ProdigalFrog
@ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
- Comment on Men are generous 40 minutes ago:
Notice that the user who received the temp ban went on to complain about it, and even after other users explained why the memes were racist (including the zuckerberg post that you also agree is racist), the user dismisses the racism entirely and just says “not arguing everyone has to like the memes.” They are showing zero ability for self-reflection and refuse to acknowledge the memes were racist.
I still would’ve given a permaban based on the evidence at hand, were it my community. You can disagree with that and give them more and more chances, but posting one blatant racist meme which is indisputably racist (even you agree), shows that we’re not working with some innocent lamb who just isn’t keeping up with modern dog-whistles.
If someone had only posted the LOTR meme without that previous history, then I would give benefit of the doubt, and just remove it and explain why.
- Comment on Men are generous 3 hours ago:
Their previous history of racist posting was pretty clearly taken into account, it wasn’t some random nerd who happened to get misconstrued.
- Comment on Men are generous 3 hours ago:
Strange, how is it that you can see the posts that were deleted?
I assume I can still access them due to being an instance admin, that’s how I know what they were.
What’s racist about that?
I explained how that imagery is used by racists, and the previous racist meme is a good indicator it was posted with racist intent.
- Comment on Men are generous 5 hours ago:
Notice that there’s 2 posts that were removed for racism. The other one was posted 15 days prior, and was an image of a black mark zuckerburg with a comment below it implying that that was the version who steals data, which is clearly a racist post. The moderator who removed it added the comment “Next racist post gets a ban”.
The post with the Cueta post that got them banned was an image of an invasion from Lord of The Rings, equating the Cueta migrants as essentially a ‘barbarian horde’, which has traditionally been used by right-wing media as a racist scare tactic to make their viewers see non-white migrants as evil hordes who are ‘invading’ their country.
Both memes were clearly very racist, but despite that, they only received a temporary 1-week ban (I would’ve given a perma-ban for such blatant racism, myself).
- Comment on Thief vs. AAA Gaming - An Essay 2 days ago:
Gloomwood is the only close spiritual successor, but its been in early access for a long time (though it does still get substantial updates).
- Comment on Thief vs. AAA Gaming - An Essay 4 days ago:
Eh, I dunno, I think it’s possible to be fairly objective about the merits and downfalls of newer or older designs without nostalgia influencing it too much.
A different essayist made a semi-related point that, there was a certain period in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, where games were getting bigger budgets and better tech that allowed them to really expand their scope and possibilities, but with relatively little oversight from shareholders/CEO’s who would in later years essentially force higher budget games to fit a more generic mold for mass appeal. That era did seem to have a more risk-taking nature to it, which at least in the AAA space today, is a bit more muted.
That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of janky flops, if anything most of them probably don’t hold up, but the ones that do really show off what creative freedom combined with higher budgets could bring.
Today we have the indies who’ve brought back that creative freedom and resulted in some real bangers, and there are still some AAA stuff that slips through the cracks with some more risk-taking stuff (Death Stranding would be a good example, I suppose), but it does seem for the most part that AAA today is very much tending toward playing it safe, which can make things feel a bit samey or stagnant in that space.
- Submitted 4 days ago to games@lemmy.world | 13 comments
- Submitted 4 days ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 0 comments
- Comment on What games did you sleep on for too long? 4 days ago:
I actually played the OG Doom right before Dark Forces (it was what reminded it me to try it), and while the first few levels of Doom are fun enough to the point where I beat the first episode, I very quickly lost interest in episode 2, as the level design begins to get really maze-like and sprawling, and the monster closets get old. Episode one gave me all the Doom I needed, personally.
While Dark Forces is definitely very Doom-like, it added quite a lot to the experience over Doom that drastically helped to keep my attention. The addition of a story with cutscenes to provide context for the missions, the specific objectives that needed to be completed, and the far less game-y level design was drastically more interesting to engage with. I just really liked the set-up of each mission being an infiltration, with sometimes requirements to then escape back to the extraction point.
