Best of luck, guys.

I know that doing things that can eliminate a political opposition are incredibly ethically sensitive, but it’s demonstrably the correct choice here. I just wish that it wasn’t a choice that had to be made. How are these far right parties getting so many votes? Where have we failed?

Boris Johnson robbed my country blind; his party’s Austerity sold off and destroyed our public infrastructure and services to such a terrible degree that it’s unlikely the UK will recover within my lifetime if at all, and that’s BEFORE you get into the truly devastating consequences imposed on us by Brexit, or the fact his verbatim orders to handle covid were “Let the bodies pile high in the streets!”. All to line the pockets of him and his billionaire shitbag friends.

…So it is with some regret that I say: I can’t argue with this statement.

Boris Johnson has a similar fascination, you see. This guy wants to be Winston Churchill sooooooooo badly. You would not believe how hard BJ wishes he could be a modern Churchill. It was an open secret that the russian government had some pretty solid influence over Boris, a lot of rumours about them having dirt on his father in particular- and many reasonable and well-founded theories that Boris pushed Brexit through at the behest of Putin. But Boris Johnson saw the war in Ukraine start and he changed overnight. He certainly didn’t give up any of his vices or become a better person, god no, not at all. But he had stars in his eyes at the prospect of going down in history as a big and strong and heroic wartime leader studied in history books, and for that reason, he absolutely jumped at the prospect of helping Ukraine. Zero hesitation.

What I’m saying is that I genuinely believe Ukraine represents Boris Johnson’s lifelong dreams as a human being. And for that reason even if Boris is a terrible person who is certainly prone to bias, he has every intention of supporting Ukraine as much as he can- hence his willingness to speak against someone that he was previously very close with.

Even as a dedicated pokemon fan that hasn’t played Palworld (the butchering mechanics don’t really appeal to me)…

I really hope Nintendo loses this, and loses it HARD. I think that some actual competition would be really healthy for the pokemon franchise, giving them an actual impetus to make sure their games are high-quality and well-supported and don’t pursue serious anti-consumer practices.

Godspeed, Palworld. Counting on you.

Nobody’s ever accused me of being smart! But hey, at least I’m honest

Insanely true, I didn’t give a shit about 90% of the features on my new phone once my old one broke down and I got a Pixel 8, but I was delighted to go from a worn-out 12 hour battery life to a 64 hour battery life. I would actively like to uninstall any sort of current AI function from my phone if it could increase my battery longevity by even 1%.

Also: ew, Apple.

Edit: Really annoyed it doesn’t have a headphone jack though

Oh yeah, I wouldn’t say that Nintendo are paragons of virtue or anything. But they are far, FAR better at making games that offer a wide variety of experiences (edit: when compared to Sony/MS. Indies are king). Similarly, sure the Switch control scheme isn’t something nobody had ever conceived of before, but it’s very distinctly different from the Xbox/Playstation controllers.

They’ve got like… what, 7 or 8 IPs that they actively maintain, right? And about 10 more derelict but still iconic IPs. Plus some stuff made by other companies that’s exclusive to their hardware.

-Mario -Zelda -Pikmin -Splatoon (Hey look a gun game) -Fire Emblem -Donkey Kong Country -Super Smash Bros

Dedicated 3rd party: -Xenoblade -Pokemon

All these games have really different themes and gameplay styles and aesthetics, and that is the reason why I’m convinced that the Switch 2 is perfectly positioned to just completely take over the market the way the Wii did- Nintendo is large and competent enough to avoid the issues that plagued the PS5 launch and later life, and fresh enough to get people interested, unlike the Xbox.

Where Sony/MS have uhhh… Looks at the PS5 exclusive games… Looks at Halo/Call of Duty/Fortnite…

Pffff. The AAA industry is notorious for being about as stale as a three week old french baguette. If it isn’t a Gun Game made for chasing the most recent trends, then chances are they don’t even want to sniff at it. To say nothing of the absolutely egregious thirst for Profit that plagues a lot of titles. It’s one thing to be a $70 game, and another thing entirely to be a $70 game with a subscription, ingame puchases, and day 1 DLC.

Sony and Microsoft can have their pathetic little ‘arms race’ about processing power and framerates and 150GB+ games.

In the meantime, Nintendo is likely going to step right up with something that has a nice fresh, intuitive control scheme like the Wii or the Switch, with a solid release library that covers a variety of styles and appeals, and promptly curbstomp the living shit out of the competitors. The market is absolutely wide open for a smash hit console in the near future, coming off the backs of the PS5’s no-games failure and the fact I haven’t even heard about the Xbox in about 3 years.

Oddjob is banned. No exceptions.

Yeah, checks out. I’m just a UK guy, but when the Tories were all having a media circus about “Oh inflation is done now, we’ve stopped inflation, the cost of living crisis is done!”, I mean… no amount of lying to my face is going to stop me going to the shops and wanting to scream when I see the price of Everything has jumped up by 20% again.

I can’t imagine that’s any different at all in China. You just can’t really hide something as objective as the cost of a bar of chocolate.

Now that’s really interesting! I wonder where I can go to see this stuff…

It’s pretty modern if you mean popular, although the idea itself is REALLY old.

Rather than going into specific examples because there are a lot of them (especially in gaming and TV), I’d like to say my piece on cliches.

Basically, cliches come to exist because the cliche trope is a really good idea.

