2D3D
28d ago
I prefer to posit that the accidental noticing we are performing is unfortunately more reflective of our biases and sensitivities than a concerted effort being shoved down our face.
The more likely reality is that a series of parallel incompetencies all got baked into a product by vague statements being proposed and implemented poorly, and the proposers being unwilling to look stupid by saying 'shit this was dumb shut it down'. We only see that sort of shutdown when it is high profile, like the Batgirl movie, and there are plenty of examples of these 'project managed by committee' products coming to market with clearly observable yet individually minor deficiencies.
When these organisations play the culture war angle, there is usually zero subtlety because they think consumers are idiots. Dragon Age Inquisition hit us over the head with fan favourite voice actress Jennifer Hale voicing Krem, a transwoman (transman? I couldnt fucking tell) whose dialogue options specifically highlighted her transness. Mass Effect 3 specifically highlights the homosexuality of Cortez and Traynor to scream 'HERE BE GAYS' at every opportunity. I'm sure theres some retardation about racism and species in some games, but the main example, Warcraft, shit the bed on its analogies so badly that its not worth repeating. (ok a brief one: being racist against orcs bad because thrall good. yet the orcs ravaged stormwind, teldrassil, the entire draenei species... as a racism analogy warcraft orcs are pretty fail. this point is weak, if I get loredumped in a followup rest assured I will roll over and immediately surrender because blizzard games are only good for porn and not worth my brain cells defending or attacking).
Finally, the fuggofication of video game characters which is the specific bugbear of this thread is certainly deliberate for a large part - there is no need to make women fat - but I would also argue it is a consequence of improved technology for face rendering. Old tech had blocky faces with clean lines, but the faces tended to be symmetrical and smooth even in uneven lighting since there wasnt enough power to render small details like cheek lines or sellions. Now with dynamic HDR and higher resolution facial textures we can see every stupid wrinkle and line moving. Combine that with facial capture tech honestly still being ass (requires artificial boosting of detected movements to cause the algo to change) and we get clown faced movements that trip straight into the uncanny valley.
2D3D
29d ago
This forum has a refreshing readiness to highlight bad take faiths, one of which is that Ukrainians actually really want to be Russians are are only being forced to fight by the cruel machinations of the West. That the pro-ru position overlaps between antiprogressives (tolerated here) and antiwest socialists (disrespected for good reason) is why bad takes are entertained even briefly, so long as the decorum of the forum is maintained. Calling '5000 word deep dives on videogames' cringe while your own takes are superior is, to my view, straining the boundaries of decorum.
2D3D
23d ago
I would gently posit that your level of conscientious organization is slightly higher effort than these flash mobs. Occupy Wall Street and Chaz exhibit hallmarks of being coalescing of disparate bedfellows rather than a coordinated mobilization effort. Coordinated efforts if anything exhibit geographical dispersion to maximize visibility, like deliberate disruptions of uninvolved parties and events by the pro-pal protestors. Staying in a single region to protest dance is just a magnet attracting the crazies, and those tend to dissolve the moment a power struggle arises.
2D3D
29d ago
That the Russians suck at playing the international soft power game is their own fault. If the Russians couldn't even get a literal clown who performed for Putin to be their puppet, thats on them. Russians are hardly moral innocents reacting against a big mean west, they have continually acted (often incompetently) in their own interests against the west, and to give Russians the benefit of he doubt is an invitation to have your exposed back stabbed.
2D3D
1mo ago
The failures evident within India contrast against pretensions articulated by cogent members of the diaspora, hence the ready mocking of 'Superpower 2020' By contrast, there is no illusion that anyone even entertains a single claim of the Pakistanis. With the record of failure being unwritten because it is automatically presumed, why would anyone waste brain cells mocking these failures.
