memfree
- 52 Posts
- 175 Comments
Keep it up! In fact, if you get criticized, you can point out that you’d rather have a leader you CAN criticize than one that gets treated like a God-ling. Point out that one of the differences in the generic liberal versus conservative thought is the idea that a leader might be flawed but generally good at leading versus the idea that everyone needs to support the leader (or the cause) no matter what – until their transgressions become too extreme and gets them ostracized. Please. Let’s criticize early and be ready to replace them sooner rather than later.
I hear you. A few years back I was rooting for Jeremy Corbin to be Prime Minister and could not understand how the populace didn’t choose him. More than that, I sympathize with people who dislike illegal immigration into their respective countries because, well, I can see how it FEELS like, “We built this country to be good and prosperous, and these folks want what WE built while they never built anything like it for themselves” – but that is a false perception for so many reasons (Was their home a colony or otherwise oppressed? Our ancestors built our countries, but we’re just born to them. Climate change is driving equatorial people to Northen climes – to countries complicit in the climate change that has made their homelands dry and cropless, etc.)
So I don’t have a solution for immigration (which Trump harped on constantly). Fixing the climate might help for the long term, but for the short term it won’t fix that immediate complaint.
I look at U.S. history and I don’t see a strong track record for austerity helping. More the reverse. In The Great Depression, one of the things that seemed to work was letting the government take on debt to give a bunch of people ‘stupid’ jobs so they could put that money into the economy. Of course, that came with stepp progressive tax rates, too. It was much harder to get rich when the highest brackets were up to/over 90% of income. I doubt the current crop of rich people would allow that to happen in the modern world, but I’d vote for it.
What type(s) of ducks do you raise? I used to raise ducks, but never had abandoned eggs/ducklings. We did have cases where our neighbors lost an offspring (chick, gosling, duckling), and all the girls in our yard gave the visitors extremely wide berth. I also had a drake that objected to his own kids and tried to kill them, so we had to give him away. Ours were: Indian Runners, Black Swedes, and Pekins.
I agree! And I’m thankful that lots of games build that in.
I hate using AWSD as direction keys. I don’t understand why some games refuse to map the arrow keys to the same commands, but some don’t and it becomes up to me to manually set that right before playing anything.
It irritates me so much to me that if a game doesn’t let me change the key mappings, I’m probably going for a refund rather than play at all.
471·4 months agoBack in 2021, indie developer Wolfire filed an antitrust lawsuit against Valve that accused the gaming giant of anti-competitive business practices—including a long-standing habit of taking unfair cuts from game developers on its store. Valve’s 30% fees have come under criticism before—and they are notably high when compared to some other online platforms.
Ouch. I didn’t realize they took such a big cut. On the other hand, authors trying to publish to Amazon’s kindle get hit with commissions from 30%-65% before any other fees, so Steam seems downright reasonable for that particular comparison.
From where I’m sitting, though, I’ve plenty of complicated feelings. Steam might be the best option out there, but monopolies aren’t great for anybody—at the same time, business is business.
Steam’s absurd efficiency could be a product of merciless penny-pinching from indie devs, but it’s just as likely we’re watching a well-oiled machine continue to belch out cash in an expected fashion.
Is it really a monopoly with everyone from EA to GoG delivering games? I guess it is dominant enough to count. I have a hard time complaining when employees are getting good pay and I’ve continued to get good service from them. It might get scarey if/when Gabe steps down, but this all feels pretty fair for now.
Recent big sites that closed down: Jezebel, Pitchfork, Vice, Popular Science, and my hopes for the Messenger were dashed when they announced their demise: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4440773-news-startup-the-messenger-shutting-down/
LA Times and the like are hit with layoffs and – worse – Sinclair heavyweight added the Balitmore Sun to the list of ‘compromised’ media outlets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/01/15/baltimore-sun-sold-david-smith-sinclair/
That said, there are always new sites, but gaining trust and reputation takes time.
