Not an EA franchise, but in retrospect it was probably a bad sign that Assassin's Creed started going deep on "maybe the Templar shadow government that rules everyone in secret is actually not that bad?" or "no, actually some of the ancient aliens who enslaved all humanity were good and it was just the one cartoon villain that was bad."

Like, I think there's some thematic depth to looking at how in order to combat the evil shadow cult government the Assassins "had to" become a "good" shadow cult government, but as the man once said you do not, in fact, have to give it to them.

Once again proving that Naruto is somehow the core of the modern psyche. I don't believe it.

For context this is similar to the rate for evangelicals. About 50% of Republicans think Israel is either on the right track or should go farther, compared to 25% of Democrats.

I don't think anyone here would be the sort to do that. I think we have at least an implicit kind of "prime directive" against engaging at all and also our mods have done what feels like a good job keeping us free of rabid Nazis and their sympathizers. Like, I'm not going to claim it's impossible and I fully believe that someone somewhere sent him some truly vile shit as a result of this whole affair, but I would be legitimately shocked if it was any of our regulars.

I don't know how much this actually adds. Scott is still actively refusing to differentiate between people on the internet being mean to him and US-backed Israeli military forces murdering civilians through starvation. Indifference to the latter is justified through the former.

Also for all that he and others talk about "Israel’s current war of survival against the Iranian-led terror axis" it shouldn't be understated just how badly Iran was mauled in the recent bombing, to say nothing of the decapitation of Hezbollah. Israel and their US allies have demonstrated time and again that even where these groups that seek their elimination exist the notion of them actually having the ability to do so is absolutely absurd.

13

Apparently we get a shout-out? Sharing this brings me no joy, and I am sorry for inflicting it upon you.

Okay but now I need to once again do a brief rant about the framing of that initial post.

the silicon valley technofascists are the definition of good times breed weak men

You're not wrong about these guys being both morally reprehensible and also deeply pathetic. Please don't take this as any kind of defense on their behalf.

However, the whole "good times breed weak men" meme is itself fascist propaganda about decadence breeding degeneracy originally written by a mediocre science fiction author and has never been a serious theory of History. It's rooted in the same kind of masculinity-through-violence-as-primary-virtue that leads to those dreams of conquest. I sympathize with the desire to show how pathetic these people are by their own standards but it's also critical to not reify the standards themselves in the process.

And I'm sure he's sent several notices explicitly declaring that lack of contract between them that a judge evaluating the lien would be interested in.

Not gonna lie, "enforcing the line between ketchup and tomato sauce" isn't the sort of thing I'd expect the government to be into, but I guess I'm not mad about it?

[-] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 26 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I mean, I feel like the core problem with billionaire philanthropy isn't that they aren't effective enough at choosing causes; they're supporting exactly what they want to, whether it's saving lives and improving conditions in poor countries or making more classical music happen in rich countries. Rather the problem is that that much money can be thrown around by a single individual at all without public oversight. Like, EAs have a point in that philanthropic activities can mobilize a world-changing amount of resources. But then they do the libertarian thing of assuming that this is a necessary and inevitable fact of the world that must be worked around rather than considering the circumstances that created that ability and the degree to which the existence of billionaires requires African kids to die of malaria.

I feel like in a lot of cases the context is also sometimes important to differentiate between a real-life idiot and someone who is "Just Asking Questions."

The trite disclaimer is one thing, but explaining how you came to the specific question you're asking helps me trust that it's worth giving you an actual explanation rather than the dismissal that some folks want so they can post it on wherever the new home is for "so much for the tolerant left" bullshit.

Note that the image here isn't from the AI project, it's from actual Doom. Their own screenshots have weird glitches including a hit splat that looks like a butt in the image I've seen closest to this one.

And when they say they've "run the game" they do not mean that there was a playable version that was publicly compared to the original. Rather they released short video clips of alleged gameplay and had their evaluators try to identify if they were from the AI recreation or from actual Doom.

Even by the abysmal standards of generative AI projects this is a hell of a grift.

Gee, I wonder if there were any major shake-ups in the Ukrainian government circa 2014 that could have explained this change in tune.

Ukraine wasn't able to join NATO because of active territorial disputes regarding Russia's 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea. The 2022 invasion and intervening Russian-backed fighting in Donestk and Luhansk were naked imperial land grabs trying to force Ukraine back into the Russian sphere of influence despite their democratic processes repeatedly trying to move towards the EU.

Or in simpler terms, imperialism is actually still bad when Russia does it and it's weird that you don't seem to understand that.

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YourNetworkIsHaunted

joined 1 year ago