What an insane take. If both sides are equal on one completely undefendable thing, then you vote based on other issues. One of the two parties are going to be in power at the end of this election cycle, regardless. Both are permitting genocide, and it’s a fucking problem, meanwhile only one of those parties are actively working to strip the people’s right to do something about that.

All this “both sides” bullshit feels disingenuous. If you were really concerned, you’d be focused on paths to solutions, rather than focusing strictly on trying to devalue Democratic votes. I certainly don’t see any path to stopping this genocide that starts with permitting a Trump presidency.

Yeah, there’s a lot of cheeky “hurr, thanks for finally catching up!” in response to all these recent articles about Trump being an ignorant, bigoted dictator wannabe, and while none of them are wrong, it’s just not useful commentary. All this self-servinf political-intellectual one-upsmanship only serves to talk down to people who are finally coming around to the reality of the situation, and I’d much rather be glad it’s finally being said than jerk myself off over the fact that I’ve known it for the past 8 years.

I get that it’s frustrating to have mainstream media only finally admitting to Trump’s anti-democratic position as early ballots are beginning to make things look like he’s losing this race, but it’s just not constructive conversation. Spread the word, get more people exposed to this, rather than lording it over others that it’s old news.

My man, if a shadowy cabal of elites were dictating who won and lost the upcoming election, they sure as fuck wouldn’t be manipulating results in such a base-level way. They’d just have the numbers fudged at the end, rather than take risks with tracked objects going missing.

God, I can’t wait for the election cycle to end so the majority of the trolls, nutters and Russian astroturfers can finally crawl back into their respective holes for another 3.5 years.

I can’t believe someone uttered that monologue with the expectation that it’s a winning argument. Like, yes? Perform sex acts without consent and the police should be, in fact, after you.

“You sick bastards will permit anything as long as it’s between consenting adults!”

Ummm, yeah? Glad you finally grasp what we’ve been saying.

I feel like this was meant as a tongue-in-cheek jab at the post title, but sarcasm of this type is lost in text.

Don’t you see? That’s the enemy they’re up against, so they have to cheat! /s

Right. As in all cases involving freedom and liberty, my freedom to swing my arms ends where your face begins. This is hurting someone.

Even if it weren’t such a rediculously politically charged topic, these girls are likely to now have peers who see Ted Cruz’s statement. They’ll have to deal with some of those peers making comments, and mocking them for being “masculine.” We have countless cases of bullying getting out of control and leading to serious psychological and physical harm, and now we have grown-ass men in positions of political power enabling this kind of behaviour to do what? Weaponize gender issues and spread hatred along political lines?

Fuck Ted Cruz, and fuck anyone who thinks a grown-ass man commenting on the gender of and posting images of young girls should be protected under “freedom of speech”. This is abuse of power and child abuse. You wanna save the children, Republicans? Start with saving them from your leadership.

“I’m a gamer myself, and therefore I know what I’m talking about”

Should we call it a fallacious call to authority, meme on it for being a “how do you do, fellow gamers” moment, or simply mock the guy for whoring himself out in favor of daddy corporate? I could write an essay on the ways this is an absurd statement.

Gamers hate Denuvo because it doesn’t “simply work”. It limits paying customers from accessing their content, bogs down mid-range machines that are already overtaxxed by poor optimization and, in admittedly uncommon cases, full on breaks some games until patches and fixes roll out. Stop pretending that “gamers” are out here rioting because they’re too cheap and immoral to pay for content. Quit your fuckin’ lying.

Excuse my ignorance here, but what is the data that they’re collecting being used for? We see polls every day suggesting that Trump and Kamala are closer in votes than anyone on Lemmy would like, but now I wonder who exactly is being grifted. Is this Trump being lied to and paying for a service he isn’t receiving, or is this data being falsified to make Trump look more popular than he is, lending weight and legitimacy to his claims of widespread voter fraud?

I’d love, for once, for Trump’s own philosophies to be biting him, but based on the past, I’m worried this is just another tool in the misinformation arsenal.

If he’s going to lie about working a McDonald’s, I don’t blame people for lying about the (non-existant) service.

A photo-op in a closed McDonald’s isn’t a “job,” Donny. Though, since you’ve never had one, I can understand how you failed to make the distinction.

has brought dehumanizing language into American politics.

