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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • Paramount being capitalist is a red herring. That would have been the case regardless of trump being corrupt. Settling the extortion payment had to happen for them to stop being harassed. The fact that they want to stop being harassed…so that they can continue doing the same capitalist bullshit they would have done regardless is irrelevant. It’s not the flip side of an extortion coin, it’s a completely separate unethical practice to try to confuse and divide criticism. This is step one in fostering a “both sides” argument.








  • The petition has specific wording about how the legislation would work. He was critical not because he didn’t believe in the cause, but because he felt it wasn’t well thought out. The reality is, art takes many forms, and sometimes you can only go see a play on the one night it’s performed if you happen to buy a ticket to see it, and that’s how the creator intended it. Art is not a one-size-fits-all field, and a half-baked piece of legislation would make innovative experiences in game design illegal.

    He also pointed out the very real potential attack vector for malicious actors to effectively DOS small games at launch, ruining the experience for other players, causing the game to fail and be forced to release a means for customers to self host, only for the malicious actor to then make a profit on rehosting.

    Everyone involvrd wants to get rid of scummy business practices, but this initiative is short sighted in how it describes the behaviour it doesn’t like.




  • Unfortunately, the phenomenon of social dogma that gives rise to religion has an evolutionary advantage. It’s how you get a bunch of people to focus on a common ends without spending too much time and energy being critical of the means. Humans who rally unquestioningly behind some percieved commonality get stuff done, regardless of how ethical it is. It’s why the Catholic church is immune to “cancel culture”. If any other modern institution had a documented history of figureheads systematically abusing children, they would be finished. But if everyone involved can say “that’s just the actions of a few evil individuals, they don’t represent my faith,” then they’ve achieved social immunity.

    I honestly believe that until we see a belief system that emphasizes human dignity over corporate profits, we will continue our race to the bottom of capitalism. This isn’t something a democracy “reasons” its way out of, because falsifiable beliefs based in reason will always lose some argument (by design).

    I think the Japanese religion of Shinto is pretty close to a best case scenario for a religion. It’s actually really fascinating. At its core is a belief that a spirit or godlike entity inhabits every single thing, living or inanimate, so you should treat everything with the respect of a divine being. But what you wouldn’t expect is, most people don’t literally believe these gods exist, they just see that practicing the religion makes their society better. In the west, we have a huge number of “non-practicing religious” people, but in Japan there is a huge number of “shinto-practicing non-religious” people. Combined with the fact that it (somehow) doesn’t have any figurehead trying to coopt it, it’s basically exclusively a net win for their society.

    Btw abolishing religion is also be the quickest way to convince a bunch of people to start/join a religion.