loobkoob

@loobkoob@kbin.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I never noticed it was him in X-Men: Apocalypse⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Tom Cruise is an odd one for me. The idea I have of Tom Cruise is that he always plays the same character, is just a generic action star, etc. And then whenever I actually watch Tom Cruise in a film, I'm always really impressed by just how good an actor he is. But I still can't shake the idea I have of Tom Cruise.

  I have a similar issue with Brad Pitt, where my idea of him is that he's just a generic leading man, despite him almost always putting in a really strong, nuanced and varied performance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Government tells Britons to stockpile as part of emergency planning⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe the thinking is that three days is (hopefully) enough time for whatever issues to be resolved, or for you to look for other sources of supplies. You're not expected to stockpile enough to live on for months!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Megalopolis Teaser Trailer (2024)⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like no amount of trailers or reviews are going to give me an idea of what to expect from this film, and it feels like I'll probably not know what I think about it until several days after the credits have rolled.

  I'm not convinced it will be a good film, but it absolutely seems like a must-see for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Eurovision loses almost a quarter of UK viewers compared with 2023⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I saw an article on the Torygraph titled something like "I voted for Israel in Eurovision to spite the woke", and there were people in the comments talking about how they'd sent in 20 votes for Israel. And others talking about how "the left" are relentless bullies for making the Israeli singer cry, etc.

  I'm wouldn't be surprised if Israel did try to influence the votes, but I think there are plenty of right-wingers willing do do it for free, too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course, take your time! I think Blade Runner 2049 is such a deep and complex film that you have to let all the ideas percolate anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  PS, @Blaze, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, especially with the film being so fresh in your mind!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it's a film where most people are being objectified and in some cases pretty senselessly murdered! Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista's character) is senselessly murdered. Joe/K attempts to senselessly murder Deckard. Joe/K is left to die on the steps at the end of the film. Ultimately, I think it's less about any kind of gender divide and more that almost everyone is just a victim of extreme capitalism. Everyone is dehumanised in the name of profits. Everyone is made to compete with everyone else for what scarce resources remain. And that's especially true for the "secondary citizens" the film largely spends its time with - replicants, women, orphans, poor people. Slaves.

  If patriarchy and violence against women weren’t a problem or if the film were about those issues, then all good.

  I'd go so far as to say that patriarchy, violence against women and fertility are major themes of the film. With replicants existing, we see a world where women aren't needed to create life. With overpopulation and resource scarcity, we see a world where having children is less desirable anyway. The film's larger narrative focuses on Wallace, who is very much patriarchal himself and also representative of the patriarchal ruling class in the setting, wanting to discover how to make replicants reproduce because breeding replicants would be cheaper, quicker and easier for him than building them from scratch.

  Wallace is cruel, power-hungry, sadistic, and dreams of electric wombs - of a world where women aren't necessary (because he only sees them in terms of their "function") and he can play god. He's very much painted as the villain - one gory scene shows him quite literally see him cutting into where the wombs of female replicants would be because he sees their infertility as a failure and something that makes them worthless to him.

  Blade Runner 2049 goes far beyond using the sad prostitute and the destitute brothel to signify dystopia; it fully integrates them into its plot and takes a deeply anti-patriarchal stance.

  It feels like other options were available and, TBH, using female objectification/ownership/subordination/violence as a vehicle and marker for dystopia is perhaps lazy and trope-ish.

  I don't feel like it leans into them so much that they become tropes, personally, and I don't think men fare much better either. But while women's sex appeal is commodified - quite literally with pleasure models, the most clinical, corporate name possible for sex robots - we also see combat models and blade runners commodifying violence. Some of these roles are filled by humans doing what they can to survive in a capitalist system trying to crush them; others are replicants or AI literally designed and manufactured for those roles. I don't think any of them were used as markers for a dystopia so much as being part of the fabric of the world, the story and the themes.

  For me, as much as I like the film, I don’t think it’s story and point quite get to the point of making what happens to women in it feel justified in our current era.