I also noticed that none of the missions in Dark Forces are really that long, they kinda felt like bite-sized missions, which kept any one mission from overstaying its welcome.
Overall it’s just a much more fleshed out, more intriguing take on the doom formula.
- Comment on What games did you sleep on for too long? 4 days ago:
Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995).
I had it growing up as a kid, but could never beat the third level so I shelved it and forgot about it, until a few days ago when I decided to try it with The Force Engine which adds mouselook and some quality of life features.
As an adult, I finally was able to figure out that 3rd level, and appreciate the cool setup for the missions (in a way, it’s kinda like Andor).
Was absolutely blown away by how much I enjoyed the combat and level design, had an absolute blast from start to finish, and now consider it one of my favorites.
- Comment on What are your favourite PSP games? 1 week ago:
From what I recall the 2nd game is regarded by some as the weakest in the series, while the 3rd is considered quite good, so if you don’t click with the 2nd’s school theme and anime tropes, you may want to skip to the 3rd one.
- Comment on What are your favourite PSP games? 1 week ago:
Valkyria Chronicles 2 and 3 are PSP exclusives, if you liked the first one on PC or PS3.
There’s a couple decent Jak & Daxter exclusives, too.
- Comment on How to summon a group of gym bros (100% working tutorial 2026) 1 week ago:
They feel fine to me, and are a little safer to use for noobies in some positions since they have progressive resistance.
I believe they are also considered better suited to the elderly or those who sustained shoulder injuries in the past.
- Comment on How to summon a group of gym bros (100% working tutorial 2026) 1 week ago:
It’s quite possible to do resistance training at home, and it’s particularly affordable if you use resistance bands, which also take up extremely little space.
- Comment on Whispers in the Moss - A very odd JRPG released in 2024 that was made entirely with BASIC and MS-DOS ASCII / BBS ANSI art | Ladiesgamers 1 week ago:
I felt the same way about the dialog when I tried the demo. I love the art style, but the dialog was just a bit too put of place for me.
However, the author mentioned in a reddit thread I found that his skills improved quite a bit over the 12 years he spent making it, though ultimately decided not to re-do the art and dialog from the start of the game as it would’ve taken too long, so I’m guessing it might start feeling less out of place as the game progresses.
- Whispers in the Moss - A very odd JRPG released in 2024 that was made entirely with BASIC and MS-DOS ASCII / BBS ANSI art | Ladiesgamersladiesgamers.com ↗Submitted 1 week ago to gaming@beehaw.org | 3 comments
- Whispers in the Moss - A very odd JRPG released in 2024 that was made entirely with BASIC and MS-DOS ASCII / BBS ANSI art | Ladiesgamersladiesgamers.com ↗Submitted 1 week ago to games@lemmy.world | 1 comment
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
That behavior with Linux is absolutely real, and it’s very weird that it hasn’t been fixed in over a decade. It’s due to the default OOM (out of memory) killer being way too conservative with killing an application when the memory is completely full and disk swapping. Some people have solved this with an app that watches for OOM situations and acts with more decisiveness to kill an offending application before it swaps and brings the system to a halt, called EarlyOOM.
That still isn’t quite as good as Windows handling though, as Windows can generally handle those situations without killing the application at all.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Sometimes software is just… Done. Feature complete and sometimes still just the best way of doing something. It’s a rare thing, but sometimes happens.
I guess a good example is WordPerfect 6.2 for DOS; it’s to this day a great WYSIWYG word processor, and the most feature complete TUI word processor for people who like distraction free writing, and there are still proponents meticulously documenting how to get it working and integrated with modern OS’s so that it can access modern printers.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Amazingly, Windows 11 still has some settings menus directly from Windows 3.11, which is from 1992.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Microsoft has pretty much lost most of their experienced employees, they’re sitting on a mountain of spaghetti code with tech debt that goes back to windows 3.11 to maintain compatibility, they’ve fired their QA team, and their absolutely out-of-touch leadership is trying to force the surviving employees to use AI anywhere they can for developing the OS to pump up the numbers of AI users to prop up their insanely huge AI gamble so shareholders don’t lose faith.
