Perhaps i’m too optimistic, but I think these conflicts tend to be resolved much earlier on. I don’t think someone just wakes up one day and says “hey I want to be an evil selfless despot”.

Not a dictator, but I think a close enough example is Mackenzie Scott, formerly Bezos. I don’t know her or Jeff personally of course. We know about Jeff’s privelege of course, but Mackenzie was the daughter of a financial planner and granddaughter of a natural gas executive herself. The two of them met working at a hedge fund. I hate hedge funds and think they shouldn’t exist, and I suspect there was some nepotism and privelege that helped them both get there, but i’m not going to call everyone who works at a hedge fund or benefits from privelege evil.

Then they quit to start Amazon. Privelege aside I am sure there was a lot of hard work and risk in those early years. She reportedly did a lot of work while also having 3 children (and they adopted a 4th), and she also put off her passion of writing novels to do so. I’ve known a lot of people who own their own small businesses, and there’s a lot of hard decisions and sleepless nights involved. I’m sure they both made mistakes and learned lessons, and occasionally made selfish decisions.

To use a scientifically inaccurate idiom- the frog boiled. Amazon became more ruthless, certainly unethical, and most likely violated antitrust laws that never get enforced. They applied more pressure to everyone - their employees (which led to union suppression tactics), their suppliers, their customers, governments, and that’s just what I know about.

It’s possible that Mackenzie knew about all of that and was fine benefitting from it until Jeff cheated or grew distant or whatever. But from her quotes and her actions afterwards, it seems like she had enough of the exploitation. She divorced him in 2019, getting half of Jeff’s net worth and making Musk the world’s richest man instead.

She signed the Giving Pledge, which at face value is basically a promise to give away most of her wealth to charity in her lifetime. The efficacy of the Giving Pledge is beyond the scope of this comment, but according to her website she’s given away over $19 billion. Philanthropy like that can often be a shady scheme to funnel money to friends and family, avoid taxes, or lobby governments for favorable legislation. It’s possible that she is doing some of that too, but I haven’t seen an expose yet. So maybe she actually is giving that wealth back to the world.

She also has written and released a couple of novels. Maybe she hired a ghost writer, and I’m sure her money helped her get published, but it does kinda seem like that was her dream and she followed it. She also married (and shortly thereafter divorced) a private schoolteacher- not skme celebrity or politician or billionaire.

Maybe it’s just a well-crafted facade, but from a distance it looks to me like a rare case of someone actually realizing that such wealth accumulation was bad for the world and stepping away from it. She’s still quite wealthy, allegedly with a net worth over $30 billion left, but that kind of money takes time to get rid of and she seems to be making progress.

Questions like “how much money should a person be allowed to have” are details that are going to change over time and I’m not sure what the answer is right now, but at the very least i think the world would be a better place if more billionaires did what Mackenzie Scott is claiming to be doing.

God of War. I played 1,2, and 3 and they were all pretty much the same. I think a lot of the hype was from marketing and edge lords who were thrilled to have so much blood and some low-poly tits on the PS2. Once you get past the spectacle, the combat is a slog of mashing the Square button until the game decides to stop spawning HP sponges for you to hit. The puzzles are tedious and annoying. The platforming they try to force in just doesn’t work with the physics and controls. The music is bland and generic “epic symphony” stuff that may as well just be from a stock music library, with no Greek influence at all. The story is a generic and modern story with a thin vineer of Greek mythology. Kratos is less of a character and more of a reason to move the game along to the various locations. I know it’s not a completely fair comparison, but Hades used Greek instruments to create greek-influenced and interesting music that I still find myself humming and drumming to years later. Hades also did a way better job of using actual Greek mythology to create a narrative that would actually fit in that cannon.

I remember playing Knack 1&2 and thinking “wow, this is like if the old God of War games were fun”. Knack is far from perfect of course, but is largely a similar series that cares more about being fun than being mature.