  I really don't think what happens to men in the film is much better. The film is miserable for everyone in it - it's an equal-opportunity dystopia. The only person not being crushed by the world and the system is Wallace, and not only is he the oppressor (so, y'know, not much sympathy there...) but he also doesn't come across as too happy either.

  Perhaps a bit more like the story of the protagonist in BR 2049 (who’s of course male).

  Joe/K might be the main character of the film but he's not special, and that's the point. His entire character arc is that he starts off feeling like any other replicant - ie, not feeling much at all because of all the emotional suppression - before daring to hope that he might be special and becoming more and more in touch with his humanity as a result. As the story progresses, he becomes convinced that he is indeed special. And then it turns out he's not, and he decides to give up his life to help someone - a woman - and that is when he really becomes special.

  Almost everything that happens to Joe/K in the film is at the direction of women. His boss - the police chief - is a woman. The person who implanted his memories - and who is responsible for implanting all replicant memories - is a woman. The person who leads the replicant resistance is a woman. His direct antagonist in the film - Luv - is a woman. A lot of his emotional development comes from being prompted by Joi, a female AI. Almost everything that happens to Joe/K ultimately happens because of a woman, because they are the ones who are really playing the game around him.

  I think Blade Runner 2049 is a deeply, deeply feminist film. It doesn't shy away from depictions of female objectification/ownership/subordination/violence - they are important for telling its story and getting across its themes - but it sure as hell doesn't endorse them either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[IJustWatched] Blade Runner 2049. What do you think about it?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When I saw the film I had some female friends tell me they felt uncomfortable with objectification and portrayal of women in the film. And I can’t disagree. But I always felt that there was an underlying truth to the dystopia of the film that explained that objectification, though perhaps does not justify it.

  I think the film does justify the objectification, although it does still make me uncomfortable.

  Joi is sold as an object / product in the film. We see her advertised all over the place, and I think we are supposed to see her as an AI girlfriend and feel a little sorry for Joe, at least initially - he's replacing a real relationship with an object pretending/programmed to love him.

  And then we start to realise that that's not really the case. "Our" Joi has memories with him, and her personality with him is clearly different to the default personality we see in the advertisements. And so what if she's programmed anyway? - that doesn't make the feelings Joe has any less real.

  The main theme in the first Blade Runner, and still a major theme in 2049, is having the audience ask themselves "is a replicant really any different to a human, really?". The clearly have feelings and are defined by both those and their memories (implanted or real) in the same way "real" humans are, even if replicants were constructed. I can't help but feel that Joi, and AI in general, is the logical progression of that line of thinking - if an AI is bringing up memories, emulating feelings, etc, then should you treat them any differently to a human? And does the influence the AI has on humans' (or replicants', which I think we already established to essentially be the same as humans) feelings not mean that AI can have just as much value to humans?

  I think Joi being not just treated as an object in the story but objectified is kind of key to having people consider that. The first Blade Runner very much did the same thing but with replicants, and we've seen other media do similar with gender/race/sexuality/etc. It can be much more powerful to belittle/objectify/discriminate against a character and then tear that down and ask the audience to consider why it was wrong, than to just never bring it up in the first place.

  ---

  I also just think the dystopia is kind of the point and objectifying women is a part of that dystopia. The film doesn't revel in objectifying women but rather women being objectified is yet another thing about the film that highlights how dystopian it is. The film doesn't try to normalise it in real life or make you feel comfortable with it; it just presents it to you as something that's normal in the setting, similar to the huge amount of garbage, similar to the capitalist hellscape, similar to Las Vegas being an irradiated wasteland, similar to replicants being hunted down, similar to Joe being a replicant... Very little about the film is meant to be aspirational or comfortable - the opposite, in fact - and singling out the objectification and portrayal of women just feels a little odd to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come liberals dont hate conservatives the way conservatives hate liberals⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can just say “well they’re stupid that’s what you get” or you can ask yourself why aren’t we getting these people on board while some greasy billionaire can?