They’re acting confident because they haven’t had to respond to a credible threat to their monopoly for 30 years, and that arrogance combined with everything mentioned above will most likely be their ultimate demise. The corporate system they have created and perpetuated is no longer capable of righting the ship, both technologically and organizationally.
They made a statement years ago now about how they were going to respond to the success of the steamdeck by creating a handheld mode for windows, but they never did, and Valve ate their lunch and allowed Linux to gain a foothold among gamers. They probably couldn’t manage building that handheld mode (it’s been so many years now, but I read a post from a Microsoft employee detailing how it could take something crazy like a week of work just to add a new menu entry to a drop-down without it introducing major breakages elsewhere).
They haven’t been able to develop a killer app or feature for Windows in over a decade, and I don’t think there’s anything else under their sleeve. I believe we are actively witnessing the downfall of an ossified giant, just as the once great Commodore fell due to incompetence and extreme corporate greed.
They already use Linux for their server division (azure). Eventually, if Linux is able dominate on the desktop in the next decade, they may shift to selling their own Linux distro with a 100% windows compatible container/VM instead, an inversion of their current model of selling Windows with their optional WSL (windows subsystem for Linux).
- Comment on Patrick Stewart Reflects on 'Star Trek' at 60: Why He Wants More Spinoffs 3 weeks ago:
I’m pretty sure one of the creator’s/writer of voyager was really disappointed that it never actually fulfilled the premise at all, so he went and made the Battlestar Galactica reboot in 2003 as essentially what Voyager should’ve been if the premise was taken seriously.
- Comment on In a hearing on data centers, a resident of Tyrone Township, Michigan, asked a simple question: Have you signed a non-disclosure agreement? Officials refused to answer 3 weeks ago:
For people from the US reading this, here’s the steps we’ll have to take to avoid falling into a hellish fascist dictatorship:
Part 1: The big picture
The protests are good ways of meeting like-minded people in your community to form connections, as well as spreading awareness of local mutual aid groups so more can join or form ICE resistance groups who can join an encrypted chat to coordinate, alert neighbors, and talk strategy. It also is a good place for unions or union members to encourage others to unionize their workplaces, which can also ultimately work toward a national general strike, which is our most tangible and powerful collective action. The country would be brought to its knees if suddenly deprived of profit and labor, allowing us to directly demand real changes (such as ending the war in Iran, ceasing support for the genocide of Palestine, and Abolishing ICE). The General Strike was extremely effective in Chile in 2019, and had they not fallen for the trick of liberal reform, they would’ve had a successful revolution on their hands with virtually no bloodshed. There are some concrete steps all of us can take toward enacting that hard-core general strike to make it more viable and bearable for us all. (the titles below expand if you click them).
Part 2: Learn First Aid
Violence is being used against those who resist and it will only continue. It extremely important to have the skills to be able to keep yourself and others alive if they get hurt. Tacticool Girlfriend provides a great introduction to building a personal first aid kit, called an IFAK, which can deal with things like bullet wounds and other serious bleeding wounds. I also want to emphasize her recommendation of only buying medical gear from reputable sources (not Amazon!), such as North American Rescue to avoid fakes that could cost you your life. But you’ll need to learn how to use that equipment, too. The best resource for that is to take a local Stop The Bleed class, which are pretty widely available in most places. They may cost a small fee, but can also sometimes be free. Alternatively, if you cannot access a local class, this video by PrepMedic will give you a solid understanding of how to use Tourniquets and Gauze for wound packing. Injuries are less harmful if they are tended to early. Learning first aid can help conserve resources when healthcare becomes unaffordable. Having several medics in case of harm by police is an extremely powerful morale booster during a protest that may become a police riot. When you become comfortable with the basics of first aid, riot medicine is the next suggested step.
