planetJane's recent activity

  1. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~games

    planetJane
    Link Parent
    Thank you for the explanation!

    Thank you for the explanation!

    3 votes
  2. Comment on The Neoreactionary movement - The alternative alt-right in ~misc

    planetJane
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I think this is giving them more leniency than they deserve. First of all, I certainly hope no one here would call them "autists". I'm autistic myself and find the idea of being associated with...

    It's easy to call these people "autists", and maybe some of them are, but in reality they are simply manchildren with sheltered childhoods, no education or experience outside of their STEM field (usually coding), no social ability.

    I think this is giving them more leniency than they deserve.

    First of all, I certainly hope no one here would call them "autists". I'm autistic myself and find the idea of being associated with these people wretch-inducing.

    Secondly while it's true that isolation can be a cause that leads to adopting these kinds of philosophies it's rarely the only one. You have to go pretty far down the rabbit hole to blast past normal reactionism (reactionaryism? I am not sure how you ismize "reactionary") into "literally, democracy was a mistake". I think blaming it on society in the broad scope is a mistake, and is letting them off the hook too easily.

    6 votes
  3. Comment on EU leaders have agreed on a plan to delay the Article 50 process, postponing Brexit beyond 29 March in ~news

    planetJane
    Link Parent
    A friend of mine (s/o Michael) compared Brexit to a man solemnly dismantling his house brick by brick because of the results of a twitter poll, and I think about that metaphor basically any time I...

    A friend of mine (s/o Michael) compared Brexit to a man solemnly dismantling his house brick by brick because of the results of a twitter poll, and I think about that metaphor basically any time I read news relating to the whole thing.

    They could back out any time is the crazy bit. They won't, because that would require a major world leader actually just admitting that they'd done something wrong and wanted to reverse course (and it'd torpedo the careers of all involved), but they could, and I think that in a way that actually makes it worse.

    10 votes
  4. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~games

    planetJane
    Link Parent
    would you mind elaborating on what these "anti-consumer tactics" are? cuz I see the phrase thrown around a lot re: EPIC but don't really know what's meant by it generally. In a vacuum, I'd be glad...

    would you mind elaborating on what these "anti-consumer tactics" are? cuz I see the phrase thrown around a lot re: EPIC but don't really know what's meant by it generally.

    In a vacuum, I'd be glad to have someone challenging Steam's monopoly even if it's marginally more inconvenient on my end.

    3 votes
  5. Comment on Secessionism versus sovereign citizens: my inner confusion in ~talk

    planetJane
    Link Parent
    I tried asking her at one point but she just said that a good friend of hers had told her. Which might be true, but she's one of them old Pennsylvania Dutch grandma types who has about 10 trillion...

    I tried asking her at one point but she just said that a good friend of hers had told her. Which might be true, but she's one of them old Pennsylvania Dutch grandma types who has about 10 trillion other grandmas she's friends with, so "good friend" could mean almost anyone.

    1 vote
  6. Comment on Valve lays off thirteen employees, reportedly slashing VR hardware division in ~games

    planetJane
    Link Parent
    I really think that if VR has a future it's not in gaming. Another replier mentioned porn and obviously that's a market, but I think of stuff like virtual tours of famous landmarks and the like...

    I really think that if VR has a future it's not in gaming. Another replier mentioned porn and obviously that's a market, but I think of stuff like virtual tours of famous landmarks and the like first and foremost. The uses for education are far and above the uses for gaming right now but for some reason the latter seems like where all the money is going. I guess just because of the idea of the typical PC gamer as someone who will drop thousands on high-end electronics (and maybe that's true, I don't have any data on hand).

    3 votes
  7. Comment on Secessionism versus sovereign citizens: my inner confusion in ~talk

    planetJane
    Link Parent
    Yeah that's the kinda thing I was referring to. That's just depressing. Your pal reminds me of a neighbor I used to have. Real sweet lady for the most part, ended up voting for Trump because she...

    Yeah that's the kinda thing I was referring to. That's just depressing.

    Your pal reminds me of a neighbor I used to have. Real sweet lady for the most part, ended up voting for Trump because she somehow became convinced that he would personally buy all of his supporters a new house. Suffice it to say she was kinda torn up about it a few months post-inauguration when she realized it wasn't happening.

    1 vote
  8. Comment on What have you been watching/reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime

    planetJane
    Link
    Mostly been keeping up with my seasonals. I wanna talk about one in particular though. Magical Girl Spec. Ops. Asuka. Boy, is this show something else. I don't mean that in a good way. It's one of...