  I don't necessarily like to just dismiss people as stupid, but a lack of education and the ability to understand complex issues is both a big issue for these people and a reason why the greasy billionaires can get them on board. Convincing someone that them paying some of their money into a union will actually result in better working conditions and more money for them - rather than just being poorer - is a lot harder and takes more understanding on their part than someone convincing them there's less money to go around because there are more immigrants, for instance.

  On top of that, people like to be able to absolve themselves of personal responsibility if they are given the option to. That's not exclusive to right-wing people, but when that's coupled with people wanting simple "explanations" because they don't understand more complex systems with all their consequences, knock-on effects, etc, it makes it easy for right-wing politicians and media to offer simple scapegoats and get people on board.

  To use the immigrants example again: not only is it not your average right-wing voter's fault in any way - it's the immigrants' fault - but also, they don't personally need to do anything to fix the issue, they just need to let the right-wing politicians get into power and it'll all be solved for them. It's all very comforting for them - much more so than being told it's going to take ten years and some work on their part to improve things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BREAKING: Microsoft has closed Redfall's Arkane Austin, HiFi Rush's Tango Gameworks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda. | IGN⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I'm definitely a little confused about Tango - I'm hoping we'll at least get more details come out about why Microsoft shuttered them. I mean, Ghostwire Tokyo was... whatever, and I could understand Microsoft not wanting to have them working on that kind of scale again any time soon. It wasn't bad by any means, but it was fairly expensive and perhaps didn't do as well as they hoped. But I'm surprised they didn't want to just downsize the studio and aim for another HI-FI Rush-esque game (or sequel).

  But Arkane Austin being closed definitely makes sense. Not only was Redfall a disaster, but by the time Redfall released, 70% of the people who'd worked on Prey had left the studio. (Largely because the studio's president had left the studio just after Prey, I believe, rather than because of the Microsoft acquisition of Bethesda.) All that was really left was the name.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come liberals dont hate conservatives the way conservatives hate liberals⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Those underlying issues are what left-wing people are trying to resolve already, though - wealth inequality, poor mental health, too much power in the hands of corporations and the mega-rich, removing outrage politics, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Garry's Mod to remove ALL Nintendo content from the Steam Workshop due to takedown⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don't think the Steam Workshop is the issue here. I'm glad it exists, and direct downloads or snv links are still a reasonable alternative for mods that can't be hosted on the Workshop for whatever reason.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Parents with genuinely good looking sons but mostly daughters. How do you make sure they don't build their whole personality around looks?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Those are the best kinds of compliments in general, I think, whether it's a parent complimenting their child, someone flirting, a platonic compliment, or whatever else! Compliment things that are within their control and that they can feel pride over and it feels a lot more meaningful.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cities Skylines 2: "Beach properties assets are all gone and my city is screwed. Thanks a lot."⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It's okay; I appreciate the apology! :)

  I think it's important to look for the nuance in situations and not treat everything as zero-sum. Both sides can have good points and be open to criticism at the same time (this isn't an "enlightened centrist" take, I promise!). I think a lot of discussion online does tend to strip away nuance and take the position that if you show any empathy with one side then it means you must hate the other - I do my best to avoid that!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bugs me when audiobook series do this⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is the fully casted radio version not the best version to listen to anyway?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cities Skylines 2: "Beach properties assets are all gone and my city is screwed. Thanks a lot."⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  these people SHOULD be putting this negative pressure on them. It’s deserved

  Was it not implied I agree with that when I said:

  The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

  and;

  • customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable

  • people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable

  I'm not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it's obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I've not played it myself) and should be improved.

  ?

  I don't see why that would make my opinion stupid. Yes, the studio/publisher should be held to account for the crappy release. But a big part of holding them to account should be not giving them money for it in the first place; not just handing over money and then complaining afterwards. Complaining afterwards is reasonable for the people who did hand over money, but they should also hold themselves accountable for financially rewarding a company that puts out a crappy product - they're part of the problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cities Skylines 2: "Beach properties assets are all gone and my city is screwed. Thanks a lot."⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.

