Bougie_Birdie
@Bougie_Birdie@piefed.blahaj.zone
- Comment on Outcry after Call of Duty maker uses real footage of deadly Seoul crowd crush in new video game 1 week ago:
The article mentions that the clips are only seconds long for the opening, having not played the game myself I assume it’s a montage to establish mood while being narrated over. Filming would be prohibitively expensive for something that could use stock footage instead
I can’t say for sure, but I feel like they’ve taken a similar approach with other CoDs, particularly for historical conflicts like WW2, maybe some footage from Vietnam for a Cold War entry. Usually this doesn’t draw ire because it’s archive footage of an actual war used to show a ‘war is hell’ message
The backlash here seems to come from two points. One is the recency of the event which surviving family would still be mourning. The other is that this isn’t conflict footage, it’s a civil tragedy framed as warfare. This crowd crush was the deadliest mass casualty event Korea had seen in about 30 years
The use of footage where people are killed for the purpose of entertainment is in bad taste on the best of days. CoD has been frequently criticized as being propaganda and while I don’t agree that killing pixels turns people into monsters, having actual human deaths alongside it just feels wrong
Aside, the note about conservative politicians urging the prime minister to play this work of fiction as a way of fearmongering to prevent reconciliation with North Korea is truly disgusting
- Comment on Tim Sweeney Is Still Crying About Steam AI Disclosures 2 weeks ago:
He calls it an “anti-technology smear campaign”, and claims that it’s akin to Valve forcing developers to list their political affiliation, i.e. whether they vote Republican or Democrat
Billionaires and false equivalencies, name a more iconic duo
I mean, if we’re going to compare apples and oranges, how about with a metaphor that makes sense? Like how if you sell food you have to list the ingredients used
- Comment on It's a wonderful feeling 2 weeks ago:
During the remote work era it was a bit of a bummer that there were no more snow days
Now that we’re in the return to office era, does that mean we get snow days again? Fuck no, you can work from home those days
- Comment on How come fat chance and slim chance both mean the same thing? 2 weeks ago:
I read it this way too. It’s like how your biggest friend might be nicknamed Tiny
I don’t know that you can pin down the origin, but a quick search suggests it was early 20th century American English. That makes sense to me, it sounds like the sort of slang I’d hear in an old gangster movie
If you updated the slang for modern times I don’t know if it would have the same impact. If somebody told me I had a dummy thick chance, I’d think my odds are pretty good
- Comment on Memes that sums up my experience with 4 of Resident Evil's action focus ganes 2 weeks ago:
I think you would probably like Flesh Made Fear, it’s a recent favorite of mine that captures that old feeling. It was clearly made with a lot of love for the genre
There’s everything you love and hate about them: two characters with multiple endings, tank controls, inventory management, backtracking, limited saves, fixed angle perspectives, bad voice acting, judicious conservation of ammo, and you can even do a knife only run (but good fuckin’ luck)
There are a couple of goofs, and the voice talent for the antagonist clearly loves his job and could have been a major villain in Saturday morning cartoons. But the humour doesn’t distract from the mutagenic horrors that turned everyone you ever knew into a ravenous shambling low-poly corpse
- Comment on How can you telll the difference between a good defence lawyer and a bad one? 3 weeks ago:
What if they’re not wearing a tie at all?
- Comment on 5 weeks ago:
Imagine being the diversity hire for the gay bukkake. Just going around the set handing out high fives and attaboys
- Comment on Do creatives maintain relevance because lay people can't edit AI generated works? 5 weeks ago:
There’s also all those people who are rightfully pissed about AI who then call out human creators because they draw / write like AI. All the while, actual AI gen is getting more passable with each day
The situation is super lame
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Because people keep paying for blatant scams, terrible deals, and shit we don’t need in general. It’s why everything keeps getting so expensive, INCLUDING our necesities, and they won’t get cheaper until people stop buying. It’s why companies are allowed to get away with ripping us off or doing blatantly evil shit, and they’re not gonna stop until people stop buying.
I’d argue the reason why prices keep going up is due to the parasite class at the top squeezing people more with each passing day.
