I don’t want to hammer on this really, because I think you mean well, but…

You’re not condemning the specific assholes who treated you poorly - you’re condemning “men” generally. Your point and your focus isn’t that they were assholes, but that they were men, as if that’s the actual problem - as if their failure isn’t being assholes, but simply being men.

I don’t know if that’s your actual view, but that is the way it comes across. And broadly, that view is part of the problem, since it alienates men who deserve no blame and diverts attention from those who do. And that’s exactly what I meant when I said that countering misogyny with misandry is a poor strategy.

but I feel that it is important to recognize and call out the misogyny element in this story

I don’t.

I think that countering misogyny with misandry is rather obviously a losing strategy.

I started off thrilled and impressed by the mere fact of a new The The song.

But it’s not even just a new song - as Matt Johnson has always done so well, it’s an unflinching look at the human condition, and spot on for the current era.

Wow.

This broad dynamic isn’t new and it isn’t unique either to gaming or to men. Every single creative volunteer community on the net is filled with assholes and drama llamas, of any and all genders. It’s just the nature of the thing. You see the same things over and over with game modding, cracking, romhacking, emulation, manga scanlation, anime fansubbing, vocaloid production, mmd modeling, fanfic, fanart, and so on and on.

People often (generally?) are willing to invest the time and energy into whatever it is that they’re going to post online at least in large part because they crave the attention they hope it will bring, and specifically, they want to be lauded for their talent and skill.

And that often runs up against the fact that an awful lot of the responses they’re going to get are going to come from self-absorbed and entitled assholes bitching because they don’t like whatever it is that they’re getting for free, and think they have to be accommodated.

And very often, the response from the creator, unsurprisingly really, is to effectively (or even literally) say, “Fine then - fuck you all. I’m done.”

And 'round and 'round it goes, and has from the start, and likely will never stop. It’s just an unfortunate but pretty much inevitable clash between a personality type that’s likely to create and share something online for free and a personality type that’s likely to comment on something somebody else created and shared with them for free.

I expected to be offended and/or astonished by a ridiculously transparent bit of sanewashing here, but you know… I think I actually might agree.

It does seem to be a valid point - Gaetz is a grotesquely destructive demagogue and Trump sycophant, but he’s also a buffoon, and that’s undoubtedly better than a grotesquely destructive demagogue and Trump sycophant who’s also a smart and devious and highly skilled politician.

Huh…

This is fascism 101.

Fascism is at least as much an economic system as a political one, or more precisely, it’s more like an economic system hiding behind a political system.

And the way the economic system works is very simple - private ownership of the means of production combined with an overt and institutionalized revolving door between business and government, so that the end result is plutocratic oligarchy.

Basically, it’s taking the system that already existed in the US, by which the wealthy bought access to political power mostly surreptitiously and nominally illegally unless they followed specific restrictions, and legitimizes and formalizes and institutionalizes it and moves it right out into the open.

And behind all of the white supremacist and christian nationalist and reactionary conservative rhetoric, this was always the real goal.

Given the opportunity, no, he’s not going to prosecute his foes. He’s going to have them killed.

But until he can count on getting away with that, he’ll have to, and will, settle for just prosecuting them.

Exactly what he’s doing is pushing for them to protect the scumbags he intends to appoint from the scrutiny that’s sure to expose just how scummy they are.

Huh.

I’ve been sort of idly wondering who was going to be the first “enemy” politician the Trump regime was going to kill.

I’d say McConnell just became the odds-on favorite.

Mmm… sort of.

In some very broad sense, yes, it’s corruption.

In a narrower and more precise sense though, it isn’t really, since “corruption” implies a violation of higher standards, which is what we’ve had, to a greater or lesser extent, pretty much throughout our history.

The difference in the coming era is that there will be no higher standards to corrupt. The things that were previously violations of higher standards will become the new standards. Theft and graft and cronyism will no longer be crimes or even (meaningfully recognized) wrongs - they will be the institutional norms.

And I don’t mean this as mere pedantry - the point is that when what used to be corruption becomes the overt norms, things will get much, much worse than they ever were or could be when they were still corruption.

Fascism is, at heart, at least as much an economic system as it is a political one, and broadly, more so.

Fascism, alongside its political control of the populace, establishes economic control of the populace, and it does it very simply, by organizing the government to serve businesses and the wealthy few who control them, and by establishing a revolving door by which a relative few are allowed to freely move between control of the two.

This is the underlying point of Project 2025, and specifically the reason for the planned purge of civil servants. They are to be replaced by people who can be counted upon to serve the interests of the wealthy few and to deny the interests of the rest of the populace.

Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side.

Those in power in those institutions, even if they don’t share the political goals of Trump and his coattail-riders, are driven by their own greed to at the very least not stand too much in the way, since they too expect to profit.

I predict… a corporate ass-kissing establishment hack with a focus on appealing to suburban professionals.

All I know is that Kagi triggered my scam alarms from the start, and moving into the browser market just made them ring even louder.

Gee whiz - who would’ve thought that creating moral hazard could have negative consequences?

What “us?”

I’m going to be right there alongside her, on my way to an execution too.

And so are you.

I wonder how she’s going to feel about this choice a few years down the line, when President-for-life Trump orders her execution.

Very much so (and there’s at least one patient gamers community around, because I’ve posted to one).

The only advantage I can see to playing a game on release is taking part in that first rush of interest, but I’m antisocial enough that that doesn’t appeal to me anyway, so I’m not missing anything there.

Beyond that, I think playing a game at least a year or so after release has all of the advantages. The initial flurry of absolute love vs. absolute hate has died down so it’s easier to get a broad view of the quality, the game is more stable, the price is better, dlc and expansions are out and generally packaged with the game, and best of all, in this current era, I can most likely buy it from GOG and actually have the full game, DRM-free, on my system.

And there are a bajillion good games out there, just waiting for me to discover them.

Guaranteed they are.

Even if he wasn’t a racist fuckwad on his own, he’s of a generation of white New Yorkers for whom being racist against Puerto Ricans was sort of a universal minimum.

In a statement to the Miami Herald, a Trump campaign spokesperson said that Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico does not “reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

Bullshit.

They didn’t book him by accident. They booked him for one and only one reason - so that he’d say things that they expected would appeal to Trump’s supporters.

And that’s exactly what he did.

Oh come on.

There will be no regional deal because Israel doesn’t want a regional deal. Israel wants to conquer the entire territory, from the river to the sea, and kill everybody who might stand in their way. And they’re not going to stop.