Yeah, it’s a great first few steps. Really hoping LibDem becomes the official opposition and it’s just two Left™ parties driving each other leftward.

Current Labour concerns me with how it’s moved rightwards, but Daddy Starmer has my vote regardless

I’m not sure where you’re going with that? I would argue that yes, it is. As it’s sexual material of a child, with that child’s face on it, explicitly made for the purpose of defaming her. So I would say it sexually abused a child.

But you could also be taking the stance of “AI trains on adult porn, and is mearly recreating child porn. No child was actually harmed during the process.” Which as I’ve said above, I disagree with, especially in this particular circumstance.

Apologies if it’s just my reading comprehension being shit

The original 20 minute video in the article makes it clear he’s talking about job roles, and mentions writers a few times (admittedly not close enough to draw an 100% certain link). I don’t think it’s enough to discredit this just based on the assumption that he’s talking about actors or that there isn’t enough context. Obviously it’s vague enough that we can’t draw any solid conclusions, so I agree with you there.

The main reason I think this is bullshit is that the guy’s testimony isn’t credible for two main reasons:

• The guy was recently passed up for promotion, and blames it on being white and male
• The interviewer is posing as a romantically interested date and asking plenty of leading questions, the guy is at least partially telling her what she wants to hear

These two points, regardless of how true his story is, give him an ulterior motive for embellishing the story and exaggerating facts, which ultimately means we can’t trust this.

I’d like to see a full investigation, as with any accusation of discrimination. But we all know that when nothing turns up, it wouldn’t shut the right wingers up

This is also a lot more achievable than total healthcare reform. Both are achievable for sure, but just forcing landlords to install and maintain aircon is easier

I’m a strong atheist, but you’re kinda pick and choosing the facts. Skepticism isn’t about replacing one dogma with another.

China had a whole thing with persecuting those with religious beliefs. It’s certainly the minority, but state enforced atheism has created great horrors. Anything can be warped and disfigured into a horrific belief system used to justify anything.

Those who are religious should be held to the same level of scientific scrutiny as everyone else. There’s no evidence to show that Andrew Wakefield was Christian, and look at the shit show that caused

Being charitable, he’s saying that he’s going to massively help cooperations, and that any exec should do the morally bankrupt thing and vote for him because he (thinks) that he’ll make line go up much more than Biden.

Although the more I think about it, it’s hard not to see it as a not so subtle call for ideological purity. It’s certainly going to rally some people

I’m just saying that accepting your definition of anxiety being tied to apprehension, anxiety about the climate is still valid.

I would say your definition is correct, but your application is extremely limited. The anxiety is about things getting worse, it’s a vague nebulous feeling that can apply 1ms in the future or several decades. Or even about finding out past information in the future (the unknown). Or just not knowing what the future holds.

So yes, being super pedantic, you can’t really be anxious about the literal state of the literal climate literally right now, but it’s instead about the possible future outcomes and events. But it’s very commonly understood that when someone says they’re anxious about climate change, they don’t mean it in the super pedantic literal way

Climate change is happening now, but the anxiety is about how bad it’ll get in the future

Same, but I also see a trope of men often being dumb or evil or both in a lot of current media. And that really doesn’t help create role models

Sorry man, but that’s a relatively milk toast YouTube video with 81k views. Definitely very right leaning, but outright fascist is a bit much. She clearly has no media literacy or is deliberately misleading people.

Her latest video got only 11k views, and most of her titles look like some right wing grifter shit like “Ben Shapiro SILENCES Candace Owens, CANCELS Debate?”.

And I’m sure that right wing grifters will use this for content, that’s what they do.

I wouldn’t say that shows anything more than a loud minority. Honestly 81k views is lower than I expected and more proves my point

Please could you provide some examples? I’ve legitimately never seen someone upset at the devs for not literally being fascists.

If I have to go out of my way to find this, I’m assuming it falls under the “loud” minority group. I’m sure these people exist, but it’d surprise me if they made up a significant amount of the over 12 million players.

