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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Most Americans aren’t even related to original colonists (not that it really matters anyways) The US has had several large influxes of immigrants throughout its history. The Irish fleeing genocide from the Brits. The huge waves fleeing World War 1 and World War 2. Fleeing the USSR, or fleeing the former Soviet states as they collapsed. The US has traditionally been a haven for people fleeing all sorts of horrors in the world.

    Even with all that immigration, the US needs more. The USA is the 184th most densely populated country, according to the UN. The current fertility rate in the US of 1.787 means that the counry would be seeing population decrease if not for immigration.

    You’re right that the colonists existed in a different time and with different rules. The beauty of that is that we can learn from the past and make better rules today to allow more immigrants in. Pretty much every economic study that wasn’t based in racism agrees that immigration is good for economies.

    There are countries with both more and less strict laws around immigration. I do not see the value of those comparisons- like yeah North Korea doesn’t let people in… Should I want to be like them?


  • Do you honestly believe people from non-“Western” countries don’t complain about the weather?

    If they did, how would you know that they do?

    You also don’t know all of the battles that others are fighting. Just because you were born and live in a country that is relatively wealthy compared to other countries does not mean each individual is well-off. What might be “slightly cold” weather to you could cause debilitating joint pain for someone else. For people who live paycheck-to-paycheck, grocery prices are a huge deal. The fact that you consider them trivial speaks loudly to your privilege.


  • Wow the propaganda you’re consuming must be really, really effective. I can’t imagine believing that looking for ways to improve society is a “western” thing. Perhaps you need to look more closely at the news and media you are consuming and start asking yourself where potential biases or gaps in perspective could be.

    Do you not think the people if Gaza are complaining right now? Or the Hong Kongers fighting for their autonomy and what’s left of their democracy? Or for that matter pretty much every country to the south east of China who is having their sovereignty infringed upon? Or within China, the Uyghurs and Tibetans and other ethnicities are being brutally repressed. Does Argentina count as western? Bcause they are talking about impeaching their recently elected Libertarian president already. What about the migrants to Qatar that are effectively indentured servants? For that matter, is Ukraine far enough east to count? Or the various other countries where Russia has been infringing upon borders, like Georgia and Kazakhstan and Moldova. I haven’t even touched upon Africa yet, but there’s another genocide happening in Sudan. India is still trying to modernize itself and get rid of the caste system.

    I think this is a you problem.



  • You think some British radio host who isn’t big enough to have his own Wikipedia page was a significant influence on US elections? I can’t even find enough info on this dude to determine what his political views are and whether he self-identities as “progressive” or not.

    Every progressive politician in the US was trying to get as many anti-Trump votes as possible.








  • Bruh if you’re still giving a shit about what any pre-election polls were saying after they’ve repeatedly failed to predict so many elections I don’t know what to tell you.

    I said it before he stepped down- America is too misogynist and racist to vote in Harris. Even the economic left. Would Biden have done better? I can’t say. But I do think it’s pretty damning that Harris didn’t even win the popular vote like Biden and Hillary did.


  • What the fuck are “modding values”? Women with ridiculous anime proportions and almost non-existent armor? Adding Shrek and Thomas the Tank to Skyrim? Gatekeeping mods to a small community of individuals who play on PC and have the technical skills to do that? Slaving away while the rent and bills like up out of some sense of obligation to a community? Hoping people donate? Putting all the time and effort into creating something and taking on all of the risk? Being. Subject to the whims of Bethesda’s management and hoping management doesn’t change their tune to be more like Nintendo?

    How can you calin that Bethesda doesn’t give a shit about modders getting paid, when they pioneered the first real legitimate attempt at paying modders? That’s some serious cognitive dissonance. And perhaps the most important piece of the equation is the financial security it provides. The Creation Club paying modders up-front greatly mitigates the business risks of investing that much time and effort. It is not the best fit for everyone, but that allows a lot of mods to be made that never would have been possible otherwise. And it doesn’t remove any of the mods that already existed or prevent anyone from making free non-CC mods.

    As for donations to modders- those companies like Patreon are taking their own cut as well. And that’s a legal grey area because modders are profitting off of Bethesda’s platform. Then you have the issue where Bethesda updates their game and provides an improvement for literally millions of people while a couple hundred PC players flame them on Twitter for breaking the mod they paid or donated for.