  • it's hard to feel sorry for people who pre-ordered because they got exactly what they paid for - a game of unknown quality and quantity of content
  • it's hard to feel sorry for people who bought post-release because they also got exactly what they paid for - a game where reviews detailed poor quality and quantity of content
  • customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
  • people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable
  • people abusing the devs is not reasonable

  I'm not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it's obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I've not played it myself) and should be improved. But I do think gamers could learn to be a little more responsible with their purchases and inform themselves before buying a game.

  I'm pretty over the whole cycle of games coming out and not meeting expectations, people buying them anyway (through pre-orders or day-one purchases), people being unnecessarily rude/hostile/sending death threats to developers as if they were forced to buy the game as gunpoint. Yes, developers should try to do better, yes publishers should often give developers more time to polish up games rather than announcing the release date two years in advance and refusing to delay, but also consumers could really take some responsibility for what they decide to give money to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Film preservationist Robert Harris defends controversial James Cameron 4K restorations of Aliens, The Abyss and True Lies⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree that keeping the original versions is important, even if it's just in a vault somewhere.

  And people should have choices over whether they want a version that’s just the high quality scan only, or whether they want the AI upscale version.

  It would certainly be nice for people to have that choice, but I guess it's up to the creator(s) whether they want to offer that choice. I agree it sucks for consumers to not be able to (legally) access older versions any more, but I also think it's fair enough for artists to no longer sell their works if that's what they want.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Film preservationist Robert Harris defends controversial James Cameron 4K restorations of Aliens, The Abyss and True Lies⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I'd agree that just taking the raw output from an AI and putting it out without any changes probably isn't going to go well. But I don't think there's any harm in a human using it as a tool - much like you using "fuzzy select" in Photoshop doesn't have any effect on someone's judgement/appreciation of your end result. Because ultimately, to the audience, the result is the important thing, not the process. 99% of people aren't going to care how it was done, just that they like how it looks.

  I also see no point in "re"storing art to a higher quality or resolution than it originally was. That seems like wasted effort which could have been directed toward a sequel.

  I don't see it this way, personally. I've definitely seen films where dated special effects or other technical aspects can break my immersion. I'm not someone who'll refuse to watch old films, but it doesn't necessarily mean I don't appreciate things being updated to meet more modern technical standards (ideally the old versions will be preserved, though) if the original artistic vision can be upheld (or even executed on even better than at the time).

  As for directing that effort towards a sequel, I think there are plenty of reasons why they might not want to. Maybe they don't have any further stories they want to tell with the characters or setting. Maybe the actors don't want to be involved. Maybe they have an idea but can't get a good script going. Maybe they can't get financing. A couple of people going through upscaling/restoring the film is very different from creating a new film!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Film preservationist Robert Harris defends controversial James Cameron 4K restorations of Aliens, The Abyss and True Lies⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don't think AI assistance is inherently bad. The issue is when they just call it a day without checking it over and making their own adjustments afterwards.

  We've seen plenty of terrible AI upscaling, but I'm sure there's also upscaling and restoration that's been done with AI assistance where no-one's even noticed the fact that AI was used because it was used well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There certainly was some actual "ethics in video game journalism" discussion early on that I felt was legitimate, but that got drowned out pretty quickly by the misogynists (which, from what I gather, was the entire point - it seems the misogynists started the whole thing and used the "ethics in game journalism" thing as a front to try to legitimise their agenda).

  I think the discussion about the personal relationships game journalists have with developers in general was a reasonable one to have. It unfortunately ended up just laser focusing on Zoe Quinn supposedly trading sex for good reviews, which was untrue, sexist and resulted in nasty personal attacks. But I think it was worth at least examining the fact that game journalists and game developers often have close relationships and move in the same circles, and that game journalism can often be a stepping stone to game development. Those are absolutely things that could influence someone's reviews or articles, consciously or subconsciously.