2D3D
2d ago
Frankly the USA lacks a clean racial/cultural split across demarcated geographies to let a proper civil war play out. Gretchen Whitmer isn't rallying Dutch-German Americans in the Midwest to take up arms against the New Englanders of Hochul. There are too few concentrated natural resources or geographies worth fighting over in the USA because it is so large. The most likely failure point will be race based riots collapsing a major metropolitan area totally combined with a refusal by a governor to send in the national guard or said national guard rebelling. Think full riots of BLM and Rodney King with 0 law enforcement for a few weeks. A spontaneous violent mob horizontally coordinated along racial lines for ease of identification just to wreck shit. Less armed factions battling street by street Stalingrad style, more Harlem Riots with more destruction.
Civil wars really require geographically consolidated factions free of any local element capable of resistance. This is especially easy when the state institutions are token rebrandings of existing tribal or ethnic power structures. When the state falls, the militias simply swap out their patches and return to their old ways.
2D3D
28d ago
Slavs are sluts and while Muslims are chaste (zero value judgment to those appellations) seems somewhat reductive but I do wonder if the axis is 'purity vs starvation' as opposed to innate sexual proclivities in the differing cultures. This is an idle thought not worth expending too many brain cells on; at least within the confined of this topics original bearing which I have risked derailing by thoughtlessly discussing perversions.
2D3D
21d ago
edited for punctuation
I wish to add that Ukrainian troop complaints about mobilization are more 'let me fight well' instead of 'I do not wish to fight'. Ukrainian soldiers in the brigades constantly bitch about not having enough ammo or artillery or mines to fight in the trenches, instead of bitching about why they are forced to fight. Motivation is a more germane concern among the muscovites, which is why their regeneration focuses on central asians and token impressed foreigners instead of the westernized slav elite.
This point in particular
Full-scale war to recapture all lands included in the 1991 borders
really substantiates the thesis that Ukrainians have given up on peaceful coexistence with Russia, and the only thing that would have polled higher is 'full scale war, with the west directly bombing every russian on our soil.'
There is no positive sentiment left in Ukraine for the Russians and the Ukrainians already view themselves in a full scale war. One of the only thing stopping further mass mobilization is limitation in materiel and training capability, rooted in competence and capacity issues. This obviously still doesn't mean Ukraine is going to or will actually win with mobilization, but the narrative internally is 'we want to kill Russians' instead of 1918 era 'our leaders send us to die for nothing and we shall rise against the capitol'.
2D3D
24d ago
Consider all the swamp creatures he appointed.
This line highlights the specific reason Trump was able to demolish the Republican establishment in a way no others have succeeded in: Trump does not actually wish to live life as a politician. The glad handing, the genuflecting, the influence peddling... all of that escapes Trumps attention, largely because he's too stupid to realize thats what being a politician is about. The calculating politicians do not want to really do work, they want the recognition and the lifestyle accorded to a politician. Trump has partially upended the dynamic since the swamp toadies make the pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago, but none of these mutants (including Trump) are invited to the junkets and receptions that characterize the real social calendar that a politician cares about.
2D3D
28d ago
Rufo is a talking head in the right leaning intellectual spheres, not exactly the ground most mid2010s-style refugees would find themselves inhabiting. Most forays into the 'other' side would lead to the usual shitposters on 4chan or Bodybuilding or the spiciest being Kiwifarms. No one actually goes to the Front or the spicier discords/telegrams/forums (not shared due to foulness). The reality also is that the intellectual CW right often has its successes claimed or attributed to boosters like Musk or Rogan simply for name visibility. Few people seem to know or care about Rufo or Loury or even Mcworther Sowell and Fryer. Which is a tragedy, but also totally expected since most of us have lives and aren't terminally online outrage bait biting retards.
2D3D
28d ago
You hit the nail on the head regarding the noncredible source. Often the usage of noncredible sources with demonstrated conspiracism and creative interpretations of reality (moonofalabama, wsws, consortiumnews, ritter mcgregor armchairw etc... and you all haven't even scraped Islamic twitter) is itself proof of scraping the bottom of the barrel to (ironically) write a 5000 word soup of 'logic' and 'facts' to justify an end point already concluded in the headline. Cogency and sourcing wither in the face of ironclad certitude, for evidence and theory are already one and the same to those pissing in the pool they drink from.