“The Butler did it” as a murder mystery trope is a fantastic idea because some people with too much money will use the protection money affords them to mistreat their employees, providing a great motive you can build on to create a great story with relatable morals and characters. It sets up a character with perfect motives, means and a reasonable position of trust to avoid suspicion.

Similarly, “Hell good, Heaven bad” is a fantastic trope because it lets you step back and analyse things like the negative impacts of religion and how authorities (and the bible) will portray themselves as good regardless of their actual actions. Plus of course there were periods of time where people were told doing virtually anything that didn’t fit into an extremely narrow worldview meant you were going to hell. You know, stuff like basketball and Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, the problem with cliches is when someone sees a popular idea that’s also a very good idea, but doesn’t understand why it was a good idea. As a result, when they use the idea, it rings hollow at absolute best, and that kind of terrible execution of something that’s already known and popular tends to be especially disappointing. I think the best example is The Hunger Games, which absolutely defined young adult dystopian fiction for years because it showed how the media industry mistreats its workers, and Alleigant, which used a lot of ideas from Hunger Games (and some other things) without actually understanding the ideas.

(TLDR: Hunger Games has a love triangle as a prominent plot element, but the actual reason is that it’s perpetuated by the media pretty much on pain of death for Katniss so that she can entertain the viewers. By contrast, Alleigant also has a love triangle but the triangle IS the plot element and the author bends over backwards to make it happen despite the fact none of the characters really feel like they’re suitable for it)

Anyways, cliches aren’t bad but you need to know how, why, and when to use them in order to actually fulfil their potential, and the heaven-hell one you’ve mentioned above is no exception.

Gonna say it, this REALLY feels like a case of the news cherry-picking what parts of a protest they show. Between the unreasonable viewpoint that’s directly adjacent to a very sensible and popular viewpoint and the fact we KNOW the media have a very vested interest in trying to push pro-genocide narratives (such as anti-Israel protests being pro-terrorist)…

Yeah, even someone as gullible as me? I’m not buying this.

TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK BOYS

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Yeah, seems reasonable. The front lines have proven to be extremely difficult to move once they get set in place, and Russia is provably completely fine with a couple hundred thousand of their Expendables dying every year.

Ending this war quickly definitely requires knocking out other aspects of the russian war machine, anyone should be able to see that. I’m not enough of a military man to tell you WHICH aspects have to be knocked out, but I’d believe those elements are inside Russia in a heartbeat.

Let’s just not go and talk about hitting any major population centers though. Collateral damage is not justice, even if the russian brass have absolutely gleefully been hitting population centres as much as possible. Justice for that is seeing them hanged, not hitting some people that had no real say in all this.

Holy sunk cost fallacy, batman. How fucking much does it cost to operate an ENTIRE GODDAMN NUCLEAR REACTOR just to fuel a tech project that nobody wants???

I wonder if a birth rate that stays low for a while might be what it takes to avoid future wars? Just in general, across all nations? Funny that the very things that have damaged society’s faith in the future might end up mitigating conflicts in the future.

When manpower can no longer be replenished, then wasting it trying to pull off landgrabs can only be sustained for so long. Not just physically, but politically.

NINETY SIX PERCENT???

Bro how the hell did Boeing piss these guys off so much??? The closest my workplace ever got to a strike was when we literally didn’t get a raise one year during Covid, and that was 62% to strike. We were all pissed at the company over that one for obvious reasons, but this…

To me this result off the back of a 25% raise says one thing: This isn’t about pay. This was never about pay. EDIT: Nevermind! This is not a fucking 25% raise! This is a 6.25% raise every year for the next four years! This is NOT a 25% raise because of how it works in relation to inflation, and should NOT be treated as a 25% raise by anyone writing about it! It is presented as a 25% raise by Boeing solely to misinform and misdirect people! This is Boeing trying to wheedle their way out of paying their workers at rates above inflation ON TOP OF ALL THEIR EXISTING PROBLEMS!

Combining that with what we know about the company’s culture of shutting down anyone with safety or wellbeing concerns in the name of faster cheaper production of aircraft…

Even if Blizzard games haven’t had a high note since 2016, I would like to remind everyone that the company still had absurd amounts of goodwill and customer loyalty for a large and corporate studio at the time, with fans owning and actively collecting literal decades of merchendise.

Things only really truly collapsed for Blizzard and saw their goodwill vanish when they openly supported and endorsed the chinese oppression of Hong Kong.

Specifically, the winner of a Hearthstone tournament was interviewed after his win and gave the pro-Hong Kong slogan “free Hong Kong, the revolution of our times”, which there was absolutely no rule or stipulation against. China demanded that the company not endorse that (because authoritarianism), but Blizzard ACTIVELY WENT THE EXTRA MILE to strip the player of his prize money and ban him from all future events alongside other punishments, specifically in the name of appeasing the chinese government.

It wouldn’t be fair to expect a game company to singlehandedly stand up to an authoritarian regime that loves to make people disappear. But it is absolutely fair to recognize that Blizzard’s actions very clearly demonstrated that they weren’t just doing this because they were threatened into it- they were more than happy to actively endorse the chinese government’s oppression of Hong Kong. And THAT is what we should always remember about Blizzard’s morals and principles, or lack thereof.

On one hand: I know damn well that formatting is a huge bitch, because I’ve made my own huge homebrew for the game.

On the other hand: This is a multi-million dollar company that’s been around for bloody ages. Hiring a professional formatter shouldn’t even be a blip in the budget.