HalloweenSnarry
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User ID: 795
HalloweenSnarry
22d ago
But Tarn still raises a good point: the current ruling coalition of India is a political party and a strongman head-of-state who is considerably right-wing compared to the previous ruling coalition. Will Modi reverse every last element of socialism stemming from India's independence? Probably not, but I'm under the impression that much has already been done in that direction. And given the uncertainty about the old Congress ever managing to wrest their seat of power back from the BJP, it's hard to thus conclude that India will accelerate leftwards.
HalloweenSnarry
11mo ago
To add onto Ec's reply, I think the argument they were trying to make is that the Olympics and all other televised major sports sell a subtly/deceptively-unrealistic image of human capabilities. Frankly, I think a lot of sports-related marketing also does that (athletes on the Wheaties boxes!), and if, instead, we were honest while still trying to make sports a thing for everyone, we'd probably have to become bio-realist to some degree.
HalloweenSnarry
3mo ago
I'm gonna second this and add that I think there's a lot of great art coming around right now, of various degrees of relevance to current social issues, but a lot of it is in other media like anime, video games, and web video, and not merely familiar things like music and film.
On the topic of music, though, HEALTH's new album Rat Wars is shaping up to be something quite special; check out "DEMIGODS" and "ASHAMED."
HalloweenSnarry
1d ago
Botond mentioned in the thread about the Korean gender war that he is not American.
HalloweenSnarry
4d ago
Perhaps this relates to the "axial revolution," where people began to conceive of history as something that progresses instead of repeating in cycles? Maybe also ideas of reincarnation and the afterlife, from Ancient Greece to Ancient India.
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
I think "character/person hypnotized into sex" is more prevalent in illustrated form rather than in live-action. More live-action stuff is probably the preserve of seriously niche and weird fetishes like sissy hypno (one of the genres where, as Aqouta and Prima mention, the viewer is the one that's supposed to be getting mind-controlled).
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
I think there are some games on the store that are straight-up uncensored, no patch needed.
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
The US brought the state-of-the-art stingers that negated Russian aviation
And even then, don't people say that the Mujahideen simply traded the Stingers for simpler, cheaper weaponry?
HalloweenSnarry
10d ago
I guess Pixiv couldn't just carve out Texas? Granted, I guess that's a lot harder if you're a company based in Japan, whereas Mindgeek is in the West.
HalloweenSnarry
14d ago
Besides, they're patient and rich enough to not genocide people as you can tell by what's going on in Xinyang.
...Is this sarcasm?
HalloweenSnarry
14d ago
Honestly, I imagine what might happen then is that the tribes just rent out the land until they feel like they have enough money to justify clearing out the land, and maybe even going a step further and building something new on it like that one tribe in Vancouver(?).
HalloweenSnarry
15d ago
HalloweenSnarry
19d ago
What do you make of this, then? That this is happening at all in Iran probably says something. I'm with Lizzardspawn in that I'm under the impression that the theocracy, while enjoying considerable support, only barely has a hold on the nation, and that the populace is a little too liberal and well-educated to remain under its thumb for eternity.
HalloweenSnarry
21d ago
Somewhat off-topic, but: thoughts on RoboMaster?
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Yeah, those sandwiches you can get at 7-11 or Lawson probably are just literally built different compared to how it'd be done here in the US.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Is that Jaibot? Did they move away from their own blog and onto Substack?
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Another thing with video games and writing is that a number of games approach writing and storytelling in different ways vis-a-vis the gameplay. You have games where you just wander around to learn about the setting (Myst, Gone Home), games that attempt to immerse you in the world so that you can directly participate in the story (Half-Life, System Shock), games that attempt to be movie hybrids (Metal Gear, Wing Commander), or games where the story feels more ancillary to your progression gameplay-wise and you aren't always the sole driver of the plot (Command & Conquer, MechWarrior).
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I would contend Steam, there are actually a number of games that are outright uncensored (with no need for a patch) and/or contain explicit content in their store page materials.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
and if they wanted easy money for little investment, they'd resell the previous one with updated assets, and call it a sequel.
The fuck of it is, they kinda were doing this before Payday 3 to begin with. I might have to dig up this one video talking about the history of Payday 2, but in short, from my memory: Overkill/Starbreeze put out the game, made a shitload of DLC for it, tried to put it behind them as they focused on a new Walking Dead licensed game and their own snazzy VR headset project, those two things failed hard, so they went back to Payday 2 and cranking out DLC for it just to raise money to keep the lights on (complete with new "complete editions" to save you the hassle of purchasing the million DLC packs separately). I don't know why they even bothered with Payday 3 if they were going to go back to supporting 2, which did kind of make them a lot of money anyways.
There's an argument that this divestiture/ban/whatever is bad because we should focus on strong universal data privacy and the like, something that targets all social media and doesn't single out TikTok. I agree with that, but nonetheless, I think I'm on Noah's side with this, that we are in another Cold War and smacking an arm of the CCP on their little pizza hands is worth the questionable struggle presented by the bill.
Edit to add: This all being said, I suppose this will be the first real test of the right-wing theory about the power of the Cathedral. Will Yass's billions and Trump's bluster be able to make the Deep State blink, or will Yass find himself regretting getting on the Trump Train? Will Team Blue get what it wants regarding China, or is the American public too wedded to their social media to take this sitting down?
ETA2: I'm also not unsympathetic to a common thread in the replies here and to Noah: that it seems hypocritical and pointless of us to be so concerned about Chinese surveillance and control, about illiberalism from abroad, when we still have to deal with the same things at home. But I'd argue that it is precisely why we must take a stand against this. If we cannot stand up for ourselves against an outside enemy, we will never be able to stand up for ourselves against an inside enemy. "My brother and I against the clan, my clan and I against the world" and all that.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
I think that's a mixture of inertia, popularity among non-Western audiences (CS is probably second only to soccer among European and LatAm pastimes, and the Russian playerbase of Dota 2 is infamous), and the sort of "purity" of those games as contests of skill. Girls are probably more likely to play Overwatch, Valorant, or League.
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Have not yet seen the new film, but would you say that the Lynch film and the Westwood games did a better job showing how fucked-up the Harkonnens were?
HalloweenSnarry
1mo ago
Wait, why does a political party just have gold bars in a vault? Collateral for finances?
Also, was the insufficient housing an issue before the arsons, or is it currently a direct result of such?
There's a lot that Susan gets flack for, chief among them being the CEO of YouTube during its TV-ification.
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