2D3D
1d ago
Good point re undertale. That game had a pretty decent core gameplay loop to underpin the experience, but the dialogue was actually decent and emotionally investible. My specific complaint about 'choice' is that Mass Effect, Fallouts and to a lesser extent Skyrim had really poor consequences for choices, they were just different coloured lights and minimal FMV cutscenes. Perhaps the challenge of working in a Universe means you can't have wild ranging consequences, any sequel requires certain base states to persist: I can't nuke the universe in ME3 or kill Preston Garvey in FO4, and that cheapens the 'freedom of choice' in the game.
2D3D
24d ago
Point to how good multilateration is vs stealth please. At that sensitivity you're making your radar pick up every passing sparrow. Good luck differentiating one gain, much less three. IRST still has a very wide performance band, always better for confirmation than for acquisition. IR has an issue where it is rear-facing optimized against jets since the heat of an engine comes from the rear (engine motors on helos are all hot which is why SHORAD will never go out of style) and is constant, unlike forward facing thermal profiles which continually deform based on angle and scatter. Stealth is also not just radar signature reduction, it is also thermal emissivity absorbing, which is why all stealth planes have that darker shade - absorbs more thermal energy and thus reflects less thermal energy. Also, thermal has notably stupid performance when things like cloud reflected scatter (same as radar), so a web (can't be a ring, you can just punch a hole) of IR sensors must still be complemented by multiple stations to increase gain probability. Nevertheless, once a decision is made to launch GBAD in a not so vague direction where a hostile aircraft is incoming, IR does render stealth null. Modern IRH is stupid hard to soft counter inside the kill envelope, so if the adversary is ok with just wasting dozens of missiles in the vague air then yeah stealth totally is a meme - but so is basically any type of air mission if the enemy just throws dozens of missiles at every passing (literal) bird.
2D3D
27d ago
My bad, I saw 3.5m and mentally added 3 0s to reach 3.5b and went 'hmm every woman in the world. ok I respect that but damn'
2D3D
28d ago
Yes, most want some other countryman to fight. Conscription always has this tension of 'are we getting the right bodies in the fight' and right now, especially since mid 2023 we can posit that war enthusiasm has died down with the calculus shifting on where Ukraines maximal capability is following Ukrainian failures even with the much vaunted European armour. Mobilization in any country has never been popular, with responses ranging 'bitching about it' to 'fragging the Lt'. On this front I will give Russians a measure of credit, the sheer number of buryats and tajiks enthusiastically clambering into shitboxes to catch a mine is quite amazing.
2D3D
28d ago
Exactly! I am an unashamed punter, so I can claim to have direct observable experience with the working girls in various countries, and so I am legit curious if the slavs (highest point on the price to quality curve) have increased in quantity. Cheaper slavs is generally a good thing for punters looking for a good time.
Can't comment on the hypergamy, I think thats a function of economics - the Dubai scene seems to indicate Slavs are actually more circumspect than other participants, surprisingly.
2D3D
2d ago
Is there any great work that would be improved by the addition of choice, by the addition of alternate possibilities
Choice sucks. Most players in Bethesda or freeform character created open world games go for troll runs because the available choices end up sucking pretty hard and are inconsequential or inconsistent. Railroaded games don't offer choice beyond letting players play the game in different styles, and that has always lead to tighter narratives with greater emotional depth. The denouement of achievement is better savored when the outcome is amenable to the player.
LLM generated missions are unlikely to be any better than the standard algorithmically generated quests and maps of Roguelikes or Bethesda style radiant quests. By their very nature within a game a quest cannot significantly affect the world, otherwise other aspects of the game get broken. Unless the world is fully dynamically generated each playthrough and allows full destruction of not just the environment but the very engine itself, any LLM game quest will just be a high quality filler anime episode, inconsequential and distracting from the core experience players are actually intending to invest their time and effort in.
2D3D
28d ago
Frankly this is one reason I actually prefer Reddit to this forum regarding certain hot topics (Ukraine, Holocaust, probably a few more). Either the specific subject matter experts demurr, or the topic has a pendantically obstinate position advanced eternally by emotionally invested posters. No slight against emotionally invested defenses of untenable positions, the consequence free wasteland of an anonymous forum means I will unironically simp for the XiMa TenAliAI Godhead, but it does mean that this tick isnt coming unburrowed.
