We invented napalm. Specifically as a terrorizing tool to be used on the Japanese. Tokyo was a wood tinderbox, and we designed a weapon that would decimate that and inflict maximum human casualty while doing it. People would survive it; that was the point. That they would live in terror for the rest of their days of ever seeing something like that happen in front of them ever again.
We used it. They did not surrender.
This implied the necessity of an even more terrifying weapon. We used that. They did not immediately surrender, so we used it a second time. And only then, finally, did they admit they could not go on.
This is a dead simple analysis. I don't need 3000 words to explain it. It is what happened.
The fact that napalm was invented shows that the nukes were necessary.
Upper-management benefits? They're less valuable for that when you can't virtue-brag about your Electricity Car to your communist friends when they hiss at you anyway because "Tesla Man Bad" because "Orange Man Bad." It's all very tedious to navigate, I'm sure.
It is refreshingly simple. The game warns you that it is not to be discussed publicly and why. If you discuss it publicly, or write and publish an article about it (kek), you get banned from current and future participation. Open and shut.
The cat is out of the bag so there's no real reason for Valve to hold you under a legal threat. They're confident that news won't really hurt them, and participation would be desirable. So they invite you quietly, and allow you to invite your friends. And when you break the arrangement they just ban you.
I have to admire the elegance.
But what kind of nutcase are you to literally put the disclaimer of "Don't share any details about this game with anyone" that the game shows you on every launch IN YOUR ARTICLE, and then glibly assert "But I didn't press OK, I pressed Escape, ha HA!" You want to live in a society where nobody trusts anybody, and this is the attitude that makes it so.
You can test if it is the archive site that's actually broken by trying to open it in an incognito/private window. If that works, then it is a borked session on your end, and blowing out the cookies for that site should fix it. This happened to me repeatedly over the last year. Might have something to do with their anti-ddos system.
'Copies of books' is not what is meant by 'output.' That is what is meant by 'sales.'
Example:
99 books with 1 copy ordered, 1 book with 198 copies ordered
-> 1% of output is 66% of sales.
edit: corrected math, it's actually a crazier ratio than I thought at first.
It would be, but they can't. For the same reason they can't write, they can't avoid lavish over-the-top ham-handed nonsense. To the present cultivated crop of industry writers messaging is the only important thing. Every element is examined and re-examined during development for alignment and clarity. Nothing can be allowed to offer a questioning thought for even the merest of moments or to the most imaginary of audiences.
Yasuke can't be unassuming or humble, because then we couldn't have the imagery of him being overtly and rightly worshiped by the Japanese plebeians. Even the female ninja in this story whose role it is to be invisible (for which being unassuming and humble would be tools) must be rude to any man and cut him down verbally in all instances. If these things weren't so, the writers might give the impression to their stupid right-wing audience that it's understanding of reality has any merit and shouldn't be gouged from each of their brains with the urgency of an ice-pick through the eye.
Their propaganda flounders because they lack subtlety, which they're having to slowly (glacially) re-learn. They lack this because they were all raised to be the most unthinking adherents of radical world-ending philosophy, so that they can't imagine anything else being given primacy in their minds.
It's also impossible for a committee of ideologues to maintain subtlety because they will fight for their individual interpretation of the Gospel and insist on its inclusion and the reversion of those moments that violate it. So a writer can't even get a bit of character development or narrative twist through them because they can't see past their egos or abandon their holy, godly thoughts that must be added right here right now.
From every vector, in every way, the industrially standard creative system present at this political moment is unwavering in its mission to crank out blunt, overt inanity. Even if I believed in the message on offer, I'd cringe to death trying to consume it and still look back ravenously for the time when a story could just be internally coherent and compelling, rather than trying to sell me on The Party's righteousness.
It is a space opera setting where colonies have been established on planets around the universe that are connected by wormholes. Space travel is conventional thrust except for those. Space weapons are mostly pointless after an arms-race involving ballistics was halted by an energy-shielding system, and then an arms-race involving lasers was halted by a conversion system that turns them into just more energy for the defender's shields. The wormholes are natural chokes into each system with no reasonable travel method existing outside of finding another wormhole outlet. Invasion and defense tactics are oriented almost entirely around taking and holding the wormhole entrance.