Edit: Had a further look, there seems to be more people complaining about people taking it literally than people actually taking it literally. I did find like 3 Reddit posts, but all had 0 upvotes and like 30 comments telling them they’re wrong and stupid

All I’m getting from this is two things:

• Free Markets need to be regulated

• Capitalism is the process not the outcome, and you can’t blame the sausage factory for making a sausage. The factory is just a set of circumstances that happens to produce sausages

It’s more that when the writing is bad something is perceived as “political”, as the insert of whatever political messaging is being used comes out of nowhere and smacks the player like a cudgel. That’s what most gamers have a problem with, obviously there’s a loud minority that rage about stupid shit like Jesse Faden being too masculine. But that’s not what most people are talking about.

Games need to tackle these issues head on and fully integrate them into the world, not just tack on preachy dialog that doesn’t make sense within the wider game world.

FF16 is blatantly about slavery and no one really complained, it’s not exactly peak fiction, but they at least had everything contained within the world. FF7 is the same but with fossil fuels and much better writing.

New Vegas is the best example, it’s simply written well and gives the player agency.

Death Stranding did a great job of both integrating it’s themes directly into the world, and also tackling them head on without any remorse.

Helldivers is so ludicrously full on and absolutely dripping with it’s pro fascist ideology that everyone knows what they’re getting into from the intro video, and then the game starts adding texture and “are we the baddies” energy straight away.

Fucking Disco Elysium is near universally praised by the wider gaming audience, and I don’t even think I need to explain how that one is political.

It’s the same reason why most ideologically driven media is cringe as fuck. Christian media being a prime example, it’s contrived slop that doesn’t make sense within its own story. Like God’s Not Dead and it’s illogical legal system built on feels and Shapiro logic.

Who remembers the weird pro-life Doctor Who episode? That was bizarre and out of place. The characters stopped acting like themselves for the sake of whatever message it wanted to get across. It just felt really out of place.

The Last of Us Part 2, to label the most controversial example, had periods of good and bad writing, but focusing in on the “violence bad” part of it’s messaging, it completely missed the mark. Giving the characters names that they shout was just hilarious, and having Ellie repeatedly kill dogs whilst Abbie pets them was just so hamfisted. Then making the gameplay violent and fun which just divorced it further.

TLDR: Gamers People love politics in video games media, they hate hamfisted preaching in video games media. Especially when it doesn’t make sense in the crafted world

centrally-planned systems are an aspect of capitalism

Isn’t that the end goal of capitalism? Winning is having control of all the capital right? How can you divorce the implied, if not explicit, end goal of a system from the system itself?

pile of decaying bones is an aspect of a family pet.

How is this not an aspect? It’s the inevitable end of any living thing, much like capitalism and the heartless exploitation of literally everything

This is however, a practice that results from the government being effectively corporate controlled. Which is the end result of allowing your free markets to run wild and allowing corporations to acquire that much power, money, and influence.

A pure capitalist system actively selects for this kind of bullshit. The most ruthless and unethical companies end up winning in the end. And those same companies are buying our politicians.

People blame capitalism when the system clearly favours the rich over the poor to such a dystopian extent that a man is allowed to be held hostage by a corporation

Being mega pedantic, pasta has ingredients.

But I understand your general point, you should be able to read the list of ingredients and understand what they all are right? Pasta being, flour, eggs, olive oil and salt is a much shorter list than whatever is in a microwave meal

I would happily pay a 40% tax rate for good public services including healthcare.

They have the 2nd highest quality of life index of all countries, with 1st being Luxembourg which is right next to them

I love how this implies the protagonist just wants to die

To add to your point. It also, in this case, subverted my expectations of what the joke was going to be. As the standard one just implies the therapist is taking notes because you’ve done something weird. The expectation is subverted, as the therapist is just stealing the joke instead. Subverted expectations are often a key part of humour.

Okay, thanks 👍