fracture [he/him]

on its 50th anniversary, let’s all remember that microsoft has been profiting massively off the genocide in palestine and has recently been targeted by BDS: https://noescapevg.com/xbox-has-been-added-to-the-bds-list-so-what-now/

i think that they probably had some sort of choice, but i imagine they also needed to work to live, right? very few places in the world let you have food and shelter for free, so i think there’s at least some of an argument that doing this stuff is forced in some way or another. plus, it might (have been sold as) paying better or being safer than the conditions they had previously

they’re hardly the only ones to work in unethical (or downright criminal, depending on how you view it) fields. and i’m not sure holding them in crowded, filthy conditions like this, where they’re spreading disease among each other and sharing something like one toilet to 80 people, makes amends for what they’ve done, or even makes the world a better place

i just think we can wish for justice while still acknowledging that people are deserving of some basic amenities for being people

… can a brother get a source on this??

i guess it’s a good motivation to go actually read the paper. i can’t stand not knowing if the summary i just read was accurate or not (and i’m assuming that you didn’t go double check yourself, either. not hating, but it is a known downside to using AI summaries)

… oh, do you (the reader) want to know if it was accurate? guess you’ll also have to read the study to find out :p

seems especially relevant when talking about a study related to discerning truth from false

it… works but it doesn’t work nearly as well as discord for gaming screen sharing, at least with the bit of testing i’ve done with mh wilds

no recommendations but i just hopped back on HotS and share your sentiment haha

i guess? we talk a lot about the consequences of being in an information bubble but i think we’ve experienced it very little. and it’s hard to imagine the consequences are going to be worse than… this waves hands at the current state of things

i tend to think that the internet, up to this point, has been relatively forceful in exposing you to opposing viewpoints, which, from a mental health perspective, is quite taxing on individuals (we’re not really wired to constantly be confronting really fundamental disagreements all the time). so i think that an internet where people are less constantly thrown into friction with each other will be a net benefit, even if there are some consequences for the otherwise information bubbling

would love to see a source for AI helping with the covid 19 vaccine

fr, this and that other headline that was like “Testing how much people will tolerate a declining standard of living”

we all going through the same shit

kind of ironic that this article is hosted on a site with several pages worth of cookie selections that you have to scroll through and opt out of

enshittification of the net continues

it is proprietary, but it’s worth noting that bsky is also federated, so it is less centralized than e.g. xitter. it uses a different protocol than mastodon and i don’t know many details about it, so unfortunately this is about the extent that i can speak on it

edit: it looks like you can get more details from others in this thread

if it’s not worth preserving

IT’S NOT WORTH PURCHASING

rarely, i like to play a fluffy, feel good game with no real stakes. enter: Flynn, Son of Crimson

there is absolutely no chance of anything really bad happening in the game, the worst that happens is your powerful guardian diety dog loses his powers at the beginning of the game (but it’s OK, he just rests until you reclaim his powers and he feels better). you never really feel like anyone is really in danger, you get to play a pretty fun 2d action platforming game, and it has some really fun sections later on that make you feel awesome

it wraps up nicely in probably 20 hours too, if you want to 100% it, so it doesn’t overstay its welcome and lets you experience all of its content with low demands. really a lovely little experience. it’s not pushing the envelope at all, but if you want basically 20 solid hours of lighthearted fun, this is a great way to get it

gonna throw in my caveat here; ITT is a really good co-op game but there’s like a 25% chance the story isn’t for you. it’s the kind of story where, if you think about it too much, you start to realize that the characters do some pretty fucked up stuff including

::: graphically tearing a plush doll apart while it screams for mercy

:::

i don’t want to come across as judgemental if you enjoyed it; i get that some people are gonna find it more slapstick than anything. but it was more than enough to make me and the person i played it with flush it, and i wouldn’t feel right not mentioning it for specifically “uplifting games”

if you can ignore the story, the co-op gameplay is super solid, though

(sorry if the spoilers don’t show up right, my client doesn’t show them properly)

lots of great suggestions in this thread, just wanted to shoutout this little indie i played and had a delightful time with: Flynn, Son of Crimson

it’s a little 2d adventure game with pretty linear progression, although there will probably be some backtracking if you want to 100%. but it’s level based and not open world at all. the movement and combat both feel pretty good, the story is very fluffy and feel good, and you have a giant dog as a pet, what more could you want?

it’s probably like a 15-20 hour game in total, if that. a great time if you want something short, fun, and uncomplicated

beyond the obvious ways this is fucked up, imagining this happening with AI gen text is insane. trying to craft a post to both empathize with another poster, kindly demonstrate flaws in thinking or logic about a point they usually care a lot about, and trying to explain how the different point of view better supports the things they care about it such a monumental effort already that AI just cannot do. no actual persuasion will come out of this (not that a ton happens on the internet to begin with, but even less than that)

and honestly if you’re firehosing people like that, AI is just going to absolutely drown out any actual communication from happening. at some point, we’ll just have bots going to war for us about our points, and no one will be reading it

big shoutout HOTS… i should tap back in… FUCK deadlock (note: this user has not played deadlock)

i would have liked it if this had offered a COVID perspective on communal baths. i’m inclined to think that a hot moist environment is a likely place for it to flourish, and it seems odd to neglect to mention that three years of a pandemic probably had an outsize impact on the number of bathhouses still open in 2022

obviously we probably don’t have a ton of data on how to circulate air and filter COVID out of bathhouses, but i also bet there’s a way to do it in a relatively energy efficient way

anyways, it feels like a major spot that’s lacking in an otherwise informative and well thought out read

really good thoughts and write up that you linked, thanks