    Personally, I’ve never donated or paid for any mods because I don’t use them. I’ve messed around with mods and the vast, vast majority of them suck. They feel completely out of place and ruin the vibe of the game. It’s not worth all of the hassle of installing a mod manager and working through all of the issues just to add memes to the game. The ones that add more quest lines are usually just way worse versions of the radiant quests that already exist. Maybe if I had a more powerful computer back in like 2012 or 2013 then graphics mods might have made sense, but with the updates in the Special and Anniversary editions there’s not much point. If I wanted to go back to Fallout 3 then maybe there’s an argument there, but I’m not really interested in going back there in general.

    The “best” mods can be created In a variety of ways. I’d argue that the Hearthfire, Dawngard, and Dragonborn DLC’s are better than any free mod I’ve ever seen. The vast, vast majority of free mods are shitposts or school projects that no one cares about.


  • I mean… It’s hard to really find solid numbers because Bethesda hasn’t published them, but we know that Prey’s opening week of sales was 60% less than Dishonored 2’s was. All the estimates and discussion i can find on the Internet either concludes that the game lost money or, at best, broke about even.

    It got great critical reviews. People who identify as “gamers” seemed to love it. But it gets compared to Bioshock a lot- Bioshock Infinite came out 4 years earlier and the market was saturated with similar games by the time Prey came out.

    So I don’t think it’s unreasonable for management to want to move in a different direction. That direction ended up being a terrible one with Redfall, but i can’t automatically assume that the studio would have been any better off making another game like Prey.

    You can find every example you could look for in history. Studios who changed direction successfully, like Insomniac going from FPS to 3D platformer. Gamefreak went from platformers like Pulseman to making JRPG’s and ended up making the most successful media franchise in history, while all of their later attempts to do anything else have failed miserably.

    And it’s not as if it would have made sense to have Arkane make Weird West. You can’t just slash a AAA studio down to an indie overnight.


  • I still don’t understand why people have so much hate for Bethesda for… Paying independent creators to make better mods for their games and charging for those mods.

    I can understand criticizing the execution: the quality and price of each mod, the grey legal area where these weren’t included in Season Passes that were supposed to include all DLC, etc. And I certainly wouldn’t call the results a success.

    But nothing about it ever seemed particularly greedy or “unfair” to me. It solved a lot of problems that the modding community has. It protected the creators from having. Their content stolen and re-used or re-distributed. Mods (especially for-profit) were always kind of a grey area legally because… It’s Bethesda’s platform and IP. Bethesda may not be as great with modders as other companies, but they’re a lot better than the worst offenders like Nintendo. The Creation Club has better quality control. And it’s better for the end users- easier to install, usable on consoles, no need to go to sketchy 3rd party websites or mess with the installation. I know people complain on the Internet anytime Bethesda updates one of their games because it breaks their mods- I could be wrong but I’ve never heard of that happening with CC mods.

    Seems to me like most of the hate for CC comes from people just wanting more content without paying for it.



  • It’s neither as simple as the article states nor what I see in the comments here.

    It’s not just about staying on Trump’s good size to avoid his wrath, getting lucrative government contracts, or getting personal tax breaks. It’s also about stopping or rolling back regulations that would hurt profits.

    Keeping the minimum wage down. Eroding worker’s rights, allowing the union busting tactics that Amazon is famous for. Removing consumer protections. Allowing mergers and acquisitions without all those pesky antitrust lawsuits. Rolling back environmentally regulations, staying on fossil fuels. Foreign policy that allows these companies to exploit cheap global labor and sell to the wealthy. Heck, Musk at least seems rather cozy with Putin- i would not be surprised to see these billionaires try to roll back Russian sanctions.


  • Depends on how you define important"

    The HD Zelda remakes would be nice to have on a real console.

    It’s notable that there is still a Kirby game stuck on the WiiU.

    I’ve heard good things about Nintendoland but I’ve never played it. Still, that’s kind of the soul of the WiiU so might not be likely to get ported.

    Paper Mario Color Splash is notable, though I don’t think it sold well. If they ever do a compilation of the second wave of Paper Mario games it’ll probably get included.

    I liked Pushmo World. I wouldn’t mind a new entry in the series, though as a puzzle game the line between sequel and remake is kind of blurry and irrelevant.

    Sega loves to do Sonic compilations so I would guess Rise of Lyric would get re-released at some point.

    There’s the infamous Star Fox games. Nintendo has been known to re-release old games that were obscure, sold poorly, or were just plain bad before. But I wouldn’t expect that for a decade or two. Either as part of a compilation or hidden away with a bunch of other games on a digital storefront.

    Devil’s Third may end up as lost media someday. The spinoffs probably do too. Pokemon Rumble, plus the “party” and “sports” games.