ObjectivityIncarnate

Doesn’t make sense to compare a rate of an outcome (without even knowing how often that outcome was sought) with an individual attempt whose outcome is not even known yet.

When Mangione IS actually given the death penalty, this ‘argument’ will actually amount to something. Dumb until then.

Despite the current wealth inequality

It’s not “despite” the gap, because the gap itself does not cause poverty. If the poorest person in the US made $75k/year (in other words, poverty completely eradicated), the size of the gap would still be pretty much exactly the same (after all, the difference between zero and 75k is nothing compared to the difference between 75k and hundreds of billions, which is the current net worth of those with the most wealth).

After all, 50 years ago, the gap was significantly smaller, but the overall incidence of poverty was much higher.

Someone’s always going to have the most. And new wealth is constantly being created. And net worth is a valuation, a price tag, not an amount of cash (which is the primary reason it can go up as fast as it can–cash money simply can’t do that). Given these facts, expect this gap to always exist (and almost certainly continue to widen), even after poverty is eradicated.

Looked it up:

McDonald’s double cheeseburger hasn’t been a dollar for over 15 years (started in 2002, and in 2008, the McDouble replaced it, which had one fewer slice of cheese). And the McDouble itself stopped being a dollar in 2013, over a decade ago. Bit more than “a few years ago”–I think Covid screwed up everyone’s perception of time more than usual, lol.

That said, I get lunch at work several times a week at Wendy’s and always pay less than $5, not too bad all things considered imo.

Yeah, the gap between the wealthiest and everyone else literally does not matter at all, when it comes to ‘motivation for revolution’.

The overall level/amount/condition of poverty is what matters. And let’s be real, things are not nearly as bad in the US today as they were in France before the French Revolution. Not even close.

Fact is, if you magically bumped everyone up so that no one was making less than $75k a year, the wealth gap would be essentially identical to what it is now, because the gap between zero and 75k is nothing compared to the gap between 75k and hundreds of billions. But no one would be suffering in poverty, so would anyone care about the wealth gap, then? I seriously doubt it.

It’s exactly as long as it needed to be to explain everything it explained, and it is a completely dry comment with no real tone at all, the “rudeness” is of your own invention.

Ironically, “Firstly you could read user names before going off” is far ruder than anything I wrote. Also, you’re assuming I’m the one who downvoted you–have you considered that maybe your tone earned that from someone else, maybe?

But it has to be for something. And in Balatro, there simply isn’t any gambling. You never wager anything to win anything based on that wager. All you have are points, and you can neither wager them, nor lose them in any way, chance-based or otherwise.

There is zero gambling in Balatro.

Minor correction, the three stages in an “ante” are the “blinds”. The game instead uses “stake” to describe its ‘ascension’ system (a common mechanic in roguelixe games, where going to a higher ascension/“stake” adds difficulty modifiers to the game, for those who don’t know what I mean by that).

Going off? Yeah, you asked a question, and I answered it. What are you talking about?

A game just has to show characters gambling for it to be gambling imagery.

Okay. Well, Balatro doesn’t do that–no gambling of any kind happens in the game.

So, what’s your point, exactly?

“Antes” are what Balatro calls its levels. Each level consists of 3 stages, which the game calls “blinds” (small/big/boss).

In poker, you don’t “beat” an ante, it’s part of what you bet. You also don’t “reach” blinds, nor is there such a thing as a “boss blind” in poker. And the word “bet” or any synonym should be pretty conspicuous by its absence in Balatro’s description. There is no gambling without betting/wagering, after all.

So yes, if you’re familiar with poker, that description should make it obvious that the words have different meanings in the game than they do in poker.

The only actual ‘mechanic’ that’s actually the same in Balatro as in poker is what comprises the different hands, and their relative value. And even then, there are also hands in Balatro that don’t exist in poker at all (five of a kind, flush house, etc.).

Thinking about this hypothetically is making me laugh.

Imagine setting things like how often your employees are checked for STIs, and the cost for that, etc., lol

The irony is that you can’t really teach someone who doesn’t know anything any poker anything more than what the hands are, and which are considered better than others, by playing Balatro.

Everything else in Balatro is completely divorced from poker. There are a few other shared terms, but they’re defined completely differently in Balatro than in poker (e.g. a “blind” is a stage, 3 stages in a level (small/big/boss), and the levels are called "ante"s, also totally different from what an ante is in poker.

But Balatro doesn’t do that, so how is this a valid addition to the analogy?

There is zero betting in Balatro.

It’s not performative gambling. It’s not any kind of gambling.

Gambling by definition requires making a wager that you risk losing. That literally does not exist in Balatro. There are no wagers at all, not even for fake currency/points.

The fact that people are so lazy that they keep going for the corporate-sure-to-enshittify options shows how little people actually care about escaping corporate control of their lives.

It’s not that deep.

People want to go where other people are. A tiny minority of them are even aware of the things that are influencing your decisions. Not a single moment is spent thinking about whether X or Y is more ‘corporately controlled’ before deciding to join a new platform.

Well, now I feel 20 years older, lol

Yatzhee is dice.

So is craps, one of the most popular casino games on the planet.

Also, the simple fact is that there is no reason that any entity promoting their product has to choose any of these platforms over the other–you can just post to all of them, every single one that has enough users to be worth posting to.

You literally do not make antes in Balatro, in any way.

You should know that you’re talking about before drawing conclusions.

There is a massive difference between someone who actively fights against their biases and doesn’t let them dictate the conclusions they reach, and is always open to changing those conclusions and their way of thinking as new information comes to their attention, and someone who clings to those biases, and happily ignores anything that may challenge them.

I only define the latter category as “ideologues”. Sure, technically everyone who is sapient has an ideology, but as the definition says:

an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.

I have a feeling you know very well that’s the kind of person I was talking about. And no, not everyone is like that. On Reddit I was once called a “commie” and a “Nazi” on the same day by different people in different subs, lol, both in reaction to being told a fact that contradicted a bias of theirs. Those are the kind of people I’m talking about.