Fucking bonkers. Between this an McD’s changing their ToS to say using their app waives any right to non-arbitration dispute, something needs to be done about companies trying to effectively write new laws into their ToS. This shit is beyond egregious
We aren’t talking about something in production, like this app, we are talking about play testing a game in alpha. I would be upset if this was in a released game, or even like the beta test, but if it’s still under serious development it seems incredibly reasonable to me.
A general NDA is reasonable, sure, but allowing only comments which glaze the game but not those which criticize it is not. I genuinely cannot even fathom how you think the contrary; I don’t mean that in offensive, so if you can articulate why you believe that way I would like to try and understand.
I agree that it should just be an NDA to be the most fair. But keep in mind I’m responding to someone who is claiming this is beyond egregious and that there should be laws against this.
It’s just not a big deal. It makes sense for them to say that you can’t disparage the game, because it’s in alpha, but why would they restrict good press? If you find this to be disagreeable, it’s alpha and you can just wait for release.
While I find it disagreeable, I don’t see anything to be outraged over, as avoiding it is as simple as not playing a game in alpha.
Unlike the mcdonald’s example where it is actually a released product.
I work for a video game company, and I promise you’re being far too generous about their motives. This NDA prevents press from doing press. If the alpha is bad, they’re not allowed to say how or why it’s bad, at all.
I understand exactly why they are doing it; what you say comes as no surprise. It’s 100% part of my point.
Coming from software development, including a small amount of game development, I understand how trash alphas can be, especially if you introduce users/players. So it seems reasonable that if the point of the alpha is to flush these bugs/exploits out, which is the point, then restricting the players who are allowed in from disparaging a far from complete game is not some ridiculous overreach everyone here seems to want it to be.
I’m on publisher QA side. Every so often, around this time of year, my company does closed internal playtests for games that are on the pre-alpha release candidate (usually it’s the ones they expect to be blockbusters). Generally when a pre-alpha RC is selected for this, a very small subsection of the game is highly polished to give Users an honest preview of what the devs expect the launch game to be. Obviously since it’s in alpha a lot of things will be changed and there are a lot of game breaking bugs to be found still, but the general experience should still be up for discussion if it was bad. I know it’s possible to imagine a game in alpha as released, because part of my job is to give professional feedback to the producers without ever mentioning unfinished or bugged aspects of the game.
Okay, if they want to bug test, there’s DECADES of accepted practice. Paid/intern bug hunters or playtesters, with an airtight NDA. They’re there to stress tests and find issues, there needn’t be a public facing element.
Marvel want free bug testers, and to get the hype train moving - but don’t want to pay for actual testers who work quietly, and want only positive commentary. Marvel want an astroturf campaign to push preorders, not actual genuine discussion or bug testing.
I’ve been part of public alpha releases, and generally they don’t allow streaming or public commentary, outside of the invite-only forum/discord channels - BECAUSE THEY WANT THE FEEDBACK TO FIX ISSUES.
Marvel want free bug testers, and to get the hype train moving - but don’t want to pay for actual testers who work quietly, and want only positive commentary. Marvel want an astroturf campaign to push preorders, not actual genuine discussion or bug testing.
Okay, then the problem is with the people doing the work for free, not with Marvel realizing that people will do it for free.
The issue is that the people who do this work for free are not like you, and want that early access. . .either for strictly personal reasons or because it benefits them financially (such as is the case with streamers).
You’re literally defending ‘post-truth, race to the bottom standard’ capitalism. Yes dumb consumers exist, but that isn’t a free pass for corporate exploitation or false advertising. Because this isn’t an alpha, it’s advertising.
es dumb consumers exist, but that isn’t a free pass for corporate exploitation or false advertising.
Except I didn’t see where they advertised that people were going to be able to join the alpha with no restrictions, and I don’t see this as “exploitation” at all. People want to play these games first. I don’t get why, but they do. And they are being given that opportunity.
Make people sign an NDA to playtest it, don’t release a “public closed beta” contingent on this non disparagement agreement bullshit
Most people (except for you, apparently) can see right through this kind of thing. The only reason you’d make someone sign a legally binding document saying “you’re not allowed to say bad things” is because you know there are bad things to say. If there are bad things to say and you know about them, the correct move (from both a technical and PR perspective) is to fix the bad things before allowing your game to be played publicly. Preventing people from talking about the bad things won’t magically get rid of the bad things.
Alpha testing is, by definition, testing on unreleased code. Even though they are offering the testing to some select group of people, it’s still considered un-released.
The only reason you’d make someone sign a legally binding document saying “you’re not allowed to say bad things” is because you know there are bad things to say.
False dichotomy. There is also the possibility that you realize, from experience, that when you start introducing users, unexpected shit happens.
They could do the alpha testing completely internally, or they could give some super fans pre-access with more restrictions on what they are allowed to say. Would I prefer they be able to speak their mind? Of course. But I get why the company would do this and it’s really a complete non-issue.
Sure, they could do an NDA, or they could also get free publicity. It’s reasonable for them to choose the latter, and if you don’t like it, it’s reasonable for you to wait for release.
Preventing people from talking about the bad things won’t magically get rid of the bad things.
Yeah, that’s pretty clearly not the point. They presumably want to fix the bugs without them counting against them in the court of public opinion.
Alpha testing is, by definition, testing on unreleased code. Even though they are offering the testing to some select group of people, it’s still considered un-released.
I go out of my way to explain how alphas are typically done as a games industry professional, and you’re still out here spewing the same nonsense? get outta here. This is not a defensible action by a corporation. When a game reaches alpha, the whole of the game is unready but the part used in the public playtests are extensively reviewed by QA and gets as polished as possible. When a game is at alpha stage, it’s by definition gone through multiple release candidates.
Are you arguing that alpha testing is not considered in house testing? It’s literally the definition.
The alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase of software testing (alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, used as the number 1). In this phase, developers generally test the software using white-box techniques. Additional validation is then performed using black-box or gray-box techniques, by another testing team. Moving to black-box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release.[1][2]
Alpha software is not thoroughly tested by the developer before it is released to customers. Alpha software may contain serious errors, and any resulting instability could cause crashes or data loss.[3] Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version.[4] In general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon for proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a feature freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature-complete. A beta test is carried out following acceptance testing at the supplier’s site (the alpha test) and immediately before the general release of the software as a product.[5]Wikipedia link
I’m sure parts of the game are well polished. I’m sure some only release a small part of the game for advertising reasons. They are doing something different here maybe. I don’t really know. But this is such a non-issue that the outrage over it is laughable. Not surprising, at all, however, considering I’ve been a gamer all my life and I know how unreasonable we can be.
False dichotomy. There is also the possibility that you realize, from experience, that when you start introducing users, unexpected shit happens.
If you’re not willing to let the unexpected shit be public, don’t do a public alpha test. That’s the point everyone here is trying to make. Like, what are these streamers and content creators supposed to do when they run into a game-breaking bug, or they run into some mechanic they really dislike? Ignore it and hope no one notices, for fear of saying something “disparaging” about the game? Do you not see how unreasonable that is? We all understand that alphas are incomplete and will have bugs, and unexpected shit will happen. We all also have different opinions about what we like in video games. Them trying to hide from that, rather than just being upfront about it (like every other alpha or early access game I’ve ever played) is asinine.
They could do the alpha testing completely internally
They should do the alpha testing internally, if they’re not willing to have their product be honestly reviewed, or pay to have their product advertised.
But I get why the company would do this and it’s really a complete non-issue.
Considering that this thread exists, Seagull’s original tweet got the immense attention it did, and the studio announced hours ago that the particular clause everyone (except you) is taking issue with was a mistake that they’re looking into fixing, uh, maybe it actually isn’t just a “non-issue”?
Sure, they could do an NDA, or they could also get free publicity. It’s reasonable for them to choose the latter, and if you don’t like it, it’s reasonable for you to wait for release.
No, actually, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect “free publicity” on the condition that the ones providing that publicity muzzle themselves if they don’t like the game. That’s exploitative behavior by this studio. Expecting free anything and then attaching unreasonable legal stipulations that you know the other party cannot fight is unethical.
Yeah, that’s pretty clearly not the point. They presumably want to fix the bugs without them counting against them in the court of public opinion.
They want to control the narrative around their unfinished video game, by trying to legally bully content creators, who have way less legal and financial leverage, into doing their bidding. That is unethical. Full stop, no I will not be taking any more questions.
I can’t help but think that if this sort of thing proliferates that it will essentially hamstring reviews. This particular agreement might be just because the game is in alpha, but it’s part of a broader trend of ToS/EULA wishlists that are so restrictive that they’re probably illegal already buy in order to test that you have to go to court against a huge, overpaid legal team which leads to people having their basic rights violated.
This is a slippery slope fallacy “if they are allowed to do something mild and legal now. . .well, it will just lead to terrible violation of our rights in the future!”
What undermines your point is that if they try to put these illegal restrictions on many people, violating their basic rights, then they are opening themselves up to large class action lawsuits.
The problem is that unless the agreement explicitly states that the non-disparagment section applies only to the test playtest, the agreement would essentially place a gag order on that creator for the life of the game.
What makes you think that? The language is fairly boiler plate and easily enforceable. We, “the company”, give you, “the creator”, an asset, “a free game copy”, under the condition that you promise not to do or say anything that could diminish the value of the asset. Not only is it enforceable, it leaves room for compensatory damages if you are found in breach of contract.
I haven’t read the entire agreement, so I don’t really know nor do I care to. But I suspect that it would squarely fall under protected speech once the game has gone public and they’ve “purchased” it.
Early access to a game is not an asset you can “un-receive” just because you purchase your own copy later. Of course, you could make arguments against the terms being overreaching in court, but not many creators have the resources or desire for a legal fight.
Other creators chimed in and said that they brought up the section in Discord and legal said they’d look into it. To me, this just seems as lazy copy and paste that they were warned about but did nothing about. Now they have a possible PR disaster on their hands unless they take swift action.
PS: Apparently section 2.6 is way worse but it hasn’t been shared yet.
Of course, you could make arguments against the terms being overreaching in court, but not many creators have the resources or desire for a legal fight.
I see. That’s not what “unenforceable” means. Unenforceable refers to a contractual responsibility that a court would never enforce. There are many reasons why a court would chosen to not enforce a contract but none of them are because a defendant doesn’t have the means to combat it.
Your linked to an article literally starts by asking “What kinds of contracts might not hold up in court?” and then goes on to explain this as one of these as “For example, a court will never enforce a contract promoting something already against state or federal law.” Basically proving my point.
And I’m universally downvoted, and you’re universally upvoted. Lemmy users crack me up.
Just like truth in advertising laws exist, some restrictions are rightly placed on free speech in the interest of consumer protection. Imo this case clearly should fall under similar consideration.
But it’s just the playtest that is free, not the actual game itself? If they are giving the playtest AND the actual game for free then yeah that makes more sense, but otherwise I think it would likely be considered unconscionable for playtest access to mean they can’t criticize the full game they (eventually) paid for, and thus it would likely be unenforceable.
That is certainly something that can be argued in court, and the case might be very strong…but you’d still have to take it to court. Something else to consider is that if the agreement isn’t clear about its limitations, then it can be argued that it isn’t limited. All the company has to do is send you a key to the full game when it’s available and they are technically still in compliance with the agreement. It would not matter if you tell them that you do not wish to participate anymore, or that you bought your own copy, you’d still be bound.
I could agree that it’s overkill, but that doesn’t warrant the outrage we’re seeing here. IMO of course. If this is really offensive to you, just wait for release. Considering it’s FTP so this doesn’t apply as much, but I would recommend even waiting until way after release to buy a game.
