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1 hour agoThe same way we held accountable the perpetrators of the genocides in Rwanda and Armenia and Tibet and Darfur and Myanmar and Bosnia and Lebanon and Indonesia.
themeatbridge
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023
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121·22 hours agoThe one that sticks out in my mind is the original BioShock. Spoilers if you haven’t played it.
Bioshock
The first thing that happens is a voice over the intercom asks, “Would you kindly pick up that weapon.” And of course you do it, or the game does not progress. The voice is very polite and resonable, helping you navigate this dank maze of horrors. “Would you kindly open that door?” “Would you kindly kill that monster?” The calm manners contrast starkly against the modern horrors you’re experiencing in the game. Of course every request seems like a great idea at the time, and of course the game ends if you fail.
Then halfway into the game, you finally meet the man behind the voice and he explains that you are a mind-controlled slave, conditions to obey any command that begins with “would you kindly…” He’s trying to destroy the tyranny of the system and commands you to kill him, sacrificing himself to free you from the control phrase. The “tutorial” seemed like it was just helpful instructions, but you didn’t really have a choice, did you? The majority of players just followed those instructions without question, never considering whether they were good choices or moral actions. And could you say no? Without the wrench, you can’t survive the first attack. Without opening the door, you remain in the first room forever. Your world is pre-ordained and tightly controlled. How much free will do you have in the game and outside of it? At what point do you stop making decisions and start following orders? And when can you stop again?
27·22 hours agoSending drugs in the mail is illegal. The point of this bill is to create pretext for seizing data from servers. When they say “dark” they mean “encrypted” and when they say “illegal” they mean “private.”
17·22 hours agoYes, which should give ICE supporters a moment to pause and consider two things. First, anyone could be an immigrant. It could be their neighbors and coworkers. Documentation can be faked or doctored or just expired, and the immigration process is deliberately complex.
Second, ICE isn’t being careful about who they abduct and deport. There’s no process, much less due process, and it can literally happen to any person, immigrant or native born, legal or otherwise.
10·2 days agoJust want to point out that The Enterprise is like the nicest, most exclusive, most elite ship in the Federation. Most people living in the Star Trek universe don’t have access to replicators or holodecks or highly-trained doctors.
Like it’s basically a super cruise ship with all the bells and whistles. Even if you’re onboard, chances are you’re a lower decks crew member.
The goo inside of a tomato reminds me of chunky snot. I enjoy a good tomato flavor, even raw.
43·2 days agoDespite? Sounds like a selling point for those cowboys.
5·2 days agoSpider-Man (Peter Parker) is still white. Spider-Man (Miles Morales) has always been mixed race black and Puerto Rican. Spider-Man (Miguel O’Hara) will be Mexican-Irish. Spider-Man (Hobie Brown) is black, although he frequently goes by Spider-Punk. Spider-Man (Takuya Yamashir) and Spider-Man (Yu Komori) are Japanese, and have been around since the 70s. They are different people who exist in universes with Peter Parker. There are also universes where Peter Parker is Peni Parker (Japanese), Pavitr Prabhakar (Indian), and then there are all the other Spider girls, Spider demons and Spider monsters, not to mention all the Spider-adjacent clones, offspring, and villains who posed as Spider-Man while Parker was incapacitated (which happened twice).
8·3 days agoChatGPT can’t make a rug as well as a 300 year old loom.
They’re not the reason we can’t get loans. Greed is the only reason we can’t get loans. Don’t waste your resentment on fools while the capitalists have their hands in your pockets.
18·3 days agoUnless they’re in a riddle guarding a door or something.
Miles Morales isn’t race swapped, though. He’s a different character. But I do agree with your larger point that Rowling sucks as a writer and as a person, and that race swaps don’t matter if the characters are well written.
I’ve never been a fan of Rowling. It always bothered me how much of her writing was lifted from better sources, but I let it go because the movies were fun and it got kids into reading. Discovering that she has always been a bigot, and her insistence on actively promoting discrimination, just erases all the goodwill she built up.
Case in point, Snape is a shit character. Just awful. People coo at the “always” moment from the movie because it came with a glowing doe dancing around the room, but it wasn’t an interesting or poetic moment. First of all, it’s not something that Dumbledore didn’t already know. If Rowling was a better writer- You know what, no, that’s not the point of this rant, and I don’t have the time to enumerate all the shit great actors turned into gold.
But making Snape a black man puts a lot of story beats into a different context. Was James a racist? Were the other maurauders racist? Did Lily have feelings for Snape and suppressed them due to concerns about how an interracial relationship would affect her standing?
Changing the race of a character isn’t a big deal when the characters are well-written.
Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Stupid is a lack of awareness.
That’s not really how statistics work.
Jokes on you, I’d probably enjoy that so I wouldn’t argue. Especially if I’m crazy rich, what else would I have to do?
Lotto cashier. “I’m definitely going to hit the jackpot on this one, ya big dummy.”
22·4 days agoSeems like standard conservative foolishness, wait, what? Run that last one by me again?
Nailed it in one.