Biden literally circumvented congress twice to give Israel more weapons, using an unusual method that is not standard practice. He did not have to do this. No matter what comes out of his mouth, his actions put the lie to it.

I do agree the Republicans would probably be even worse, while simultaneously dropping the much needed Ukraine aid too. But Biden ain’t tapping any breaks.

They do have a lot more soft power over the government than many give them credit for though, plus some (so far) unused actual power that they only don’t use by tradition (which these days is more clearly a bad idea to rely on than ever). Plus all there’s all that money that goes into the pageantry of it (royal weddings, etc).

I feel like it’s be one thing to let them keep their royal titles, but they shouldn’t be enmeshed with the state in any actual way imo.

Thank you for your continued efforts

It seems a smidge absurd to me that some people apparently expect that death row convicts won’t fight it, I must admit. Of course he fought it. He was terrified.

A method doomed to be painful because the convict inevitably fights it is still painful, and it can’t be deemed “okay” by blaming the convict for it as if he had any choice in the matter when fight-or-flight kicked in. It’s yet another failure in a long string of similar execution failures.

I think you’re right. If psychological torture is torture - and if things alont the lines of sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, and so on amount to such - then the psychological experience of being condemned to death, then while in prison fighting through appeal after appeal after appeal for years and being condemened again and again but still having that small sliver of hope, then finally (for those who aren’t ruled innocent or insane somewhere in that process) being marched to your end, must be torture too. Compared to that, a few moments of pain at the very end seems so small as to be beside the point.

Any improvement is an improvement, but there keep on being these news stories about “aha, we have finally found the way to do this painlessly!” that repeatedly don’t end up panning out for one reason or another. Even this relatively small improvement in the lot of death row convicts seems totally illusive.

Idk that I agree with Nitrogen leaks being a big concern - I don’t know enough for certain to say one way or another really - but supposing they are a risk, regardless I think the biggest risk to the executioners or viewers is the psychological one.

Even convulsions after death that truly aren’t experienced by the convict can still greatly disturb the people who see them. Plus, in general, the psychological toll of systematically killing people who can’t fight back as one’s ‘mundane’ job. It’s gotta fuck people up. Maybe along the lines of how drone pilots - who effectively go to war, but who aren’t surrounded by fellow soldiers all the time like regular soldiers, but instead who go home every to friends and family who aren’t at war, causing prolonged feelings of alienation and separation that tend to hit regular soldiers only after they come home from deployment - end up with a lot of ptsd problems.

It does tell you that it’s been changed, though. You can typically still go and play the original game. And it enables the people affected by -isms to enjoy it when sometimes said -isms would pull them out of it for them otherwise.

And it’s not like the original intent was for people to be distracted by what would have, to the developers, have likely seemed a small or unquestioned detail. We can never truly approach a game the way its original audience did anyway because culture changes so much, and a large part the experience you have with art is what you bring to it. Thus why graphical updates can make the game look like you remember it, even though it now looks much prettier. I think these sorts of updates can be similar to that.

Granted, it’s harder to access the original game because of hardware. But even so, a lot of original intent is always lost in the process of making a remaster. I’d argue “for modern audience” updates tend to be less of a departure than changes in visual design (the different lighting in the various Myst remasters that changes the mood, the extra foliage in Shadow of the Colossus remasters) or mechanics updates (the ability to control Resident Evil like a regular game instead of via tank controls).

Edit: I think my ideal scenario would be if remasters include “modern audience” updates of all kinds, to make the game as enjoyable for new players as possible, but also that the originals be made more easily available such as by legalizing or sanctioning emulation for old games.

Georgia didn’t flip because of the “might vote Republic or might vote Democrate” swing voters people usually talk about; it flipped because of hoards of people who don’t normally turn out at all finally were approached and motivated to do so. Another kind of swing voter, between “might not vote of all, or might vote Democrate.”

Pundits make much of the first group because they always have, and because politicians insist on putting that group front and center in their priorities, but I think they become less and less of a genuinely powerful block as the two major parties get farther and farther apart. Who is even left in the middle, anymore? Never Trumpers, who won’t vote for Trump anyway?

Meanwhile, Biden’s unconditional aid for Israel’s genocide is alienting Arab Americans, who have a lot of voting power in some key states, as well as a large (though I can’t say exactly how large) portion of young, Black, and Latin American voters who can see the obvious racism at play.

I think he’s made a political bet here to appeal to the people the DNC always tries to appeal to at the cost of other groups, but I genuinely think he may lose because of it, especially if Trump ends up sidelined and replaced with another Republican.

