nothis's recent activity

  1. Comment on The small company at the center of ‘Gamergate 2.0’ in ~games

    nothis
    Link Parent
    You seem to actually put effort into arguing this point, so I'm gonna ask: What, concretely, is the thing gamergate "exposed"? Professional game critics having a liberal arts background? I do not...

    You seem to actually put effort into arguing this point, so I'm gonna ask: What, concretely, is the thing gamergate "exposed"? Professional game critics having a liberal arts background? I do not think the (absolutely bizarre!) Five Guys manifesto is a "red herring", it's literally the whole story and everything that followed was a reaction to the following crusade not being appropriate or proportionate. Even the most damning accusations were of the kind of "some journalist donated to a patreon of a game dev he mentioned positively".

    What annoys me about the cultural impact (beyond the fact that individual people got attacked) is that this happened at a time when games got really good, mostly thanks to indie devs and interesting, experimental takes on the medium. This would have been a great time for the medium to mature, critics to grow beyond mere entertainment reporters and conversation about games getting deeper. Instead we got this shit, places like /v/ exerting dominance in gaming discussion and forcefully (there was doxxing and death threats) setting back gaming discourse a decade or more. All in the name of "ethics in game journalism". Note that the Sweet Baby story is about a company... doing story consulting work. There is nothing even to "expose". Like, the "-gate" part implies something illegal or at least unethical being exposed. This is about having a brown woman as a side character in some AAA game. That is the absolute state of this movement.

    19 votes
  2. Comment on The small company at the center of ‘Gamergate 2.0’ in ~games

    nothis
    Link Parent
    I have to disagree strongly about gamergate ever having been about anything real. It was, quite transparently, a case of lonely internet men acting out a fantasy about the women that aren’t...

    I have to disagree strongly about gamergate ever having been about anything real. It was, quite transparently, a case of lonely internet men acting out a fantasy about the women that aren’t interested in them forming conspiracies against them. Period.

    Zoe Quinn barely made a dent on gaming culture before, she had like two quirky text adventures that got mentioned in lists of unusual indie games. The gamergate conspiracy claimed that there was essentially a scandalous wave of gaming journalists who slept with female indie devs who got favorable coverage in return but that, obviously, was ridiculous. I don’t even remember a second female game dev being in the news back then, let alone a third or anything you could consider “a pattern”.

    The hate for Anita Sarkeesian was about her taking the boobs away. Like… there’s porn. That’s it, that’s the whole fucking story.

    The whole thing is and has always been stupid and, ultimately, a power trip for insecure white men. I have not seen a single argument that would convince me otherwise.

    20 votes
  3. Comment on Travelling to Japan for eleven days in May. Stay in Kyoto or Osaka other than Tokyo? in ~travel

    nothis
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    I spent 3 weeks in Japan last year and it's been my favorite trip ever. I have to hold myself back from writing a novel about all the awesome things we saw but I think you're on the right track if...

    I spent 3 weeks in Japan last year and it's been my favorite trip ever.

    I have to hold myself back from writing a novel about all the awesome things we saw but I think you're on the right track if you have Nara on your list (feeding the deer in the middle of the city was an absolute highlight!).

    If nightlife is not your thing, I'd recommend Kyoto over Osaka. Osaka is good at the extreme sensory-overload type of neon sign aesthetic but Tokyo can provide that as well. Kyoto is temple city. You can soak in "modern" Japan in Akihabara and I found the quiet streets of Kyoto a nice contrast. Try walking a day along the "philosopher's path" and check out the most famous temples and houses with gardens along the way, those gardens are breathtakingly beautiful.

    As for other day(ish)-trip recommendations: We spent two days in Hakone where we treated ourselves to a stay in a traditional ryokan. It's expensive but a very beautiful and unique experience. A sliding door to a private garden, an 8 course kaiseki meal, a private onsen. A big surprise for me (since I'm not that big of an art museum guy) was the Hakone Open-Air Museum. It's sculptures placed in a large, hilly area, with a few buildings in-between (including a huge Picasso pavilion). With the mountains in the back, it was really beautiful.

    1 vote
  4. Comment on Game recommendations, specifically (round 2) in ~games

    nothis
    Link Parent
    It can be hard for me to tell what’s “obvious “ since I love the genre but I can recommend Stephen’s Sausage Roll.

    It can be hard for me to tell what’s “obvious “ since I love the genre but I can recommend Stephen’s Sausage Roll.