Sure, more reasonable and fair. But this is neither unreasonable nor particularly unfair, as long as it’s restricted to the alpha. If you find it bad, don’t play it, and understand that what opinions come out of alpha are biased by this. I would recommend taking all reviews that come out of any alpha with a huge grain of salt.
they shouldnt be releasing it to streamers and youtubers to play, in alpha, on their goddamn channels, while muzzling them in how they can respond to issues that present themselves during their video/stream, if they want to “protect” (shut down any legitimate criticism concerns) their “alpha” (free advertising)
I agree with you. But this is basically a non-issue, which is my point. If you don’t want to be restricted, don’t play the alpha. Why is this so hard for some people to accept? Again, we aren’t talking about a released product, but some playtesting.
even then, it’s essentially paywalling your rights. you need to go to court, wait for the matter to be adjudicated, hope it works out in your favor, run out any potential appeals, all while paying attorneys and not being able to do something you’re legally entitled to do. If you can’t do all that, then your rights are moot.
A lot of companies got spooked a few years back and walked back their arbitration agreements. I wonder what changed for companies to decide it’s worth it again. Maybe the lack of discovery in the arbitration process even with higher costs?
You can’t “just start” a class action suit. You need to sue, get other people to sue, coordinate, and apply for class action status. That’s more time and effort than an individual suit.
Yeah, it’s time to nip this on the front end though. ToS are such a part of daily life now. They should be regulated to be concise, use standardized consumer-friendly language, and have bounds against non-arbitration and other nonsense like this. This sort of legislation is well overdue.
Having unenforceable or illegal clauses in a legal contract means the contract wasn’t written in good faith, which should void the whole thing. Regardless of any “if parts of this contract are deemed illegal, the rest still stands”.
It would be nice to see more proactive involvement of the legal system with this, like have some people whose job it is to challenge these consumer contracts and standardize them kinda like how some open source licenses are standardized. Modularize it, so instead of writing out the whole “limited liability” section, they could refer to an established one by name. Then each module can be the subject of study and challenge, like if a more limiting one should come with other compromises elsewhere.
I think at that point, most honest companies would just pick a standard license or contract, plus maybe a few modifications and shady ones will have more trouble hiding shit like this in the middle of pages and pages of the same boring shit you’ve read hundreds of times before if you actually do read these things before signing or clicking agree.
At this point, most contracts should probably be unenforceable because few people actually do understand what they are agreeing to, which is supposed to be one of the essential parts of a contract. So many parts should probably have an “initial here to show you agreed to this” at the very least. But I’m no fool, this is likely considered a feature rather than a bug for most of the people involved in making and enforcing these things.
It’s already been decided in Europe. Terms of service have about as much legal weight as toilet paper. Usually what’s true in Europe is true in California as well so I assume something similar has happened over there.
All good; I wasn’t trying to be offensive in my reply and was sincere in calling it poignant. Sometimes I get worked up and make tangents that feel vaguely related too. We’re cool if you’re cool ✌
How are they being body shamed? I don’t see anybody saying one is better than the other. Some people like bigger boobs, some people like smaller boobs so there isn’t a correct answer. I can see them being objectified sure, but I wouldn’t call it body shaming.
How is this being objectified though? If one is a brunette and the other is blonde is an observation. It’s not saying they are only an object. It’s just a description of an attribute.
We’re not talking about hair colour though, this is obviously reducing a pic of some friends to “haha big booba small booba”. That’s kind of textbook objectification.
Way to take my point, not listen, and completely make it personal. It’s exactly what I meant. That it’s just a difference you can see. That’s the same as the color of their shirts. It’s obvious if you have eyes. Pointing out the contrast is the root of the joke and can work just because it is so obvious. That is the only point I am making.
I debated which term to use and decided on body shaming because it was a touch vague. Bottom line is that these two women were just at lunch and now people are reducing it to just their breasts. Objectified would’ve probably been a clearer word choice, but I think since the meme is making a comparison between the two its inherently body shaming. Regardless of whichever one you personally think is more attractive.
Or they just posted a lunch picture to their social media and somebody grabbed it and made a meme out of it. Your body doesn’t determine what intention you have when you post pictures
If you had lunch with a friend, took a picture, and posted it online, would it have been to “show off”? Ask yourself why you’re making that assumption about the subjects of this photo.
How exactly am I body shaming? You can decide whichever one you personally find more attractive, we all can, but these are just two women with breasts at lunch. Probably posted it to Facebook/IG, and now there are people using a meme to compare their bodies, neither one of them is better or worse, but the meme is inviting us to judge, so they are both being body shamed for not having the others. Objectified would’ve been a clearer word choice, but we can use whatever word you feel fits best so long as we agree this concept is gross.
Totally ignoring the majority of women are mocked for having big or little breasts at many points in their life. If you are going to play dumb about it then I can’t help you, but you should really talk to any woman you have in your life and let them explain it to ya. I’m not gonna walk you through an extremely common experience.
Assigning big = better and small = worse is indeed a judgement.
I think some people would argue that smaller growth = better since economies do better given slow change rather than rapid change, as rapid change might lead to rebounds.
By even recognizing traits that seem similar across humans, we’re isolating those parts of them while ignoring the richness of their being. It is objectification.
But objectification is only detrimental when we assign judgements to what we compare. I’m not a woman so I haven’t experienced the turmoil in those comparing breasts or other factors that men desire, but I am taller than average so I get the other end of the stick in how men are judged based on their height - often by women.
Being short or tall has nothing to do with your intrinsic value as a human being, but there is extrinsic value created by those outside of us. I agree in that we should be prioritizing the former instead of the latter in society, which is why posts like this are problematic.
Thank you. I almost typed out a similar comment, but deleted it.
Although this meme is just supposed to be “thing, bigger thing” maybe half the time I see it it’s someone trying to say “thing, objectively better thing” and it just feels really gross. I hate most memes that are just stolen social media posts of people living their lives honestly.
Her breasts are HERS. Not yours or anyone else viewing her. She is not advertising! She is wearing whatever clothes feel comfortable to her and at no point does that become something she should be criticized for.
Is it now? Everything’s a misogyny. Girls putting bra, misogyny, guys noticing pushup bras which are designed to drive attention, misogyny. Not noticing, misogyny. Breathing misogyny. And it is damn funny. Not as funny as reading your comment history… “gender is a thought crime”, hilarious. Luckily most of society doesn’t bend to your will otherwise you’d be policing what everyone is allowed to think and quoting freedom of speech at the same time.
