But is there any OS to abandon it to? Windows has probably always been spyware, but it’s getting increasingly blatant—and also incompetent and DEI—about it. Apple is, of course, a brand entirely built on the hipster/socjus image, so that’s no alternative. Being fed up with one or both of those two big players is usually the impetus to jump to Linux. Where does one jump from Linux?

The big barrier for Linux is already that it’s infamously filled with the need to troubleshoot to make things work with it, and it’s the third-place player. I can’t imagine that an even more obscure OS would be better in that respect.

You should still be concerned when you see signs that the industry is being subverted.

Okay, but all Dom has is “I read this comment one way, it turns out it could reasonably be read a different way that doesn’t imply what I thought it did.” At best that’s a “maybe this guy could be an alt, I’ll watch both of them more.”

But Dom jumped right to “he IS an alt.” Plus, once you look at the user history and realize that Siegfried has a year of consistent history her, the “he’s an alt” theory starts looking sillier.

I mean, what’s the reasonable “persuasion” for convincing a guy that’s clearly determined to believe only one thing?

More importantly, that was a response to you commenting on your opinion, not Dom’s, and either way it’s quite correct for Kienan to point out that there is no good evidence for the alt theory, so, again, if the importance is in persuasion, how come you aren’t going “gee, the lack of evidence makes the argument that he’s an alt look unpersuasive”? Instead you’re reversing burden of proof.

Yeah, but will the black woman be competent? Because the WEF under Klaus has objectively been fairly successful at its aims—would his metoo replacement continue that success? I’m hoping she’d fuck it up… although at this point, even a fuckup could be catastrophic on its own way, depending on exactly how it plays out.

I don’t think he actually watched it. I think he listened to the song and then got curious about if the thing it was attached to had been viewed by anyone.

If he actually did watch the show just for the closing credits song, that’s very strange indeed.

it also happens when you attack in the wrong way.

Right, but that's encoded in the rule. What do you think a "bad target" is? The rule could be rephrased as "the morality and methods of a tactic must be proper and proportional to the target," and it basically means the same thing. Unless you're intentionally setting your ceiling for morality much lower than most people (for example, if the line you draw for "unforgivable" is "I'm not allowed to kill anyone, ever, for any reason," or "there is no case where spying/doxxing/getting someone fired is ever okay"), then you have to admit that there is a certain amount of moral standing that affects what you can do to someone and why.

Now, if you're dreaming up exceptions like "well, I can't see any case where you should be allowed to imprison someone for a decade, repeatedly torturing them and nursing them back to health to start over again..." fine, I agree, that's a tactic that doesn't really have a good target and you have found an exception to the rule. But extreme hypothetical edge cases can break every moral or tactical truism. That doesn't make all of them bad for general use.

Sometimes it's nice having an asshole on your side, but only as long as they're on your side and aren't making you look bad.

Is that not just rephrasing what he said? “As long as they’re on your side and don’t make you look bad” is just another way of saying “as long as they’ve an asshole to the right people.” Even “looking bad” is just a function of attacking the wrong people.

To be fair, just as how “kike” means “circle,” “nigger” really just means “black,” “gook,” “chink,” and “ching chong” are essentially the racial slur equivalent of doing a bad imitation of someone’s accent, and “jap” is literally just a shortening of “Japanese,” but if I say any of those, you can assume I’m expressing a bit more contempt than the literal translation implies. Ironically, the (false, I think?) etymology of “cracker” as “person cracking a whip” would actually make it the worst racial slur under this standard, because it’s the only one I know that is based on misplaced blame.

Reacting to insults towards one’s identity and in-group with anger is probably a healthy self-defense thing, frankly. If whites did that sort of thing more, they’d probably be better off.

Edit: important to note, though, that the institutional power of that anger should probably be limited to personal choice—“he called me a nigger, so I’m not going to be friends with him.” If your righteous anger about being called a mean name results in a person being debanked and fired, or in you beating him to death and getting a relatively light sentence because you were “provoked,” maybe the guy using the racial slur had a point.

I may not agree with his specific morality, or aims, or the groups he might sympathize with (he’s a Muslim), but strictly speaking, I don’t think that that quote is untrue. Terrorism is effective, guerrilla warfare is effective, and tactics like suicide bombing are hard to counter.

I mean, a large part of what lets the cartels control states like Mexico is because it’s understood that if you go after them, they’ll torture not just you, but your family, to death. What is that if not rational, effective use of terrorism? Abhorrent, detestable, sure, but rational and effective nonetheless.

at least I'm self-aware

You attribute every downvote you get to “conpro bot networks.”

Is “Awesome Jew” an anti-Jew or anti-Israel parody account? I just can’t imagine being this tone deaf. This is almost worse than gopower, and I’m sure that guy’s a troll.