The main story centers around an important family on a planet called Barrayar. The planet was lost to the rest of the galaxy several centuries before when their wormhole turned out to be unstable and collapsed. The humans living there were in the earliest stages of terraforming and when they were cut off from the rest of the galaxy they were on an urgent clock to do the best they could to finish their work and make their now only planet permanently habitable. This meant not caring about anything but making it as Earth-like as possible, so they destroyed all existing plant and animal life in their speed (which wasn't the original plan).
The desperate expenditure of resources meant they had to settle for a very meager subsistence after a short while and their civilization downgraded to approximately the European dark ages for many generations.
They were inadvertently re-discovered by a race of humans called the Cetagandans who were mapping out new wormhole paths after this time, and within a few years they were invaded by the same who saw them as a small obstacle to a perfectly (now) habitable planet.
Against expectations, the Barrayarans repelled the invaders and through that war clawed their way back into the space-age with Cetagandan technology and resources. They then set about establishing an empire encompassing the rest of the habitable planets nearby and securing their wormhole against further invasions.
This expansion brought the rest of the galaxy down on them as they were seen as a warmongering race (and low-key terrifying since they beat the Cetagandans in open warfare, something the rest of the human races were terrified of ever attempting).
The expansion war ends when the Barrayaran emperor dies and is replaced by a child relative under the regency of Miles' father. Miles (the protagonist I spoke of) is born at this time, and the story hits its best stride as it follows him.
An assassination attempt on Miles' father (that catches his mother in the crossfire) while he is still unborn results in his body being irreparably damaged. He is born with bones that will always be brittle as the main trouble, and this causes him to grow stunted and short (though it is just a bone issue, he isn't a dwarf). Due to the period of isolation the planet had gone through, one of the most terrifying things to be blamed of is to be a 'mutant' which for reasons of survival meant immediate death to protect the gene pool.
Miles is cool. His adventures are great. The world-building is excellent. And unfortunately, due to timing, everyone will just assume he's "Space Tyrion Lannister," but I quite disagree on that.
There was a secondary force that became primary once the gold-rush was moving as you describe. That is, the 'viral marketing campaign' organizations that believed the best way to advertise was to get the social media engagement from anyone they could buy positivity from.
The mannerism of someone paid to shill is fundamentally different than the natural speaking forms of critique, review, or casual mention. The feedback someone on the take will get will be "more positive, more effusive" on and on. They're selling a product, and it is their overly gay hyperactivity applied to their audience.
The rest of it, is the hive-minding of what is successful and trendy. A mode of communication develops based on the norms and expectations of these particular audiences (those with something to hawk) and players (those who can act and manufacture 'engagement').
Whoopi used to brag about how many abortions she'd had long before the public had grown ambivalent to them. It was an outrageous number last claim I heard which was in the 90s. She was all IN on Women's Rights expressed as no-consequence sex followed by no-consequence pregnancy (dumpstering every baby her body produced) followed by dancing about it.
This is the least shocking thing I have ever heard said about her by anyone in any context. She had a baby before, during, or after all those proud abortions? I'm reminded of the pregnant bitch holding a baby in one hand at an abortion rally along with a sign in the other that pointed at her belly and read "not yet a baby."
I tried finding it, and of course the guy who posted it here deleted all of his posts. Why is this site so trash to allow that?
This complainer is a long-time concern troll who has dedicated his entire life to this kind of shit. From his own website https://taiuru.co.nz/classic-racist-reply-to-claims-of-cultural-appropriation/ he 'debunks' why he himself is not an appropriator despite using the internet and dressing like an Englishman. In fact, it is racist to question him at all.
He makes a great case for Racism being a completely made up concept. I hope his reach spreads far.
I never heard Salvatori presented as anything by Bungie but a jobber. He had been the lesser composer (working underneath Martin) at Bungie for years before Destiny, and stayed with the company during the Microsoft exodus. It boggles my mind that Bungie would suddenly want or try to present him as anything else because I reckon they never actually treated him that well.