Part 3: Establish or join local Mutual Aid networks
If you haven’t already, get to know your neighbors. Mutual aid is a willingness to support and grow your community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions. These are groups using direct action to solve each other’s problems. Building strong communities makes it difficult for fascism to take root. The actions of the government are going to hit every community hard, and the ones who build trust in each other and work together are most likely to survive. We’ve been building a list of resources in !inperson@slrpnk.net to help you on your way. Also check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area. This isn’t only for your own community protection. Your ability to organize today will change the political landscape tomorrow. When revolution occurs, the social organizations that show the greatest resilience through the regime are the ones typically calling the shots when the dust settles. When it comes to elections, get out the vote drives are useless if most of the voters are fascists. At some point, you have to do grassroots political education if you don’t want fascist candidates winning elections. Mutual aid networks are excellent forums not only for teaching each other good political ideas, but demonstrating them in practice. There’s also some projects you can do that help build community (and can be fun in themselves!), for more info, go here, and scroll down to the “Fun Projects to Build Community) section”
Part 4: Join a Union to help prepare for a General Strike
If you aren’t in a union (or even if you are, it’s worth dual-carding), consider joining the IWW to unionize your workplace (bonus: you’ll get higher wages, better benefits, and more time off if you succeed!) to make a general strike possible. Once you are in a union you and your coworkers will need to pressure your leadership to prepare for a general strike, as well as pressure them to organize with other unions to enact a general strike. This is especially true if you are in a more traditional union that isn’t the IWW. Your local shop may need to organize directly with other unions if your union leaders are too cowardly to do so. Most unions have a strike fund that can supplement your income during a general strike to make it more financially bearable (you should also save as much money as you can reasonably do, so it can also be used to keep yourself afloat during a strike). A General Strike is officially planned by the UAW for May 1st 2028, but it was planned before Trump was elected, and by then will be too late, so prepare now for one that may start sooner. You can contact the IWW with the link below: * 🌍 US/Global: IWW (Français) - (Español) And for our international friends, you should join one as well, as fascism is gaining momentum globally. If your country isn’t listed below, just contact the IWW directly in the link above, and they’ll help you set up a new local branch. * 🇦🇷 Argentina: FORA * 🇦🇺 Australia: ASF-IWA * 🇧🇷 Brazil: FOB * 🇧🇬 Bulgaria: ARS, CITUB * 🇩🇪 Germany: FAU * 🇬🇷 Greece: ESE * 🇮🇹 Italy: USI * 🇮🇪 Ireland: IWW Ireland * 🇳🇱 🇧🇪 Netherlands & Belgium: Vriji Bond * 🇪🇸 Spain: CNT * 🇸🇪 Sweden: SAC * 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: UVW
Part 5: Adopt Security Culture and Digital Camouflage
Sometimes benign seeming efforts can turn into unexpected personal data collecting traps. Like an obscure website for exchanging contact info with other students turning into a global ad-tech surveillance network (Facebook), or innocent seeming online personality tests being use to harvest character profiles. Even Etsy, Reddit, Tinder, and Duolingo are feeding information to US Government Agencies like ICE. Security culture is commonly used to describe the general awareness of such potential traps and how it can affect groups or entire communities. This goes beyond mere individual privacy efforts, as without joint efforts these often fail to work. Especially in activist circles, security culture is paramount. For opsec reasons not everyone in the group might be aware of what clandestine efforts others are involved in, but with a general security culture many potential data leaks can be avoided. Movements are made by the volume of their participants, and the easier and less dangerous it is to participate, the more people will get involved. As more people get involved, individual involvement becomes even less dangerous, creating a virtuous cycle. We’ll start it off with some General Advice: * Mentally wall off personal uniquely identifying info from your online presence, actively build a habit of opsec so that withholding information is your default mental state * Be careful about who you meet online * Use different, unrelated usernames, passwords & emails for every account. And try not to connect to those accounts with your real IP address (use Tor or a VPN) * Be mindful that anything done online leaves a trail * agents provocateurs may seek to find patsies willing to perform an ill-advised illegal activity in order to legitimize police repression. If someone is trying to pressure you, especially if you don’t have a long and proven history with them, be extremely wary. For a full guide on what encrypted communications platforms to use, and how to stay off the radar, read the Digital Camouflage section within the Monthly Meta post here (you’ll need to scroll down. I’d add it here, but it won’t fit in this comment).
