I mean, that’s fair, and super fucked up. I have a lot of issues with that, including the cultural ramifications

Still, it seems a different caliber to being actively hostile to players in the game design department. Nintendo games aren’t the ones using psychological manipulation to give me a gambling addiction

That’s fair, though. It’s hella fucked up, and I’ve been wary of Nintendo’s approach to this stuff since way back when AM2R was coming out

I get that corporations are all ultimately after your money and nothing else, but I’m curious why Nintendo is on here. As far as game companies, the only thing I really see from them that’s kind of ass is their hyperprotectiveness of their own IPs. It sucks, but I don’t need a battlepass to get the full experience of the next Mario game. Zelda doesn’t require an always online connection. Metroid Prime 4 is actually gonna be finished on release instead of just shipping it in a terrible state

The game that spend 10 years removing things from AC Black Flag

As someone who has written songs… We get them, and I don’t think it’s particularly ironic

I believe that my consciousness is a thing I can point to as being my essence. You could maybe call that a soul, or you could maybe not. Either way, my consciousness is the collective consciousness of countless single-celled organisms all working to make my singular self function. You could maybe call the manifestation of all these processes into a greater thinking singularity as a “soul”, more akin to the way in which a city might have a “soul” made up by the people that live in it. I don’t believe I have a ghost, and I believe that my consciousness is conditional, derived from my biology, but consciousness itself is as good as anything to call a soul

So I guess, in short, no XD

I think we’re stereotyped often as the militant and belligerent atheists quite a lot. We have been painted as unsympathetic assholes who like to talk down to religious people to make us feel better about ourselves, not to mention a weird overlap with some parts of the far-right, usually by way of transphobia, homophobia, racism, social darwinism and the enforcement of poorly understood or straight up incorrect “science”

Eugenecists inhabit this space, as well as people who might call themselves “race realists”, as well as people who think their middle-school-level understanding of genetics and sex encapsulates the entirety of gender and sexuality. It’s those atheists who claim to love science, hate ignorance, but remain ignorant of science. They give us a bad name, and their loudness makes it seem like they represent us

I am older now then my mom was when she had me, and I’m a significantly younger of 2 children. I know that my mother was already deeply unhappy in her relationship with my dad, but at the time still believed in trying to salvage it. That’s why I was born, after all

Mom was a leftist for the time, free spirit, rebellious woman who made the mistake of getting impregnated by a conservative and traditionally macho man in a catholic, Latin American country, and found herself marrying because out-of-wedlock pregnancies would be the absolute literal worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone ever, apparently

By the time she was my current age, she had been domesticated (partially through some mid-tier abuse, but also because she did have my sister and I to raise) and worked an entry-level job in a country where her degree didn’t mean shit and she could barely communicate. My dad also worked, having a better-paying job, but also a second weekend job. We grew up poor, my sister basically raised me, and my mom regrets that she couldn’t be there. She also deeply regrets how much of her own personal joys she gave up for my father specifically, joining him for all of his hobbies, while never being able to indulge in any of hers because he didn’t let her. She don’t give a fuck now, though

I have a lot of negative things to say about my parents, but boy did they fucking work their asses off

I know plenty of “white” Americans speaking perfectly fine American English, but with a last name like Garcia

This is me. I’m a latina, and even my first name is white-passing, and not a single person would know until I explicitly tell them or they meet my parents or something. It really goes to show how arbitrary race is, and how much of our perceptions based on race is also built on a base of ignorance

Legit I good instrument. Would love to own some day

Now open borders can mean from anywhere, but this is largely about Mexico. Them’s the people that cross our borders. It’s so incredibly strange to me that western civilization is in such peril from immigration from a *check’s notes Catholic country that speaks a European language. The realization I had that Latin America isn’t actually considered part of “The west” was the last piece that clicked into place on just how meaningless that term is. They are geographically western, the primary religions are European, and the primary languages are European. For fuck’s sake, it’s called Latin America, and it’s not because they were the site of the former Roman Empire

When you realize that Latin America is not part of Western civilization, you can see how plainly there isn’t even an iota of thought behind the idea of a common collective European heritage; It is only race; It is only white

“This is Melody Crescendo”

“Oh, that’s pretty. What’s her middle name?”