I’m playing through the 2018 God of War now. Completely different, and honestly a few hours in I’m still not sure why they chose to make this a God of War game staring Kratos instead of just making it a fresh IP. Maybe more lore reasons will be revealed, but so far it seems it was just to capitalize on the brand for marketing reasons. The music is still not a strength, but it’s better. The environments are better. The combat is still pretty boring with way too many boring enemies with way too much health, but it’s better. This is the first game where I’m starting to get tired of the same UI and over-the-shoulder perspective that other Sony games have used lately (Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Horizon, Spiderman). GoW, like most of those games, has an unnecessarily complicated itemization and leveling system that just bogs the game down, and feels almost inspired by MMO’s or gacha mobile games.

It does a great job of characterization, with plenty of small, subtle, beautifully written moments that grant insight into personalities. The boy is annoying, but I can see that’s the point so I mostly don’t mind. It’s really annoying how the game won’t shut up- there’s always someone saying something, and if you even just stop moving for a second someone pipes up to remind you of what you should be doing. It doesn’t have space to breath. The puzzles are better than the prior games- they are an acceptable tool for pacing but aren’t great by themselves. The story seems a lot better, with much more attention given to original Norse mythology.

With Uncharted I could push last the mediocre puzzles and bullet sponge enemies because the cutscenes were really good and the stories were fun. For Ratchet and Clank I can ignore how the humor has gotten worse and more juvenile over time because it’s still fun to platform, dodge, cycle through weapons, and kill tons of enemies. For Horizon Zero Dawn… Actually I don’t have many complaints, that was a solid title. For GoW (2018) there’s just nothing pulling me back to it.

Twilight Princess is worth mentioning too. It was rated Teen, and had this scene (no gore or sex or anything, just weird surreal horror).

Zelda is such a diverse franchise it really depends on the game. I love Twilight Princess and Majora’s Mask, but didn’t like BotW or Windwaker at all. It’s almost like 2 or 3 different franchises crammed into one.

My personal theory is that a lot of the love for The Witcher 3 in particular stems from the fact that very early on it has a sex scene with full nudity, with a female character who is supernaturally hot according to the lore. There’s several women Geralt can seduce, and I suspect a lot of people who mostly play hentai games were in shock to play something with more exciting gameplay than match-3 grids or a jigsaw puzzle.

The Witcher 3 doesn’t seem like a bad game, but I’m similar to you in that I’ve bounced off it a couple times after a few hours. There’s nothing particularly bad about it, but nothing that really grabbed me and made me want to keep playing more either. I still plan on giving it another shot eventually.

I feel similar. After having tons of people tell me for years I need to get into them, I finally played Bloodborne, which multiple people have told me is their favorite.

I pushed through it on my own first. I actually didn’t die quite as much as I expected, though I definitely had to spend time watching YouTube videos and reading 3 different fan-made wiki’s to figure everything out. I managed to finish it, but I didn’t think it was worth it and would not have finished it if not for wanting to be able to talk about it with my friends.

Then I did another playthrough with a friend doing co-op. When it worked (ugh) it was a way better experience. Partly because of my previous experience - I had a better feel for how to build my character, I remembered most of the environments and enemy placement, and still had that muscle memory from my first run. Partly because it’s better as a cooperative experience. Having an ally makes the world feel less desolate. Having another player to take aggro so you can heal is huge- some bosses almost feel like they were designed for multiplayer. And it’s fun just cracking jokes and hanging out, making fun of how ridiculous some of the stuff is.

I still don’t have the love for it that other people do though. I agree 100% on the aesthetic: everything in Bloodborne is just dark and wet and looks the same. FromSoft makes a LOT of game design decisions that are different from most other developers in terms of what they prioritize. Which is fine, but there are aspects of design where they clearly cut corners and the fanbae seems to laud it as a desirable artistic choice. I shouldn’t need to spend hours watching YouTube and researching fan sites to learn how to play the game, and I would argue I shouldn’t have to do that to appreciate the story. They simply do not respect my time.