  And another conversation worth having was the fact that gaming outlets like IGN were/are funded by adverts from gaming companies. It makes sense, of course - the Venn diagram of IGN's (or other gaming outlets') readers and gaming companies' target audience is almost a perfect circle, which makes the ad space valuable to the gaming companies. And because it's valuable to gaming companies, it's better for the outlets to sell the ad space to them for more money than to sell it to generic advertising platforms. But it does mean it seems valid to ask whether the outlets giving bad reviews or writing critical articles might cause their advertisers to pull out, and therefore they might avoid being too critical.

  Now I don't think the games industry is corrupt or running on cronyism, personally. And I certainly don't believe it's all run by a shadowy cabal of woke libruls who are trying to force black people, women (and worse, gasp black women shudder) into games. But I do feel it was worth asking about the relationships between journalists, developers, publishers and review outlets - and honestly, those are the kinds of things that both game journalists and people who read game journalism should constantly be re-evaluating. It's always good to be aware of potential biases and influences.

  The fact that the whole thing almost immediately got twisted into misogyny, death threats and a general hate campaign was both disappointing and horrifying. And the fact that it led to the alt-right, and that you can trace a line from it to Brexit and to Donald Trump becoming US president, is even worse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Last Epoch 1.0 Patch Notes⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  1.0 is getting a "true offline" mode where there won't be any chat (and where a connection isn't required for server authentication). Personally, I quite like the chat and the sense of community it brings (apart from when it's filled with "D4 bad") but I can see myself wanting it turned off if the game gets much more popular and attracts a more casual playerbase.

  Honestly, though, I feel like that's such a minor quibble to have - especially for a game still in beta. While Last Epoch obviously doesn't have the budget behind it that Diablo 4 or Path Of Exile has, I think it's done a great job of cementing itself as a worthwhile addition to the genre already. The developers have done a brilliant job of coming up with creative solutions to problems (both LE's own problems and problems that other games have suffered from) and I think they've laid a very strong foundation to continue to build upon going forward. The game is mechanically interesting, has probably the most interesting itemisation and by far the best crafting in the genre, and generally feels good to play.

  I agree that the art style isn't as strong as Diablo 4, Path Of Exile or Grim Dawn, but I think it looks much better than a cheap Unreal asset - especially with the lighting overhaul in 1.0. And I'm glad that it isn't just another dark fantasy setting; as much as I love those kinds of settings (Grim Dawn's, especially), having the more lush, vibrant style of Last Epoch makes for a nice change.

  It's not a perfect game by any stretch, but I think it's a very good game and I think it has a lot of room to grow going forward.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk says Tesla workers will be sleeping on the factory floor when new $25,000 EV goes into production next year⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  His brain's been rotted from all the interacting with 14-year-olds and bots on Twitter.

  He's always seemed unlikeable to me, but I do wonder how different a person he'd be if he'd never developed his Twitter addiction. I think he's very perceptibly become more narcissistic and shifted his personality to try to appeal to his Twitter worshippers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Piranha Bytes, devs of Gothic and Elex, are next on Embracer's chopping block⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Unfortunately, I doubt it'll have much of an impact. Most of the properties/studios Embracer owns aren't popular enough to get people to make noise about it. And people don't tend to see the bigger picture - especially when these stories about studio closures are trickling out rather than all happening at once. I'm sure there'll be a lot of talk about it if something happens to do with Gearbox/Borderlands or The Lord Of The Rings, or if multiple studios all get shuttered at once, but other than that, I expect it'll just be small stories that continue to fly under the radar.

  And regulators don't seem to care about video games unless people make noise. They get involved in things like loot box regulations or Microsoft acquiring Activision because those are big deals that almost everyone in the gaming sphere has an opinion on. But unfortunately, I don't see Piranha Bytes having issues or being closed getting enough attention for anything to change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Employees Say ‘Sizable Portion’ Of Gearbox-Owned Studio Has Been Laid Off⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You've got some good answers already, but I can expand on it a little: businesses in most sectors are feeling the impact of increased interest rates - both because they can't borrow as much themselves any more, and because there is less money coming in from investors because they can't borrow as much either - but tech (including games) is doubly impacted because there was such a surge in demand during lockdowns. While other businesses tended to struggle during lockdowns, and have simply had that struggle replaced with a different struggle due to the interest rates, the tech sector grew massively during the pandemic.