Pick a lane. Is everything misogyny or am I a lone tyrant?
“gender is a thought crime”, hilarious.
That was fallaciously mocking someone, but ya know. Go off. Be mad.
guys noticing pushup bras which are designed to drive attention
Nope. 100% bullshit. Clothes are for the person wearing them, nothing about this has to do with driving attention. And it’s wildly arrogant to assume otherwise. You know that tons of women wear sexy underwear without showing anyone right? That’s because its for THEM, and not for any one else.
“Clothes are for the person wearing them, nothing about this has to do with driving attention.”
I agree here, but there are plenty of women who wear specific clothes to garner attention. That, too, is their perogative. At the end of the day the attention is still for them, not the person giving the attention, so it still ties back to your initial point I guess!
It absolutely is. The fact you lack humor in any shape or form is a problem of your own. More to the point, what others find funny is not up to you to decide, luckily. Otherwise we’d have a nations of people with brooms stuck up their ass. And I think only a blockhead with no sense of humor is not capable of understanding a joke. So there, I am equally in the right of deciding what is shitty and what is not, as you are.
Wrong. Comedic license: you can joke about ANYTHING, as long as the joke is funnier than the thing is fucked up to joke about. Things you don’t seem to understand: who decides if your joke is funny? The audience, aka literally anyone/everyone but the joke teller. How do I know if my joke is deemed funny? If a large portion of the audience, preferably over 50%, deem it so.
I hear you. I just start to think about how expensive bras are at that size. They are expensive enough as it is and I am thankful I can stick to something comfy from TomboyX.
I really wish we didn’t exploit people on the Internet quite so much. Do these girls even know or approve of their pictures being posted?
How is this bodyshaming? Its just natural that some people have bigger breasts than other people. There are also meme formats where one of them is taller or something so is that also bodyshaming or what?
Honestly really sad that some people seem to be more upset by you writing “body shamed” instead of “objectified” than they are about the objectification happening in the OP
I always check reviews for things like BT adapters to see if people mention it working OTB on Linux. Usually if the manufacturer says compatible with Linux it’ll work right away, but some want drivers installed.
I get what you’re trying to do here but the thing is, bluetooth and nvidia are terrible on every platform tbh… At the very least, nvidia laptops on Windows for my friends haven’t been as stable as my AMD laptop on Arch has been for me. I hear nvidia on desktop is solid, so that might be the issue here though. Which also reminds me, nvidia on Linux isn’t really an issue anymore, they work as well as their windows counterpart basically and nearly every distro makes them really easy to install.
And Bluetooth on Linux right now is just as terrible as on Windows, which is to say, it works pretty well.
If I see a post of weird bragging that I don’t care about I personally don’t feel the need to reply to them to let them know that I don’t care. I just keep scrolling.
If the weird bragging was happening enough to annoy me then I would down vote and keep scrolling.
In this case it’s a response to a pretty obnoxious comment. You could argue that the comment op is acting like an apple fan, ms fan or any kind of thing fan that enters a conversation.
It can’t be answered in this context, cause there is no context in the post.
And I’m sure letting trump have an easier time getting elected will make things so much better.
I would recommend talking to your local representatives about the current situation and how important it is to you and expressing how you may support other people running against them if they don’t support a ceasefire.
there’s “administration aiding a genocide, but also doing so because they’re being lied to by israel, who also has a massive propaganda campaign to manipulate americans into supporting them…”
versus
Project 2025 and their plans of a fascist dictatorship right here, complete with a genocide of trans people and hispanics… and muslims… AND a continuation of supporting israel…
oh and aiding russians commiting genocide in ukraine.
i mean to vote for someone who won’t support the genocide, but i wouldn’t fault anyone for looking at all the candidates and deciding none of them deserve to have the office.
I was young once too. Eventually you’ll figure out that the party that got 1% of the vote last time isn’t suddenly gonna sweep it with 51% this time. Every single person who has a nonzero chance of being president next year supports Israel, so you should vote based on what the best possible outcome is.
this is ad hominem. what i’m saying is true or false regardless of how old i am. also, you don’t know how old i am. and on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog: you could be 12 years old for all i know.
this statement is pure sophistry. it’s disgusting rhetoric, and you should be ashamed.
It’s not ad hominem. I’m not saying you’re wrong because this is your first election, I’m saying I can tell this is your first election because voting third party is incredibly naive. If this isn’t your first election, then you should know better.
No, I’m attacking what you said by calling it naive. I never once intimated that your belief was wrong because you were young. I also think that anyone above the age of 22 who doesn’t vote Biden is also wrong. It has nothing to do with age.
I was simply giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you’d never been burned by voting third party before. Am I wrong to do that? Are you actually stupid, and not naive?
Like I already said, your identity isn’t what makes the decision to let Trump win any more or less wrong. This being your first election would just make it a much more understandable and forgivable mistake. If this isn’t your first time abstaining from voting, then it’s a much less forgivable mistake.
How’d that work out for Nader in 2000 when he didn’t even get to 3%? Was it worth it, when nearly 100k people voted for him in Florida, and Gore lost to Bush by a margin of only 537 votes? Would the environmentalists who supported Nader be more appreciative of Bush’s outcome than they would have been if Gores?
Third parties are great. We absolutely need them. But they cannot and will not ever get a foothold starting at the top of the ballot. Yang really has the right idea in The Forward Party, starting down ballot before even contemplating higher office. It’s the only way another party will ever get any significant standing.
It shouldn’t have even been a question in the first place. 100k people thought Gore wasn’t good enough for them, and as a result, they all got us Bush.
Yang really has the right idea in The Forward Party, starting down ballot before even contemplating higher office. It’s the only way another party will ever get any significant standing.
if you think that, you should put energy toward that. but I don’t and won’t.
Every single person who has a nonzero chance of being president next year supports Israel, so you should vote based on what the best possible outcome is.
i only vote for someone i want to have the office. you don’t get to tell my what i value or how i should express my values. you certainly don’t get to tell me how to vote.
I can absolutely tell you how to vote, and you can absolutely ignore me. But next year, if Trump wins, it will be your fault. Just like it’s my fault that so many women don’t have access to basic medical care because I didn’t want Clinton in office. The country and the world will be worse if we let Trump win, and there is exactly one legal way that we can work against Trump winning.
