I'm still nostalgic for the Saints Row 2 character creator because it was one of the only ones with a gender slider. If there's just two (or even four, see BG3) body types, they're usually still ultra-male and ultra-female in my view. The development of ever more realistic graphics has only served to cement this, I feel.

I need some geopolitical information on Western Sahara. From a quick read, it seems like a simple colonial situation where Morocco acts as a Western proxy against the nationalist Polisario Front. But there's obviously some other complex factors, like the ambiguous position of the non-Western superpowers. Any informed opinions?

This website, "The Insider", totally looks like some fed stuff. No masthead, no owners or editors listed anywhere, but an acknowledgement that they are funded by several EU grants. Also, they've literally got an international list of enemies titles "Fakesperts", which is comically incongruent with a serious journalistic outlet both in tone and in its violation of journalistic standards.

Frankly, this just seems embarrassing for everyone involved in this "debate". I'm tired of dunking on debate streamers, total low-hanging fruit.

you can go to some abortion rights rallies and never hear anyone talk about the oppression of women, instead insisting on woke lingo like “people with a uterus,” because in the postmodernist conception the most crucial aspect is the changing of language to be more woke.

They're extremely upset about "postmodernism", "identity politics", "canceling" and "woke", but they insist they're for trans people in one sentence somewhere, so surely all their complaining about pronouns and verbal inclusion of trans people is in good faith. Anyway, being really vulgar about sex work is always a good indicator of where someone's real allegiances lie.

While watching Andor, I was pretty underwhelmed at its depiction of a state that should be resisted. So an evil emperor has taken absolute power and how does that manifest? Opposition politicians get investigated for corruption, although they don't worry about the investigators planting evidence or anything. Suspicious individuals receive additional attention from the secret police, but they won't act without a proper cause. A civilian stalking a secret police agent receives a stern talking to. At one point, police occupy a building, commit some torture (only on a few people with valuable information, of course) and forbid a protest. Oh, and all public buildings look like a caricature of the Soviet Union or the GDR. Well, alright.

Dyson Sphere Program is one of those games where you build a giant factory and it's very good, maybe the best in the genre.

Standing lessons not paying off somehow

In Wrath of the Righteous, the one female love interest only available to male PCs is a flesh-eating serial killer, which should be the standard for romancable heterosexual characters.

It does make me sad how the only time there's a great number of comments about art or philosophy is in the monthly struggle session about whether all Western culture is just a tool of the CIA. I'm still holding out hope that we could get some genuine discussions going, especially because all other Internet venues for discussing literature are extremely fucked in terms of politics, but it doesn't seem likely.

I've got a thing I need to do in a few hours and until then, I'm just sitting here vibrating with anxiety

It's pricefield.org and we're federated with it! It's not terribly active, but I always smile seeing it.