  People working at home, or furloughed, had more personal time and more disposable income because they weren't spending money on travelling to work, on overpriced lunches, on dining out with friends, going to concerts, etc. It all added up, and they spent that money on streaming subscriptions, video games and just generally on recreational, home-based activities, many of which revolve around tech these days. So the tech sector grew a lot because of the low interest rates, and it grew a lot because more people were buying its products/services. And now, rather than having more disposable income, a lot of people are facing a cost of living crisis, meaning not only have they reduced their spending because they're back in the office and dining out and going to concerts again (and all those other things people spend money on when they're not confined to their house), but many people have less money to spend on gaming, subscriptions, etc, than pre-pandemic.

  Also, because the tech sector was doing so well during the pandemic, it was an attractive prospect for investors (who themselves had increased money, as well as great interest rates), meaning it grew even more. Everything kind of fed into each other and the tech sector grew exponentially as a result. Whereas right now, not only does the increased interest rate for borrowing mean investors are throwing their cash around less in general, but the fact that the tech sector is struggling makes it a less attractive prospect for investors, meaning the whole sector kind of doubly loses out on that front.

  So these tech companies invested their money into growing their companies and expanding their businesses' scopes like good capitalists. Which does generally make sense - if you find yourself sat on a huge pile of money, it's generally better to find a way to invest it into something useful (or to invest it into something makes you an even bigger pile of money if you see the Monopoly Man as aspirational). The issue is, most of them were somewhat short-sighted (plus global economics is a tricky thing to predict); they spent money as if it was always going to be coming in at the same rate. And now that they're being impacted by increased interest rates on their own borrowing, the loss of investors, and the reduced spending power of consumers and they're very suddenly having to make massive cuts to stay afloat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Trump and Biden both died today, what would happen?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  "Trump" is synonymous with "fart" in British English. Plenty of Americans already did celebrate and vote for a fart.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My phone's dictionary thinks the word "expanse" only exists as a show title⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My keyboard (Swiftkey) gets very excited about the possibilities when I start to hyphenate words to create compounds. It accepts that they exist, but it starts trying to throw all sorts of random suggestions in for what the second word could be (and it rarely gets the right word).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Square Enix’s president says it will be ‘aggressive in applying’ AI⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It absolutely is. Although, putting aside the obvious ethical debates, I will say that least AI has some practical uses. Crypto-currency and NFTs felt a lot like a solution looking for a problem, and while that can be true of some implementations of AI, there are a lot of valid uses for it.

  But yeah, companies rushing to use AI like this, and making statements like this, just screams that they're trying to persuade investors they're "ahead of the curve", and is absolutely indicative of a hype bubble. If it wasn't a hype bubble, they'd either be quietly exploring it externally and not putting out statements like this, or they're be putting out statements excitedly talking specifics about their novel and clever implementations of AI.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨God of War Creator Is Unhappy With New Games and Kratos' Story⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The last thing I saw regarding him was him being unable to comprehend how secret rooms in Metroid work. It was painful.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Shadow and Bone' canceled after 2 seasons, spinoff also scrapped⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I really liked the premise. I never got into Game Of Thrones purely because it felt to me like it relished the violence, gore, sexual abuse, cruelty, etc, too much. I'm not some puritan who's against stories featuring those things, but I don't enjoy seeing them constantly depicted in detail.

  Anyway, the idea Shadow and Bone being this fantasy show with in-depth politics without leaning too heavily into all that stuff was appealing to me. But yeah, it ended up just feeling rather tropey, flat, and very "young adult" (in a bad way).

  Also: hell yes to Andor! It's easily my favourite show from the past few years.