Honestly, if there were tight restrictions on how the footage is used and what cases it’s allowed to be turned over for, these are probably less dangerous than actual armed human beings running around. Robots don’t have a sense of egotism unless they’re programmed to, and hopefully wouldn’t be armed.

Knowing the kind of tech bros that seem to typically start companies like this, though? I could see it being an incredibly intrusive form of data mining. Seems like yet another case of technology that could be really helpful in the right hands, but a mess of enshittification in the hands of money-grubbing cap capitalists.

Having played Palworld a bit, some of the monsters are distinct from Pokemon, but some of them are incredibly obvious clones.

But like, looking back at some of the knock-off toys I remember seeing in the 80s and early 90s? It definitely seems like copyright has gotten more robust in its attempted overreach.

Mushrooms are pretty loud talkers, tbh. Just gotta listen to the right ones. 😂

This is the problem with spending millions of dollars on games and focusing on profitability over actual quality or expression. Video games are fundamentally an art medium. You can choose to make some uninspired cash grabbing trash, and can even make a whole company built around that and make profit. But are you going to make a great game that way? Probably not.

You’d be better off with half a dozen people with passion and a comparatively minuscule budget. You might have to scale back from ultra realistic graphics and massive explorable areas with dozens of voice actors, but I don’t really think that makes games any better anyway. A little 2d rpg with really basic pixel graphics can put a big project to shame if it’s made with passion and emotion.

I kinda like it. It’s better for some shows than others, but like, look at Curb Your Enthusiasm. It would pop up every now and then, only to fade back into the aether for a few years, then come around again. It never felt forced, or like it wasn’t within its own continuity when it came back. Some time just passed, and that was alright. I feel the same way about Red Dwarf. It comes, it goes, it comes back again. We love it.

You can’t force it. It’s one thing if delays are because of studios or rights holders blocking creators from getting their work out, but if it’s part of the natural process? The process is the product, and sometimes good work needs time to percolate, or ferment, or whatever metaphor you want.

Don’t try!

Given the responses in this thread, it seems that the same bias exists even in ostensibly leftist spaces. Yikes.

Y’all need to get out more.

I’ve had pretty decent luck with Notesnook. I wish they’d give it the capability to open multiple windows, but at least it hasn’t lost me any writing like Notion and Obsidian did.

I honestly loved it. Wish there was more.

It would be nice to see a decent show in the GoT universe again. Something that isn’t just all rich people planning who is married off to who and blah blah blah blah.

I would honestly bet money that if someone shows up to a BBQ and complains about what’s available, 9 out of 10 times it’s going to be someone who eats meat and is upset that there either isn’t their favorite meat or like, that there aren’t eggs in the potato salad or something. Not much money, because I’m broke, but I’d put like five bucks on it no problem.

I mean, you shouldn’t expect anything particular at a BBQ that you’re not bringing yourself or like helping with the planning of. Like, hamburgers and hotdogs are pretty standard, but if I showed up at someone else’s BBQ and all they had was ribs I’d be kind of an ass for whining about it.

But like… why are vegetarian options specifically a problem? Is this something that’s coming up? Is there like, a rash of vegetarians throwing a fit about it? Did someone get invited to a BBQ and ask if there’d be a veggie option? You know, like, so they could participate in a social event with their meat-eating friends?

This kind of stuff usually feels to me like people who eat meat and don’t want to think about the cost in suffering pointing a finger at people who abstain so they don’t have to think about it. Like, I personally do eat meat. I find that my brain functions better with a little animal fat than without. Buuut I’m also well aware of how much torture goes on in the process of making that meat, and I at least try to minimize the calorie to suffering ratio.

That’s not to say that I’m going to spend my days criticizing people who don’t choose to push against the horrific system of factory farming that supports our societal penchant for meat, but I do think about it. And I have noticed that certain meat-eaters seem to be pretty defensive about it, which generally translates into being shitty to people who don’t eat meat.

Posts like this coming unprompted certainly seem like that kind of defensive behavior to me.

Anyway, food for thought.

Sure. Something like a poorly configured sprite sheet could be an appropriate metaphor too. Personally, I have PTSD. For me it tends to manifest as getting wrapped up in memories and in grappling with thought patterns that make it hard for me to process them or that leave me struggling with how I feel as a result. A lot of my own stuff is very internal, and often comes in response to my trying to process trauma. I feel less like I’m tinting the world than struggling with buggy internal processes. Not to say that interpretation of outside stimuli (social stimuli in particular) isn’t also a factor, but it’s not the main thing for me.

Where you put the error, whether in interpretation or in execution, is largely beside the point, though, to my thinking. The main thing is that you’re looking at an error versus a choice.

I do think that a lot of these destructive and malicious behaviors could certainly be seen as being the result of toxic thought patterns and compartmentalization, but I don’t think that’s quite the same thing as a buggy, error-prone brain.