Not voting for the only person who stands a chance against him is helping him win. The distinction is meaningless. If we’re playing CoD Zombies and you don’t help barricade the house we’re in or shoot zombies and we lose on the second round, you don’t get to say “it’s not my fault we died, the zombies were the ones who broke in and killed us!”
Yeah, in a video game the people that die because of your inaction get to respawn.
The way you make a new reply to each sentence, spamming threads with dozens of replies reminds me of Commie. Is this one of their alts? I kinda regret blocking them, arguing with them was fun even though I know they’re a troll
The most common form of this fallacy is “A” makes a claim of “fact,” to which “B” asserts that “A” has a personal trait, quality or physical attribute that is repugnant thereby going entirely off-topic, and hence “B” concludes that “A” has their “fact” wrong - without ever addressing the point of the debate.
I fulfilled one part of an ad hominem—I asserted (implied, but whatever) that you have a personal trait, quality, or physical attribute. This is not enough to accuse me of committing ad hominem, because I fulfilled no other portions of it. I never implied that the fact that you are relatively young is a negative trait, I never concluded that you were wrong because of it, and I did address the main point of the debate. Calling someone young or stupid or naive isn’t ad hominem if I then go on to explain why what they’re saying is incorrect.
If there are 10 people including you and the majority chooses who gets to be president and the vote ends up as 5 for Biden (including you) and 5 for Trump. Then the vote gets recast and the only thing that changes is that you decided not to vote for Biden, it would be 5/4 for Trump and the person responsible for electing Trump would be everyone who voted for him and you. If you had voted against Trump instead of abstaining, he would not have become president.
That’s a very basic concept and it’s clear that it extrapolates to the actual election.
Woah there, hold your argumentum ad populum! No ethics model is unflawed and just because deontological ethics work often doesn’t mean they don’t have problems. Instead of looking at the actions you can take, let’s look at the results that could be reached:
Biden wins presidency
Trump wins presidency
3rd party wins presidency
No 3rd party has ever achieved presidency. Votes for a 3rd party have instead commonly resulted in votes being drawn from one party benefiting the other. So realistically we could generalise to:
Voting 3rd party: Aiding Trumps victory
Voting Trump: Aiding Trumps victory
Voting Biden: Aiding Trumps loss
I hate dichotomies as much as you, these shouldn’t be the options, I would seriously love to be proven wrong. Am I missing something?
jill stein says she’s on track to hit 5% this fall, so that’s an outcome you’re not considering. also, biden has been enabling a genocide, but you dont seem to see any problem with putting himback in power.
Except you ignore their arguments to put out a thought terminating cliche and they keep addressing your points. The one who reads as bad faith here is you.
I did consider this, I even adressed how this is an issue as it fails to aids Trump in winning the election. I do think that Biden is problematic and that the genocide in Palestine is wrong, however voting a 3rd party aids trump resulting in no changes in Palestine and changes for the worse for the rest of the world.
Thank you for spelling it out! Unfortunately, most of the "Biden is literally supporting a genocide which is why you should vote 3rd party) are suspiciously obtuse.
I am fairly sure this is part of a Russian Psy-Op aiming to demobilize Democrat-leaning voters in order to push their preferred candidate and sow division. Trump being elected again would be Putin’s wet dream, since Trump would (try to) leave NATO and cut all support to Ukraine. With NATO gone and the US busy with infighting under an isolationist and repressive government, Putin would have free reign to stir more shit in eastern Europe to further his imperialist agenda.
For this reason, posters trying to frame voting for Biden as actively supporting genocide don’t get the benefit of the doubt from me. And they’re everywhere, unfortunately.
this kind of paranoid bad-jacketing of users is fucking disgusting. accusing users of being part of a state-sponsored psyop should be bannable across every community and instance. come with receipts, or keep your badfaith bullshit to yourself.
Nobody running for president, ever, has deserved the office. I sincerely believe, as Douglas Adams so eloquently put, that “those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.”
I can’t think of any point in recent history where the choice is of who is deserving for office. The choice is, and has always been, who is the least undeserving of office (or the spoiler candidate). This year, I think it’s pretty obvious who is least undeserving of office.
The choice of who is deserving for office is reserved for everyone else further down the ballot.
Not voting is letting trump have an easier time at victory
The core of the GOP’s strategy for holding on to power is the disenfranchisement of voters who are opposed to them. Not voting (or voting third party) is self-disenfranchisement and doing the GOP’s work for them.
whoever is first past the post. if you know I’m not voting for Biden and your only concern is keeping trump out of office, you shouldn’t vote for Biden, either: vote for Jill stein or cornel west
vote splitting is a myth that relies on the presumption that I would vote for anybody except the candidate that I’m choosing. it presumes that The votes belong to some candidate and giving them to another candidate is siphoning them away. The truth is that the votes belong to voters and it’s up to politicians to earn them.
Stop acting like Biden is just being lied to by Israel and is some helpless victim. He is absolutely responsible for his continued allowance of the genocide of Palestinians. Hold your politicians to a higher standard.
He is responsible, though I don’t expect a different response from the majority of people in Washington. I hope regret about his continued complicity in genocide continues to weigh heavily on his shoulders.
I believe only 2 points about Palestine in this election:
Trump will be worse for Palestine than Biden.
Biden is likelier to switch positions on Palestine than Trump.
When I look at everything else Trump endangers on top of Palestine, it’s not even a decision.
Do you really believe not voting for Biden deceases the likelihood of genocide in Gaza? Because the alternative seems so much worse in every way, both for Gaza and so many other massively important issues
And instead, a genocide will still be on, and also more women will go to prison for seeking medical care, and also my LGBT friends will have their rights eroded even more, and also the new president will annoint more christofascist Godkings to the Supreme Court ensuring that any attempt to vote for an actual leftist in the future is impossible, and it’ll be fine, because at least you didn’t vote for the guy that wouldn’t have done all that extra awful shit
A vote is not an endorsement, stop treating it like it is.