Social sites seem doomed to crest and then fall. Digg? MySpace? Friendster? Who remembers the good old days of (moderated) UseNet? Do we want any of those back? Would any of them have remained were it not for spam/bad-actors?
3·4 months agoI’m not the lego person, but I am not taking that selfie because: 1) I don’t want to clean the house to make it look all nice before judgey relatives critique the pic, 2) my phone is old and all its pics are kinda fish-eyed, 3) I don’t actually want to spend the time doing the task right now when AI can get me an image in seconds.
2·4 months agoIt might also be a red-bellied newt or a Sierra newt. Habitat ranges can be found here: https://critterhideout.com/newts-in-north-america/
More pics and distinguishing features of each (note that these pages only give their range for just the state of California, but the rough-skinned ranges far beyond):
4·4 months agoWatch out for the sloppy reporting in the Salon piece. For example, it states:
“Hur’s claim that Biden couldn’t remember the day his son died was an outrageous lie,” argued Tommy Vietor, a former Obama staffer and commentator.
Vietor DID tweet that, but Salon doesn’t mention that Hur didn’t make that claim. Rather, Hur claimed Biden couldn’t remember the YEAR (not DAY).
“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” the report said. (source NBC).
I liked Tamara Keith’s more accurate coverage posted over here: https://www.wbur.org/npr/1237745840/biden-hur-report-memory-classified-documents
Crawford said that legislators had heard from NASA, which expressed concern about the bill’s impact on programs to develop alternative proteins for astronauts. An amendment to the bill will address that problem, Crawford said, allowing an exemption for research purposes.
Opponents of the ban have said governments shouldn’t interfere with a nascent industry because of unfounded fears over safety concerns.
The carve-out for NASA doesn’t make this bill any better. The bill is obviously stifling.
That said, I really do want some extra checks that whatever agar-like substrate meat is grown in does not leech excessive quantities of hormones (think: rBST) or other chemicals into the packaged product. I would happily eat lab-grown meat, but I want to know that it is well tested for safety.
2·4 months agoThank you! Reader View does the trick!
I appreciate that the “Gradient Canopy” roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, so maybe the problem is they didn’t do enough by not adding in some shielding, too.
It might be because I block a bunch of stuff, but is all I see:
The United States is rapidly shedding historians—and the national security implications are dire. Even as it grapples with challenges and conflicts rooted in complicated regional histories, the United States continues a decade-and-a-half-long path of defunding history departments and deprioritizing history education. This threatens to produce a generation of policymakers and advisors whose view of the world is increasingly, and dangerously, shallow.
After that, it is just the author credit and end-page layout (and side bars and the like).
1·4 months agoIt is good to hear that there are some non-whites in your story. Since there was no detail in your initial post, the art of an Aryan Angel did not inspire me to ask any question except, “Yet another blonde hero?” I get very tired of “white man’s burden” stories featuring white men picking themselves up and solving problems that ‘others’ could not overcome.
It sounds like your hero strays from the archetype enough to be atypical, so hopefully s/he realizes some reliance on the vital contributions of ‘others’ along their journey, too. All I’m saying is that the initial art didn’t speak to of any of that. The only thing it said to me was ‘racist agitprop’ (though not of the historic/Russian variety).
Why? Because – and while I applaud you paying someone to do the art – the art reminded me of Nazi Propaganda. I was saddened to see another idealized blonde haired, blue-eyed Jugend/baby getting elevated to special reigning status. Most of the world is dark haired and brown-eyed. Why give Nazis yet another piece of fiction to subtly push the zeitgeist into believing the abnormal caucus folk are better than the lower masses?
- https://ww2frauen.middcreate.net/en/the-third-reich-en/motherhood/
- https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/orig-period-german-propaganda-284177523
- https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/nazi-recruitment-propaganda
- https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/hitler-youth-propaganda
Less related, but stylistically similar: https://germangirlinamerica.com/history-hummel-figurines/
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_National_Convention