    Mostly been keeping up with my seasonals.

    I wanna talk about one in particular though. Magical Girl Spec. Ops. Asuka.

    Boy, is this show something else.

    I don't mean that in a good way. It's one of those dark action seinen series you see every now and again. It's fairly rare that they leave the manga format and the better ones are kind of a guilty pleasure of mine so I was hoping that this would fall in that camp too. Instead it's been, how should I put this, incoherent?

    It's not really fair to judge it as a magical girl show cuz it doesn't really try to be one, so I'll not do that. As an action series, it's pretty mediocre. The animation is dumpy and very limited--to the point that I wonder if there're some problems going on production-side. Any time anything action-y needs to happen it'll suddenly turn into a festival of stills and splash screens, not even particularly pretty ones. There'll be the rare nice cut but they're few and far between.

    The other thing it tries to be, a like, weird war drama? Phew. Maybe it's just been too long since I've seen something this shlocky but to me it is a special kind of bad. The tone is all over the place. It'll skip between tragic backstory to comedy to fanservice and back again without missing a beat. The weird part is that that seems to be intentional, and I guess it could work in a show that has a better command of itself than Asuka does but it just makes the show seem schizophrenic.

    Also it likes to be, just, comically over-the-top edgy. There wasn't much of that in this past episode, but the prior one had one of the ostensible heroines torturing a captured villain for no particular reason and also a drunk middle-aged guy beating up his disabled daughter after failing to get her a job at a whorehouse (yes you read that correctly). It's all just a jumbled mess. I have no idea what the show is trying to be and I don't really think it does either.

    It does occasionally produce some truly amazing out-of-context dialogue but not a whole lot else. At this point I'm kind of just watching it because it's interesting in the ways that it's fundamentally broken and I guess my inner critic finds that kind of thing fascinating in a weird way.

  9. Comment on Secessionism versus sovereign citizens: my inner confusion in ~talk

    planetJane
    Link Parent
    This is the right idea. I'll go further even. Not only do Sovereign Citizens / Freemen on The Land not secede from society, they don't have any actual desire to do so. It is purely conspiratory...

    This is the right idea.

    I'll go further even. Not only do Sovereign Citizens / Freemen on The Land not secede from society, they don't have any actual desire to do so. It is purely conspiratory bunk that people either believe in or claim to believe in so they can get out of inconveniences like paying their taxes and things like that. I think the most sympathetic of these people are, at best, very gullible, and invariably they've bought into some huckster's gobbledeguuk.

    I once read a thorough dressing-down by a judge of a sovereign citizen defendant and what stuck with me most was that he said that SCs seem to think that the law works like magic where if you can find the right specific words in the right order you can just make stuff happen. That's not how it works, obviously, but some people trick themselves into thinking it does.

    4 votes
  10. Comment on As possible rivals pass on 2020 race, Biden may see a path clearing in ~news

    planetJane
    Link
    Yeah, I don't know. Broadly, I agree with @Yugioh_Mishima. I didn't even know that Holder planned to run, and I am only dimly aware of who Sherrod Brown is. I think Biden's main advantages, such...

    Yeah, I don't know. Broadly, I agree with @Yugioh_Mishima. I didn't even know that Holder planned to run, and I am only dimly aware of who Sherrod Brown is.

    I think Biden's main advantages, such that they are, is that he's not offensive to the more conservative wing of the democratic party, and that he has name recognition. Which of course he does, he's the former VP. I don't think that that's really something that's gonna get a good campaign running. Not on its own.

    I'm less hard on Biden than I think many people of my general political alignment are. I think his heart's probably in the generally correct place, but he overemphasizes "reaching across the aisle" which is not something people care about right now, and as this very article points out, he's prone to running his mouth. Neither of these are things you really wanna carry into a hypothetical primary election vs. Trump.

    I guess I'm just echoing what other people are saying here but we really do need someone to believe in. When I cast my vote next November, I don't want to have to drag myself to the voting booth feeling like a scuzzbucket because I'm voting for Yet Another Establishment Politician. I think the hopeful message thing is something that people like Booker, Warren, and Castro (hell, even Sanders and Yang, who I don't much like) understand. I'm not crazy keen on any of the people I just mentioned, but I'd still be much more behind them than I would Biden.

    2 votes