    1 vote
  5. Comment on Shell to permanently close all of its hydrogen refuelling stations for cars in California in ~transport

    nothis
    Link Parent
    What's the long-term, serious solution for how long it takes to charge car batteries? I always thought of this as a problem that will be solved, eventually, but somehow it's still a thing. I heard...

    What's the long-term, serious solution for how long it takes to charge car batteries? I always thought of this as a problem that will be solved, eventually, but somehow it's still a thing. I heard about battery-swapping, is that feasible?

    6 votes
  6. Comment on The majority of traffic from Elon Musk's X may have been fake during the Super Bowl, report suggests in ~tech

    nothis
    Link Parent
    He's an asshole, to make that clear, but this was like, his major thing: Get rid of the bots!

    He's an asshole, to make that clear, but this was like, his major thing: Get rid of the bots!

    5 votes
  7. Comment on The majority of traffic from Elon Musk's X may have been fake during the Super Bowl, report suggests in ~tech

    nothis
    Link Parent
    Didn’t Elon Musk claim “getting rid of bots” was his primary goal in order to fix twitter?

    Didn’t Elon Musk claim “getting rid of bots” was his primary goal in order to fix twitter?

    16 votes
  8. Comment on The majority of traffic from Elon Musk's X may have been fake during the Super Bowl, report suggests in ~tech

    nothis
    Link Parent
    I’m definitely noticing search results that are like 30 paragraphs on a question like “how do you switch off Cortana”. Either it’s someone’s job to write these or it’s all AI generated. Both...

    I’m definitely noticing search results that are like 30 paragraphs on a question like “how do you switch off Cortana”. Either it’s someone’s job to write these or it’s all AI generated. Both sucks. Ironically, I’m starting to just ask chatbots since they at least give single-sentence answers to simple questions.

    17 votes
  9. Comment on ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ gets up and stands up to $51M; ‘Madame Web’ crawls near $26M over six-day holiday frame in ~movies

    nothis
    Link Parent
    Oh man, I almost forgot about the “It’s morbin’ time!” memes, those were hilarious!

    Oh man, I almost forgot about the “It’s morbin’ time!” memes, those were hilarious!

    2 votes
  10. Comment on Humble Choice - February 2024 in ~games

    nothis
    Link Parent
    That's actually pretty neat. Can you just do one month of humble choice if you like the games or do you have to subscribe ahead of knowing the games and it's more of a gamble?

    That's actually pretty neat. Can you just do one month of humble choice if you like the games or do you have to subscribe ahead of knowing the games and it's more of a gamble?

    1 vote
  11. Comment on Humble Choice - February 2024 in ~games

    nothis
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    First time in many years I’m checking out a Humble deal. I’m surprised it’s still around. This isn’t the list of headline-making games I remember. But more than that, the offer of quantity...

    First time in many years I’m checking out a Humble deal. I’m surprised it’s still around. This isn’t the list of headline-making games I remember. But more than that, the offer of quantity (regardless of quality, even) no longer draws me in that much. What do I do with 8 new games every month? I barely finish one.

    I guess if you look to build a solid indie library from scratch, this is a good deal, though. Do they still give out Steam codes?

    2 votes
  12. Comment on Gen Z and millennials proudly wear ‘lab-grown’ diamonds, oblivious to the fact they’re made from burning coal in China and India in ~enviro

    nothis
    Link Parent
    It's the "gen z and millenials" in the title. It's a huge fuck you towards two entire generations and the only reason boomers are excluded is because they couldn't give a flying fuck about how...

    It's the "gen z and millenials" in the title. It's a huge fuck you towards two entire generations and the only reason boomers are excluded is because they couldn't give a flying fuck about how bloody their diamonds are. I want to see a calculation of the entire energy needed to make diamond the size of a rice corn which is probably a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. It's probably laughable. Meanwhile voting for a party that actively sabotages green energy is probably doing millions of times that damage to the environment.

    Halfway into the article they go into the price of diamonds and whether it "drops in value". The whole article seems to be a plant by the diamond mining industry.

    13 votes
  13. Comment on I applied for a software role at FedEx and was asked to take this bizarre personality test in ~life

    nothis
    Link Parent
    That makes the test even more stupid, lol.

    That makes the test even more stupid, lol.