Yeah, he should, and if he doesn’t, you still have to vote for him anyway, because the alternative is necessarily worse.
It absolutely sucks that Democrats are able to make zero effort and get votes based solely on the fact that they aren’t Republicans, but that’s the way it is. Vote in primaries, fight to make Republicans adopt better policies so that Democrats have to react, and vote blue in November, because the alternative is half the people in the community we’re arguing in going to fucking jail for being trans.
Okay. Don’t vote blue, and contribute to the eradication of LGBT folks in this country. Be proud of the fact that you didn’t do anything to prevent it when they get rounded up and sterilized.
Then you get someone pro genocide anyways, but you get to hold your head real high when your friends die because they had an etopic pregnancy. Good job.
And all those people who don’t have anyone to take care of them? Oh that’s right, you don’t actually care about them. You only care about making yourself feel good.
of course I do. how bad faith would it be for me to accuse you of not caring about the people in Gaza? or the people who can’t discharge their student debts?
The difference is I am trying to minimize the harm done and you are not. If biden doesn’t win then trump does, that’s the reality. The fate of the people in Gaza are not what this election dictates. No matter who wins the people in Palestinian (my people) will continue to be bombed. But you know what is effected by the winner? The fate of the women who need abortions and the fate of many trans people. That is what gets decided by this election.
You’re not doing what you can to minimize the harm done, you are allowing through inaction the worst outcome.
The election will end with either trump or biden winning. If you don’t vote for biden you are helping trump by making it easier for him to win.
If 10 people vote and 5 go to Trump and 5 go to biden then you’ve avoided a Trump victory and allow for another round.
If in that 2nd round a person who voted for biden decides to go 3rd party now trump has 5 votes biden has 4 and the 3rd party has 1.
The person who switched to 3rd party helped Trump win along with the 5 who voted Trump. If you don’t understand that then you’re being purposefully obtuse. Or you could explain how that 3rd party vote didn’t help Trump without responding with a thought terminating cliche
the only votes that help Trump are votes for trump. a vote for Jill Stein or cornel west is a vote against Trump. a vote against Trump doesn’t help Trump.
your scenario presumes I would vote for Biden. I did that once in 2008. I haven’t voted for a Democrat for president since and I won’t be voting for Biden this year either.
What does this mean? You’re going to give abortions for your friends because they can’t legally receive the life-saving medical care they need from doctors?
You know how often this sort of thing used to kill people? You’re cool having that blood on your hands?
Women dying of ectopic pregnancies, Mexicans being murdered at the border, and trans kids being beaten to death at their own schools might disagree about that.
But at least you can pretend that you did something to help, by doing nothing.
No, it’s not, unless you specifically decide to define the words to mean the same thing. A vote is simply a choice between two or more options. Voting for someone is not a way of showing approval of them, it’s a way of saying that given the available options, one of them is preferable to the other, in much the same way that an appendectomy is preferable to dying from appendicitis. Anyone would rather do neither, but when you have appendicitis, neither isn’t an option.
Biden isn’t pro genocide, at least there is no evidence to say that. The Biden administration has been against the ground invasion from the start.
Biden has made some missteps in my opinion, but America pulling support for Israel was never a real option. Israel does require aid, but Netanyaho doesn’t care if that aid comes from the US, or from his buddy Putin. Israel realigning with Russia would put Palestine in an even worse position because it would threaten their support from Iran.
Then, of course, there is the risk of a regional war breaking out of Iran takes the strained relationship between the US and Israel as an opportunity. That could easily pull other countries in and become WW3.
Foreign policy is about more than just virtue signaling. It’s outcomes that matter, and what a lot of people are calling for will not get them the outcomes they are looking for.
Not that I’m shaming anyone for pressuring Biden. The positive movement on aid shipments was very likely helped along by the protest votes in Michigan.
Israel does a lot of research and innovation for US technologies, including weapons. That would be of great value to Russia. I can’t speak as to what weapons the US can and can’t lock.
All of this is in a kind of unrealistic realm, because US support for Israel isn’t going anywhere.
You are on a different and better level. You are a Chad consequentialist. Managing probabilities, shooting for the best outcomes, minimizing losses. Setting up the group of ideologically aligned leaders for future success. Fighting off fascism for four more years against all odds.
They are a weak feelings voter. Hopes Biden senpai will notice them and throwing a temper tantrum when he doesn’t. Talks about genocide, but doesn’t actually care if Trump will handle the genocide any differently than Biden. Wants everyone else to suffer because they are suffering. Hoping if Trump gets elected that someone else will do the hard work and fighting to fix everything. Is burned out on politics, but instead of not voting quietly, makes big posts about how not voting is actually a good and very smart idea because they can’t handle the fact that they need to rest.
Imagine Trump wins, starts doing the shit he is saying he will do and the outcome is a civil war. I think Israel would stop being something the US would think about. And then the genocide stops… At least in one direction. But given the bad blood there is now there…
I think Israel would stop being something the US would think about. And then the genocide stops…
I don’t think Israel would stop doing what they’re doing just because support stops from the US. They still have a lot of support from Europe and their own resources besides. They’re a nuclear power, they have however much leverage they want.
The US should cut ties to at least partially absolve itself of responsibility for the genocide, but Palestine is not going to be saved until some global power is willing to stand with Palestine against Israel.
This is the stance I really don’t understand. You do know that if Trump wins, even the limp-wristed calls for constraint go away? That Trump will actively encourage and endorse the genocide? That things will get measurably worse for the Palestinians?
I really do want to understand how people who hold this particular position think not voting for Biden will improve the lot of the Palestinians. Please, enlighten me.
I won’t vote for someone who’s pro genocide. It’s pretty simple.
People who aid and abet genocide don’t get my vote.
Biden’s not changing course, so he clearly thinks he can win just with the votes of people who are okay voting for a pro-genocide candidate. That’s his call to make.
This year, it’s a choice between a person who’s funding a genocide while applying (admittedly limited) political pressure to restrain Israel, and a person who’s publically stated that he supports the genocide and thinks it isn’t going fast enough, and who would increase funding to increase the speed of the genocide.