What do you view as people being smart with their money, like investments and bonds and stuff? I can’t afford groceries, I certainly can’t afford a 401k. Likewise, it’s rational to save for retirement, but with WW3 escalating, the climate crisis, and a general feeling that you might not live to see next week - people are going to ask what’s the point?
Although I will agree that the blame for rampant consumerism outside of necessities must lie at least partly with the consumers. It takes two to tango after all
More to your question: I’ve never actually heard someone use that phrase, but I have encountered the sentiment that someone can spend their own money however they see fit. That’s entirely true, and you’re not going to change their mind if you take an aggressive stance. If you call people stupid for spending their money on their own happiness then you’re not going to ingratiate yourselves to them and they’re just as likely to spend more to spite you, further entrenching their own opinion.
Gentleness, empathy, and education go a lot further in influencing people’s behaviour. Their opinion of how they spend their money feels correct to them, just as your opinion of how they spend their money feels wrong to you. In any conflict you have to allow that your opinion isn’t correct just because it’s your opinion - either side usually does not have all the facts or perspectives
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Botting on youtube
Too many requests in a short period will get you an error 429 and blacklisted from youtube. If you’re not banned, you’ll be rate-limited because they don’t want people using up their bandwidth - ironic considering their business model
Alternatively, I’m pretty sure most Invidious instances will let you download any youtube video. You go to a website, search for the video, and click download. This is arguably easier if you’re not comfy on the command line
- Comment on Is there a place online where I can download or torrent the Path to 9/11? Will buy if necessary. That movie/show is kinda my white whale. 1 month ago:
A quick search shows it’s available on YouTube
I’m not sure of the legality / community rules for giving technical advice on piracy, but there are ways of getting your own copy
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Honestly, I find the pitch can be the hardest part about developing a game. You want to be able to describe your game in twenty seconds or less while still pointing to something unique about it.
It’s way easier said than done, but that’s the attention span you have to deal with sometimes. Many people take less than a second to decide if they’re going to pass on a game.
- Comment on How come when people report something to the mod's in a community a one person can take care of it? Instead shouldn't it be voted on to remove content by the majority mod team? 1 month ago:
Mods are volunteers, and therefore will moderate however they feel like. The needs of the community might influence what that looks like, but at the end of the day it’s whatever they want.
Reacting in a timely manner but also requiring a majority are both things that we want to see, but they’re also conflicting ideals. Depending on the size of the community it may be an impossible ask.
If a moderator oversteps, the rest of the mod team could take action. If you can’t trust a single moderator to moderate, then maybe they shouldn’t be a moderator.
It’s not a perfect system, but things rarely rare.
- Comment on Types of Game Developers 1 month ago:
Can you turn down the volume on your dog whistle? It’s giving me a headache
- Comment on What would be an interesting magical effect for a pineapple that is displayed but not eaten at a fancy dinner? 1 month ago:
Everyone who attends a party with a rented pineapple later remembers it as a classy affair. However, you lose the deposit on your rental
- Comment on Why do people refer to characters in movies by their actor's names? 1 month ago:
All of the reasons above, plus sometimes the character just doesn’t have a name
When I’m talking about They Live, the protagonist is literally unnamed. Rowdy Roddy Piper is credited as “Nada” but even that is never used in the film (Great movie btw, go watch it if you haven’t seen it)
Then sometimes the actor is far more famous than the movie was, or the character wasn’t very memorable, or whatever the case is. Particularly true if the actor is appearing as a cameo
- Comment on A new hero for Heroes of the Storm announced at Blizzcon! 1 month ago:
Huh, I guess that makes this announcement less surprising then
I hadn’t heard they’d taken the game out of maintenance. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard any news about the game, it’s like it dropped off the face of the earth
- Comment on A new hero for Heroes of the Storm announced at Blizzcon! 1 month ago:
For those who thought the game was already shuttered, HotS went into maintenance mode a few years ago - 2022 I think? Basically that meant that they weren’t actively developing it anymore, I think they stopped balance updates and only committed to patching major bugs or security vulnerabilities.
