While I want to agree with you, the sad thing is in our current legal climate it's often faster and cheaper to just settle than to take it to trial, fight it there, quite possibly need to fight an appeal, etc. And most doctors probably don't even bother thinking about the occasional malpractice claim these days, as they just bounce it to their malpractice insurance to deal with.
if I remember correctly from my con law class in high school, the first amendment indeed does not cover lies. all they have to do is claim that he is lying or spreading false truths and they can censor whatever they want. it doesn't matter if the person they are censoring believes they are telling the truth, let alone that what they're saying is actually the truth. if they can convince a judge that you are lying, they have plausible deniability to revoke your first amendment rights.
Actually, I believe that is incorrect. In 2012, United States vs Alvarez, the Supreme Court struck down the so-called Stolen Valor act (which made it illegal to lie about having received military medals), saying that it violated free speech provisions.
Can't recall if they ruled on anything else in the past decade that overturned that, but going off Alvarez you can lie and have it covered under free speech.
So, we've got an administration which is
a) actively trying to arrest the primary political opponent in the other party
and
b) actively censoring (I'm sorry, just permitting the censoring because of course the administration which has pressured these companies to censor before is not doing it this time) a primary challenger within it's own party.
How does everyone like their bananas? Because that seems to be our republic's main export now.
I bring this up because in RPGs I actually enjoy the classic fighter/mage/rogue archetypes. However it seems like more and more with 'modern RPGs' you almost get punished for picking them depending on the situation.
Can you give some examples where that happens, and what you mean by getting punished? Honestly, I can't recall any cRPGs that I've played where fighter/cleric/rogue/wizard (or equivalent, depending on the game) was not perfectly viable for completing the game - heck, Fighty McFighterson is often the first companion you run into in most cRPGs, with Stabby McSneaky and Whitebeard the Wizard coming 2 minutes later.
That said, though, I do admit that combo may not (is probably not) optimal, but there's two things going into that. The first is that, even if it can be achieved, perfect balance is not a state to strive for. Yes, it is perfectly balanced if the fighter's heroic blow", the paladin's "holy strike" and the barbarian's "mighty slam", all do the exact same thing but it's also boring and redundant. If two classes are functionally equivalent in what they can do, then they are the same class and one should be removed. But, that's really a state we don't need to worry about because there is always going to be some imbalance in any reasonably complex system - and that's why fighter/cleric/rogue/wizard is probably not optimal. Take something like Owlcat's Wrath of the Righteous - you've got 26 base classes (each with a half dozen subclasses) and 13 prestige classes without even getting into the epic level paths or mixing and matching with multiclassing. Optimal likely doesn't even exist in that case because changing the class of one party member will add and remove capabilities making the other classes more and less effective.
MMOs are an entirely different monster, but the good news there is you probably only need to wait a month or two for the next balance pass and the "meta" will change again. That said, though, that is a huge problem with modern gaming which has nothing to do with the developers or even the games. Take any game, give it a week, and some turbonerd on the internet will have done the math to figure out that Class X does 2.3 more damage per second than Class Y, in optimal conditions, and will make a video on it. Then, people will start sharing the video all over the internet. And 2 days later, many people will say "LOL! You're such a noob! Why are you Class Y when Class X is objectively superior? Get out of here, we don't want you and your vastly subpar DPS in our group!" even though Class Y is still more than capable of clearing all the content without difficulty. If anyone figures out a way to actually solve that problem, I will happily support their efforts to become the Supreme Ruler of Mankind in any way I can.
I know it's a minor thing compared to everything else, but my biggest issue with Creative Assembly on this was their initial announcement email of the new DLC. Which was not sent from their Total War e-mail account but from the email account of Hyenas (which is Creative Assembly's upcoming multiplayer hero extraction shooter, cause it's not like that market is heavily over-saturated at the moment ).
Yeah, it was just a case of some marketing person selecting the wrong e-mail address when sending it. But, to me it's just showing where CA's focus and concern is at the moment. And if you can't be bothered to put the correct e-mail address on your marketing emails, what else can't you be bothered to do?
How to say "We have no leverage at all in our strike and are all going to get fired" without saying it.
I fully agree that a few increasingly big media companies is an issue. But, people have been saying that for years now and where was the WGA (and SAG) then? Actively supporting those companies because they approved of the company's messaging. And the groups who have been trying to create alternatives, are the WGA and SAG going to join them? No way.