By not voting for the former, you are implicitly endorsing the latter (saying, he’s just as hood as the former), and are culpable if he is elected - the definition of moral evil includes inaction. Sitting this one out because you like neither candidate is a moral evil, since one candidate is categorically worse (genocide-wise) than the other.
Biden has agency here. He could very easily get my vote, but chooses not to. He’s making conscious decisions with expectations to how people will receive them. That leaves us with two possibilities, which I alluded to earlier:
He cares more about genocide than winning the election.
He thinks he can win without the anti-genocide vote.
If it’s 1, I don’t want him as my president. If it’s 2, he’s not expecting my vote and nor shall he get it.
I’m sorry, it’s probably considered some sort of a smug European truism by now, but I have to say it. There is no left in the US two-party system. It’s right or center-right, that’s the choices you have, a giant douche or a turd sandwich.
There is but you have to think of each party as having sub-parties within them. There aren’t external coalitions between parties but internal coalitions within the parties.
So a guy like Bernie Sanders is left, though not technically a Democrat, he caucuses with the Democrats effectively creating a coalition. There are many members within the Democratic Party that are also left wing, and others that are center, and others that could be considered right wing.
The Republicans are similar, but have an internal coalition with the far right MAGA faction. Which causes them a lot of problems.
The primary system is effectively a run off system which is used to determine a final two candidates to vote for in the final election. This system is old and has some bizarre traditions and has vulnerabilities to there being a third party spoiling everything.
Obviously it’s a crusty system that developed without planning, but the the Presidential election it’s not that dissimilar to France’s run-off system, just takes more time. And the legislatures having coalitions between people with different politics happens everywhere, it’s just happening within the parties and requires people to vote in primaries to get more representatives that have similar views to their own to make up a greater percentage of the coalition (which also happens everywhere).
In fact having coalitions within a party gives people more information when voting. If I’m voting for one of a dozen parties I don’t have a say over how a coalition is formed after an election. Someone declaring which coalition they intend to be a part of before the electorate votes gives the electorate both a say as to which individual they want (via primaries) and which coalition they want (in the general election).
This isn’t true in a global sense, nor is it true in a practical sense. There is a left in America, but it is tiny and rarely successful. Most liberal democracies are to the right of American Democrats at the global level on most issues. Every country has drifted rightward over the past half century, so the US isn’t unique.
It can be both true that there is no true Left with any political power in the US - individual congressional delegates, maybe, but no coalition or party - and still recognize that there remain differences in the parties and differing outcomes from their governance.
It’s not anything like the Southpark situation; leftists forget so easily what could - and has - been lost under conservative leadership, that would not have been lost if the person who won the popular vote in the past 6 elections. Women would still have protected body autonomy in all states - that loss was a direct consequence of the Trump administration.
I live in a red state so it doesn’t make any difference who I vote for. I’m not voting for Biden because I don’t want to support the Democrats and my vote doesn’t matter anyway. If I lived in a state where it mattered then I would probably vote for Biden because he’s not Trump.
that’s totally fair…
depending on how red it is, some states do flip, especially with redistricting…
ive voted third party in a super blue state before… but against trump, i even swallowed my vomit and voted for hillary
i have a trans child, and i don’t want them put into a concentration camp for sneezing in a school zone or whatever they’re cooking up in Project 2025…
Please still vote though! At least rest of the way down the ballot. The more local the office the more weight your vote has. Plus there is legislation to vote on. Sorry if you were already planning to, this was also more for anyone who agreed with the sentiment and will stay home.
Agreed. Local candidates and referendum votes are often more directly impactful to local communities.
Things like legalization of weed, protection of abortion rights, and ranked choice voting usually show up as referendum votes. And when it comes to how homelessness, police, financial aid, schools, etc. in your area are managed, that’s all local politics.
Exactly!!! Locally they are trying to recall a school board member for basically being liberal. Mask mandates, covid policies, some sort of race related class or club… you know the real egregious stuff. That’s really where conservatives are more active too.
Yeah, if you’re on probation or parole you’re not allowed to drink (or use marijuana, or any other illicit substance). The cops in PA will randomly raid bars looking for probationers and parolees. That shit was annoying for those of us that were trying to have a good time at Karaoke
I’m having a tough time trying to read that, the first part is obviously 「ミスター スパーコル!」 (“misutā supākoru!”/mister sparkle) but the second part is hard to read, I think it says 「ハワー ワリーソ!」(“hawā warīso!”) but it doesn’t make any sense to me. Maybe the ハ is just missing a handakuten and it’s supposed to say “pawā”/power? But idk what the second one is supposed to be. Maybe クリーン (“kurīn”/clean)? But that’s a stretch.
For most of the existence of human species (according to the scholarly consensus of anthropologists) we existed in bands of adults who would intermingle freely. Adolescent men would raid nearby tribes and kidnap their young women, which is the means by which genes were exchanged between tribes.
All the monogamy and licensing happened after agriculture and the great leap forward once tribes became big enough that infectious diseases were no longer contained through pure isolation. We see the misogynistic trends rise in late Hellenic periods and then Christianity cranked it up to eleven, so now we imagine even our migrant hunter-gatherer ancestors paired off.
As a note, during the middle ages, it was super important among aristocracy to assure ladies-in-waiting were virginal before they were wed, and then used purely as heir machines, but the serf class routinely banged like bunnies in springtime. And while frowned upon by the more piety-minded clergy, it was generally ignored because a) Child mortality was something awful and every kid that ever reached majority was to be celebrated, and b) The labor shortage was extreme everywhere. There was always way too much stuff to be done, and so every pair of hands was welcome, even when they were attacked to an idiot, a malformed hunchback, a ne’er-do-well or the bastard progeny of a mixed coupling.
Curiously, as we see in the birth of Mordred, pre-Christian European traditions included suspending adultery limitations during holidays, which happened at least once a season, sometimes twice. So even in societies where monogamy was the norm, there was a defined space for getting a bit on the side. (Useful when your partner was infertile.)
even when they were attacked to an idiot, a malformed hunchback, a ne’er-do-well or the bastard progeny of a mixed coupling.