Then again, maybe pushing the abortion rights thing will make enough of a difference to counteract this. I don’t know. But I hate that I feel like this election could easily go either way.

I don’t think you can become a billionaire in an ethical way, without exploiting hundreds or thousands of people below you.

To me, the “good” billionaires participate in and create the system that keeps everyone else poor and without resources just as much; it’s just that they throw a few coins back to charity - what looks like a lot to us, but isn’t much to them - to a) make themselves look good and charitable or b) assuage any guilt they feel for their continually exploitation of workers and hoarding of wealth. Like a king gathering so many taxes all the peasants are destitute, then tossing some gold coins into a crowd and getting called generous for it even though it’s a pittance compared to what they took. There is no more powerful PR for a billionaire, no better way to steer public and media opinion, than strategically giving their money to charity.

They maybe aren’t intentionally evil, but if a bit of charity makes people praise them, and makes them feel like they’re using their wealth for the greater good, such that they can feel like they’re good people and sleep at night, I think they conveniently fail to think through whether the “good” they do by handing out their wealth outweighs the harm they caused by taking such an outsized share - one much larger than they ever give back - in the first place, because anyone would be extremely motivated to come to the conclusion that it’s ethical to keep being an mega-powerful billionaire.

If they didn’t exploit workers and hoard so much wealth in the first place, their “charity” wouldn’t be needed because all that wealth would be much better distributed to begin with, and it would be distributed more equitably rather than on the basis of whoever most appeals to an individual billionaire’s whims at a given moment. As it is, they’re like middlemen between workers and the causes that need funds, and in being so they are able to wield ridiculously outsized political power (via donations, being treated as important enough to talk to politicians, market manipulation, etc), and they will always oppose any measure that truly threatens their continued power and wealth.

Also they rely on our current capitalist system that requires the line to go up forever, with companies expected to make more and more money year after year (often by taking more and more from their workers), with no answer to where or when the line can stop going up, which is an incredibly stupid strategy on a planet with finite resources and a global warming problem.

Aljazeera reliably reports on world news that gets totally ignored by other outlets, is the thing. I haven’t read up on Qatar’s policy’s otherwise, and I do notice that aljazeera never seems point fingers at Qatar’s own issues, but I’ve generally been very glad it exists.

Do you have an alternative that’s equally good for breadth and depth of world news, but in your view less biased?

Edit: I’ll note also that aljazeera does post no shortage of negative articles about the actions of, and human rights abuses by, Hamas, too. They’re just not getting shared here on beehaw, since Israel’s actions are rather more attention grabbing at the moment. I’ve never seen them post any stories or opinion pieces praising Hamas, either.

This is a really good article, and I like that they made their data public and put a link to it right in the article.

Also, I knew it was bad, but looking at these numbers it’s even worse than I thought. I recommend reading this one.

Like, this part:

Asymmetry in how children are covered is qualitative as well as quantitative. On October 13, the Los Angeles Times ran an Associated Press report Opens in a new tabthat said, “The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that 1,799 people have been killed in the territory, including more than 580 under the age of 18 and 351 women. Hamas’s assault last Saturday killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including women, children and young music festivalgoers.” Notice that young Israelis are referred to as children while young Palestinians are described as people under 18.

During discussions around the prisoner exchanges, this frequent refusal to refer to Palestinians as children was even more stark, with the New York Times referring in one case to “Israeli women and children” being exchanged for “Palestinian women and minors.” (Palestinian children are referred to as “children” later in the report, when summarizing a human rights groups’ findings.)

A Washington Post report from November 21 announcing the truce deal erased Palestinian women and children altogether: “President Biden said in a statement Tuesday night that a deal to release 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.” The brief did not mention Palestinian women and children at all.

That is so fucked up. And there are a bunch of other examples like it re. the disparity in the language these newspapers use.

Tangentially, and though this is a whole can of worms and rather beside the point we should be focusing on at the moment: I am also disturbed that it’s apparently still common practice to bundle women together with children like this - if they just mean “noncombatants” or “caregivers” then they should say that, just saying “women and children” like this demeans female combatants and male caregivers alike. I can sort of understand an argument for it in certain contexts where women are subjugated and denied a lot of rights, but this language is used regardless of social contexts.

I presume they didn’t because that would be likely to get gamesradar sued for piracy. They can report on it, but they can’t aid it.

Also, the “whales” are by and large not unharmed rich people - it’s mostly poor people who are at risk for gambling addiction, such as many with adhd, depression, etc. The people who are targeted successfully by this model usually suffer for it.