No, it was Paul McCartney (of Beatles / Wings fame). Activision likely pushed for them to have a 'big' name associated with the game, and the new-guard at Bungie seemed gaga over the idea as well. Given the music that made it into the game, it is very obvious to my ear O'Donnell was the primary composer. The beef as I understood it then was that Bungie was pushing for giving McCartney top billing despite all of his contributions being vague and without direct attribution song to song. I still have no clue what music or musical themes are supposed to have been his, though I admit I stopped caring about Bungie during the early phases of Destiny so if they've revealed that information since, very well.
The music sounds like O'Donnell music, you can draw a straight line from Halo (especially ODST) to Destiny very easily. They have to convince me it was otherwise and I certainly didn't see it at the time.
He was never with 343 to my awareness. He stayed with Bungie as they left Microsoft (343 was what remained there). He was fired by Bungie just as Destiny was going out the door in part because they wanted to claim that Paul McCartney was the primary composer of that game (of course, a bald-faced lie).
He was a company founder and partial owner, and had to be stripped of his voting power and title in order to get to firing him. Something they managed to do in a span of hours. It was very shady and almost certainly illegal. He sued them for it, and won big.
DC shows how Batman disappears
Character assassination by modern writers, how quaint. "There is a broken child playing that game." Fuck off.
Hugo Debacle (2023 edition)
Disgraced institution disgraces itself again to remind everyone why they were wrong to forgive it before. What's a little censoring anti-China sentiments for a little payola when you've already censored your political rivals for free?
This is a pretty petty complaint. My own personal experience as a student and later staffer at a university (no where near the 30 years this guy claims) had much more scandal and disillusionment for the entire CONCEPT of universities even existing at all.
'Spin' is the complaint? If you don't spin bad news you are stupid. In any endeavor. Saying one thing and doing another is so far down the list of problems that I'd consider existentially relevant. I might even go so far as to say NOT doing so is a far bigger threat to your future. Politics are important in political endeavors (shock)!
In the meantime, Human Resources departments, formerly called personnel departments, have mostly morphed into ‘departments of people’. The problem is that they do not seem to deal with people. Instead they occupy themselves writing policies on equality, diversity and inclusion and solving problems which do not exist.
We get close to an actual problem in this off-topic statement at the end of the article: parasitic sub-groups that exist to perpetuate their validity and nothing else. This is what corrupts and kills an organization.
I don't care about spin for internal shortcomings. Sometimes you have to call the piss rain to get through the winter. I DO care about spin for external shortcomings, also called 'propaganda.' Carrying the water of a failed state-held philosophy, and lying to the public about the merits or demerits on matters of culture and human condition. These are the things the universities lead the world in, and these are the dangerous and actionable reasons they should cease to exist as they are.
I and others have suggested that the puff pieces over the last month from Sega's and Bandai's diversity departments where they proclaimed total ownership and control of those companies' content output, was them posturing for strength. They wanted to attach shame to the concept of firing them because they had spoken with such an official voice so recently.
What they don't realize, because frankly they are too detached from the real world to understand anything, is that they have handed their companies a free win by laying them off after the public embarrassments associated with their unforced brand damage.
Let's hope those companies take the golden opportunity of: balancing their budgets, cutting loose the employees literally running in the opposite direction of profit, and pivot their image with the public by proudly saying so.
A man can dream.
At the risk of over explaining, this is the standard leftist, feminist, and Marxist folly of conflation. The song "Be a Man" is sung as far as the speaker is aware, to an army of men. In this context, very obviously, a "Man" is aspirational, exclusive, and performative, and necessarily not something any boy is born as. This is evidenced by the adult male listeners who do not meet any of the qualifications at first.
The song does not presume or insist on any physical attribute at all, because it is neither important nor distinctive between what a boy is and what a "Man" is. Instead it focuses on spirit, mind, and comportment. The twist is that a girl is listening, and she is indeed not a "Man" nor is she even a "Woman" she is just a girl. She embraces these attitude changes and rises into a positive example along with the now Men around her who have also been influenced by the instruction.
The intentional distinction in the original movie is that a "Man" is divorced from being a male. It is instead an ideal that even adult men do not become automatically.