Of course, they never stopped taking your money if you wanted to buy their boosts.
This news has me conflicted. On the one hand, HotS was my favorite MOBA - it does several things right that other games in the genre consistently fail at and they took some major chances on unique character designs. On the other hand, I wouldn’t piss on a Blizzard exec to put out a fire, I don’t even want to play their free games
- Comment on Why are lemmings so touchy about downvotes? 1 month ago:
I came here to say this
Maybe it’s the communities I’m in, but it sure seems like the fediverse skews autistic. Not only is RSD quite common in autistic people, but a lack of social grace is also pretty normal
- Comment on Italian place in South Africa, which means "counterfeit" in Italian (correct me if I'm wrong) 2 months ago:
So if that regularly happens, and it still goes to shit, does that make the fugazi snafu fubar?
- Comment on 2 months ago:
I’m not an expert on the global legality or anything, but it looks like DNS is handled by ICANN
Even though they’re a global group, ICANN is headquartered in the USA, which means they’re probably obligated (legally, not morally) to carry out the block
It’s still bullshit, but it is what it is
- Comment on How do I identify someone who has deleted their post? 2 months ago:
Was this the one about video games playing it safe?
I wrote a rather detailed reply and it was deleted before I got to post it. Super lame
- Comment on Day 764 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 2 months ago:
Can I just say: love the outfit, it’s iconic
Peak OSRS drip right there
- Comment on Not to arm chair general it. How come the US doesn't get a bunch of helicopters over to the Lincoln with food meds and whatever? How did it get this bad where we can't supply our own ships? 2 months ago:
There’s about 400 beans in a one-pound can, and a blackhawk has an internal cargo limit of 2600lbs. It could alternatively carry a 9,000lb load via sling.
That’s either 1,040,000 or 3.6M beans
Of course, some of that is going to be in packaging, and the average dried bean is about half the size of a ready-to-eat bean. I’m guessing you could make it between 4-10 million beans depending on how you want to optimize
- Comment on What's your MarioKart character and why? 2 months ago:
Dry Bones, because just like real life, if you call in DOA the boss will still want you to show up
- Comment on Is it just the norm now-a-days for grocery stores to have lots of stuff on the shelves that's past the best-by date? 2 months ago:
That’s a bummer. The industry gets by on misrepresenting its product, so I guess that doesn’t really surprise me
- Comment on Is it just the norm now-a-days for grocery stores to have lots of stuff on the shelves that's past the best-by date? 2 months ago:
This is often a symptom of a razor-thin labour budget. Management tends to view rotation as a cost, and any cost that can be ignored probably will be.
If the milk is off so quickly past the best-by date, I’d imagine they’re having trouble with either the fridges not keeping temperature, or literally stocking the shelves in a timely fashion. I’ve been places where pallets of frozen food keep getting taken out of the freezer and can sit out for hours while it’s being worked. I’ve had management tell me it’s fine as long as it’s less than four hours - the generally accepted safe maximum time limit - and they fail to realize that’s a cumulative time per product.
Here’s a complaint form. Apparently Hy-vee is employee-owned, so they might actually care to do something about that.
- Comment on How to deal with people who obtusely miss your point on Lemmy? 2 months ago:
It’s acute philosophy
- Comment on Saber CEO scorns writer who says she was fired in favor of AI with confusing, combative statement 2 months ago:
Dude says he asked AI who one of his employees was instead of reaching out to HR
Truly an example of trash humans failing upwards
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I think it’s normal and healthy, if it’s not taken too far. Same goes for mainstream religion.
Religion is ultimately about answering the unanswerable. Why are we here, the meaning of life, what happens after we die, that kind of thing. Nobody is able to answer these questions with evidence, so therefore any established religion has just as much credence as whatever you come up with yourself.
Denying objective reality or restricting the rights of others is where you have to draw the line though. That’s where things become weird.
Regarding mixing christian and pagan rites, there’s a fascinating history of how catholicism in particular incorporated pagan beliefs into their own pantheon. If it’s okay for them to pick and choose what to believe, then the same goes for everyone else too