The multiplayer barely works. It’s restricted to bosses and the areas leading up to them, and costs Insight (a valuable and kind-of finite resource) to use. Simply connecting is a tedious pain. You can only play either completely online or offline, so if you want to play with a friend you have to accept your whole world cluttered with annoying and distracting messages from random players and the specters where other players died. And that also opens you up to having hostile players gank you. Like… Why can’t my friend and I just pair up and play through the whole game together without inviting the rest of the internet too? Why does it cost Insight? Why are the caps for stats never communicated to the player? Why does the Hunter’s Axe do primarily Blunt damage while the KirkHAMMER does almost no Blunt damage, and for that matter why aren’t the damage types explained anywhere? I’m still not sure why some gems increase Attack, others increase Physical Attack, and others increase Blunt or Thrust, plus there are hidden damage types.

The game feels like it was designed to really get good on your second playthrough and beyond. Especially NG+, although even starting a fresh file again is much better than the first playthrough. Kinda reminds me of how some MMO fans like to say “it gets good after the first 100 hours”. For most developers, the player onboarding experience is one of the most important parts to be developed, but FromSoft basically skills over that and outsources it to their community of hardcore fans.

I can’t hear Richard Horvitz without thinking of Invader Zim. He does a ton of random voices in the more recent Ratchet and Clank games and it’s very distracting.

Not sure why you want to call me names. My guess is we probably agree on more than we don’t.

I was just (admittedly, sarcastically) pointing out that perhaps copying methods that have WORKED might be better than copying methods that… Maybe slightly annoyed a couple of CCP officials? I’m sure everyone in China still thinks the election was legitimate, and pretty much everyone outside of China didn’t need any sort of protest vote to tell them it wasn’t.

In the US we have been non-voting for decades. That’s exactly how we got into this mess. Non-voting isn’t going to make anything better.

Ah yes. Hong Kong, such a famous victory for democracy.

Oh you sweet summer child

What else do these all have in common?

They all have art styles that are purposefully designed to be really cheap and easy to make. The same choices that helped these studios crank out hours upon hours of formulaic content also helps the rule 34 artists.

I keep seeing this point repeated on the internet, that Harris’s campaign tried so hard to appeal to conservative voters.

How? What platform did she run on to do so? Did she run on banning abortion fully? Outlawing trans people? Giving billionaires tax breaks? Rolling out environmental regulations? Disemopwering unions? Granting ICE more power? Starting a trade war? Privatizing the post office? Repealing the ACA?

She accepted the support of some of the old traditional Republicans like Liz Cheney who has already been essentially kicked out of the GOP. They ran some attack ads pointing out how ridiculous, theatrical, and hateful MAGA is to try to win over some Republican voters who just want lower income tax. It seems as though the media has run with that, both at the time and retroactively, to paint Kamala Harris as being a fascist?

Eh it’s more like “right wing people are masquerading as centrists because they want to get laid”

Well there’s the issue of defining things and crossing up a bunch of language, trying to smash multiple different points together.

The headline of the original post suggests concern that Joe Biden is basically the same as a Republican. In order to identify whether that is true or not, you need tofirst define what a Republican is and compare that against what the Biden administration actually did (executive orders, appointments, legislation supported and passed, regulatory changes, etc). Accounting, of course, for the checks and balances of the US Federal Government. So for example, Biden forgave hundreds of billions of dollars of student loan debt, but the conservative (Republican-appointed) Supreme Court shot most of that down. There were limits on what they could pass through Congress without a supermajority. This is even easier to do today because we have several months of Republican government to compare against and the changes are really obvious. You canook at the creation and catastrophic consequences of DOGE, or the foreign policy changes that have abandoned Ukraine and worsened the Palestinian genocide (the handling of Israel is probably my biggest criticism of Biden and Harris, but Trump has been far worse). Tons of government agencies are being refunded, there is a “war on woke”. Critical infrastructure that keeps our food and water supplies safe are being abandoned. The EPA has been gutted. The IRS has been gutted and is essentially being forced to stop auditing the wealthy and focus on the poor instead. ICE is being weaponized against unions, trans people are being pushed out of the military, US citizens are being illegally detained and sent to El Salvador, the Secretary of Health is an anti-vaxxer who wants to create an autism registry, tarrif nonsense is destroying US trade, and I’m still waiting for the price of eggs to go back down. Claiming Biden is a Republican is only possible if you completely ignored both Biden and Republicans.