2D3D
23d ago
The normie Clinton era voter is listening but not absorbing this leftward shift. Most of them are vaguely democratic insofar as the republican options remain as noxiously stupid as they currently are; Trump is bad enough but Majorie Taylor Greene is a trainwreck to anyone wishing to express even mild dissent from the Democrats.
2D3D
24d ago
But, reasonable judges who aren’t good at parsing scientific studies themselves can be convinced that general intelligence does not work like that.
Many brain cells are expensed trying to justify WHY some groups must ve 'actively discriminated' against when the intuitive value of the above statement is obvious to anyone who has interacted with other people. If everyone was equal in ability and some groups were being discriminated against for no reason, I would hire them since they cost less money/are more desperate and I would crush the competition with my superior offerings. Korean bulge bracket banks are filled with Korean girls because they work hard and don't cause trouble all while being cheaper. Silicon Valley is filled with the obvious Asian (East and South) surplus because of their acretive value. Neither circumstance emerged because of a concerted antidiscriminatory lobby, but because market forces brought them to the fore. Capability tests are discriminatory solely because they are barriers to the value capture efforts of activists. Goldman Korea hires girls because these girls generate more value than their cost, but activists hire minorities because their tribe can parasite the value off the host.
2D3D
28d ago
Normalize healthy BMI and smooth skin! Wait why am I being dragged to the ludovico theatre? Oh no its the Tess Holliday swimsuit special!
2D3D
28d ago
Russia has much more to lose than Ukraine. Sure, Ukraine loses more as a percentage of its original reputation/territory/resources/material, but by absolute quantity Russian pyrrhic victory has lost more, and nothing can rebuild the Russian arms export market.
2D3D
28d ago
Will they tire of being NATO's cat's paw?
Your words, not mine. Calling this a 'nuanced anti war position' is frankly laughable, a pathetic attempt at pretending to be impartial by labelling this position as such to head off the pass and preemptively tie all previous arguments to this end state.
An argument in favour of 'the Ukraine' (real subtle there): they don't want to be Russian. They made that calculus, and they can choose to effect that outcome however they can. State power, public sympathy, whatever. We (the nebulous we) are not obligated to listen to their requests, as you clearly have stated, but we are also free to suggest or deny as we see fit. If the Ukrainians see maybe dying in a ditch to be less preferable than being Worse Belarus, thats their calculus. Should the calculus flip (higher chance of dying, Worse Belarus isnt so stupid), the Ukrainian soldiers can make the decision themselves too, ala October Revolution.
Till that time, Ukrainians (as a currently united polity) can ask, we can respond, and the Russians can respond as well.
2D3D
19d ago
Most of us will react with the standard 'smile and change the subject' if we are not on board, because terminating near friendships has social consequences. This is the exact reason why democrats and the pro-palestinians see no reason to ever compromise and consider the validity of the necessity of a military or of Israel or of conservatives: there are zero, literally zero, social consequences to denigrating the out-group.
Of course this calculus can be assessed to be wrong, but it merely reflects the short-sightedness of the activist. There is a presumption that the military and police are mere dogs leashed and muzzled by whoever controls the government, and even if one does not control the government these stupid retards won't know how to start objecting to the superior intellect of the democrat urbanite. The social consequences for disrespecting violent men with guns tends to be far more immediate for residents of countries with less geographic dispersion than the USA, and until the protestors discover how hard the boot can actually clamp down, they will never be learn.
'We are hated and (((they))) are destroying things we like'.
That is the basic aggrievement of the polack. Many modern culture war aspects map fairly neatly into the antipolack position, and polacks are largely losers who lack escape mechanisms from the assaults on their favourite escapes. A redneck in his cabin can still go out and drive his coal roller, an Indian can turn to the pro-India internet to get his ego reinflated, a Chinese can continue ignoring the incomprehensible west, but the polack can only suffer within the communication environment he is wholly nestled within and which he has little alternatives to enjoy.
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