You mean in like 2015, right? It’s approaching 10 years of this shit.

What the fuck is Politico’s article formatting? Random-ass capitalization, bolding the first few words of each paragraph, but never the whole statement, paragraphs that are two sentences long… I feel like I am trying to read the thought processes of someone who is actively having a stroke. It’s all there, just coming out jumbled, with awkward delays and strange emphasis.

I honestly gave up reading fairly early in. I get that most people want “fast” media nowadays, but this is barely legible.

Well, I won’t comment on that, but I will tell you that: if I did, it’s a smart thing.

In other words, he did.

Do yourself a favor and stop putting off Cassette Beasts. Every time I play it, I am gobstruck that an indie team made this and sells it for a fraction of the price of whatever mediocrity Pokemon is pumping out.

I could sing it’s praises all day, but I’d rather just politely nudge you to push it up the list.

I immediately opt out of any platform that aggressively tries to decide what content I consume.

A little surprised to hear Zero Time Dilemma is seen as the weakest game of the trilogy. I played them all in a vacuum, never really engaging with the communities around the franchise, and I would never have said that myself.

If I had to pick, I’d argue that Virtue’s Last Reward was the “worst” one, but I am not happy about writing that. It was a great game that I enjoyed start to end, but ending on a “this will only make sense when the 3rd game releases in X years!” note leaves a really sour taste in my mouth. The other two games are complete experiences, and when I am playing a visual novel, the last thing I want is a cliffhanger “join us next time to find out!”

That said I think I enjoyed puzzles and philosophical musings of it the most out of the three? So my opinion is more about what was bad than what was good and should probably be discarded anyway.

I’ve gotta put this one out there because it will largely get overlooked every time the topic of “Visual Novel” gets brought up, but Digimon: Survive.

As a tactics RPG, it’s pretty mid. Character growth and customization exists, but isn’t quite as expansive as I’d like for that kind of game. It’s no Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, but comparing it to other tactics games doesn’t do it justice, because it’s one of the better-to-best written visual novels I have ever played.

Each of the endings explores the way small changes in circumstance can heavily impact people’s decisions, each of the characters and their partner monsters are oozing with personality, and some of the potential outcomes for each character represents some of the most wild, fucked up, and human emotional responses possible. Your decisions as the main character have minor impacts in the lines of which characters reach their end of their growth arcs, and which evolutions are available to your partner and some of your companions partners, and the collective value system limits which of the main branches you’re permitted to explore for your ending. Which it doesn’t boast the wide assortment of branching narrative paths that some visual novels take, it does still succeed in making your decisions feel like they matter.

And this is completely aside from the fact that it’s a Digimon game. A franchise widely viewed as “for children”, yet it engages with heavy existential themes and doesn’t shy from letting horrible things happen to good, and bad, people. People die, on screen, in ways I would not want small children to see. In a lot of ways, the game is a functional “reboot” of the franchise, sharing a lot of commonalities with Digimon Adventure, but using older characters, more serious mature themes, and never referencing the monsters as “digimon”. In fact, the term is only used once, during the epilogue of one of the endings, otherwise they’re referred to as Kemonogami, and treated like Yokai. They’re engrained in the history and legendsof the world, and it’s an amazing take on the franchise.

I’m gushing at this point, but what really matters is it’s an extremely well-written visual novel with competent enough Tactical RPG gameplay, and also currently on a rather deep Steam Sale. Cannot recommend it enough.

Canada posting higher on this report than the US, meanwhile the US constantly talks down on the quality of care in Canada, and conservatives use the Canada-US comparison to try and sell Canadians on privatized health care.

Don’t worry US, at this rate you won’t be in last place for much longer.

“The legislature acted promptly to change what was an old law to ensure access to I[VF] —,” he tries to say, only for Collins to interject and ask him, “Why did they have to act if it wasn’t in peril, senator?”

“Because of the Supreme Court decision,” Cotton responds, referring to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe.

Very “States rights to do what?” energy. Love to see it.

“THE WORLD IS LAUGHING AT US AS FOOLS…”

My favorite part is when he gets something so insanely wrong that it spins full circle and he gets it right anyway, just for completely the wrong reason.