, rather than just being an extension of/accessory to Barbie;
• The mother and daughter repair their relationship and the mother (we can assume) stops her “depressed Barbie” creations as her life improves.
• The daughter realises some parts of Barbie’s message are positives - that it’s meant for empowerment rather than to set unrealistic expectations. So in some ways, she embraces the concept of Barbie, which is a rejection of her previous relationship with the concept.

Like I said, I’ve been actively boycotting Blizzard for years now; I’m not sure why you think I’d want to “slop on their dick”. But yes, if a game is fine on a technical level and mediocre in every other sense, why wouldn’t it be a 5/10? A game that runs properly and is otherwise unnoteworthy is probably already better than the average game out there. There’s a lot of shovelware.

There’s a reason review outlets like IGN rarely give scores below 5/10 - it’s that almost any AA or AAA studio is going to be competent enough to get their game to run and have something to it. Even Redfall is a 5/10 on Metacritic. 5/10 games aren’t generally worth your time, but that’s only because there are so many 7+/10 games competing for your time/attention.

Even though I have no love for Blizzard as a company, and have never played Overwatch 2, I refuse to believe it’s in the bottom half of all games ever. A lot of the grievances I’ve seen about it seem completely justified, but it’s not a game that’s truly awful. It’s good on a technical level. It has good art direction. The characters are unique and identifiable, even to people who’ve never played Overwatch. I get that people don’t like the balance, they don’t like Blizzard’s money-grabbing, they don’t like the change to 5v5(?), and they don’t like whatever else people are complaining about. But that doesn’t make it the worst game on Steam, and it doesn’t make every single aspect of it bad.

This is stupid. I have no love for Overwatch or Blizzard - I’ve been boycotting them for years, in fact. But there are far, far worse games on Steam than OW2. The fact that, to my knowledge, it runs properly, doesn’t have crypto miners built into it, and isn’t just made from stolen assets already puts it at like a 5/10 at minimum.

I’m all for consumers standing up for themselves and being critical or poor products, but I really wish people wouldn’t get caught up in these hate bandwagons.

Or two overlapping lines of cocaine!

Also they’re not tweeting anymore, they’re . . .

Spewing xcrement