The conflation now, is that being a good example of the male ideal, is the same as being a man. Plenty of women can learn from the male ideal and strive for it if it is appealing. Not only does nothing in our culture stand in your way; it has been explicitly encouraged for 50 years. The original Mulan was very nearly peak feminist messaging pre-Current Era. "Girls, be great examples of Men," was a very strong message all through the 80s and 90s, and while it was tedious, it was at least largely positive and focused on a pursuable ideal.
The conflation was inevitable, especially as we pivoted into the understanding that women can't actually BE men, so men must be demoted for the desired effect of "equality." Trying to be stoic, trying to be strong, trying to be self-sufficient, these were at least beneficial things to try, but the desired measured outcome wasn't materializing. The female domination in all pursuits didn't show up as believed, so men had to be destroyed instead.
There are too many ironies to admit in the new reality where girls try to physically transform themselves into boys while somehow missing that boys are hated universally by the same forces that are encouraging them to do this. They are being sent down a chute of pain with hell at the other end in every single form. Boys are being seduced similarly with the fantasy that they can escape the ire of the monolith by rendering their body unto Caesar to escape the societal lions. This is obvious entrapment, and pitiable for all caught in its lies.
Summary: Being a "Man" is not the same as being male. Self-evidently so from the material being referenced. Fucking communists.
You're probably right on that point. Shimbori likely doesn't feel the same connection to the characters as Itagaki did, but I recall a mention specifically of battle damage in the past as a complete no-go for those reasons. I'm just unsure of the circumstances and who said it now.
I considered mentioning "core values" but that's just a separate hypocrisy unrelated to any actual effect on the franchise design (so far) since it was over DOA6. You're indeed right in calling the "scene" trash, though. I agree completely.
This commentary is about DOA5, and unfortunately, while that game was quite sexy and had tits and bikinis everywhere, that was not the end of this tale.
I watched this happen in realtime. It wasn't just 'suits' it was tournament organizers and the punditry of the fighting game scene itself.
The director of Dead or Alive used to show up personally at western events where the game was being played. He'd enthusiastically promote the game and do everything he could to grease the wheels of it getting stream time. He would beam in pride and genuine delight in the corner watching guys playing the game. This was in the era of Nintendo garroting anyone who dared stream Smash, so it was notable, appreciated, and welcome.
But, he was also there in several events where bikini costumes were banned. "Vanilla costumes only" was the constant refrain from streamers, TOs, and the puritan sycophants who like to lick boot and ass for brownie points. SRK (a popular opinion site at the time for the scene) published a series of tournament rules for eeeeeveryone to follow that banned any skimpy costumes in any game, but specifically targeted DOA as the example they meant. All this because they wanted ESPORTS legitimacy and "it was cringe anyway."
He was obviously impacted by this direct backlash to his game and he stopped showing up to community events after a while. I expected him to be sad about it and stop prioritizing the west due to his hurt feelings, but the far worse thing happened. He took the advice and tried to do the next game differently.
DOA6 was heavily de-sexed, and instead violence was emphasized. Characters bruised and bled for the first time in the series. Something the creator had famously said would never ever be done, because he thought of the girls as his daughters and they were meant to be pretty and happy, not sad and damaged.
It was clear that this was him capitulating his own values to make something he thought the West wanted. DOA5 was just one battle, and we can see where the series went after. So rather than celebrating this interview, it just makes me more sad.
Gender Dysphoria is diagnosed remarkably similar to how ADHD was diagnosed in the Ritalin episode of South Park. If you walk through the clinic door and ask the question, you have it. It is a policy driven outcome. If some places diagnose it more than others, then that is naturally a function of the degree of convergence of the profession, and the number of patients asking the question, for that location.
I think it was even more that it has become a sport on CR to spot the low-effort bargain subs they're farming there lately. One-pass machine translation without so much as a sanity check getting slapped on big series (and many small ones). We were mere days into the embarrassment that was the first episodes of My Deer Friend when they pulled the plug on the whole thing.
Can't notice bad subs when others aren't saying it in the comments to confirm your suspicion.