That said, it would be very easy for the WGA and SAG to bust up this situation right now, if they actually wanted to do some work. They have basically everyone in Hollywood short of the producers in those unions. You want to show how unnecessary and overburdening the companies are? Go make something amazing on your own to rub in the face of Disney, Netflix, etc. Except you won't, because that's too much work and because you are all are as big if not a bigger problem than the companies because you insist everything follows your crappy message.
But Target’s stock went on a nine-day losing streak and hit a three-year low this week because of broader changes in the US economy, the possibility of a recession, and Target’s over-exposure to discretionary merchandise, according to corporate executives and retail and investment analysts.
Wait, I'm confused now. I thought the economy was amazing, there was no chance of a recession and people had tons of discretionary money. That's what the White House says, and CNN/MSNBC/etc. keep telling me to listen to Biden and not believe my lying eyes. Which is it?
On top of that, foreign aid has two other problems as well:
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When all the resources comes in, and whoever in the local country receives the shipments for distribution gains immense power, money and influence. Thus, you inevitably end up with strongmen and rampant corruption. (Even if some honest Western NGO - should such a thing exist - handles distribution directly, there's still locals demanding payment for letting them in, skimming stuff off the top, determining which locals actually get stuff, etc)
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It vastly suppresses local economies. When other people flood in food, clothing, medicine, etc. to your area that they just give away, what reason do you have to make any of that yourself? Sure, there are some ambitious people who try but even then they are up against vast competition from free stuff. So, in the end, you end up with economies that are entirely dependent on foreign aid and large numbers of people who don't have anything useful to do.
I hadn't heard of this either, but apparently the short version is:
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Guy makes fan video for fun, dubbing several voices with AI
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Video blows up a lot more than he expected
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Daphe's old voice actress freaks out on Twitter and starts working to get the guy functionally blacklisted cause he stole her voice or something with the AI
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The Anti-AI hollywood crowd gets involved.
The men who are going "monk mode" have probably all tried this and found out the world and most the people in it don't give a shit.
100%. Unless he's got a genuine male friend, a guy expressing any type of emotion is probably going to be worse off for it. If you're lucky, people (even family members in my personal experience) will just ignore what you're saying. If you're unlucky, you're going to get classified as a whiner or complainer, or mocked to your face.
I'll take some popcorn, thanks!
And, yeah, I expect more to come. This is (sadly) following the same trend as usual. Wokeness becomes more and more common, then evidence of incompetence/business failures start surfacing, then the worker complaints.
“This moment demands a sense of urgency,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a call with reporters. “This moment demands the same courageous commitment to equal opportunity and justice we saw from leaders at the height of the civil rights movement.”
Then show some courage, and respond with some urgency. You want to fix black and hispanic educational achievement (and improve it for whites and asians)? 4 simple steps to do so.
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Bust up any teacher's union which covers more than one district and arrest every single teacher's union official who argued for shutting down schools during covid on charges of child abuse.
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National school choice where the money follows the student.
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Cut all federal funding to schools where more than a set percentage (I'd say 20% as a starting point) is spent on things beyond teacher salaries and building upkeep and maintenance.
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Forbid schools from graduating students who do not score as proficient on reading, math and science national standardized tests to be given at the end of elementary school, middle school and high school.
Won't fix every problem, but will drastically improve the system within a couple years. Do you have the courage to do that?
Anyone who wants to downvote or yell at me over this feel free, but whoever buys Starfield on release is an idiot. Why? Because it is a Bethesda open-world game.
Now, I have sunk ludicrous hours into Bethesda games. But, for decades what has held true about Bethesda games is:
Each successive release removes RPG elements, and simplifies plot stuff
They are crazy buggy on release (including reintroducing bugs that were previously seen and identified, I'm looking at you FO4 vertibirds having the same bugs as Skyrim dragons)
Mods are what give them their legs.
Now, debating #1 is not really doable at the moment since Starfield isn't out (but what has been released of the character creation information is thoroughly unimpressive IMO). But, for anyone not expecting this game to be ridiculously buggy on release, I'll just refer you over to Internet Historian's summary of Fallout 76. And for the mods, while Todd has said mod support will exist I still want to see how things break down with creation club vs non-creation club mods, and even if we assume the mod scene ends up looking like the TES and Fallout games that will still take time.
If Starfield turns out to be junk, I'll just pass on it.
If Starfield turns out to be good, I'll give it 6-12 months, pick up the GotY edition with all the DLC (which we all know is coming), and by that point the worst bugs should be patched (either by Bethesda or the Unofficial Patch), the script extended will be out and basic quality of life mods should be there.
But there are no reasons I can see to pre-order it (or pre-order any games TBH) or buy it on release.