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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • the devs given any reason to doubt them

    I agree that it’s super early for much speculation, but Dan Houser and a few other key players left Rockstar after RDR2. He and Michael Unsworth (who I think also left the studio with Dan) were two-thirds of the GTA 5 and RDR2 writing team. Without their involvement, I fear a scenario where the core single-player narrative has less gravitas, around which much of the detail and realism of the gameplay and game world has previously resolved, and the company leans more into the success of its GTA Online style gameplay.

    I’m sure they can still be wildly successful with that formula, but it will be a huge disappointment for me personally.


  • Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the company that owns Pornhub to force compliance with the state’s age verification law and threatened millions of dollars in civil penalties.

    My brain has actually defaulted to thinking of Ken Paxton as a particularly vile time traveling pilgrim, whose immediate response to arriving in the present day was outrage that the world had changed and a divine conviction that it was his purpose to revert the world to the puritanical Christian dominance that made him feel warm and safe in his own time.

    That’s easier for me to comprehend than that an actual 21st century person has this many stupid, hateful ideas he’s willing to happily tie his name to.






  • Yeah, that’s fair, I did not have that context originally. I should have quoted the article I linked, because the salient parts point out that it was strange the graffiti evoked the Israeli flag, which I had noticed originally:

    Also the message in the medium was confusing. Conceivably a blue Israeli flag, or what immediately evokes it, could be seen as a pro-Jewish sign. Surely any genuine antisemite would have found a clearer way of expressing their hate.

    I’m inclined to agree with the BBC’s conclusion:

    As for the purpose of Operation Star of David, like all dezinformatsiya it seems to have been to sow confusion and anxiety. The fact that the symbol could be either pro- or anti-Israeli made it all the more interesting: that way both sides would be suspicious.

    I notice the Times of Israel doesn’t consider this months-old information when continuing to reference it as evidence of anti-semitism.



  • All your sources rely on the same primary source: the interior ministry. And I don’t see a breakdown of the acts. In a number of articles, graffiti of stars of David across buildings in France was categorized as anti-Semitic, which seems really weird to me because they weren’t defaced or altered in any way, just stars of David. On its face I would think that was…pro-semitic.

    Either way, I’m not denying there has been an uptick in anti-Semitism and that any and all anti-semitism is indefensible. But there also seems to be a deliberate effort to embellish the narrative by treating anti-Israeli or pro-Paletinian acts as anti-Semitic. Then people react to that narrative with fear, and their fear is used to further credit the narrative.

    The insidious part is that these stories treat the narrative as support for Israel’s ongoing aggression.


  • I feel for anyone who feels unsafe in their homes and communities. I can’t imagine the weight of the decision to uproot yourself and your family to emigrate to another country for reasons beyond your control, especially discrimination.

    It’s worth noting, though, that this article seemingly goes out of its way to obfuscate what qualifies as anti-semitic acts.

    "This kind of expression is no longer coming only from the extreme right, but also by the far left — and while it’s doubtful that it’s always antisemitic, anyone sensitive can feel that it’s never far away in certain discourse,” warns Wieviorka.

    Palestinian solidarity is not anti-semitism, and there are abundant indicators (from this article and its links) they’re being conflated in France.






  • Pride can actually be defined as pleasure derived from an achievement. There are meadows in your community right now with a sizable population of randy toads that would otherwise have been ripped out and replaced by cheap, cookie cutter (I assume) housing, if not specifically because of your interest and contribution.

    Intent needn’t be part of the equation. Pleasure + achievement = pride. I’m proud of you for saving those meadows, for goodness sake take some for yourself!




  • I have a soft spot for Jee-woon Kim, a Korean filmmaker probably best know for The Good, the Bad, and the Weird or I Saw the Devil. He’s gotten some big recognition, and even made an American debut with a regrettably forgettable post-gubernatorial Arnold Schwarzenegger movie (The Last Stand).

    But in the 2000s, he made a string of really phenomenal genre flicks (the two mentioned above, as well as A Bittersweet Life and A Tale of Two Sisters) that got me into Korean cinema even moreso than Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho, who I was also paying close attention to at the start.

    His career has been less consistent though. The Arnold movie and his adaptation of Illang we’re both misfires. He does get good performances from his actors, and he can elevate a good script to it’s maximum potential, but he doesn’t do the same for bad scripts. I think his greatest strength though is his visual flair, and that just doesn’t generate as much attention as his contemporaries.