  14. Comment on Ski vacations in the Alps are becoming increasingly elitist in ~travel

    nothis
    Link Parent
    Growing up in a country that mostly consists of mountains I associate skiing with something you had to do, culturally, because of school-orgianzied ski trips and all your friends constantly...

    Growing up in a country that mostly consists of mountains I associate skiing with something you had to do, culturally, because of school-orgianzied ski trips and all your friends constantly talking about how their family goes skiing (and then snowboarding because somehow that was cooler). I hated it. I knew it was expensive but that mostly were the prices of day passes which were high but not absurd. The rest was like any other holiday. It might have been a slight bubble, still, it took me up until my 20s to realize that a vacation (any kind of it, really) could be considered a luxury by itself. But my association was always that skiing was the trash holiday option that ruined winter and summer beach vacations were the real vacations you looked forward to.

    11 votes
  15. Comment on Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us? in ~tech

    nothis
    Link Parent
    Quality isn't "post-scarcity".

    Quality isn't "post-scarcity".

    1 vote
  16. Comment on ‘Money dysmorphia’ traps millennials and gen Zers – mixed signals about the economy have made it tough for some younger adults to know where they stand financially in ~finance

    nothis
    Link Parent
    Yea, because that worked so great in the past. A lot of healthy parts of the economy (and potentially tens of millions of private livelihoods) would be taken down with all the "toxic" parts....

    Yea, because that worked so great in the past.

    A lot of healthy parts of the economy (and potentially tens of millions of private livelihoods) would be taken down with all the "toxic" parts. Nothing about that solution is "clean". It would take decades to rebuild from there. Even if we would magically arrive at a more stable economy afterwards, I haven't seen an argument for why it would be worth the cost.

    The reality is: We did pretty fine, considering. If it wasn't for all the toxic (to borrow that word) political discourse, we'd conclude that we went through a once-in-a-century global pandemic with dignity. Turns out the modern internet is pretty good at remote work (Zoom, online shopping,...), we developed a novel vaccine in a matter of months and the economy survived the shock of half the world having to stay at home and rebounded within a year or two. That's pretty good. But somehow right-wing assholes looked for ways to ruin everything out of spite. Vaccines are government conspiracies to kill us all, the virus doesn't really exist so fuck all security measures, governments paying for people to not lose their livelihoods is somehow communist nonsense and now, to fit the narrative, we just have to have hyperinflation and a broken economy because we largely didn't listen to their insane ramblings. But we don't. Things are looking up. Oh, Putin is rolling in and starts a war in Europe that sends energy prices rising. But even that turned out to be something we managed to adapt. And now they're fucking cheering for Putin!

    It used to be that complaining about everything was just a natural thing we do, maybe a healthy thing to find areas to improve upon. But it's been so politicized online, through propaganda accounts and the bubbles they created, it's just absurd. I'm a pretty pessimistic person myself. But I'm actively forcing myself to be more optimistic because it closer aligns with reality and a lot of of the current pessimism seems to be propaganda.

    7 votes
  17. Comment on ‘Money dysmorphia’ traps millennials and gen Zers – mixed signals about the economy have made it tough for some younger adults to know where they stand financially in ~finance

    nothis
    Link Parent
    The article is super cynical but the real propaganda is Biden causing hyperinflation. We had the biggest crisis since WW2 and… things got 15% more expensive. Inflation is coming back down towards...

    The article is super cynical but the real propaganda is Biden causing hyperinflation. We had the biggest crisis since WW2 and… things got 15% more expensive. Inflation is coming back down towards 2% and rate cuts will follow. The narrative that we’re somehow living in a “hell hole” is politically weaponized. The problem isn’t “the economy”, it’s a lack universal healthcare and public housing.

    13 votes
  18. Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news

  19. Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news

    nothis
    Link Parent
    One of the cases where I genuinely want to hear both sides of the argument.

    One of the cases where I genuinely want to hear both sides of the argument.

    4 votes
  20. Comment on Vesuvius Challenge 2023 Grand Prize awarded: we can read the first scroll! in ~comp

    nothis
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    I read a summary of this in local news but did not know how involved the process was! I love the challenge and prize! What a great project! An interesting take: The scrolls are severely burnt but...

    I read a summary of this in local news but did not know how involved the process was! I love the challenge and prize! What a great project!

    An interesting take: The scrolls are severely burnt but in that process, they were also preserved! Otherwise, the material would likely have decomposed by now.

    2 votes