I’d also highly recommend Full Spectrum Resistance to anyone who wants further info on how to resist (audiobook version here).
- Comment on In a hearing on data centers, a resident of Tyrone Township, Michigan, asked a simple question: Have you signed a non-disclosure agreement? Officials refused to answer 3 weeks ago:
The US has been designed to quell dissent as much as possible by making dissent endanger most people’s lives, as most are 1 or 2 missed paychecks from homelessness and losing their health insurance. It makes them less willing to risk forming a union, less willing to take a risk in forming a cooperative, less able to have the free time or energy to protest, and the country is too big for them to easily gather at their capital in protest.
In the EU, workers get 30 days of consecutive time off, workers can’t be arbitrarily laid off, free or cheap health care in most cases, housing and food assistance to unemployed in many countries, etc. So it’s generally easier to fight back there.
Saying all that, the US absolutely need to take steps to overcome all that regardless, just as the EU had to do to get all those protections in the first place. If the US does nothing, it’s likely they will become like Russia is today, with a population that is mostly too scared, apathetic, or brainwashed to fight back against their regime.
- Comment on Problem solved 3 weeks ago:
Hey Mickey, I ask this without intending or meaning to offend, but why do you enjoy “haha, hate my wife” boomer humor so much?
- Comment on What is it like being drunk? How much control do you have? 3 weeks ago:
I’ve only been properly drunk once. For myself, at no point did I feel out of control, and my reasoning ability still seemed perfectly intact.
It was interesting to observe the effects of the drunkenness on my balance and ever increasing ‘lag’ type feeling, and I did notice I was a bit less inhibited, though I was around friends I already was quite comfortable with so I wasn’t that inhibited to begin with, but even still I did catch myself saying something I might’ve held back or said in a less direct way. At that point I was satisfied with the experiment and didn’t drink any more that night.
The experience did make me wonder how other people could convince themselves to drive while drunk, as even while I was wobbling to the bathroom, I was fully aware that I was totally incapable of safely driving.
I also had no issues recalling that night, so I didn’t get drunk enough to get ‘blackout’ drunk.
- Comment on What's the difference between socialism and communism? Is there one? Or are the terms interchangeable? 4 weeks ago:
Humanity actually successfully implemented a decentralized egalitarian socialist society without dictatorships in 1936 Spain, which bore out that it’s possible for us to achieve freedom for all while also ensuring everyone is able to live a fulfilling life by providing free housing, food, transportation and healthcare.
Some very specific outside circumstances caused it to be halted prematurely (namely, an unusual amount of industrialized fascist states and the USSR ganging up against it all at once, with very limited industrial capacity of their own to effectively fight back), but they documented how their society functioned while it existed quite well, and over 3 million people participated in it.
For most, it’s as difficult to imagine to an end to capitalism as it was for peasants to imagine an end to the divine right of kings, yet it did happen.
- Comment on Poll: Will you buy GTA 6 when it launches on your platform? 4 weeks ago:
No. I find virtually all AAA games for the past decade or so to be unsatisfying. I only pay for indie games nowadays.
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 5 weeks ago:
No prob :)
- Comment on #StopPayingGames 5 weeks ago:
Stop Killing Games explicitly does not want endless support from a publisher. They are advocating for publishers to implement an End of Life plan during the development stages of a game that can be enacted after the publisher wishes to stop supporting a game, so that a player has a reasonable chance of continuing to play the game on their own, either by disabling Always Online DRM, removing the Online component of a game with a large single player campaign (like The Crew), or providing server binaries so the user can self-host a server.