The serfs probably become more fit than the nobility over time because they had far more evolutionary pressure and diversity. The bloodline rules limited the nobility more than anything. One capable person doesn’t change much genetically in the grand scheme of things. Nepotism and inequality are anti-meritocratic.
Yeah, adolescence is weird, and some of this is guessing based on other primates. Gorillas, for example, evict familiar adolescent females shortly after puberty while welcoming strange adolescent females, which informs how we model the behavior of pre-agriculture migratory human tribes.
(I should add we don’t presume that it was the same everywhere either, so it’s quite possible that some prehistorical humans had different means of managing their teens than sending the boys off to wage war and letting the girls get kidnapped in kind by raiders. Once we go that far back, we have to rely on archeological data, which is very selective in the tales it tells.)
So then, there are some powerful goddesses in early Hellenism, for instance, Aphrodite (commonly a goddess of love and beauty), evolved from Astarte (Lover, Healer, Hunter, Warrior) who developed from Ishtar. In fact, when Aphrodite emerged from the sea foam on Kytherian beaches, Phoenician traders were coming to the Kytherian harbors, not only bringing goods and their own goddess, Astarte but also the modern Greek alphabet (before which the locals were using Linear B). So we have a path from Ishtar and this major poly-faceted goddess being reduced to a love goddess, who is then married to Hephaestus (the crippled forge) to put her in her place.
Also curious to me is Dread Persephone who ruled the dead and the underworld long before Hades appears on scene. (Poseidon was the Olympian in Chief, and we see part of his gig in creating biodiversity, not just all the creatures of the sea, but also those of the land). Zeus and Hades were added late in the game, and the stories we have of Persephone, specifically of the abduction of Persephone from Demeter and the thing with the six pomegranate seeds comes from a single poem. Even then, winter comes not because Persephone is gone, but because Demeter is sad about it, and stops doing her job. So Persephone’s role is to be mom’s co-dependent emotional-support assistant during springtime, and go back to attending the dead.
So here we have two examples of powerful goddesses that influenced the Hellenic people and culture who are then shoved backstage with the addition of Zeus and Hades.
There’s a similar event that I remember from Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson regarding Asherah, the consort to Adonai / Elohim / Yahweh. Asherah was always the ambitious one between the two, and the Canaanite temples to her were bigger and more numerous than the ones to Adonai. Eventually an ideological rift developed and the Hebrews raided all the Asheran temples, massacring the acolytes and burning them to the ground. The whole don’t boil a calf in the milk of its mother thing (which informs the separation of meat products and milk products in kosher diet) is a specific reference to an Asheran ritual meal, I think for weddings, but I’m not sure.
While I can’t speak to whether misogyny is innate, I can say we’ve had periods in which goddesses were accepted alongside gods and in some cases were on top of the pantheon. We don’t talk much about Gaea anymore even though in Hellenism she created everything on earth long before Poseidon was tinkering with horses. I think there’s a division between Dionysian culture and Apollonian culture which parallels the shift from chthonic religion to celestial religion. (Chthonic gods are not to be confused with Cthonian gods, who are 20th century, and definitely celestial).
I can say that in the middle ages and the domination of Christianity, women were completely unpersoned and regarded as chattel beasts (despite their capacity to think and talk, both of which was discouraged). Even Mary, mother of Jesus was not even given due recognition until the 12th century.
The Roman historian Livy writing around 0 AD attests to “the rape of the Sabine Women”, wherein the founders of Rome kidnapped and raped women from surrounding villages, which may just be mythological but is likely a factor in this concept being so prevalent.
As a constrast, though, Madagascar was settled by a mix of Bantu and Indonesian (Austronesian) people, and genetic analysis suggests a founding group of at least 30 women from Indonesia, who almost certainly weren’t stolen from across the Indian Ocean.
This is incredibly common in SF. Many people live in co-ops and it’s created an entire subculture where they coordinate large parties and events both within the co-op and with other co-ops. It’s gone beyond necessity and become preferred by some because they enjoy living with lots of others. Not my thing, but many friends live in co-ops and love it.
Work TV is on the local news channel but the sound is off. Guy is watching the girl presenter. When the commercial comes on he says “Man, that weather girl is hot.”
I tell him she’s hotter than he realizes.
He asks how can she be hotter than he knows.
I tell him that she was doing a traffic report, not the weather.
I’m a bit dense as well, so you’re among friends (not sure I fully get ur reply, tbh)
I was mostly piggybacking on your popular comment to poke fun at people that seem to take their choice of OS a bit too seriously. That “as well” at the end feels odd; it was meant more like the “too” at the end of “and I probably would’ve got away with it too.”
tho I still think that being passionate about the things you care about (be that technical or social justice) is something wonderful. As long as you don’t go down the path of elitism
I had someone tell me that I was doing exactly that this weekend when I wrote a forum post and feedback submit to the company I buy my keycaps from for a 1.5u Tux or Logo key option rather than the windows 10 logo they currently offer.
I figure they’ll offer at least their logo as that’d sell really well (glorious, look em up for why), but having someone reply that I needed to not make Linux my whole life was weird
Do people actually use them like this? I’d assume its part of the joke, but then again I’m so old neither I nor my contacts use any emoji - we all “xD” and “:'D” each other like we did during the war I ought to tell you younglings about.
I think it’s those who didn’t grow up in the internet age and came here much later. What Gretchen McCulloch calles “Pre Internet People” in her book Because Internet. Meaning they grow up before internet and were introduced to it much later. Think of boomers who get their first smartphone because their son in law is afraid they get lost in the forest or something. You get the vibes.
So I think in this case it is part of the joke, making fun of older conservatives
My (very kind, sweet, wholesome) 70 year old boss at work uses a lot of emoji. Not to this extent, but more than one a text seems like a lot to me and he has used 4-5.
I use :) and :D really much (the former extremely much, like really in every second sentence). :( also sometimes. But there are also quite some Emojis I often use, especially 😅. And being on Discord, there are also many custom emotes like :KEKW: I frequently use.
I think “I’m so old” doesn’t make the most sense as reasoning, considering that especially Boomers and old people are often famous for over-using emojis.
files.catbox.moe
Top