I only beat Animal Well's "first layer", but I was pretty addicted for that period. It's really, really clever and satisfying.

A while ago, like mid-to-late aughts maybe, it was in vogue to joke about Ben Affleck being a shitty actor. I haven't seen all his roles and granted I'm sure he's had his duds, but the existence of the Dogma parking garage scene was always evidence enough to me that he had the chops.

Many noted a striking similarity to the case of Savita Halappavanar, a 31-year-old woman who died of septic shock in 2012 after providers in Ireland refused to empty her uterus while she was miscarrying at 17 weeks. When she begged for care, a midwife told her, “This is a Catholic country.” The resulting investigation and public outcry galvanized the country to change its strict ban on abortion.

But in the wake of deaths related to abortion access in the United States, leaders who support restricting the right have not called for any reforms.

My country's aptitude for remaining entirely unmoved by preventable tragedies that utterly upend political trajectories in other nations has become one of our most globally defining traits.

Video clip of the comment and aftermath during discussion (via twitter): https://x.com/Acyn/status/1851085909435039789

"Are you a supporter of Hamas?"

"Are you a racist, violent person inciting violence against me?"

In searching for the video, (already provided in this thread) I amazingly found that this appears to be the same school where a selection of boys from the class of 2018 posed for a gleeful photo of them throwing up the nazi salute.

Decided to check in on things. She got a chuckle out of me from some of the quotes attributed.

Necheles asked her about the number of porn films she's written and directed, and said, “You have a lot of experience making phony stories about sex.”

“Wow. That’s not how I would put it," Daniels replied. "The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room” with Trump. She added, "If that story was untrue, I would’ve written it to be a lot better.”

Asked if she'd promised people she'd be instrumental in putting Trump in jail, Daniels said, "No." Necheles then asked her about a social media post where someone had called her a human toilet, and Daniels responded, "Exactly! Making me the best person to flush the orange turd down." Necheles asked if that meant she'd be instrumental in getting rid of him. Daniels said it was "hyperbole." "I'm also not a toilet," she said.

@MrVilliam@lemmy.world called it saying it would get cringey and gross. The "phony stories about sex" line from Necheles is awful stuff.

I don't know if Prey is my favorite game of all time, but it's on the short list. I can, however, say that it is the game that most fills me with awe. Talos 1 is an extraordinary playspace filled with incredible detail, choice, style, and diversity. The narrative, possibly the weakest element of the game, still packs in a lot of cool ideas and genuine surprises.

Prey also contains by far my favorite opening "level" of all time. Without spoiling, the immediate tonal shift, the creepy mystery, the complete recontextualization of your first 10 or 15 minutes, it's an absolute spectacle.

In a perfect world, all these devs get absorbed by WolfEye Studios or something and they get a bunch of funding to make another massive masterpiece.

Via Kotaku:

Bloomberg previously reported that the vampire shooter’s [Arkane's Redfall] troubled development grew out of a push by top Bethesda leadership to make a live-service game, a decision that ultimately led to sky-high attrition and multiple delays.

All reward, no risk for the executives demanding that their best-in-class immersive sim developer create an empty live service shooter. Stupid decision led to predictable outcome and the workers feel the ax for it.

I'm not convinced that cameras and Nextdoor are having a material impact on the vague idea of "trust between neighbors," but I admit it's hard to gauge because I only have my own experience, which exists on a potentially wide spectrum.

I'm barely on Nextdoor and was surprised to hear there's apparently a pretty common use of it for public shaming. The potential for petty community conflict does seem heightened by some of these technologies.

Home entertainment is such a closed system that all these companies are just beta testing shitty ideas for each other. Eventually they all do the same thing as long as any backlash was neither too destructive to revenue nor sustained. See endless streaming services price hikes, account sharing lockdowns, or the fact that you just can't buy dumb TVs anymore.

Did they publish the poll itself? Curious how they defined "iconic." These results are baffling. I'm most surprised by Shadowheart, who is a great character but...functions as part of an ensemble and is arguably not even the most "iconic" character within her own game. And BG3 itself, despite being one of the most culturally impactful video games in recent memory, still is just too young to qualify for iconic status.

Some of us buy printers because we have abuse and humiliation fetishes. My OfficeJet is the kinkiest product I own.