The blurb under the headline is almost completely irrelevant to all of that. It’s starting to get to what the article is really about: individuals who self-identity as Centrist or Moderate whose values are truly conservative and often align heavily with the Republican party. Especially with regards to online dating. This is nothing new - it’s a phenomenon almost as old as online dating, and may date back to printed personal ads or older (though much better data exists for online dating). Conservative men know that their mispgying views don’t make them popular with women, so they are trying to hide that. These people don’t have much to do with Democrats or Biden whatsoever.

And then in your response, you lost a picture-of-a-tweet claiming that “Democrats spent 4 years desperately trying to get “moderate” Republicans to break from Trump”. First of all, with no source- this is just whoever owns that account saying shit. But if you stop to think about it- there were a ton of “traditional”, non-MAGA Republicans disillusioned with their party going after Trump all the way back in 2016. Most of them have already broken from Trump after historically voting for people like Bush and Romney. It would have been foolish to ignore that contingent of people, so the Democrats were absolutely correct in running attack ads against Trump and his followers in red states trying to win those votes.

If the Dems had changed their policies to be more conservative and attract those voters, that would garner some heavy criticism from me. But they didn’t. The only policy I can think of that I would criticize them for is their support of Israel, which is moreso because of their wealthy donors who want to do business there than any courtship of Republicans.

If you look at what he accomplished, or if you’re lazy and just want to look at an outlet that evaluates presidents for you, there’s pretty much unanimous agreement that Biden was the furthest-left president since FDR. Harris ran on a platform of essentially continuing that. And progressives chose to stay home on election day rather than vote for someone who isn’t 100% in agreement with them on everything. And that’s how you get fascism.

Oh cool another “both sides are the same” meme. Daring today, aren’t we?

If you are a professional who is installing insulation all the time? You absolutely need that mask.

If you’re a flipper who buys a new house every year or two and usually replaces the insulation? You should wear a mask.

A homeowner who installs it once, maybe twice in their lifetime? Eh. A lot of PPE mandates are about doing it often and professionally where you can get a lot of exposure. Or if you already are at risk. If you have respiratory issues then if course you should wear a mask. If you have healthy lungs and plan to do this task just once in your lifetime, just having decent ventilation and not shoving your face in it is fine.

I’d wear gloves, but more because the rafters probably have splinters and rusted old nails or staples or whatever. The skin irritation from fiberglass lasts like a day or two and doesn’t have any long-term impacts, but I also find gloves aren’t as inconvenient as masks.

Eye protection is a must. I don’t mess with that.

Or you can just pay the extra money for Rock Wool and get all the other benefits that come with that too.

Nah we just don’t write fun stories about it when it happens.

The roads don’t care about whether the car is ICE or EV. There are plenty of gigantic SUV’s that are hybrids or even electric. Eventually we will see electric 18 wheelers.

There should be an additional tax on ICE’s for their emissions as well to capture that higher externality. But remember EV’s are not emission-free. Anything with tires is a source of pollution.

Personal vehicles cause a lot of problems for humanity, and only some of those are exclusive to ICE’s.

Was there an exodus from Facebook to Lemmy I didn’t hear about?

Did this place have bike racks?

As someone who worked in a parking lot for years I can tell you 90% of the time the cars that park in these designated spots do not have anything hung from their mirror or on their license plates indicated they are allowed to do so. We couid have theoretically had the cars towed, but when there’s still several empty designated spaces it’s just not worth bothering with.

I’m much more upset about minimum parking lot size requirements built into zoning codes than I am about an easily-movable bike being left in a space for a few minutes.

Maybe it’s just me but this seems like exactly the kind of driver who would keep the system running smoothly and get upset if the train arrives more than 60 seconds before or after the scheduled time.