MartianNight
No bio...
User ID: 1244
MartianNight
9mo ago
I'm not sure if you needed an account for that, but at least that was optional, and you didn't miss much if you ignored it.
What was dumb about it was that Ubisoft couldn't even be arsed to keep their site up and running, making that part of the game technically unfinishable in recent years, if it wasn't for fans reverse-engineering the encryption algorithm (luckily, they used a symmetric algorithm instead of something harder to crack). And of course, the fan-maintained websites are still up and running: https://darkroom.bgemyth.net/, because apparently fans can do what billion dollar multinational companies cannot.
Let me highlight this part:
Arguably, Ubisoft has been fighting the good fight. I make fun of Ubislop titles, and their super generic, open world, casual action adventure mechanics. But they are still ostensibly offline big budget single player games.
I recently bought the remastered edition of Beyond Good and Evil, and the launcher doesn't allow me to play the game without creating a stupid Ubisoft account. Why the fuck would I need to create a Ubisoft account to play the single-player game I already bought and paid full price for? (Incidentally, I bought this game three times: once on PC, once the updated version on XBOX 360, and then again the remastered version.)
To be clear, this is a 100% offline exclusively single-player game with no online components whatsoever! There is absolutely no need for online accounts!
The only way to circumvent this asinine garbage was to put the console in offline mode, which is a hassle. And the only reason that works at all is that Microsoft put its foot down and didn't let hell-tier companies like Ubisoft block their games from running offline. Fucking Microsoft is the hero in this story! Let that sink in. MICROSOFT! I cannot emphasize this enough. How the hell do you fuck up so badly as a gaming company that a longtime gamer like me thanks Microsoft for not letting you ruin the gaming experience even worse for your paying customers?
This fucking shit make me hate Ubisoft with a fiery passion. A company that fucks its customers over this badly doesn't deserve to survive. I wish they went bankrupt yesterday, just to discourage this bullshit.
MartianNight
9mo ago
Sure, that's why I started my comment with “If I put on my conspiracy hat...” At the same time, it's naive to assume that an attack on the opposition couldn't possibly be politically motivated because there is some friendly fire.
MartianNight
9mo ago
If I put on my conspiracy hat, I would say that this is exactly what you would expect from a group that wants to get rid of certain politicians without making it look like their actions are politically motivated: throw a few of their allies under the bus too, to make it look like the actions are politically neutral, while knowing full well that the impact on your enemies is much more severe than on your allies.
This gives your actions the veneer of neutrality while still achieving your political aims.
MartianNight
9mo ago
This interpretation makes no sense in the context of the story, though. The evil queen is the second-most “fair” person in the entire kingdom, but decides to murder her innocent stepdaughter out of jealousy, which is pretty obviously not morally virtuous.
You cannot become a morally virtuous person by murdering all the innocent children who are more virtuous than you, except in the trivial sense that if you murder literally everyone else, you are “most virtuous” by default (which isn't what happens in the story). However, you can become the most physically attractive woman by murdering all the women who are more attractive than you.
So the story only makes sense if (at least the evil stepmother) thinks of “fair” as meaning “physically attractive”, not “morally virtuous”.
It's essentially the 1994 video game Quarantine, if anyone remembers that.
Maybe the offensiveness of what Darone did becomes more obvious if you remove the trans issue from the topic.
Imagine you have a support group for parents whose children have a terminal form of cancer. These really exist and are important to the people involved. One day a member posts a sad story about how his kid has died recently, obviously getting lots of expressions of support and sympathy from the group, because that's what support groups do. Then later it turns out that his kid is alive and well, wasn't even sick, or maybe doesn't even exist.
Could you then imagine some of the people who were in the process of actually losing their children to cancer would find the behavior of the imposter deeply offensive? Wouldn't it be more than a little “weird” if the group administrators responded to the controversy by kicking out the offended parents with actual dying children (i.e. the target demographic of the group!), to kowtow to an imposter that wants sympathy for his imaginary grief?
And I know you might say: well, maybe the imposter cannot help it! Münchhausen syndrome is a thing! Let's be empathic and inclusive! But even if I agree that Münchhausen syndrome is real and that people with this condition deserve help, it's not clear that that help must come in the form of being admitted to a support group they do not qualify for. I think it's reasonable to keep the support group for actual parents of actual dying children, and give the imposter support in the form of psychiatric treatment separately.
Similarly, I cannot understand why a group specifically for pregnant women would prioritize the needs of a male imposter over the safety and comfort of actual pregnant women in the group.
Note that none of this depends on proving that the male acts out of malice or indulging a sexual fetish. It's perfectly plausible that some transwomen are legitimately sad that they can never become pregnant, and perhaps they need support to deal with that grief, and maybe that support involves LARPing out a miscarriage, but that still doesn't imply they should be entitled to join support groups for pregnant women, on the simple basis that they are not, and never will be, pregnant women.
Links to:
(Am I the only person who finds it maddening that in the year 2025 newspapers still don't bother to link to the easily-findable publications that they base their reporting on?)
I think that's a fair criticism, but I think there are at least three strong points arguing against your interpretation, which are also mentioned in the judgment:
The Equality Act 2010 was meant to replace the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and Sex Discrimination Regulations 1999, which predate the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and obviously intended to use the biological definition. There is no evidence to suggest the lawmakers intended to change the definition of man and women.
The Gender Recognition Act creates a distinction between legal sex and biological sex; it does not abolish biological sex (how could it?). Interpreting the EA as referencing biological sex is not inconsistent with the GRA, especially since this is the most common interpretation. You could argue that if the EA wanted sex to be interpreted as legal sex, it should have defined this explicitly, and since it doesn't, it could be reasonably assumed to default to biological sex.
The EA only refers to “pregnant women” and never “pregnant men”. This implies the word "woman" refers to biological sex, because it would be unthinkable for a law to exclude biologically female legal men (trans men) from protection of discrimination on the basis of pregnancy.
I admit I'm biased because I oppose genderism in most of its forms, but I think the judgment is defensible.
More options
Context Copy link