My immediate thought is that almost no one would have attached it to her in any way if she did not go attaching her face to it. Honestly, I do think it's kind of weird to focus the camera on random people in the crowd (unless they're obviously holding a sign/in a costume/etc.) but I don't think it's an issue worth making a stink about.

And, again, if you're embarrassed by it, don't make a Tik Tok attaching your fucking name to it. You can't convince me anyone was approaching her going "hey, I know you! You're that ice cream eating girl!" At most she probably got teased by a friend or two.

No, I agree with you. Her eyes are offputting somehow.

Well, it is stunning. Just not in a good way.

nor is there any sex, or even the hint of sex.

There are a lot of topless women and jokes about either intentionally or accidentally peeping on topless women, though. As well as at least one pervert joke character. I’m not sure I’d call it a sex comedy, and certainly not a transgender sex comedy, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s “[not] even a hint of sex.”

Which isn’t a bad thing, it’s all well-written and funny, I’m just saying that it is definitely a little racy.

Well said. Of course, both the pedo spammers on this board and modern society writ large also provide an eloquent, if unintentional, argument for setting an age of consent and sticking to it like hell, even if it’s a little arbitrary, so I don’t mind it being at 18… but pretending you’re a creep if you acknowledge that the 16 or 17 year old is obviously, visibly post-pubescent and would likely have been married or looking to marry as little as a century ago is strange.

(For that matter, I believe the legal age of consent is 16 in more individual states than not, although I could be wrong and I don’t know how that interacts with the federal law).

I think Age of Mythology's remaster (Extended Edition in 2014, not the OTHER remake they announced recently) was well-received, although I didn't play a ton so it's possible there was an issue I'm forgetting with it. They did make an expansion for it two years later that everyone hated, so I don't know how that impacts the scoring.

"The hen can't possibly need all of that bread. The other animals need more food than she does."

It's the same thing you see with blacks and women—point out ways in which the system is clearly biased in their favor and you get told "actually, that's just [ism] because they're infantilizing them." Then, of course, they do nothing to actually end the preferential treatment that they say is offensive.

The weird thing to me about it is that they always do it when they're... actually talking about God. It's not "oh my g-d, I can't believe that happened," it's "G-d blessed me with wealth and kids" or whatever. But shouldn't the second one be fine? They are literally referring to God.

tried to block a training by a Jewish charity on domestic violence in orthodox communities

Yeah, that could be any number of things. Could be they were sick of DEI feminist preaching (because that's what I assume most "domestic violence" talks are these days), could be they didn't think the training was a good use of work time... could even be they thought it made orthodox Jews look bad and wanted to block it because of that.

Actually, I think that if the car is already running, the safest course of action is to floor the accelerator. There’s no way that remanding yourself into the custody of a hostile armed stranger is safer than forcing them to pop off shots at a moving target. Isn’t that what they always say about kidnapping? Better to fight/run, regardless of the weapon, than to allow yourself to be tied up and moved to a second location?

Obviously, there are different behavior expectations with a cop than with a stranger, but if we’re talking only in terms of “I believe this person would shoot at me, and I have no other information about their authority, expectations, or intentions,” I doubt that surrendering is the safer choice.

They buffed monster damage and to-hit rolls at higher levels because they didn't scale well against PCs in Paragon and Epic tier after they started collecting multiple good magic items. To my knowledge, they didn't do anything that would have changed what I was talking about, which was the comparatively bulky nature of everything as opposed to other editions that had lower HP on average, especially at lower levels.

I'm aware that 1hp minions were a feature. They were a clever idea. Functionally, however, they did not solve the issue I'm talking about. Building an adventure for a party of level 1 or 2 PCs that only includes minions is (of course) pretty boring. It also makes the at-will 3x3 AoE spells that many spellcasters get overperform, undermining the whole attempt to balance spellcasters and martial classes.

However, once you stick 2-3 30hp goblins (or kobolds, or bullywugs—this is another issue; everything at a level has about the same HP within its "role," which increases the feeling of sameness) in an encounter, then combat almost inevitably lasts a few turns longer than is welcome, just because all those hit points will need to be depleted.

4e solved some issues, and it created had some issues of its own. In particular, here’s what comes to mind for me:

It increased the base hit points, which solved the issue of low-level characters dying to one unlucky damage roll, but created the issue of making everything feel stickier. If I have to hit every goblin two or three times before it’s even “bloodied,” combat gets slower, and characters feel less heroic if even the most basic enemies can consistently tank multiple hits.

It introduced a system of “daily” and “encounter” powers for everyone. This reduced the issue of spellcasters eclipsing martial classes at high levels, but it created the issue of spellcasters and martial classes feeling similar. Forget spell slots and such, now everyone has the exact same number of special powers in play, and all classes can debuff or hit multiple enemies or move people around or whatever.