Like, somebody who drives around in a massive pickup truck ignoring traffic laws and bullying their way around knowing that people will fear being hurt by their vehicle and will avoid them is just an abusive, dangerous asshole. There may be some underlying insecurity or discomfort that leads them to react that way, but it’s the reaction they’ve chosen and habituated to. We can discuss free will all day, but there’s a big difference between the guy who runs stop signs in a 2 ton vehicle and someone whose depression keeps them stuck in bed. One of those things is a pattern of choice-related behavior, while the other is someone struggling to have the energy to exist.

The fact that many of us seem to have a hard time conceiving of anyone making these kinds of choices on purpose, to me, is simply illustrative of it being related to volition. They make different choices because they’re a different person, who sees things very differently. When the behaviors are taken to their extreme and other people are hurt, it can be harder to see the volitional difference, but at a simpler level I think it’s a little more obvious.

Does knowingly blasting everyone with your high-beams indicate mental illness? Does being rude to service workers? Littering?

The volition aspect here is pretty obviously different in someone who, for example, dumps their trash in a river rather than paying to have it removed. We may not know exactly what’s going on in their heads, but we can at least sort out that they probably don’t really care about nature or pollution or the people swimming down-river. I think it becomes a little harder to see in those more extreme behaviors because it’s so extreme, but I don’t think the fundamental nature is all that different.

Someone carrying out a murder is not, in type, fundamentally different from someone who merely doesn’t care if anyone gets killed by their 8ft tall truck. They’re different in degree.

While I think this is a reasonable sort of surface-level interpretation, I think it misses a bit of what typifies mental illness versus just being destructive, malicious, desperate, or extremely entitled.

Mental illness is something your brain is doing to you. It’s not just a thought that you have and roll with, it’s a persistent pattern that you struggle against. Just deciding that the thoughts and feelings being produced are inaccurate or unhelpful doesn’t make it go away. It’s not just extreme emotion, it’s emotion that’s being switched on in a way that isn’t tied into the continuity of your more volitional patterns of thought and feeling. It’s not just that the thoughts and behaviors playing out are unhealthy.

To put it into metaphor, think of your life and your interactions with the world like a video game, with your brain being essentially your character controller, interpreting your actions and bringing them into the world. You can decide to do healthy or unhealthy things with your character, but those things are under your own volition. Mental illness, then, is like a poorly coded character controller throwing errors and causing unforeseen bugs. Like, for example, if I push the down button there’s a 30% chance that I randomly move to the left first, rather than moving in the appropriate direction.

That 30% chance might send me careening into a pit, but chances are that once I’m used to having this bug, I’ll be aware enough of it to try to compensate. It might not always work, and I might drift a little left occasionally, but if I give myself a bit wider berth for any obstacles on my left, I’ll probably be okay. This is distinct from someone who uses their volition to throw themselves into a pit on purpose.

Are both potentially bad for the character’s health? Yes. But only one is caused by a character controller error, and because my goal isn’t ‘throw myself into pit’, I’ll probably do a much better job avoiding pits than someone who’s jumping into them intentionally. These two problems are fundamentally different in that one is a product of a person’s volition, while the other is a problem with the means by which they interact with the rest of the world.

That’s not to say that people with mental illness are going to accidentally assassinate someone because they pressed down and went a bit left, but it illustrates the fundamental difference in making a bad decision versus struggling with errors in your brain.

That someone jumps into a pit on purpose does not imply that their character controller is bugged, especially if they smoothly beeline it while showing all signs of acting with intention.

Rip 'em apart! Make them into 6 different companies with single letter names and force two sets of two to share their letter to fuck with their marketing!

Dino Land for Genesis was a lot of fun!

Honestly I mostly just know because I have a big stack of old Game Pros and Nintendo Powers from the 90s and I only ever remember seeing Game Informer in Barnes and Noble once those became a thing.

But you may still be right! xD

2006 is a bit late in the game. Game magazines as a relevant medium peaked in the 90s. By 2006 you have a pretty robust internet, what’s the point? Yeah, sure, if you stick them in every single B&N they’ll sell, but Game Pro and Nintendo Power were institutions in the 90s. If you wanted to know about games, that was the way.

Bummer. Game Informer was the leading game magazine when Game Pro and Nintendo Power were around, though? I think not. Game Informer was third fiddle at best.

Well yeah, that’s not what super hero movies are for. Honestly, having a Marvel movie in your top 20 is just a good argument for watching a lot more movies. They’re fun but they’re not profound or amazing or particularly artfully shot or anything.

For a Deadpool movie though? It’s perfect. It captures the chaos and reference-heavy nature of the Deadpool comics about as well as you could expect.

That’s cool! I only really do thumb-ball mice, though, and I haven’t really seen alternatives to Logitech in the same form-factor. I imagine they might even have a patent on it.

Buuuut I’m betting I can do stuff like repair the couple of MX Ergos I have lying around if I need to if I get motivated about it. Or like, maybe there’s a way I can have replacement parts fabricated or use the shell of a Logitech mouse as the basis for something similar.

You hear that Logitech? Charge me a subscription fee and I will absolutely figure this out and distribute blueprints and repair guides to the whole ass internet. I appreciate your ergonomics, your unifying dongles, your precision mode, and all your hotkeys, but $90 is plenty for a mouse. Don’t get greedy or I will personally bite you in the ass.