“Well Melody is her middle name. Her real first name is Hurdy-Gurdy”

“It’s not a sequel or a remake, it doesn’t take 400 hours to beat, has zero microtransactions, no pointless open world grinding…”

All of that sounds pretty great, though. I hadn’t heard of this game until now, so I’m wondering how efficient they were with that 40 mil in marketing

Or maybe the idea is good, but the execution is bad. Maybe meeting strict deadlines meant the game had to be pushed out unfinished, or concepts had to be cut or changed. I don’t know jack shit about this game, but there are a lot of things worth looking into besides “These games just don’t sell these days”

Editing to add that it’s currently 60% off on steam, sitting at a “mostly positive”

Finally got around to playing Disco Elysium. I don’t think I’m very far, but I love it so far

Besides that, also doing a first person run through Elden Ring, and occasionally a bit of Lethal Company here and there

“Good thing could happen unless GOP” is pretty much American politics since at least Reagan

Floridian here confirming that 0%

I’m pretty sure the US IS considered meritocratic. There are just countless other factors that also impact your ability to succeed

That’s too vague a definition. Like, if person A is an accomplished athlete, the best basketball player ever, I do not think his position of power or success should be, say, president. I think this is actually a very dangerous mindset derived from the capitalistic notion that success determines your–I’ll call it value. If you’re successful, you must be smart; If you’re smart, you can be anything, even the president. Success is equal to wealth in these talking circles, and it sort of ends up as a backwards meritocracy. You gain merit measured by your success (wealth) instead of the other way around

But if you define it as a place in which positions of authority are given to people who have proven themselves knowledgeable and capable in the field in which the position of authority is being granted, I do believe in it in principle. I say that because principle and practice are rarely the same in politics and sociology. There are countless other factors that will impact your “success” that are not actually based on your expertise in the field. Better people have designed public transport, electric cars, social media, and spaceships than Elon Musk, yet the man sits in a position of tremendous influence. In a just meritocracy, we would never have heard his name

Which brings about the point that we have certain ideas as a culture (or maybe system) that awards some merits disproportionately more than others. Some will say his merit is in being a ruthless business man. He’s good at that, I guess, so he should be the leader of the company. His “merit” of being a bad human being is being disproportionately rewarded compared to the merit of the scientists that actually design his spaceships, and the engineers that make them work. Meritocracy only really works in a closed system. The most capable archaeologist will be the head of the expedition. If you let the ideas go beyond that, and start comparing apples to oranges, you start seeing instead a system’s idea of what’s important, and by extension that of the society built in that system

Or Florida

there also tends to be an expectation that men (even those of us that are submissive) be dominant to some degree

This is an important point to make, for sure. Things like this will be greatly impacted by things such as cultural norms and expectations, so any statement that says “There are more D men than D women” needs to come with the caveat that there are likely biases in these observations, and that culture and upbringing have an impact, either deciding the ratio, or skewing it

I do tend to default thinking of men as Dominant, and that is in no small part due to culture, but I’ll add that this assumption is specifically outside of the kink community. In BDSM spaces specifically, I expect most men to be subs, but my own experiences could also be because I attract the guys who are looking for their “goth mommy dommy” 😅

I like submissive men, and generally am downright turned-off by dominant men. Am I the norm? Probably not. I think there are more subs than Doms just in general, but especially among women

But I’m just answering your question as presented. Another has already commented some decent love advice if you’re asking about this stuff as pertaining to you

I will add, though, that while strictly in a D/s dynamic, women are subs more often than Dommes, in any dynamic that strays from BDSM, the submissive tendencies are just sort of a spice when they come up, and that, if you’re using the word submissive to describe a man who isn’t conventionally masculine (Or maybe toxic masculine), you’re probably better off. We wanna feel safe with who we’re with, and outside of BDSM, you’ll probably have better luck as a gentle, emotionally intelligent, confident person. Some people might describe that as submissive