This is a great game, especially if you’re the type who thinks the beginning hours of a civ game (before you get bogged down in micromanagement and unit orders) are the best hours. It basically gives you that kind of early-game experience over and over, with plenty of variation. It’s so much better paced than most comparable games as a result. I’m surprised it doesn’t get more buzz.

I didn’t get far in it because the characters seemed very bland to me, and the story setup generic, but perhaps that could improve over time? I know some games leverage their length to pull off slow character development well, even if the basic character templates are straightforwardly tropey. But this one didn’t grab me enough at the beginning to justify investing my time in it, personally.

I’m glad it exists for the people who do like it, though!

As people already said, Disco Elysium for sure.

Baldur’s Gate 3 on the lowest/story difficulty.

The old RPG Arcanum. Great steampunk fantasy setting and story. If you play a persuasive character you can avoid combat and skip entire dungeons. The game has some balance issues (magic tree is fine, but the tech tree is underpowered, and early combat encounters are horrible to dela with). Various fan patches and mods are available, including a balance mod, a bugfix patch, and an HD patch. Since it’s an old game I recommend getting it from gog.com, since sometimes they fix up older games a bit to run properly on new systems.

Dragon Age, since you liked Mass Effect. Though, I personally found the combat more annoying in Dragon Age than Mass Effect. Mileage may vary.

The Outer Wilds (different game than Outer Worlds). It’s a sort of an archeology/space adventure game. It’s not strictly speaking an RPG, but if you want a story game it’s top tier. Please do not look anything up about the game and go in as blind as possible, as the feeling of discovery and exploration are the main draw of the game and once you have something spoiled you can’t un-know it. Also, I recommend getting the dlc immediately with the main game, as it’s a huge expansion that fits into the main story perfectly and affects the ending of the main game.

I think it’s moreso that TikTok’s algorithms, whatever that black box may contain, are far better for discoverability than those of all the other platforms.

It’s guided by what each individual viewer wants to see (or hates to see, if they can’t resist interacting with videos they hate), so small media bubbles are created for better or worse, but Tiktok will hand on-the-ground news reported by Palestinians to people who want to see it without those viewers having to look for it or know it’s there to be looked for.

By contrast, if you go to youtube, you might see whatever shows up in the general “popular” tab, or you might enter a search for Palestinian news (which requires you to be actively looking for it in the first place vs just there and able to be shown it) but you’re likely to get mainly clips from major US news channels, with their framing of the situation, and maybe some Israeli ones. Not the heaps of videos by random individuals that you’ll find on TikTok. Even if that type of video is uploaded, youtube won’t recommend it if it’s from a new channel and doesn’t already clock a bazillion views. But TikTok can make a little video from a random person go from zero to everywhere very quickly.

TikTok in general is just better for finding “man on the street”/“what is it like to be there right now” reports from affected individuals. As well as for finding other own-voices type videos by individuals who aren’t media stars or news reporters or the hosts of big youtube channels, but who are the ones most directly in a situation.

Of course there is bias or outright misinformation on the platform too. It is best approached with caution and media literacy, but one need only look at U.S. media’s coverage of the current situation to see that is the case for mainstream news organizations too.

This is true. But calling the worst case scenario “inevitable” is doom and gloom surrender before the fight - stuff like this will just make people think “well, it’s hopeless, there’s nothing I can do” and so they do nothing when maybe they could have done something.

I won’t argue there aren’t some use cases for it, but it was massively oversold for what it actually is. It’s essentially just shared spreadsheets, but almost always described in a way that make it seem inscrutable to most people (further sinking any propect of mass-adoption) and cool to people who want to feel like they’re intelligent and in-the-know about tech. And it was pushed primarily for things it was unsuited for, like replacing regulated banks with FDIC insurance.

I think it has potential niche uses, though. Not every technology has to be widespread or applied to a wide variety of different things.

Tbh I think the same overselling/over-applying is happening to large language models/LLM “AI” now, though at least LLMs legitimately do have a lot of potential use cases. Just not as many as the everything people are trying to apply it to, and not as overpoweringly as many assume.

Also, it’s the type of thing that makes me very worried about the fact that most of the algorithms used in things like police facial recognition software, recidivism calculation software, and suchlike are proprietary black boxes.

There are - guaranteed - biases in those tools, whether in their processors or in the unknown datasets they’re trained on, and neither police nor journalists can actually see the inner workings of the software to know what those biases are, to counterbalance them or to recognize if the software is so biased as to be useless.